Autonomous building
Encyclopedia
An autonomous building is a building designed to be operated independently from infrastructural
support services such as the electric power
grid, gas grid, municipal water systems, sewage treatment
systems, storm drain
s, communication services, and in some cases, public roads.
Advocates of autonomous building describe advantages that include reduced environmental impacts, increased security, and lower costs of ownership. Some cited advantages satisfy tenets of green building
, not independence per se (see below). Off-grid
buildings often rely very little on civil services and are therefore safer and more comfortable during civil disaster or military attacks. (Off-grid buildings would not lose power or water if public supplies were compromised for some reason.)
Most of the research and published articles concerning autonomous building focus on residential homes.
British architects Brenda and Robert Vale
have said that, as of 2002, "It is quite possible in all parts of Australia to construct a 'house with no bills', which would be comfortable without heating and cooling, which would make its own electricity, collect its own water and deal with its own waste...These houses can be built now, using off-the-shelf techniques. It is possible to build a "house with no bills" for the same price as a conventional house, but it would be (25%) smaller."
In the 1930s through the 1950s, Buckminster Fuller
's three prototype Dymaxion house
s adopted many techniques to reduce resource use, such as a "fogger" shower head to reduce water use, a packaging toilet, and a vacuum turbine for electric power. While not designed as autonomous per se, Fuller's concern with sustainable and efficient design is congruent with the goal of autonomy, and showed that it was theoretically possible. One of the three prototype Dymaxion houses that Fuller produced was made part of the conventional Graham family residence in Wichita
, Kansas
, and has now been reconstructed at the Henry Ford Museum
.
In the 1970s, a group of activists and engineers calling themselves the New Alchemists believed the warnings of imminent resource depletion and starvation. The New Alchemists were famous for the depth of research effort placed in their projects. Using conventional construction
techniques, they designed a series of "bioshelter
" projects, the most famous of which was the Ark Bioshelter community for Prince Edward Island
. They published the plans for all of these, with detailed design calculations and blueprints. The Ark used wind based water pumping and electricity, and was self-contained in food production. It had living quarters for people, fish
tanks raising Tilapia
for protein
, a greenhouse
watered with fish water and a closed loop sewage reclamation system that recycled human waste into sanitized fertilizer for the fish tanks. As of 2010-01-10, the successor organization to the New Alchemists has a web page up as the "New Alchemy Institute". The PEI Ark has been abandoned and partially renovated several times.
Very often a practical autonomous building might include a garden for food. In the 1970s and 1980s, Bill Mollison
and David Holmgren
developed permaculture
, a form of agriculture using perennial food plants organized in a comprehensive forest ecology.
The 1990s saw the development of Earthship
s, similar in intent to the Ark project, but organized as a for-profit venture, with construction details published in a series of 3 books by Mike Reynolds
. The building material is tire
s filled with earth
. This makes a wall that has large amounts of thermal mass (see earth sheltering
). Berms are placed on exposed surfaces to further increase the house's temperature stability. The water system starts with rain water, processed for drinking, then washing, then plant watering, then toilet flushing, and finally black water
is recycled again for more plant watering. The cistern
s are placed and used as thermal masses. Power, including electricity, heat and water heating, is from solar power.
1990s architects such as William McDonough
and Ken Yeang
applied environmentally responsible building design to large commercial buildings, such as office buildings, making them largely self-sufficient in energy production. One major bank building (ING's
Amsterdam
headquarters) in the Netherlands
was constructed to be autonomous and artistic as well.
Autonomous buildings can increase security and reduce environmental impacts by using on-site resources (such as sunlight and rain) that would otherwise be wasted. Autonomy often dramatically reduces the costs and impacts of networks that serve the building, because autonomy short-circuits the multiplying inefficiencies of collecting and transporting resources. Other impacted resources, such as oil reserves and the retention of the local watershed, can often be cheaply conserved by thoughtful designs.
Autonomous buildings are usually energy-efficient
in operation, and therefore cost-efficient, for the obvious reason that smaller energy needs are easier to satisfy off-grid. But they may substitute energy production or other techniques to avoid diminishing returns in extreme conservation.
An autonomous structure is not always environmentally friendly. The goal of independence from support systems is associated with, but not identical to, other goals of environmentally responsible green building. However, autonomous buildings also usually include some degree of sustainability
through the use of renewable energy
and other renewable resources, producing no more greenhouse gas
es than they consume, and other measures.
Living in an autonomous shelter can require one to make sacrifices in one's lifestyle choices, personal behavior, and social expectations. Even the most comfortable and technologically advanced autonomous houses may require some differences in behavior. Some people adjust easily. Others describe the experience as inconvenient, irritating, isolating, or even as an unwanted full-time job. A well-designed building can reduce this issue, but usually at the expense of reduced autonomy.
An autonomous house must be custom-built (or extensively retrofitted) to suit the climate and location. Passive solar techniques, alternative toilet and sewage systems, thermal massing designs, basement battery systems, efficient windowing, and the array of other design tactics require some degree of non-standard construction, added expense, ongoing experimentation and maintenance, and also have an effect on the psychology of the space.
The Vales
, among others, have shown that living off-grid can be a practical, logical lifestyle choice—under certain conditions.
There are many methods of collecting and conserving water. Use reduction is cost-effective.
Greywater
systems reuse drained wash water to flush toilet
s or to water lawns and garden
s. Greywater systems can halve the water use of most residential buildings; however, they require the purchase of a sump, greywater pressurization pump and secondary plumbing
. Some builders are installing waterless urinals and even composting toilet
s that completely eliminate water usage in sewage disposal.
The classic solution with minimal life-style changes is using a well
. Once drilled, a well-foot requires substantial power. However, advanced well-foots can reduce power usage by twofold or more from older models. Well water can be contaminated in some areas. The sono arsenic filter
eliminates unhealthy arsenic
in well water.
However drilling a well is an uncertain activity, with aquifers depleted in some areas. It can also be expensive.
In regions with sufficient rainfall, it is often more economical to design a building to use rain, with supplementary water deliveries in a drought. Rain water makes excellent soft washwater, but needs antibacterial treatment. If used for drinking, mineral supplements or mineralization is necessary.
Most desert
and temperate
climates get at least 250 millimetres (9.8 in) of rain
per year. This means that a typical one-story house
with a greywater system can supply its year-round water needs from its roof alone. In the driest areas, it might require a cistern
of 30 cubic metres (7,925.2 US gal). Many areas average 13 millimetre (0.511811023622047 in) of rain per week, and these can use a cistern as small as 10 cubic metres (2,641.7 US gal).
In many areas, it is difficult to keep a roof clean enough for drinking. To reduce dirt and bad tastes, systems use a metal collecting-roof and a "roof cleaner" tank that diverts the first 40 liters. Cistern water is usually chlorinated
, though reverse osmosis
systems provide even better quality drinking water.
Modern cisterns are usually large plastic tanks. Gravity tanks on short towers are reliable, so pump repairs are less urgent. The least expensive bulk cistern is a fenced pond or pool at ground level.
Reducing autonomy reduces the size and expense of cisterns. Many autonomous homes can reduce water use below 10 gallons (37.9 l) per person per day, so that in a drought
a month of water can be delivered inexpensively via truck. Self-delivery is often possible by installing fabric water tanks that fit the bed of a pick-up truck.
It can be convenient to use the cistern as a heat sink or trap for a heat pump
or air conditioning
system; however this can make cold drinking water warm, and in drier years may decrease the efficiency of the HVAC system.
Solar still
s can efficiently produce drinking water from ditch water or cistern water, especially high-efficiency multiple effect humidification designs, which separate the evaporator(s) and condenser(s).
New technologies, like reverse osmosis
can create unlimited amounts of pure water from polluted water, ocean water, and even from humid air. Water makers are available for yachts that convert seawater and electricity into potable water
and brine
. Atmospheric water generator
s extract moisture from dry desert air and filter it to pure water.
The approaches below treat human excrement as a waste rather than a resource. Composting toilet
s use bacteria to decompose human feces
into useful, odourless, sanitary compost. The process is sanitary because soil bacteria eat the human pathogens as well as most of the mass of the waste. Nevertheless, most health authorities forbid direct use of "humanure" for growing food. The risk is microbial and viral contamination. In a dry composting toilet, the waste is evaporated or digested to gas (mostly carbon dioxide) and vented, so a toilet produces only a few pounds of compost every six months. To control the odor, modern toilets use a small fan to keep the toilet under negative pressure, and exhaust the gasses to a vent pipe.
Some home sewage treatment systems use biological treatment, usually beds of plants and aquaria, that absorb nutrients and bacteria and convert greywater and sewage to clear water. This odor- and color-free reclaimed water can be used to flush toilets and water outside plants. When tested, it approaches standards for potable water. In climates that freeze, the plants and aquaria need to be kept in a small greenhouse space. Good systems need about as much care as a large aquarium
.
Electric incinerating toilet
s turn excrement into a small amount of ash. They are cool to the touch, have no water and no pipes, and require an air vent in a wall. They are used in remote areas where use of septic tanks is limited, usually to reduce nutrient loads in lakes.
NASA
's bioreactor
is an extremely advanced biological sewage system. It can turn sewage into air and water through microbial action. NASA plans to use it in the manned Mars
mission.
A big disadvantage of complex biological sewage treatment systems is that if the house is empty, the sewage system biota may starve to death.
Another method is NASA's urine
-to-water distillation system.
s are transmitted by poorly functioning sewage systems.
The standard system is a tiled leach field combined with a septic tank
. The basic idea is to provide a small system with primary sewage treatment
. Sludge settles to the bottom of the septic tank, is partially reduced by anaerobic digestion
, and fluid is dispersed in the leach field. The leach field is usually under a yard growing grass. Septic tanks can operate entirely by gravity, and if well managed, are reasonably safe.
Septic tanks have to be pumped periodically by a honey wagon
to eliminate non reducing solids. Failure to pump a septic tank can cause overflow that damages the leach field, and contaminates ground water. Septic tanks may also require some lifestyle changes, such as not using garbage disposals, minimizing fluids flushed into the tank, and minimizing nondigestible solids flushed into the tank. For example, septic safe toilet paper is recommended.
However, septic tanks remain popular because they permit standard plumbing fixtures, and require few or no lifestyle sacrifices.
Composting or packaging toilets make it economical and sanitary to throw away sewage as part of the normal garbage collection service. They also reduce water use by half, and eliminate the difficulty and expense of septic tanks. However, they require the local landfill to use sanitary practices.
Incinerator systems are quite practical. The ashes are biologically safe, and less than 1/10 the volume of the original waste, but like all incinerator waste, are usually classified as hazardous waste.
Some of the oldest pre-system sewage types are pit toilet
s, latrine
s, and outhouse
s. These are still used in many developing countries.
Typically, elaborate, capital-intensive storm sewer networks are engineered to deal with stormwater
. In some cities, such as the Victorian era
London sewers or much of the old City of Toronto
, the storm water system is combined with the sanitary sewer system. In the event of heavy precipitation, the load on the sewage treatment plant at the end of the pipe becomes too great to handle and raw sewage is dumped into holding tanks, and sometimes into surface water.
Autonomous buildings can address precipitation in a number of ways:
If a water absorbing swale
for each yard is combined with permeable concrete
streets, storm drains can be omitted from the neighbourhood. This can save more than $800 per house (1970s) by eliminating storm drains. One way to use the savings is to purchase larger lots, which permits more amenities at the same cost. Permeable concrete is an established product in warm climates, and in development for freezing climates. In freezing climates, the elimination of storm drains can often still pay for enough land to construct swales (shallow water collecting ditches) or water impeding berms instead. This plan provides more land for homeowners and can offer more interesting topography for landscaping.
A green roof
captures precipitation and uses the water to grow plants. It can be built into a new building or used to replace an existing roof.
Since electricity is an expensive utility, the first step towards conservation is to design a house and lifestyle to reduce demand. Fluorescent lights, laptop computers and gas-powered refrigerators save electricity, although gas-powered refrigerators are not very efficient. There are also superefficient electric refrigerators, such as those produced by the Sun Frost company, some of which use only about half as much electricity as a mass-market energy star
-rated refrigerator.
Using a solar roof, solar cell
s can provide electric power. Solar roofs have the potential to be more cost-effective than retrofitted solar power, because buildings need roofs anyway. Modern solar cells last about 40 years, which makes them a reasonable investment in some areas. Solar cells have only small life-style impacts: The cells must be cleaned a few times per year.
A number of areas that lack sun
have wind
. To generate power, the average autonomous house needs only one small wind generator
, 5 metres or less in diameter. On a 30 metre high tower, this turbine can provide enough power to supplement solar power on cloudy days. Commercially available wind turbines use sealed, one-moving-part AC generators and passive, self-feathering blades for years of operation without service.
The largest advantage of wind power
is that larger wind turbines have a lower per-watt cost than solar cells, provided there is wind. However, location is critical. Just as some locations lack sun for solar cells, some locations lack sufficient wind for an economical turbine installation. In the Great Plains
of the United States
a 10 metre turbine can supply enough energy to heat and cool a well-built all-electric house. Economic use in other areas requires research, and possibly a site-survey.
During times of low demand, excess power can be stored in batteries for future use. However, batteries need to be replaced every few years. In many areas, battery expenses can be eliminated by attaching the building to the electric power grid
and operating the power system with net metering
. Utility permission is required, but such cooperative generation is legally mandated in some areas (for example, California).
A grid-based building is less autonomous, but more economical and sustainable with fewer lifestyle sacrifices. In rural areas the grid's cost and impacts can be reduced by using single wire earth return
systems (for example, the MALT-system).
In areas that lack access to the grid, battery size can be reduced by including a generator to recharge the batteries during extended fogs or other low-power conditions. Auxiliary generators are usually run from propane
, natural gas
, or sometimes diesel. An hour of charging usually provides a day of operation. Modern residential chargers permit the user to set the charging times, so the generator is quiet at night. Some generators automatically test themselves once per week.
Recent advances in passively stable magnetic bearings
may someday permit inexpensive storage of power in a flywheel
in a vacuum. Well-funded groups like Canada's Ballard Power Systems
are also working to develop a "regenerative fuel cell", a device that can generate hydrogen and oxygen when power is available, and combine these efficiently when power is needed.
Earth batteries
tap electric currents in the earth called telluric current
. They can be installed anywhere in the ground. They provide only low voltages and current. They were used to power telegraphs
in the 19th century. As appliance efficiencies increase, they may become practical.
Microbial fuel cell
s finally allow the generation of electricity from biomass. Unlike direct incineration of biomass however, the method using a microbial fuel cell is completely emissionless. The plant can be chopped and converted as a whole, or it can be left alive so that waste saps from the plant can be converted by bacteria.
Most autonomous buildings are designed to use insulation, thermal mass and passive solar heating and cooling. Examples of these are trombe wall
s and other technologies as skylights
.
Passive solar heating
can heat most buildings in even the coldest climates. In colder climates, extra construction costs can be as little as 15% more than new, conventional buildings. In warm climates, those having less than two weeks of frosty nights per year, there is no cost impact.
The basic requirement for passive solar heating is that the solar collectors must face the prevailing sunlight (south in the northern hemisphere
, north in the southern hemisphere
), and the building must incorporate thermal mass
to keep it warm in the night.
A recent, somewhat experimental solar heating system "Annualized geo solar
heating" is practical even in regions that get little or no sunlight in winter.
It uses the ground beneath a building for thermal mass. Precipitation can carry away the heat, so the ground is shielded with skirts of plastic insulation. The thermal mass of this system is sufficiently inexpensive and large that it can store enough summer heat to warm a building for the whole winter, and enough winter cold to cool the building in summer.
In annualized geo solar systems, the solar collector is often separate from (and hotter or colder than) the living space. The building may actually be constructed from insulation
, for example, straw-bale construction
. Some buildings have been aerodynamically designed so that convection via ducts and interior spaces eliminates any need for electric fans.
A more modest "daily solar" design is very practical. For example, for about a 15% premium in building costs, the Passivhaus
building codes in Europe use high performance insulating windows, R-30 insulation, HRV ventilation, and a small thermal mass. With modest changes in the building's position, modern krypton
- or argon
-insulated windows permit normal-looking windows to provide passive solar heat without compromising insulation or structural strength. If a small heater is available for the coldest nights, a slab or basement cistern can inexpensively provide the required thermal mass
. Passivhaus building codes in particular bring unusually good interior air quality, because the buildings change the air several times per hour, passing it though a heat exchanger to keep heat inside.
In all systems, a small supplementary heater increases personal security and reduces lifestyle impacts for a small reduction of autonomy. The two most popular heaters for ultra-high-efficiency houses are a small heat pump
, which also provides air-conditioning, or a central hydronic (radiator) air heater with water recirculating from the water heater. Passivhaus designs usually integrate the heater with the ventilation system.
Earth sheltering
and windbreak
s can also reduce the absolute amount of heat needed by a building. Several feet below the earth, temperature ranges from 4 °C (39.2 °F) in North Dakota to 26 °C (78.8 °F), in Southern Florida. Wind breaks reduce the amount of heat carried away from a building.
Rounded, aerodynamic buildings also lose less heat.
An increasing number of commercial buildings use a combined cycle
with cogeneration
to provide heating, often water heating, from the output of a natural gas reciprocating engine
, gas turbine
or stirling
electric generator.
Houses designed to cope with interruptions in civil services generally incorporate a wood stove, or heat and power from diesel fuel or bottled gas
, regardless of their other heating mechanisms.
Electric heaters and electric stoves may provide pollution-free heat (depending on the power source), but use large amounts of electricity. If enough electricity is provided by solar panels, wind turbines, or other means, then electric heaters and stoves become a practical autonomous design.
units recover heat from drainlines thereby increasing water heating capacity and reducing the energy used to heat water.
The basic trick in a solar water heating system is to use a well-insulated holding tank. Some systems are vacuum
- insulated, acting something like large thermos
bottles. The tank is filled with hot water on sunny days, and made available at all times. Unlike a conventional tank water heater, the tank is filled only when there is sunlight.
Good storage makes a smaller, higher-technology collector feasible. Such collectors can use relatively exotic technologies, such as vacuum insulation, and reflective concentration of sunlight.
Current practical, comfortable water-heating systems combine the solar heating system with a thermostatic gas-powered flow-through heater, so that the temperature of the water is consistent, and the amount is unlimited. This again reduces life-style impacts at some cost in autonomy. Ideally, this would be a cogeneration
system that produces other energy, and uses locally produced fuels.
Heat recycling, cogenereration and solar pre-heating can save 50-75% of the gas otherwise used. Also, some combinations provide redundant reliability by having several sources of heat.
Some authorities advocate that bottled gas
or natural gas
be replaced by biogas
. However, this is usually impractical unless live-stock are on-site. The wastes of a single family are usually insufficient to produce enough methane
for anything more than small amounts of cooking.
Less dramatic improvements are possible. Windows can be shaded in summer. Eaves can be overhung to provide the necessary shade. These also shade the walls of the house, reducing cooling costs.
Another trick is to cool the building's thermal mass at night, and then cool the building from the thermal mass during the day. It helps to be able to route cold air from a sky-facing radiator (perhaps an air heating solar collector with an alternate purpose) or evaporative cooler directly through the thermal mass. On clear nights, even in tropical areas, sky facing radiators can cool below freezing.
If a circular building is aerodynamically smooth, and cooler than the ground, it can be passively cooled by the "dome effect." Many installations have reported that a reflective or light colored dome induces a local vertical heat driven vortex that sucks cooler overhead air downward into a dome if the dome is vented properly (a single overhead vent, and peripheral vents). Some people have reported a temperature differential as high as between the inside of the dome and the outside. Buckminster Fuller
discovered this effect with a simple house design adapted from a grain silo, and adapted his Dymaxion house
and geodesic dome
s to use it.
Refrigerators and air conditioners operating from the waste heat of a diesel engine exhaust, heater flue or solar collector are entering use. These use the same principles as a gas refrigerator. Normally, the heat from a flue powers an "absorptive chiller". The cold water or brine from the chiller is used to cool air or a refrigerated space.
Cogeneration is popular in new commercial buildings. In current cogeneration systems small gas turbines or stirling engine
s powered from natural gas produce electricity and their exhaust drives an absorptive chiller.
A truck trailer refrigerator operating from the waste heat of a tractor's diesel exhaust was demonstrated by NRG Solutions, Inc. NRG developed a hydronic ammonia
gas heat exchanger and vaporizer, the two essential new, not commercially available components of a waste heat driven refrigerator.
A similar scheme (multiphase cooling) can be by a multistage evaporative cooler. The air is passed through a spray of salt solution to dehumidify it, then through a spray of water solution to cool it, then another salt solution to dehumidify it again. The brine has to be regenerated, and that can be done economically with a low temperature solar still. Multiphase evaporative coolers can lower the air's temperature by 50°F (28°C), and still control humidity. If the brine regenerator uses high heat, they also partially sterilise the air.
If enough electric power is available, cooling can be provided by conventional air conditioning using a heat pump
.
Skilled, intensive garden
ing can support an adult from as little as 100 square meters of land per person,
possibly requiring the use of organic farming and aeroponics
. Some proven intensive, low-effort food-production systems include urban gardening
(indoors and outdoors). Indoor cultivation
may be set up using hydroponics
, while outdoor cultivation may be done using permaculture
, forest gardening
, no-till farming
, and do nothing farming.
Greenhouse
s are also sometimes included. Sometimes they are also outfitted with irrigation systems or heat sink
-systems which can respectively irrigate the plants or help to store energy from the sun and redistribute it at night (when the greenhouses starts to cool down).
and email
services using cooperative computer networks that run wireless ad hoc networks. Network service is provided by a cooperative of neighbors, each operating a router as a household appliance. These minimize wired infrastructure, and its costs and vulnerabilities. Private Internet protocol
networks set up in this way can operate without the use of a commercial provider.
Rural electrical grids can be wired with "optical phase cable", in which one or more of the steel
armor wires are replaced with steel tubes containing fiber optics.
Satellite Internet access
can provide high speed connectivity to remote locations, however these are significantly more expensive than wire-based or terrestrial wireless systems. Wimax
and forms of packet radio
can also be used. Depending on the speed and latency of these networks they may be capable of relaying VoIP traffic, negating the need for separate telephony services. Finally, the Internet Radio Linking Project
provides potential for blending older (cheap) local radio broadcasting with the increased range of the internet.
Depending on the location a mobile phone
network may be available which can provide voice and data services. satellite
-based telephone systems can also be used, as either fixed installations or portable handsets and can be integrated into a PABX or local IP-based network.
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...
support services such as the electric power
Electric power
Electric power is the rate at which electric energy is transferred by an electric circuit. The SI unit of power is the watt.-Circuits:Electric power, like mechanical power, is represented by the letter P in electrical equations...
grid, gas grid, municipal water systems, sewage treatment
Sewage treatment
Sewage treatment, or domestic wastewater treatment, is the process of removing contaminants from wastewater and household sewage, both runoff and domestic. It includes physical, chemical, and biological processes to remove physical, chemical and biological contaminants...
systems, storm drain
Storm drain
A storm drain, storm sewer , stormwater drain or drainage well system or simply a drain or drain system is designed to drain excess rain and ground water from paved streets, parking lots, sidewalks, and roofs. Storm drains vary in design from small residential dry wells to large municipal systems...
s, communication services, and in some cases, public roads.
Advocates of autonomous building describe advantages that include reduced environmental impacts, increased security, and lower costs of ownership. Some cited advantages satisfy tenets of green building
Green building
Green building refers to a structure and using process that is environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building's life-cycle: from siting to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition...
, not independence per se (see below). Off-grid
Off-the-grid
The term off-the-grid or off-grid refers to living in a self-sufficient manner without reliance on one or more public utilities....
buildings often rely very little on civil services and are therefore safer and more comfortable during civil disaster or military attacks. (Off-grid buildings would not lose power or water if public supplies were compromised for some reason.)
Most of the research and published articles concerning autonomous building focus on residential homes.
British architects Brenda and Robert Vale
Brenda and Robert Vale
Professor Brenda Vale and Doctor Robert Vale are architects, writers, pioneer researchers, and experts in the field of sustainable housing....
have said that, as of 2002, "It is quite possible in all parts of Australia to construct a 'house with no bills', which would be comfortable without heating and cooling, which would make its own electricity, collect its own water and deal with its own waste...These houses can be built now, using off-the-shelf techniques. It is possible to build a "house with no bills" for the same price as a conventional house, but it would be (25%) smaller."
History
Buckminster Fuller
Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International, the high IQ society....
's three prototype Dymaxion house
Dymaxion house
The Dymaxion House was developed by inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller to address several perceived shortcomings with existing homebuilding techniques. Fuller designed several versions of the house at different times, but they were all factory manufactured kits, assembled on site, intended...
s adopted many techniques to reduce resource use, such as a "fogger" shower head to reduce water use, a packaging toilet, and a vacuum turbine for electric power. While not designed as autonomous per se, Fuller's concern with sustainable and efficient design is congruent with the goal of autonomy, and showed that it was theoretically possible. One of the three prototype Dymaxion houses that Fuller produced was made part of the conventional Graham family residence in Wichita
Wichita, Kansas
Wichita is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas.As of the 2010 census, the city population was 382,368. Located in south-central Kansas on the Arkansas River, Wichita is the county seat of Sedgwick County and the principal city of the Wichita metropolitan area...
, Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
, and has now been reconstructed at the Henry Ford Museum
The Henry Ford
The Henry Ford, a National Historic Landmark, , in the Metro Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan, USA, is a large indoor and outdoor history museum complex...
.
In the 1970s, a group of activists and engineers calling themselves the New Alchemists believed the warnings of imminent resource depletion and starvation. The New Alchemists were famous for the depth of research effort placed in their projects. Using conventional construction
Construction
In the fields of architecture and civil engineering, construction is a process that consists of the building or assembling of infrastructure. Far from being a single activity, large scale construction is a feat of human multitasking...
techniques, they designed a series of "bioshelter
Bioshelter
A bioshelter is a solar greenhouse managed as an indoor ecosystem. The word bioshelter was coined by the New Alchemy Institute and solar designers Sean Wellesley-Miller and Day Chahroudi...
" projects, the most famous of which was the Ark Bioshelter community for Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island is a Canadian province consisting of an island of the same name, as well as other islands. The maritime province is the smallest in the nation in both land area and population...
. They published the plans for all of these, with detailed design calculations and blueprints. The Ark used wind based water pumping and electricity, and was self-contained in food production. It had living quarters for people, fish
Fish farming
Fish farming is the principal form of aquaculture, while other methods may fall under mariculture. Fish farming involves raising fish commercially in tanks or enclosures, usually for food. A facility that releases young fish into the wild for recreational fishing or to supplement a species'...
tanks raising Tilapia
Tilapia
Tilapia , is the common name for nearly a hundred species of cichlid fish from the tilapiine cichlid tribe. Tilapia inhabit a variety of fresh water habitats, including shallow streams, ponds, rivers and lakes. Historically, they have been of major importance in artisan fishing in Africa and the...
for protein
Protein
Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...
, a greenhouse
Greenhouse
A greenhouse is a building in which plants are grown. These structures range in size from small sheds to very large buildings...
watered with fish water and a closed loop sewage reclamation system that recycled human waste into sanitized fertilizer for the fish tanks. As of 2010-01-10, the successor organization to the New Alchemists has a web page up as the "New Alchemy Institute". The PEI Ark has been abandoned and partially renovated several times.
Very often a practical autonomous building might include a garden for food. In the 1970s and 1980s, Bill Mollison
Bill Mollison
Bruce Charles 'Bill' Mollison is a researcher, author, scientist, teacher and naturalist. He is considered to be the 'father of permaculture', an integrated system of design, co-developed with David Holmgren, that encompasses not only agriculture, horticulture, architecture and ecology, but also...
and David Holmgren
David Holmgren
David Holmgren is an ecologist, ecological design engineer and writer. He is known as one of the co-originators of the permaculture concept with Bill Mollison.- Life and work :Holmgren was born in the state of Western Australia...
developed permaculture
Permaculture
Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that is modeled on the relationships found in nature. It is based on the ecology of how things interrelate rather than on the strictly biological concerns that form the foundation of modern agriculture...
, a form of agriculture using perennial food plants organized in a comprehensive forest ecology.
Earthship
An earthship is a type of passive solar house made of natural and recycled materials. Designed and marketed by Earthship Biotecture of Taos, New Mexico, the homes are primarily constructed to work as autonomous buildings and are generally made of earth-filled tires, using thermal mass...
s, similar in intent to the Ark project, but organized as a for-profit venture, with construction details published in a series of 3 books by Mike Reynolds
Mike Reynolds (architect)
Michael E. "Mike" Reynolds is an American architect based in New Mexico and a proponent of "radically sustainable living". He has been a critic of the profession of architecture for its failure to deal with the amount of waste that building design creates....
. The building material is tire
Tire
A tire or tyre is a ring-shaped covering that fits around a wheel rim to protect it and enable better vehicle performance by providing a flexible cushion that absorbs shock while keeping the wheel in close contact with the ground...
s filled with earth
Soil
Soil is a natural body consisting of layers of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics...
. This makes a wall that has large amounts of thermal mass (see earth sheltering
Earth sheltering
Earth sheltering is the architectural practice of using earth against building walls for external thermal mass, to reduce heat loss, and to easily maintain a steady indoor air temperature...
). Berms are placed on exposed surfaces to further increase the house's temperature stability. The water system starts with rain water, processed for drinking, then washing, then plant watering, then toilet flushing, and finally black water
Blackwater (waste)
Blackwater is a term dating to at least the 1970s used to describe wastewater containing fecal matter and urine. It is also known as brown water, foul water, or sewage...
is recycled again for more plant watering. The cistern
Cistern
A cistern is a waterproof receptacle for holding liquids, usually water. Cisterns are often built to catch and store rainwater. Cisterns are distinguished from wells by their waterproof linings...
s are placed and used as thermal masses. Power, including electricity, heat and water heating, is from solar power.
1990s architects such as William McDonough
William McDonough
William Andrews McDonough is an American architect, founding principal of , co-founder of with German chemist Michael Braungart as well as co-author of also with Braungart...
and Ken Yeang
Ken Yeang
Dr. Ken Yeang [Chinese]: 杨经文/楊經文; [pinyin]: Yáng Jīngwén; born 1948) is a prolific Malaysian architect and writer best known for advancing green design and planning, differentiated from other green architects by his comprehensive ecological approach....
applied environmentally responsible building design to large commercial buildings, such as office buildings, making them largely self-sufficient in energy production. One major bank building (ING's
ING Group
The ING Group is a global financial institution offering retail banking, direct banking, commercial banking, investment banking, asset management, and insurance services. ING is the Dutch member of the Inter-Alpha Group of Banks, a cooperative consortium of 11 prominent European banks...
Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
headquarters) in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
was constructed to be autonomous and artistic as well.
Advantages
As an architect or engineer becomes more concerned with the disadvantages of transportation networks, and dependence on distant resources, their designs tend to include more autonomous elements. The historic path to autonomy was a concern for secure sources of heat, power, water and food. A nearly parallel path toward autonomy has been to start with a concern for environmental impacts, which cause disadvantages.Autonomous buildings can increase security and reduce environmental impacts by using on-site resources (such as sunlight and rain) that would otherwise be wasted. Autonomy often dramatically reduces the costs and impacts of networks that serve the building, because autonomy short-circuits the multiplying inefficiencies of collecting and transporting resources. Other impacted resources, such as oil reserves and the retention of the local watershed, can often be cheaply conserved by thoughtful designs.
Autonomous buildings are usually energy-efficient
Efficient energy use
Efficient energy use, sometimes simply called energy efficiency, is the goal of efforts to reduce the amount of energy required to provide products and services. For example, insulating a home allows a building to use less heating and cooling energy to achieve and maintain a comfortable temperature...
in operation, and therefore cost-efficient, for the obvious reason that smaller energy needs are easier to satisfy off-grid. But they may substitute energy production or other techniques to avoid diminishing returns in extreme conservation.
An autonomous structure is not always environmentally friendly. The goal of independence from support systems is associated with, but not identical to, other goals of environmentally responsible green building. However, autonomous buildings also usually include some degree of sustainability
Sustainability
Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...
through the use of renewable energy
Renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...
and other renewable resources, producing no more greenhouse gas
Greenhouse gas
A greenhouse gas is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone...
es than they consume, and other measures.
Disadvantages
First and fundamentally, independence is a matter of degree. Complete independence is very hard or impossible to attain. For example, eliminating dependence on the electrical grid is relatively simple but growing all necessary food is a more demanding and time-consuming proposition.Living in an autonomous shelter can require one to make sacrifices in one's lifestyle choices, personal behavior, and social expectations. Even the most comfortable and technologically advanced autonomous houses may require some differences in behavior. Some people adjust easily. Others describe the experience as inconvenient, irritating, isolating, or even as an unwanted full-time job. A well-designed building can reduce this issue, but usually at the expense of reduced autonomy.
An autonomous house must be custom-built (or extensively retrofitted) to suit the climate and location. Passive solar techniques, alternative toilet and sewage systems, thermal massing designs, basement battery systems, efficient windowing, and the array of other design tactics require some degree of non-standard construction, added expense, ongoing experimentation and maintenance, and also have an effect on the psychology of the space.
The Vales
Brenda and Robert Vale
Professor Brenda Vale and Doctor Robert Vale are architects, writers, pioneer researchers, and experts in the field of sustainable housing....
, among others, have shown that living off-grid can be a practical, logical lifestyle choice—under certain conditions.
Systems
This section includes some minimal descriptions of methods, to give some feel for such a building's practicality, provide indexes to further information, and give a sense of modern trends.Water
Greywater
Greywater
Greywater is wastewater generated from domestic activities such as laundry, dishwashing, and bathing, which can be recycled on-site for uses such as landscape irrigation and constructed wetlands...
systems reuse drained wash water to flush toilet
Toilet
A toilet is a sanitation fixture used primarily for the disposal of human excrement, often found in a small room referred to as a toilet/bathroom/lavatory...
s or to water lawns and garden
Garden
A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The garden can incorporate both natural and man-made materials. The most common form today is known as a residential garden, but the term garden has...
s. Greywater systems can halve the water use of most residential buildings; however, they require the purchase of a sump, greywater pressurization pump and secondary plumbing
Plumbing
Plumbing is the system of pipes and drains installed in a building for the distribution of potable drinking water and the removal of waterborne wastes, and the skilled trade of working with pipes, tubing and plumbing fixtures in such systems. A plumber is someone who installs or repairs piping...
. Some builders are installing waterless urinals and even composting toilet
Composting toilet
A composting toilet is a dry toilet that using a predominantly aerobic processing system that treats excreta, typically with no water or small volumes of flush water, via composting or managed aerobic decomposition...
s that completely eliminate water usage in sewage disposal.
The classic solution with minimal life-style changes is using a well
Water well
A water well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, boring or drilling to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The well water is drawn by an electric submersible pump, a trash pump, a vertical turbine pump, a handpump or a mechanical pump...
. Once drilled, a well-foot requires substantial power. However, advanced well-foots can reduce power usage by twofold or more from older models. Well water can be contaminated in some areas. The sono arsenic filter
Sono arsenic filter
The Sono arsenic filter was invented in 2006 by Abul Hussam, who is a chemistry professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. It was developed to deal with the problem of arsenic contamination of groundwater...
eliminates unhealthy arsenic
Arsenic
Arsenic is a chemical element with the symbol As, atomic number 33 and relative atomic mass 74.92. Arsenic occurs in many minerals, usually in conjunction with sulfur and metals, and also as a pure elemental crystal. It was first documented by Albertus Magnus in 1250.Arsenic is a metalloid...
in well water.
However drilling a well is an uncertain activity, with aquifers depleted in some areas. It can also be expensive.
In regions with sufficient rainfall, it is often more economical to design a building to use rain, with supplementary water deliveries in a drought. Rain water makes excellent soft washwater, but needs antibacterial treatment. If used for drinking, mineral supplements or mineralization is necessary.
Most desert
Desert
A desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Most deserts have an average annual precipitation of less than...
and temperate
Temperate
In geography, temperate or tepid latitudes of the globe lie between the tropics and the polar circles. The changes in these regions between summer and winter are generally relatively moderate, rather than extreme hot or cold...
climates get at least 250 millimetres (9.8 in) of rain
Rain
Rain is liquid precipitation, as opposed to non-liquid kinds of precipitation such as snow, hail and sleet. Rain requires the presence of a thick layer of the atmosphere to have temperatures above the melting point of water near and above the Earth's surface...
per year. This means that a typical one-story house
House
A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...
with a greywater system can supply its year-round water needs from its roof alone. In the driest areas, it might require a cistern
Cistern
A cistern is a waterproof receptacle for holding liquids, usually water. Cisterns are often built to catch and store rainwater. Cisterns are distinguished from wells by their waterproof linings...
of 30 cubic metres (7,925.2 US gal). Many areas average 13 millimetre (0.511811023622047 in) of rain per week, and these can use a cistern as small as 10 cubic metres (2,641.7 US gal).
In many areas, it is difficult to keep a roof clean enough for drinking. To reduce dirt and bad tastes, systems use a metal collecting-roof and a "roof cleaner" tank that diverts the first 40 liters. Cistern water is usually chlorinated
Chlorination
Chlorination is the process of adding the element chlorine to water as a method of water purification to make it fit for human consumption as drinking water...
, though reverse osmosis
Reverse osmosis
Reverse osmosis is a membrane technical filtration method that removes many types of large molecules and ions from solutions by applying pressure to the solution when it is on one side of a selective membrane. The result is that the solute is retained on the pressurized side of the membrane and...
systems provide even better quality drinking water.
Modern cisterns are usually large plastic tanks. Gravity tanks on short towers are reliable, so pump repairs are less urgent. The least expensive bulk cistern is a fenced pond or pool at ground level.
Reducing autonomy reduces the size and expense of cisterns. Many autonomous homes can reduce water use below 10 gallons (37.9 l) per person per day, so that in a drought
Drought
A drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. Generally, this occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation. It can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region...
a month of water can be delivered inexpensively via truck. Self-delivery is often possible by installing fabric water tanks that fit the bed of a pick-up truck.
It can be convenient to use the cistern as a heat sink or trap for a heat pump
Heat pump
A heat pump is a machine or device that effectively "moves" thermal energy from one location called the "source," which is at a lower temperature, to another location called the "sink" or "heat sink", which is at a higher temperature. An air conditioner is a particular type of heat pump, but the...
or air conditioning
HVAC
HVAC refers to technology of indoor or automotive environmental comfort. HVAC system design is a major subdiscipline of mechanical engineering, based on the principles of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer...
system; however this can make cold drinking water warm, and in drier years may decrease the efficiency of the HVAC system.
Solar still
Solar still
A solar still is a low-tech way of distilling water, powered by the heat of the sun . Two basic types of solar stills are box and pit stills. In a solar still, impure water is contained outside the collector, where it is evaporated by sunlight shining through clear plastic...
s can efficiently produce drinking water from ditch water or cistern water, especially high-efficiency multiple effect humidification designs, which separate the evaporator(s) and condenser(s).
New technologies, like reverse osmosis
Reverse osmosis
Reverse osmosis is a membrane technical filtration method that removes many types of large molecules and ions from solutions by applying pressure to the solution when it is on one side of a selective membrane. The result is that the solute is retained on the pressurized side of the membrane and...
can create unlimited amounts of pure water from polluted water, ocean water, and even from humid air. Water makers are available for yachts that convert seawater and electricity into potable water
Drinking water
Drinking water or potable water is water pure enough to be consumed or used with low risk of immediate or long term harm. In most developed countries, the water supplied to households, commerce and industry is all of drinking water standard, even though only a very small proportion is actually...
and brine
Brine
Brine is water, saturated or nearly saturated with salt .Brine is used to preserve vegetables, fruit, fish, and meat, in a process known as brining . Brine is also commonly used to age Halloumi and Feta cheeses, or for pickling foodstuffs, as a means of preserving them...
. Atmospheric water generator
Atmospheric water generator
An atmospheric water generator , is a device that extracts water from humid ambient air. Water vapor in the air is condensed by cooling the air below its dew point, exposing the air to desiccants, or pressurizing the air. Unlike a dehumidifier, an AWG is designed to render the water potable...
s extract moisture from dry desert air and filter it to pure water.
Resource
Composting toilet
A composting toilet is a dry toilet that using a predominantly aerobic processing system that treats excreta, typically with no water or small volumes of flush water, via composting or managed aerobic decomposition...
s use bacteria to decompose human feces
Feces
Feces, faeces, or fæces is a waste product from an animal's digestive tract expelled through the anus or cloaca during defecation.-Etymology:...
into useful, odourless, sanitary compost. The process is sanitary because soil bacteria eat the human pathogens as well as most of the mass of the waste. Nevertheless, most health authorities forbid direct use of "humanure" for growing food. The risk is microbial and viral contamination. In a dry composting toilet, the waste is evaporated or digested to gas (mostly carbon dioxide) and vented, so a toilet produces only a few pounds of compost every six months. To control the odor, modern toilets use a small fan to keep the toilet under negative pressure, and exhaust the gasses to a vent pipe.
Some home sewage treatment systems use biological treatment, usually beds of plants and aquaria, that absorb nutrients and bacteria and convert greywater and sewage to clear water. This odor- and color-free reclaimed water can be used to flush toilets and water outside plants. When tested, it approaches standards for potable water. In climates that freeze, the plants and aquaria need to be kept in a small greenhouse space. Good systems need about as much care as a large aquarium
Aquarium
An aquarium is a vivarium consisting of at least one transparent side in which water-dwelling plants or animals are kept. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, marine mammals, turtles, and aquatic plants...
.
Electric incinerating toilet
Incinerating toilet
An incinerating toilet is a toilet that burns excrement instead of flushing it away with water.-Description:Incinerating toilet may be powered by electric, gas or other energy sources....
s turn excrement into a small amount of ash. They are cool to the touch, have no water and no pipes, and require an air vent in a wall. They are used in remote areas where use of septic tanks is limited, usually to reduce nutrient loads in lakes.
NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
's bioreactor
Biochemical engineering
Biochemical engineering is a branch of chemical engineering or biological engineering that mainly deals with the design and construction of unit processes that involve biological organisms or molecules, such as bioreactors...
is an extremely advanced biological sewage system. It can turn sewage into air and water through microbial action. NASA plans to use it in the manned Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
mission.
A big disadvantage of complex biological sewage treatment systems is that if the house is empty, the sewage system biota may starve to death.
Another method is NASA's urine
Urine
Urine is a typically sterile liquid by-product of the body that is secreted by the kidneys through a process called urination and excreted through the urethra. Cellular metabolism generates numerous by-products, many rich in nitrogen, that require elimination from the bloodstream...
-to-water distillation system.
Waste
Sewage handling is not attractive, but it is essential for public health. Many diseaseDisease
A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...
s are transmitted by poorly functioning sewage systems.
The standard system is a tiled leach field combined with a septic tank
Septic tank
A septic tank is a key component of the septic system, a small-scale sewage treatment system common in areas with no connection to main sewage pipes provided by local governments or private corporations...
. The basic idea is to provide a small system with primary sewage treatment
Sewage treatment
Sewage treatment, or domestic wastewater treatment, is the process of removing contaminants from wastewater and household sewage, both runoff and domestic. It includes physical, chemical, and biological processes to remove physical, chemical and biological contaminants...
. Sludge settles to the bottom of the septic tank, is partially reduced by anaerobic digestion
Anaerobic digestion
Anaerobic digestion is a series of processes in which microorganisms break down biodegradable material in the absence of oxygen. It is used for industrial or domestic purposes to manage waste and/or to release energy....
, and fluid is dispersed in the leach field. The leach field is usually under a yard growing grass. Septic tanks can operate entirely by gravity, and if well managed, are reasonably safe.
Septic tanks have to be pumped periodically by a honey wagon
Cesspool emptier
A cesspool emptier is a type of specialized tank truck which can suck contaminated water out of hollows such as cesspools and sewage tanks and carry it to a disposal point....
to eliminate non reducing solids. Failure to pump a septic tank can cause overflow that damages the leach field, and contaminates ground water. Septic tanks may also require some lifestyle changes, such as not using garbage disposals, minimizing fluids flushed into the tank, and minimizing nondigestible solids flushed into the tank. For example, septic safe toilet paper is recommended.
However, septic tanks remain popular because they permit standard plumbing fixtures, and require few or no lifestyle sacrifices.
Composting or packaging toilets make it economical and sanitary to throw away sewage as part of the normal garbage collection service. They also reduce water use by half, and eliminate the difficulty and expense of septic tanks. However, they require the local landfill to use sanitary practices.
Incinerator systems are quite practical. The ashes are biologically safe, and less than 1/10 the volume of the original waste, but like all incinerator waste, are usually classified as hazardous waste.
Some of the oldest pre-system sewage types are pit toilet
Pit toilet
A pit toilet is a dry toilet system which collects human excrement in a large container and range from a simple slit trench to more elaborate systems with ventilation. They are more often used in rural and wilderness areas as well as in much of the developing world...
s, latrine
Latrine
A latrine is a communal facility containing one or more commonly many toilets which may be simple pit toilets or in the case of the United States Armed Forces any toilet including modern flush toilets...
s, and outhouse
Outhouse
An outhouse is a small structure separate from a main building which often contained a simple toilet and may possibly also be used for housing animals and storage.- Terminology :...
s. These are still used in many developing countries.
Storm drains
Drainage systems are a crucial compromise between human habitability and a secure, sustainable watershed. Paved areas and lawns or turf do not allow much precipitation to filter through the ground to recharge aquifers. They can cause flooding and damage in neighbourhoods, as the water flows over the surface towards a low point.Typically, elaborate, capital-intensive storm sewer networks are engineered to deal with stormwater
Stormwater
Stormwater is water that originates during precipitation events. It may also be used to apply to water that originates with snowmelt that enters the stormwater system...
. In some cities, such as the Victorian era
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
London sewers or much of the old City of Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, the storm water system is combined with the sanitary sewer system. In the event of heavy precipitation, the load on the sewage treatment plant at the end of the pipe becomes too great to handle and raw sewage is dumped into holding tanks, and sometimes into surface water.
Autonomous buildings can address precipitation in a number of ways:
If a water absorbing swale
Swale (geographical feature)
A swale is a low tract of land, especially one that is moist or marshy. The term can refer to a natural landscape feature or a human-created one...
for each yard is combined with permeable concrete
Concrete
Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...
streets, storm drains can be omitted from the neighbourhood. This can save more than $800 per house (1970s) by eliminating storm drains. One way to use the savings is to purchase larger lots, which permits more amenities at the same cost. Permeable concrete is an established product in warm climates, and in development for freezing climates. In freezing climates, the elimination of storm drains can often still pay for enough land to construct swales (shallow water collecting ditches) or water impeding berms instead. This plan provides more land for homeowners and can offer more interesting topography for landscaping.
A green roof
Green roof
A green roof is a roof of a building that is partially or completely covered with vegetation and a growing medium, planted over a waterproofing membrane. It may also include additional layers such as a root barrier and drainage and irrigation systems...
captures precipitation and uses the water to grow plants. It can be built into a new building or used to replace an existing roof.
Electricity
Energy Star
Energy Star is an international standard for energy efficient consumer products originated in the United States of America. It was first created as a United States government program during the early 1990s, but Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Taiwan and the European Union have also adopted...
-rated refrigerator.
Using a solar roof, solar cell
Solar cell
A solar cell is a solid state electrical device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect....
s can provide electric power. Solar roofs have the potential to be more cost-effective than retrofitted solar power, because buildings need roofs anyway. Modern solar cells last about 40 years, which makes them a reasonable investment in some areas. Solar cells have only small life-style impacts: The cells must be cleaned a few times per year.
A number of areas that lack sun
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...
have wind
Wind
Wind is the flow of gases on a large scale. On Earth, wind consists of the bulk movement of air. In outer space, solar wind is the movement of gases or charged particles from the sun through space, while planetary wind is the outgassing of light chemical elements from a planet's atmosphere into space...
. To generate power, the average autonomous house needs only one small wind generator
Wind turbine
A wind turbine is a device that converts kinetic energy from the wind into mechanical energy. If the mechanical energy is used to produce electricity, the device may be called a wind generator or wind charger. If the mechanical energy is used to drive machinery, such as for grinding grain or...
, 5 metres or less in diameter. On a 30 metre high tower, this turbine can provide enough power to supplement solar power on cloudy days. Commercially available wind turbines use sealed, one-moving-part AC generators and passive, self-feathering blades for years of operation without service.
The largest advantage of wind power
Wind power
Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form of energy, such as using wind turbines to make electricity, windmills for mechanical power, windpumps for water pumping or drainage, or sails to propel ships....
is that larger wind turbines have a lower per-watt cost than solar cells, provided there is wind. However, location is critical. Just as some locations lack sun for solar cells, some locations lack sufficient wind for an economical turbine installation. In the Great Plains
Great Plains
The Great Plains are a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, which lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S...
of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
a 10 metre turbine can supply enough energy to heat and cool a well-built all-electric house. Economic use in other areas requires research, and possibly a site-survey.
During times of low demand, excess power can be stored in batteries for future use. However, batteries need to be replaced every few years. In many areas, battery expenses can be eliminated by attaching the building to the electric power grid
Distributed generation
Distributed generation, also called on-site generation, dispersed generation, embedded generation, decentralized generation, decentralized energy or distributed energy, generates electricity from many small energy sources....
and operating the power system with net metering
Net metering
Net metering is an electricity policy for consumers who own renewable energy facilities or V2G electric vehicles. "Net", in this context, is used in the sense of meaning "what remains after deductions" — in this case, the deduction of any energy outflows from metered energy inflows...
. Utility permission is required, but such cooperative generation is legally mandated in some areas (for example, California).
A grid-based building is less autonomous, but more economical and sustainable with fewer lifestyle sacrifices. In rural areas the grid's cost and impacts can be reduced by using single wire earth return
Single wire earth return
Single wire earth return or single wire ground return is a single-wire transmission line for supplying single-phase electrical power from an electrical grid to remote areas at low cost...
systems (for example, the MALT-system).
In areas that lack access to the grid, battery size can be reduced by including a generator to recharge the batteries during extended fogs or other low-power conditions. Auxiliary generators are usually run from propane
Propane
Propane is a three-carbon alkane with the molecular formula , normally a gas, but compressible to a transportable liquid. A by-product of natural gas processing and petroleum refining, it is commonly used as a fuel for engines, oxy-gas torches, barbecues, portable stoves, and residential central...
, natural gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
, or sometimes diesel. An hour of charging usually provides a day of operation. Modern residential chargers permit the user to set the charging times, so the generator is quiet at night. Some generators automatically test themselves once per week.
Recent advances in passively stable magnetic bearings
Magnetic levitation
Magnetic levitation, maglev, or magnetic suspension is a method by which an object is suspended with no support other than magnetic fields...
may someday permit inexpensive storage of power in a flywheel
Flywheel
A flywheel is a rotating mechanical device that is used to store rotational energy. Flywheels have a significant moment of inertia, and thus resist changes in rotational speed. The amount of energy stored in a flywheel is proportional to the square of its rotational speed...
in a vacuum. Well-funded groups like Canada's Ballard Power Systems
Ballard Power Systems
Ballard Power Systems , located in Burnaby, British Columbia -- a suburb of Vancouver -- is a company that designs, develops, and manufactures zero emission proton-exchange-membrane fuel cells. This company has made a bus that uses only hydrogen fuel cells. These fuel cells combine hydrogen and...
are also working to develop a "regenerative fuel cell", a device that can generate hydrogen and oxygen when power is available, and combine these efficiently when power is needed.
Earth batteries
Earth battery
An Earth battery is a pair of electrodes made of two dissimilar metals, such as iron and copper, which are buried in the soil or immersed in the sea. Earth batteries act as water activated batteries and if the plates are sufficiently far apart, they can tap telluric currents...
tap electric currents in the earth called telluric current
Telluric current
A telluric current , or Earth current, is an electric current which moves underground or through the sea. Telluric currents result from both natural causes and human activity, and the discrete currents interact in a complex pattern...
. They can be installed anywhere in the ground. They provide only low voltages and current. They were used to power telegraphs
Telegraphy
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages via some form of signalling technology. Telegraphy requires messages to be converted to a code which is known to both sender and receiver...
in the 19th century. As appliance efficiencies increase, they may become practical.
Microbial fuel cell
Microbial fuel cell
A microbial fuel cell or biological fuel cell is a bio-electrochemical system that drives a current by mimicking bacterial interactions found in nature....
s finally allow the generation of electricity from biomass. Unlike direct incineration of biomass however, the method using a microbial fuel cell is completely emissionless. The plant can be chopped and converted as a whole, or it can be left alive so that waste saps from the plant can be converted by bacteria.
Heating
Trombe wall
A Trombe wall is a sun-facing wall separated from the outdoors by glass and an air space, which absorbs solar energy and releases it selectively towards the interior at night. The essential idea was first explored by Edward S. Morse and patented by him in 1881...
s and other technologies as skylights
Steve Baer
Steve Baer is an American inventor and solar and residential designer. Baer has served on the board of directors of the U.S. Section of the International Solar Energy Society, and on the board of the New Mexico Solar Energy Association. He is the Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and...
.
Passive solar heating
Passive solar building design
In passive solar building design, windows, walls, and floors are made to collect, store, and distribute solar energy in the form of heat in the winter and reject solar heat in the summer...
can heat most buildings in even the coldest climates. In colder climates, extra construction costs can be as little as 15% more than new, conventional buildings. In warm climates, those having less than two weeks of frosty nights per year, there is no cost impact.
The basic requirement for passive solar heating is that the solar collectors must face the prevailing sunlight (south in the northern hemisphere
Northern Hemisphere
The Northern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is north of its equator—the word hemisphere literally means “half sphere”. It is also that half of the celestial sphere north of the celestial equator...
, north in the southern hemisphere
Southern Hemisphere
The Southern Hemisphere is the part of Earth that lies south of the equator. The word hemisphere literally means 'half ball' or "half sphere"...
), and the building must incorporate thermal mass
Thermal mass
Thermal mass is a concept in building design which describes how the mass of the building provides "inertia" against temperature fluctuations, sometimes known as the thermal flywheel effect...
to keep it warm in the night.
A recent, somewhat experimental solar heating system "Annualized geo solar
Annualized geo solar
Annualized Geo-Solar enables passive solar heating in even cold, foggy north temperate areas. It uses the ground under or around a building as thermal mass to heat and cool the building. After a designed, conductive thermal lag of 6 months the heat is returned to, or removed from, the inhabited...
heating" is practical even in regions that get little or no sunlight in winter.
It uses the ground beneath a building for thermal mass. Precipitation can carry away the heat, so the ground is shielded with skirts of plastic insulation. The thermal mass of this system is sufficiently inexpensive and large that it can store enough summer heat to warm a building for the whole winter, and enough winter cold to cool the building in summer.
In annualized geo solar systems, the solar collector is often separate from (and hotter or colder than) the living space. The building may actually be constructed from insulation
Thermal insulation
Thermal insulation is the reduction of the effects of the various processes of heat transfer between objects in thermal contact or in range of radiative influence. Heat transfer is the transfer of thermal energy between objects of differing temperature...
, for example, straw-bale construction
Straw-bale construction
Straw-bale construction is a building method that uses bales of straw as structural elements, building insulation, or both...
. Some buildings have been aerodynamically designed so that convection via ducts and interior spaces eliminates any need for electric fans.
A more modest "daily solar" design is very practical. For example, for about a 15% premium in building costs, the Passivhaus
Passive house
The term passive house refers to the rigorous, voluntary, Passivhaus standard for energy efficiency in a building, reducing its ecological footprint. It results in ultra-low energy buildings that require little energy for space heating or cooling. A similar standard, MINERGIE-P, is used in...
building codes in Europe use high performance insulating windows, R-30 insulation, HRV ventilation, and a small thermal mass. With modest changes in the building's position, modern krypton
Krypton
Krypton is a chemical element with the symbol Kr and atomic number 36. It is a member of Group 18 and Period 4 elements. A colorless, odorless, tasteless noble gas, krypton occurs in trace amounts in the atmosphere, is isolated by fractionally distilling liquified air, and is often used with other...
- or argon
Argon
Argon is a chemical element represented by the symbol Ar. Argon has atomic number 18 and is the third element in group 18 of the periodic table . Argon is the third most common gas in the Earth's atmosphere, at 0.93%, making it more common than carbon dioxide...
-insulated windows permit normal-looking windows to provide passive solar heat without compromising insulation or structural strength. If a small heater is available for the coldest nights, a slab or basement cistern can inexpensively provide the required thermal mass
Thermal mass
Thermal mass is a concept in building design which describes how the mass of the building provides "inertia" against temperature fluctuations, sometimes known as the thermal flywheel effect...
. Passivhaus building codes in particular bring unusually good interior air quality, because the buildings change the air several times per hour, passing it though a heat exchanger to keep heat inside.
In all systems, a small supplementary heater increases personal security and reduces lifestyle impacts for a small reduction of autonomy. The two most popular heaters for ultra-high-efficiency houses are a small heat pump
Heat pump
A heat pump is a machine or device that effectively "moves" thermal energy from one location called the "source," which is at a lower temperature, to another location called the "sink" or "heat sink", which is at a higher temperature. An air conditioner is a particular type of heat pump, but the...
, which also provides air-conditioning, or a central hydronic (radiator) air heater with water recirculating from the water heater. Passivhaus designs usually integrate the heater with the ventilation system.
Earth sheltering
Earth sheltering
Earth sheltering is the architectural practice of using earth against building walls for external thermal mass, to reduce heat loss, and to easily maintain a steady indoor air temperature...
and windbreak
Windbreak
A windbreak or shelterbelt is a plantation usually made up of one or more rows of trees or shrubs planted in such a manner as to provide shelter from the wind and to protect soil from erosion. They are commonly planted around the edges of fields on farms. If designed properly, windbreaks around a...
s can also reduce the absolute amount of heat needed by a building. Several feet below the earth, temperature ranges from 4 °C (39.2 °F) in North Dakota to 26 °C (78.8 °F), in Southern Florida. Wind breaks reduce the amount of heat carried away from a building.
Rounded, aerodynamic buildings also lose less heat.
An increasing number of commercial buildings use a combined cycle
Combined cycle
In electric power generation a combined cycle is an assembly of heat engines that work in tandem off the same source of heat, converting it into mechanical energy, which in turn usually drives electrical generators...
with cogeneration
Cogeneration
Cogeneration is the use of a heat engine or a power station to simultaneously generate both electricity and useful heat....
to provide heating, often water heating, from the output of a natural gas reciprocating engine
Reciprocating engine
A reciprocating engine, also often known as a piston engine, is a heat engine that uses one or more reciprocating pistons to convert pressure into a rotating motion. This article describes the common features of all types...
, gas turbine
Gas turbine
A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of internal combustion engine. It has an upstream rotating compressor coupled to a downstream turbine, and a combustion chamber in-between....
or stirling
Stirling engine
A Stirling engine is a heat engine operating by cyclic compression and expansion of air or other gas, the working fluid, at different temperature levels such that there is a net conversion of heat energy to mechanical work....
electric generator.
Houses designed to cope with interruptions in civil services generally incorporate a wood stove, or heat and power from diesel fuel or bottled gas
Bottled gas
Bottled gas is a term used for substances which are gaseous at standard temperature and pressure and have been compressed and stored in carbon steel, stainless steel, aluminum, or composite bottles known as gas cylinders.-Gas state in cylinders:...
, regardless of their other heating mechanisms.
Electric heaters and electric stoves may provide pollution-free heat (depending on the power source), but use large amounts of electricity. If enough electricity is provided by solar panels, wind turbines, or other means, then electric heaters and stoves become a practical autonomous design.
Water heating
Solar water heaters are widely useful because they can save large amounts of fuel. Also, small changes in lifestyle, such as doing laundry, dishes and bathing on sunny days, can greatly increase their efficiency. To further increase the efficiency of water heating, either with or without solar, hot water heat recyclingHot water heat recycling
Water heat recycling is the use of a heat exchanger to recover energy and reuse heat from drain water from various activities such as dish-washing, clothes washing and especially showers...
units recover heat from drainlines thereby increasing water heating capacity and reducing the energy used to heat water.
The basic trick in a solar water heating system is to use a well-insulated holding tank. Some systems are vacuum
Vacuum
In everyday usage, vacuum is a volume of space that is essentially empty of matter, such that its gaseous pressure is much less than atmospheric pressure. The word comes from the Latin term for "empty". A perfect vacuum would be one with no particles in it at all, which is impossible to achieve in...
- insulated, acting something like large thermos
Thermos
Thermos may refer to:* A vacuum flask generically known as a "thermos"* a brand of domestic vacuum flask made by Thermos L.L.C.* Thermos , an ancient Greek city, the capital city of the Aetolian League...
bottles. The tank is filled with hot water on sunny days, and made available at all times. Unlike a conventional tank water heater, the tank is filled only when there is sunlight.
Good storage makes a smaller, higher-technology collector feasible. Such collectors can use relatively exotic technologies, such as vacuum insulation, and reflective concentration of sunlight.
Current practical, comfortable water-heating systems combine the solar heating system with a thermostatic gas-powered flow-through heater, so that the temperature of the water is consistent, and the amount is unlimited. This again reduces life-style impacts at some cost in autonomy. Ideally, this would be a cogeneration
Cogeneration
Cogeneration is the use of a heat engine or a power station to simultaneously generate both electricity and useful heat....
system that produces other energy, and uses locally produced fuels.
Heat recycling, cogenereration and solar pre-heating can save 50-75% of the gas otherwise used. Also, some combinations provide redundant reliability by having several sources of heat.
Some authorities advocate that bottled gas
Bottled gas
Bottled gas is a term used for substances which are gaseous at standard temperature and pressure and have been compressed and stored in carbon steel, stainless steel, aluminum, or composite bottles known as gas cylinders.-Gas state in cylinders:...
or natural gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
be replaced by biogas
Biogas
Biogas typically refers to a gas produced by the biological breakdown of organic matter in the absence of oxygen. Organic waste such as dead plant and animal material, animal dung, and kitchen waste can be converted into a gaseous fuel called biogas...
. However, this is usually impractical unless live-stock are on-site. The wastes of a single family are usually insufficient to produce enough methane
Methane
Methane is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is the simplest alkane, the principal component of natural gas, and probably the most abundant organic compound on earth. The relative abundance of methane makes it an attractive fuel...
for anything more than small amounts of cooking.
Cooling
Annualized geo solar buildings often have buried, sloped water-tight skirts of insulation that extend 6 metres (19.7 ft) from the foundations, to prevent heat leakage between the earth used as thermal mass, and the surface.Less dramatic improvements are possible. Windows can be shaded in summer. Eaves can be overhung to provide the necessary shade. These also shade the walls of the house, reducing cooling costs.
Another trick is to cool the building's thermal mass at night, and then cool the building from the thermal mass during the day. It helps to be able to route cold air from a sky-facing radiator (perhaps an air heating solar collector with an alternate purpose) or evaporative cooler directly through the thermal mass. On clear nights, even in tropical areas, sky facing radiators can cool below freezing.
If a circular building is aerodynamically smooth, and cooler than the ground, it can be passively cooled by the "dome effect." Many installations have reported that a reflective or light colored dome induces a local vertical heat driven vortex that sucks cooler overhead air downward into a dome if the dome is vented properly (a single overhead vent, and peripheral vents). Some people have reported a temperature differential as high as between the inside of the dome and the outside. Buckminster Fuller
Buckminster Fuller
Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International, the high IQ society....
discovered this effect with a simple house design adapted from a grain silo, and adapted his Dymaxion house
Dymaxion house
The Dymaxion House was developed by inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller to address several perceived shortcomings with existing homebuilding techniques. Fuller designed several versions of the house at different times, but they were all factory manufactured kits, assembled on site, intended...
and geodesic dome
Geodesic dome
A geodesic dome is a spherical or partial-spherical shell structure or lattice shell based on a network of great circles on the surface of a sphere. The geodesics intersect to form triangular elements that have local triangular rigidity and also distribute the stress across the structure. When...
s to use it.
Refrigerators and air conditioners operating from the waste heat of a diesel engine exhaust, heater flue or solar collector are entering use. These use the same principles as a gas refrigerator. Normally, the heat from a flue powers an "absorptive chiller". The cold water or brine from the chiller is used to cool air or a refrigerated space.
Cogeneration is popular in new commercial buildings. In current cogeneration systems small gas turbines or stirling engine
Stirling engine
A Stirling engine is a heat engine operating by cyclic compression and expansion of air or other gas, the working fluid, at different temperature levels such that there is a net conversion of heat energy to mechanical work....
s powered from natural gas produce electricity and their exhaust drives an absorptive chiller.
A truck trailer refrigerator operating from the waste heat of a tractor's diesel exhaust was demonstrated by NRG Solutions, Inc. NRG developed a hydronic ammonia
Ammonia
Ammonia is a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . It is a colourless gas with a characteristic pungent odour. Ammonia contributes significantly to the nutritional needs of terrestrial organisms by serving as a precursor to food and fertilizers. Ammonia, either directly or...
gas heat exchanger and vaporizer, the two essential new, not commercially available components of a waste heat driven refrigerator.
A similar scheme (multiphase cooling) can be by a multistage evaporative cooler. The air is passed through a spray of salt solution to dehumidify it, then through a spray of water solution to cool it, then another salt solution to dehumidify it again. The brine has to be regenerated, and that can be done economically with a low temperature solar still. Multiphase evaporative coolers can lower the air's temperature by 50°F (28°C), and still control humidity. If the brine regenerator uses high heat, they also partially sterilise the air.
If enough electric power is available, cooling can be provided by conventional air conditioning using a heat pump
Heat pump
A heat pump is a machine or device that effectively "moves" thermal energy from one location called the "source," which is at a lower temperature, to another location called the "sink" or "heat sink", which is at a higher temperature. An air conditioner is a particular type of heat pump, but the...
.
Food production
Food production has often been included in historic autonomous projects to provide security.Skilled, intensive garden
Garden
A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The garden can incorporate both natural and man-made materials. The most common form today is known as a residential garden, but the term garden has...
ing can support an adult from as little as 100 square meters of land per person,
possibly requiring the use of organic farming and aeroponics
Aeroponics
Aeroponics is the process of growing plants in an air or mist environment without the use of soil or an aggregate medium . The word "aeroponic" is derived from the Greek meanings of aero- and ponos . Aeroponic culture differs from both conventional hydroponics and in-vitro growing...
. Some proven intensive, low-effort food-production systems include urban gardening
Urban agriculture
Urban agriculture is the practice of cultivating, processing and distributing food in, or around, a village, town or city. Urban agriculture in addition can also involve animal husbandry, aquaculture, agro-forestry and horticulture...
(indoors and outdoors). Indoor cultivation
Grow house
A grow house is a property, usually located in a suburban residential neighborhood, that is primarily used for the production of marijuana.The houses are typically outfitted with extensive hydroponic equipment to provide water, food, and light to the plants, and the houses themselves are usually...
may be set up using hydroponics
Hydroponics
Hydroponics is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, without soil. Terrestrial plants may be grown with their roots in the mineral nutrient solution only or in an inert medium, such as perlite, gravel, mineral wool, or coconut husk.Researchers discovered in the 18th...
, while outdoor cultivation may be done using permaculture
Permaculture
Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that is modeled on the relationships found in nature. It is based on the ecology of how things interrelate rather than on the strictly biological concerns that form the foundation of modern agriculture...
, forest gardening
Forest gardening
Forest gardening is a food production and agroforestry system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans...
, no-till farming
No-till farming
No-till farming is a way of growing crops from year to year without disturbing the soil through tillage. No-till is an agricultural technique which increases the amount of water and organic matter in the soil and decreases erosion...
, and do nothing farming.
Greenhouse
Greenhouse
A greenhouse is a building in which plants are grown. These structures range in size from small sheds to very large buildings...
s are also sometimes included. Sometimes they are also outfitted with irrigation systems or heat sink
Heat sink
A heat sink is a term for a component or assembly that transfers heat generated within a solid material to a fluid medium, such as air or a liquid. Examples of heat sinks are the heat exchangers used in refrigeration and air conditioning systems and the radiator in a car...
-systems which can respectively irrigate the plants or help to store energy from the sun and redistribute it at night (when the greenhouses starts to cool down).
Communication
An increasing number of activists provide free or very inexpensive webWorld Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
and email
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
services using cooperative computer networks that run wireless ad hoc networks. Network service is provided by a cooperative of neighbors, each operating a router as a household appliance. These minimize wired infrastructure, and its costs and vulnerabilities. Private Internet protocol
Internet Protocol
The Internet Protocol is the principal communications protocol used for relaying datagrams across an internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite...
networks set up in this way can operate without the use of a commercial provider.
Rural electrical grids can be wired with "optical phase cable", in which one or more of the steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
armor wires are replaced with steel tubes containing fiber optics.
Satellite Internet access
Satellite Internet access
Satellite Internet access is Internet access provided through satellites. The service can be provided to users world-wide through low Earth orbit satellites. Geostationary satellites can offer higher data speeds, but their signals can not reach some polar regions of the world...
can provide high speed connectivity to remote locations, however these are significantly more expensive than wire-based or terrestrial wireless systems. Wimax
WiMAX
WiMAX is a communication technology for wirelessly delivering high-speed Internet service to large geographical areas. The 2005 WiMAX revision provided bit rates up to 40 Mbit/s with the 2011 update up to 1 Gbit/s for fixed stations...
and forms of packet radio
Packet radio
Packet radio is a form of packet switching technology used to transmit digital data via radio or wireless communications links. It uses the same concepts of data transmission via Datagram that are fundamental to communications via the Internet, as opposed to the older techniques used by dedicated...
can also be used. Depending on the speed and latency of these networks they may be capable of relaying VoIP traffic, negating the need for separate telephony services. Finally, the Internet Radio Linking Project
Internet Radio Linking Project
The Internet Radio Linking Project, also called IRLP, is a project that links amateur radio stations around the world by using Voice over IP . Each gateway consists of a dedicated computer running custom software that is connected to both a radio and the Internet. This arrangement forms what is...
provides potential for blending older (cheap) local radio broadcasting with the increased range of the internet.
Depending on the location a mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
network may be available which can provide voice and data services. satellite
Satellite phone
A satellite telephone, satellite phone, or satphone is a type of mobile phone that connects to orbiting satellites instead of terrestrial cell sites...
-based telephone systems can also be used, as either fixed installations or portable handsets and can be integrated into a PABX or local IP-based network.
See also
- ArcologyArcologyArcology, a portmanteau of the words "architecture" and "ecology", is a set of architectural design principles aimed toward the design of enormous habitats of extremely high human population density. These largely hypothetical structures would contain a variety of residential, commercial, and...
- Appropriate technologyAppropriate technologyAppropriate technology is an ideological movement originally articulated as "intermediate technology" by the economist Dr...
- Architectural engineeringArchitectural engineeringArchitectural engineering, also known as building engineering, is the application of engineering principles and technology to building design and construction...
- BiosphereBiosphereThe biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also be called the zone of life on Earth, a closed and self-regulating system...
- Biosphere 2Biosphere 2Biosphere 2 is a structure originally built to be an artificial, materially-closed ecological system in Oracle, Arizona by Space Biosphere Ventures, a joint venture whose principal officers were John P. Allen, inventor and Executive Director, and Margret Augustine, CEO...
- BIOS-3BIOS-3BIOS-3 is a closed ecosystem at the Institute of Biophysics in Krasnoyarsk, Russia.Its construction began in 1965, and was completed in 1972. BIOS-3 consists of a 315-cubic-metre habitat suitable for up to three persons, and was initially used for developing closed ecosystems capable of supporting...
- Detention basinDetention basinA detention basin is a stormwater management facility installed on, or adjacent to, tributaries of rivers, streams, lakes or bays that is designed to protect against flooding and, in some cases, downstream erosion by storing water for a limited period of a time. These basins are also called "dry...
- EarthshipEarthshipAn earthship is a type of passive solar house made of natural and recycled materials. Designed and marketed by Earthship Biotecture of Taos, New Mexico, the homes are primarily constructed to work as autonomous buildings and are generally made of earth-filled tires, using thermal mass...
- EcovillageEcovillageEcovillages are intentional communities with the goal of becoming more socially, economically and ecologically sustainable. Some aim for a population of 50–150 individuals. Larger ecovillages of up to 2,000 individuals exist as networks of smaller subcommunities to create an ecovillage model that...
- Environmental engineeringEnvironmental engineeringEnvironmental engineering is the application of science and engineering principles to improve the natural environment , to provide healthy water, air, and land for human habitation and for other organisms, and to remediate polluted sites...
- HexayurtHexayurtThe Hexayurt is a simplified disaster relief shelter design. It is based on a geodesic geometry adapted to construction from standard 4x8 foot sheets of factory made construction material. It resembles a panel yurt, hence the name.- Design :...
- Hydrogen stationHydrogen stationA hydrogen station is a storage or filling station for hydrogen, usually located along a road or hydrogen highway, or at home as part of the distributed generation resources concept. The stations are usually intended to power vehicles, but can also be used to power small devices. Vehicles use...
- In-site resource utilization
- MicrogenerationMicrogenerationMicrogeneration is the small-scale generation of heat and power by individuals, small businesses and communities to meet their own needs, as alternatives or supplements to traditional centralized grid-connected power...
- Passive housePassive houseThe term passive house refers to the rigorous, voluntary, Passivhaus standard for energy efficiency in a building, reducing its ecological footprint. It results in ultra-low energy buildings that require little energy for space heating or cooling. A similar standard, MINERGIE-P, is used in...
- Renewable heatRenewable heatRenewable heat is an application of renewable energy and it refers to the renewable generation of heat, rather than electrical power ....
- Solar combisystemSolar combisystemA solar combisystem provides both solar space heating and cooling as well as hot water from a common array of solar thermal collectors, usually backed up an auxiliary non-solar heat source....
- Vertical farmingVertical farmingVertical farming is a concept that argues that it is economically and environmentally viable to cultivate plant or animal life within skyscrapers, or on vertically inclined surfaces...
- Zero energy buildingZero energy buildingA zero-energy building, also known as a zero net energy building, Net-Zero Energy Building , or Net Zero Building, is a popular term to describe a building with zero net energy consumption and zero carbon emissions annually. Zero energy buildings can be independent from the energy grid supply...
External links
- The Buckminster Fuller Institute is still in existence. B. Fuller left thousands of pages of notes to the university where he last taught.
- There is a section on Autonomous Houses in the Reality Sculptors wiki, including links to a mailing list which frequently discusses autonomous design considerations.
- Designs for a geodesic domeGeodesic domeA geodesic dome is a spherical or partial-spherical shell structure or lattice shell based on a network of great circles on the surface of a sphere. The geodesics intersect to form triangular elements that have local triangular rigidity and also distribute the stress across the structure. When...
version of an Autonomous House can be found at reality.sculptors.com - "Wind Power for Home and Business" by Paul Gipe
- An opinion piece by Brenda and Robert Vale
- Off-grid.net
- Self Sufficiency Guide
- Bad End 2 - 21st Century Hobbit Hole - Precast concrete in home construction
- Hexayurt Shelter System - a public domain autonomous building system for refugees and poor villagers
- The Cropthorne House - Notes on design and comparison with the Vales' Southwell House
- Self Sufficient Living