My Dream House by Bill Roberts
This is an entry in the ActiveRain Eco-All-Stars' "Pink" Challenge/Contest, "Building Your Dream House Using 5 Elements of Green Technology If Money Were No Object."
I am not an artist or an architect so there are no drawings. You have to close your eyes and imagine it.
My dream house (and I've been dreaming about it for years) is built into (not onto) a fairly steep hillside. The house faces south in order to get plenty of sunshine in the colder winter months.
The Earth shelters and protects the house.
My dream house is five stories tall, with an elevator of course. It is shaped to the contour of the hill, so it's not straight up and down. However, the rear inside wall is vertical making the bottom floor deeper than the top floor.
The Big Room, what people used to call the Living Room, is on the lowest level. It has a massive fireplace along the rear wall. Behind the fireplace is the elevator shaft. The chimney supports additional fireplaces on the other floors.
Atrium
The Big Room is an atrium four stories tall, shaped like the TransAmerica pyramid, with a living garden off to one side.
The garden in the living room separates the living room from the dining area. There is a "water feature" made from native rock from a near by stream, complete with cascading streams and a pond for koi. There is also a twenty foot ficus tree. Do I have to tell you how beautiful it is?
The entire "face" of the house is glass. It has dual-pane (thermo-pane) glass with a Photo-voltaic coating. The glass panels are floor to ceiling. The outside features decks on each level made out of a special material that looks like wood but it won't "weather" or burn.
The decks provide shade in the summer months while the sun is high in the sky, but they don't block the sunshine in the winter when the sun is low in the sky.
Structurally, the house is built with steel beams and concrete just like a high-rise building. The concrete floors have radiant heat from hot water. The mass of the concrete also ameliorates temperature fluctuations.
There are four sources for the hot water:
- Heat collectors in the chimney/fireplace
- External solar heat collectors
- Heat collectors in the kitchen
- Traditional gas-fired water heater
The entire Heat Collector/Radiant Heat Matrix is under the control of its own computer system which monitors internal and external temperatures and opens and closes valves as needed.
The master bedroom suite is on the top floor. It occupies the entire top floor with his/hers bathrooms, a magnificent fireplace, and views that go on forever.
The Dining area is a half-floor above the living room, situated behind the garden and water feature. It is sort of "suspended" between the kitchen above and the Big Room below. It provides a feeling of being in a room without the need for walls, and at the same time providing beautiful "views" of the Big Room atrium.
The property also has its own well and cistern to provide all the water needed to sustain the house and family.
In addition to the photo-voltaic system, electricity is provided by vertical-vane wind generators disguised as trees.
Grey water is reclaimed and used for landscaping.
Except for the natural gas or propane the house is energy independent.
I will build this house.
If you are an artist or architect and you would like to draw this for me, let me know.
Bill Roberts (619) 244-4610.
Bill,
;)
;)
