Mass Market for Green Homes Coming?

[jpak]

http://www.renewableaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=50122

They built, overnight, a 725-square foot house on the lawn of San Francisco's elegant city hall that demonstrates the potential for manufactured housing to tackle a variety of urgent concerns: affordable housing, global warming, peak oil, water shortages, healthy living and much more.

Part of the West Coast Green conference and expo last month, the demonstration home, called mkLotus, was designed by Michelle Kaufmann and built by Xtreme Homes.

Billed as the nation's largest residential green building event, last year the conference was a surprise hit attracting 9,000 people. This year surpassed that number with organizers estimating 12,000 architects, builders, green and renewable energy suppliers, government officials and homeowners attended the three-day event.

Builders of mkLotus used an array of green and renewable technologies to meet proposed LEED residential platinum requirements. The house features a living roof (grass and flowers), solar panels that provide 130% of electricity needs, rain and greywater catchment systems that irrigate the roof and landscaping, and supply half of the house's water needs.

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[tinrobot]

1. The greenest home is the one you don't build.

Hopefully some of these technologies can be adapted to existing homes as well.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing much desire from our customers, and I'm on the West Coast.

The most green question I have gotten is "Can I take this old paint to the dump?" I told them to drop it off at Metro, and they will recycle it. They had no idea it could even be recycled.