Sustainable Architecture

One of the problems with living in cities is you really only have four options:

House in the suburbs

Conjoined Housing (often Downtown)

Condominium

Apartment

And you really don't have much choice in terms of the methods they were made.

Thus if you are an environmentally conscious person you might be very upset to learn what the carbon footprint of building and maintaining your home is. Thus comes up the issue of Sustainable Architecture: Buildings built with the concept of preserving the environment in mind.

And this isn't just true of architecture and building practices, but in other disciplines as well such as fashion design (see Sustainable Fashion).

The photo shown above is the Bosco Vertical Forest. Its a condo that follows the idea of creating an eco-friendly architecture which actually contributes to the atmosphere (and looks pretty kewl too).

Who wouldn't want to live in that?

Books about Going Off the Grid

The following is a list of books available on Amazon about going off the grid.

There is actually quite a few books on Amazon about living off the grid. Search Amazon.com for living off the grid.

I used to have a list of books below which I had chosen because they were the most popular / ranked the highest in the reviews, but the links have stopped working. So I have since removed the list. Instead I recommend just browsing the topic on Amazon or your local bookstore.

Homemade Solar Panels - So easy a teenager can build it

Building your own solar panels are so easy that a teenager can do it.

Watch the video below to see how an example of a solar panel system built by a teenager as a high school science fair project.

And this is certainly not the only video on the topic. Browse YouTube and you will find lots of examples of how to build your own homemade solar panels.

The end point here is that if a teenager can do it, then you can probably do it too. Which means there is no reason why people couldn't build their own solar panel grids for their home.





Also below is a 2nd video of a teenager who built a "solar death ray" (amusing title more than anything) out of mirrors that creates an intense heat that can melt rocks and metal - which combined with a single small voltaic solar panel could produce significant electricity for your home.