Back in May, we got pretty excited about the Honda Smart Home, an experimental house that’s currently sitting on the campus of the University of California, Davis that’s so energy efficient that it pumps out more power than it uses. Translation? This means a homeowner could potentially make money off the energy it sold back to the power company.
Naturally, the public (and many of our own readers) wondered how they could get in on this prime piece of green real estate. Well, guess what? Honda has gone and pulled a Tesla (so to speak), opening up its smart home plans for all.
“Honda is publicly posting the building plans, architectural and mechanical drawings, furniture specs and materials associated with the project, including the raw 2D and 3D CAD data,” the carmaker said in a company release to NationSwell. “Our hope is that interested individuals across the world are able to use these plans as a starting point to create their very own sustainable homes.”
MORE: Tricked Out Zero-Energy Homes Aren’t Just for the Rich and Famous
So what’s so amazing about this house? As we mentioned previously, the home draws its power from renewable sources such as solar panels and has geothermal heating and cooling — so wave bye-bye to sky-high air conditioning bills. The Honda home slashes water consumption to a third of most American homes and the amount of CO2 that it releases annually is 11 tons less than conventional homes with cars. And because Honda is behind it all, there’s garage space for a Honda Fit electric vehicle that gets charged from the house’s solar power.
“Many of the people and companies we’ve met with wanted to know how they could incorporate what we’ve demonstrated into their own projects, or build upon what we’ve learned in their own research,” wrote Honda Smart Home project leader Michael Koenig in a blog post. “We want nothing more than to facilitate this effort, so today, we’re releasing a batch of files the get the process rolling.”
Those interested should visit the Honda Smart Home website to download the complete mechanical and architectural drawings.
Looks like the house of tomorrow will come sooner than we expect.
DON’T MISS: Small Spaces, Big Ideas: 7 Tiny Homes With the Power to Transform How We Live
Tag: Sustainable Housing
How Straw Bales Helped Solve an Indian Reservation’s Desperate Need for Homes
On South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, 4,000 Oglala Sioux families are in desperate need of homes, and now several groups are working together to solve this problem in an environmentally-friendly way. The Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation has teamed up with the University of Colorado’s Native American Sustainable Housing Initiative to build four prototype houses. South Dakota college students are helping to build homes insulated with straw bales or packed-earth blocks, with radiant floor heating that should save its future inhabitants money, as well as a shallow foundation that’s more energy-efficient than the drafty basements usually found on the reservation. They plan to build 100 such homes, and fulfill the families’ energy needs through solar panels and other energy-saving techniques.
Nick Tilsen, the executive director of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation told Nate Seltenrich of High Country News, “We’re trying to build a net-zero affordable house. We’re looking for these 34 acres to be almost like a laboratory for Indian Country, for Pine Ridge, and for the country when it comes to sustainable communities.”
MORE: Can Ancient Native American Techniques Heal Today’s Vets?