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Get Smart with These 6 Energy-Efficient Homes
April 3, 2015
From cutting-edge technology to the most basic energy-efficient installation, these homes inspire the best in intelligent design.
This minimalistic, energy-efficient home in Zurich, Switzerland uses geothermal energy to produce its hot water, and a pair of 300-foot-deep boreholes that transfer warmth through a heat pump provide the under-floor heating. With all of the technology keeping this family off the grid, this house is so efficient that the architect jokes that one light sculpture, made up of two rows of bulbs, which can be seen in the reflection from a window in the living room, uses as much energy as the rest of the house put together.
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Originally appeared in Swiss Mix
Design teams at Honda and UC Davis built this 1,945-square-foot house 15 miles west of Sacramento that uses experimental and on-the-market technology to accomplish net-zero energy consumption. The Honda Smart Home features a 9.5kW solar array, which produces a current directly from the panels to the electric car charger without any conversion loss.
Originally appeared in A Modern, Energy-Efficient Smart Home
A Danish family left behind their 1970s suburban home to live as test subjects in this green-home prototype, the world’s first Active House. Starting with the roof, designers added 540 square feet of solar cells to generate electricity for the lighting, household appliances, and the home’s automated control system, which controls interior and exterior sunscreens and opens windows to naturally ventilate the space. The system will feed excess energy back to the grid and leave the family with zero carbon debt.
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Originally appeared in Test-Case Scenario
The seven townhomes that make up the Auburn 7 development in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake, each sized around 2,000 square feet, share more than just a walkway, garden, and parking units—they all contribute to a net-zero energy design. The couple that came up with this concept added radiant heating in the floors, tankless water heaters, low-flush toilets, Energy Star kitchen appliances, and high-efficiency HVAC, as well as solar-ready wiring and roof jacks for owners who chose solar energy—all but one of the new homeowners installed solar panels. One of the homes also has water-saving artificial grass on the patio.
Photo by
Originally appeared in Lucky 7
The resident of this 750-square-foot loft uses a efficiency-oriented Nest thermostat in place of her 1970s model, proving that a house doesn’t have to be new to implement smart design.
Originally appeared in Show Us How You Nest
The midcentury Butterfly House in Austin, built by A.D. Stenger, received a number of 21st-century updates, including double-pane, insulating, 98-percent UV-blocking Marvin windows to reduce cooling costs.
Photo by
Originally appeared in A Renovated Midcentury Gem in Austin
This minimalistic, energy-efficient home in Zurich, Switzerland uses geothermal energy to produce its hot water, and a pair of 300-foot-deep boreholes that transfer warmth through a heat pump provide the under-floor heating. With all of the technology keeping this family off the grid, this house is so efficient that the architect jokes that one light sculpture, made up of two rows of bulbs, which can be seen in the reflection from a window in the living room, uses as much energy as the rest of the house put together.
Photo by Hertha Hurnaus.
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