Jaime Rodriguez Jr pfp
Jaime Rodriguez Jr
@web3jaime
While cleaning out my email inbox, an email on ?? caught my eye. Zero-carbon homes exist. Can you really live in one? https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/kcrw-features/net-zero-carbon-house "That means it doesn’t cost more to build than the traditional alternative ... There’s a much humbler, 2000-square-foot home in a quiet Ventura neighborhood that’s just as eco-friendly as the one in Malibu. It looks like all the homes nearby. “We wanted it to look as normal as it could to essentially appeal to anybody that would want to live in a neighborhood like this,” says design architect Dylan Johnson, who built the house. There’s a clue to what’s different about the house behind a small peekaboo door in the hallway wall. It reveals what the house is made of: straw ... Rice straw stores carbon from its previous life growing in a field in the Sacramento Valley, and is cheaper than conventional building materials ...
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Jaime Rodriguez Jr pfp
Jaime Rodriguez Jr
@web3jaime
“I've had an idea about straw since the 60s,” he tells KCRW as he leads a tour of the home. “There's, I don't know, 10 different methods of making a house without using two by fours and two by sixes, and cutting down forests.” But, he says, as long as it’s easy to use lumber, that’s what builders will do. “There’s just the inertia. And so I wanted to do something about it. And we did.” The straw naturally provides insulation, keeping the home’s energy bills very low. It’s packed so tightly that it isn’t susceptible to mold or fire. The Malibu house and the straw bale house both have heat pumps, EV chargers, induction stoves, and solar panels. Thus, they’re cheaper to run than a home that uses fossil-fuel alternatives. Installing those electric options can be more expensive, but that’s why the federal government is stepping in with rebates to make the eco-friendly option just as affordable.
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Jaime Rodriguez Jr pfp
Jaime Rodriguez Jr
@web3jaime
Johnson says the main reason these low-carbon homes are still so rare is because contractors don’t know how to build them yet. “We need to open our eyes to simple, low-tech, already existing things you can do,” he says as he shows off the Ventura house. “If anything, the construction of this home is lower tech in many ways than a new stick-framed home. There’s less engineering. [We’re] just using basic things from nature to create a home.” #EatonCanyonFire #AltadenaStrong #LAStrong #FireResilience #PassiveHouse #LowerCostOfOwnership #BuildBackAltadenaBetter
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