construct or live in an eco-friendly house

I have been car-free for a year now, I walk better, see more people and are way less stressed. I still have the same house, but are doing litlle things to reduce reuse and compost garbage.

We have built two houses. The first one was mostly energy efficient. I did not want an air condition system, but my husband insisted. I also refused a dishwasher.
The second house is really energy efficient, in floor heating, passive solar, wood burning stove and no air conditioning. The enery bills are really low and the house is very comfortable. Now we are looking at a third and final building project. I want this one to be truly green.

I’ve learned a lot so far from green / eco books i have purchased like cradle to cradle Remaking the Way We Make Things, Design for Sustainability: A Sourcebook of Integrated, Eco-logical Solutions, Ready, Set, Green: Eight Weeks to Modern Eco-Living, The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a time, Go Green, Live Rich: 50 Simple Ways to Save the Earth and Get Rich Trying, 365 Ways to Live Green: Your Everyday Guide to Saving the Environment. I have also purchased films like The 11th hour, and An inconvenient truth, and planet in peril that has boosted my motivation for doing all these things. I’m starting an eco site as well www.ecogreenglobe.com which connects people with eco web links to help them live a greener life. The things i do now since i don’t have the money to build a home. I buy 100% eco friendly cleaning products from sun & earth, Bought a eco friendly push reel lawn mower instead of a gas mower (works quite well too!) changed all my bulbs to cfl’s, changed my shower head to an eco friendly water saving one. I buy all recycled paper towels, toilet paper and purchase small gadgets like small solar panels to charge my cell phone, and ipod. I recycle 99% of all my garbage, i usually throw away 1% of actual garbage a week which is a biodegradable bag of about the size of my hand. Hopefully i wont even need to throw that out when i get my com poster. The things i hope to do yet is start a com poster, and collect rain water for maybe flushing toilets and or watering plants. There are hundreds of things we can do to live green and im trying every single one of them with all my heart. I just cant wait till i have the funds to build an eco home!

My eco friendly dream is to have my an eco friendly home. A building that works with the environment instead of against it. I’m currently designing the features I want to include into it. Weather it be a home that I will renovate or build from scratch everything will be 100% eco. I definitely want a green house/ green room which will either be attached to the house or separate so I can grow my own food. Solar panels on the roof are a must. With skylights, letting natural light in to the home. Ground heating, rain collecting for flushing toilets and watering plants. Wind turbines on the roof and maybe even extend it out into the back yard making a mini wind farm. My goal is to produce enough power from all these sources so that I no longer exist on the energy radar. Going off the grid is one of the top goals of this project. All materials will be recyclable or sustainable. This is a longer term goal and all depends on my financial situation. Too bad building eco isn’t cheaper!

I think that we are as close to this goal as we will be for a while. My main aims are as follows:

To keep all waste to a minimum
To cut energy consumption
To buy goods which do not harm the environment

We’ve ordered one for the garden and it should be arriving in the next 2 weeks. As the majority of our food waste is vegetable matter, this will cut down on our rubbish considerably. I am also going to create a space in the kitchen for our weekly re-cycle of glass, paper and tin.

This is now installed. It will be interested to see how our first bill comes in. We can then try to beat it next time!

An extra bonus today. I found out that our kitchen cabinets are FSC accredited. I was hoping that it might be the case.

We now have a new kitchen with most of the appliances rating A energy efficiency. We’ve always inherited other people’s kitchens before so it’s a real treat to have something that only we have used.

Happily, we have found someone who wants to take our old cooker on Freecycle and are hoping that they may consider the fridge as well. I’m not sure what we can do with the old kitchen cabinets as we had to smash up a bit to get them out (they dated from 1968!). Hopefully, the council can find something decent to do with the wood.

This is now installed. Eco-wise, it’s a tricky one because manufacturing UPVC ang glass is not green at all. However, the energy savings and relative longevity make sense, especially when you live in the middle of moorland! We haven’t been able to switch the heating off as it has been cold here, but we are planning to reduce the time that the radiators are on next week.

Hopefully, we should have all the drafts blocked up by the beginning of April which will help too.