What Is Seed Bombing?

Seed bombing is a form of guerilla gardening, where you can improve the look of your neighbourhood by “bombing” it with seeds. The video below features one girl’s quest to green her neighborhood’s empty lots with sunflowers and includes a “how to” guide so viewers can make their own seedbombs!

[Via: Fresh Cut]

Recycled Products In Your Home

A quick three minute video from former UK Changing Rooms presenter and eco-friendly designer Oliver Heath. Here he explores some of the benefits of recycling and the new products that can be made from recycled goods for your home. Recycle Now provides more information.

Neighbourhood-wide Renewable Energy

Dutch company Qurrent is developing technology that will enable neighbourhood-wide energy networks. Winner of the 2007 Picnic Green Challenge the system will be used to pilot the concept in the Netherlands.

Because of fluctuating patterns of consumption, homes with wind and solar energy generators can find themselves with surplus energy at some times of the day but not enough at others. Surplus energy typically gets sold back to the main grid, but as with most electric power transmission, ~30% of it can get lost along the way.

If a group of homes could work together to manage their collective energy generation and use so that higher levels of demand in one home can be matched with surpluses in others, this would help eliminate waste and make it more efficient. Participating homes essentially form a “mini-grid” that shares energy internally before exchanging any with the main grid.

To do this a Qbox is installed in each house, connected to a central Qserver. This monitors the Qboxes in the network measuring energy flows in each home and optimizing them for maximum network-wide efficiency. It can also turn on devices such as washing machines and dryers so that they are run at the optimal time. A home-owner could tell their Qbox that they want their laundry done by 6pm and that it will take roughly 1.5 hours, for example. They can then go to work and the Qbox will decide when is the best time to run it, taking into account their production profiles and energy rates as well as those of their neighbours.

Sounds like a great idea although at peak times demand would still probably require energy to be drawn from the main grid.

[Via: Springwise]

Lego Style Hotels Built In 12 Weeks

Travelodge, a UK hotel chain have announced a hotel made of steel modules that resemble shipping containers, which are stacked on top of each other like Lego. Almost.

Each module contains a bedroom and bathroom, with plumbing and wiring ready to hook up to the rest of the units. Once the container-like elements have been bolted together, the structure’s exterior walls are covered with brickwork or other cladding to make them look like any other Travelodge. It’s currently being used to build hotels in Uxbridge and Heathrow Airport in the UK. When the hotels have run their course, they can be dismantled and the steel casings can be reused at other sites. There is no news on the construction materials used, and how

Modular building will help speed up further expansion (although I’m not sure there is a shortage of hotels), and will also make it feasible to build temporary hotels for major events like the Olympics that is in London in 2012. They estimate that a hotel could be built in as little as 12 weeks using this method.

[Via: Springwise]

How To Build A Green House

I dream of the day I can buy some land and build my own green home. Or at least pay other people to build it for me. A quick search round the web will give you lots of green building projects. One that stands out is Green in Medusa - a husband and wife team of Baldomero and Stephenie Fernandez, along with architect Lynn Gaffney, designing and building an affordable house in upstate New York.

Baldomero took some time out to talk to Life Goggles.

Life Goggles: Can you give us a bit of background and tell us a little bit about who you and Stephenie are?
Baldomero: We met on a photo shoot in Los Angeles in 2000 and have been married six years and are expecting our first baby literally any day now! We share many of the same passions - travelling the world, good food, art, music, city life mixed with country life. We are exposed to many different cultures and choices and that got us started thinking green. We would come back from Africa or Cuba and see the amount of excess and waste all around us in our own lives and here in the US. We started making small choices here and there to live greener, cleaner - reduce, reuse, recycle… and this is just a continuation. Our next project is converting our diesel wagon to bio diesel. We think about the impact of driving upstate - in the meantime we’ve bought a terrapass to help offset our CO2 footprint.

LG: Why did you decide to build an eco house?
B: While building is not inherently “green” We wanted to be responsible and choose healthier alternatives that don’t harm the environment as much as other choices. We found there are increasingly more products and desire out there, and hopefully it will become the mainstream way of doing things instead of the alternative way.

LG: How did you hook up with architect Lynn Gaffney?
B: We had been interviewing and researching architects and builders for a few months - finding someone we both loved was harder than we thought - and we knew that whomever we went with would be a relationship we would have to endure for quite a while. We wanted someone who would help us build our dream house, not their dream house. We had a few we really liked and just when we were about to decide on one we received an issue of Dwell and saw an article on a house built by Lynn for herself. We were inspired by her house and got in touch with her right away. She was lovely from the beginning, offered to meet us up at her house so we could see it in person. We knew Lynn was the one when after spending half an hour with us she basically sketched a house that we had been dreaming of for the past few years… something that no other architect we we interviewed did.

LG: What was the first thing you did to get started?
B: Write a check/cheque to Lynn. Once you start spending money your realise it’s for real.

LG: Why did you buy the land that you have?
B: We live in NYC and started going upstate NY with friends who rented houses up there as a great escape from urban life. We both love the outdoors, camping, hiking and really want to have more of that in our lives. We saw this piece of land and fell in love with the view, the 2400 acres of state forest a couple of hundred yards away, the town of Rensselaerville three miles away also helped make our mind up. We knew we wanted to build our own place, something green and on a strict budget. We’ve had the property for three years… we’ve really spent our time thinking about it, spending seasons up there and now we are finally in the process.
[Read more]

UK Zero Emission Home Launched

A two bedroom house that apparently loses 60% less heat than a normal house, has been unveiled in the UK. The Kingspan Lighthouse generates all it’s own energy, estimating an average annual energy bill of just £31 ($60).

It does this using a biomass boiler than can run on organic material, with a waste separation unit that can provide more fuel, and solar panels on the back of the house.

However currently building costs are 40% higher than standard, though they will be exempt from Stamp Duty.

[Via BBC]

More Eco Homes - With A Difference

Not, not the fancy homes at the Kingspan Offsite 2007 exhibition in Watford that have been in the news the last few weeks, but something a bit different. Why build a new home when you can reuse something else? Two companies have take this idea and used old transport vehicles to create housing.

Double Decker Living reuse and revive retired the famous red double-decker buses. As well as making them into homes for (mainly) temporary accommodation, it provides buses for roadshows, films etc. They currently have a five-berth bus for sale which includes a shower, kitchen, flat screen TV and, of course, a bio toilet.

Village Underground does the same with disused carriages from the Tube. Well it’s actually a charity that creates office space, not homes from them, but it’s housing of a sort. They have a ‘cultural space’ in Shoreditch in London that you can hire etc.