This green housing trend is booming — but not for the middle class | Passive houses are designed to be as energy efficient as possible. But they come with a high price tag.
This green housing trend is booming — but not for the middle class | Passive houses are designed to be as energy efficient as possible. But they come with a high price tag.
The article is of course about the US situation, where the small scale and one-off nature of passive houses may be increasing costs.
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For anyone with a work ethic but more time than money, an earthship is a stunningly efficient passive home designed in the 70s that uses rammed earth tires covered with adobe as walls, thermal mass to maintain heat, and giant windows to bring in light. The roof is designed to drain into water cisterns, and grey water (kitchen, bathroom sink) is used to water crops grown inside a beautiful inner garden. Its fully ready to be integrated with PV.
Here's an example if you want to see one of the many that people have built. Here is some more analysis of the viability.
The problem is that idle time is something the rich have aplenty, but the poor don't.
Indeed, but a lot of earthship building is just rough manual labor useing cheap or free materials. It doesn't take specialized tools, although they will save you time.
Effort is something the poor have to supply much more of than the rich to reach a steady state, but with the above design its possible instead of out of reach.