Through natural building, there are many ways to prevent global warming. Conventional suburban houses are large, poorly designed, and inefficient, and the manufacturing and construction processes are big contributors to global warming.

Natural building is a sustainable design approach that promotes low impact homes built with natural and recycled materials. I will highlight two different techniques in natural building that promote global warming prevention through increased energy efficiency.

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Ready to spring into action? Here is a roundup of tips and tutorials to do some of these projects in your own home.

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[Creative Commons photo by Chad Hanna]

Marketers and large corporations have co-opted the word sustainability to sell products. It’s come to mean expensive bamboo counter tops and organic cotton bedding. We need to take back that word to its original meaning. Sustainability is living within your means. It’s closing the waste cycle and finding ways to turn trash into something that’s usable again. Last night, Kellogg talked about some ways that Rhizome is accomplishing these things. Ways that we can, too!

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Then pick the stingiest windows you can find and instruct your architect to use them sparingly. Avoid any use of windows on the Southern elevation. One, at the most.

That will keep the sun out.

Sunshine warms homes for free. That’s socialism. Real men use fossil fuel for the daunting task of warming up a frigid family. There’s no free lunch. Tough sh*t.

And when the fossil fuels run out? It will never happen. Real men will dig more up from under somebody.

Why spend lots of money heating your house when nature can do it for you? Upstate New York resident John Kosmer has taken passive solar to a new level in his home, which only costs $2.50 a day to heat. That’s less than $1,000 a year of heating expenses in an area of the country that gets mauled with snow multiple times a year.

Kosmer worked with Building With Integrity and Adirondack Alternative Energy to construct his passive solar house. Four-inch thick rigid polyurethane is installed on the exterior walls and under the roof, while pre-finished concrete siding covers the exterior of the home.

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The 20 teams selected for the 2009 Solar Decathlon have been announced by the US Department of Energy. Each team will receive a $100,000 grant from the DOE to be used for creating a completely solar-powered home for the competition.

The full list can be found in an article at Custom Home Online. The 2009 competition has some international flavor, including last year’s winner, the Technische Universität Darmstadt, as well as the Universidad Polytécnica de Madrid and two groupings of Canadian universities.

• » See also: Volunteer at 1bog.org to help educate about solar energy
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One former faculty adviser to a university Decathlon team lamented the reduction of the Solar Decathlon to a more narrow range of design concepts. The first few Decathlons were wide-open events, with very different designs. But with certain criteria in place, the strategies have been narrowed down to address the specific problems posed by the Decathlon challenge. These are still good designs that are being produced, but they are now tuned to a set of particular requirements and criteria.

Homes designed for the Decathlon should perhaps be viewed in the same spirit as one views Formula One race cars compared to ordinary cars. In the cases of both the auto race and the Solar Decathlon, the competitors are tuned for specific ways of maximizing the allowable methods for winning a contest. While some developments in the competition may trickle down to more prosaic, domestic uses, it’s not a representative testbed.

We’ll certainly be looking at the entries when the Decathlon is held; however, I don’t expect to see great numbers of them making an appearance in a neighborhood anytime soon. Like race cars, they are great to look at, and fun to think about using, but for most of us, they aren’t a practical alternative to what we have now.
Image (Kansas State/Univ. Kansas 2007 entry in front of Washington Monument) via Curious Cat

Starting with the idea of creating a conventional community with a green twist, the Corbetts set to work transforming 70 acres in Davis into a livable green community that was good for the people, good for the earth. By lining the carefully planned east-west streets with southern-facing houses for maximum solar exposure, they enabled the Village Homes residents to acquire between 50-75 percent of their heating needs from the free (and endless!) source of the sun.

By 1982, the 70-acre Village Homes broke ground with the completion of a livable model now emulated and envied by developers and home dwellers the world over. With the narrow, curved east west streets, truncated to allow pedestrian use of the centralized community green space, the Corbetts specifically designed Village Homes to encourage transportation by foot and bike rather than by car. Designing a community to focus on the people rather than the vehicles, they opened up the development structure to allow neighborhood interaction. Another cool perk: With narrower streets containing less asphalt and more trees, the Corbetts unwittingly designed a community that is known to be 10-15 degrees cooler than surrounding neighborhoods in the hot summer months!

Other benefits include voluntary weekly potlucks, neighborhood work parties, edible landscaping, a lower cost of living. centralized play areas for children, a solar heated community center and swimming pool, two vineyards, an orchard, and two large common gardening areas.

To own a house in Village Homes is highly coveted by all familiar with the efficacy of the Corbetts’ designs. As one resident puts it, “A community is more than a physical location. It's a feeling of kinship. Living at Village Homes has enhanced our lives in many ways. I guess I could say I'm looking forward to growing old here." For more information on Village Homes or the Corbetts’ books on green development design, please visit http://www.villagehomesdavis.org/