Adonis Diaries

Your Ecological “Home”

You cannot not save enough to build your house? No problem: an ecological home requires plenty of reflection, time consuming research, and big dose of an active daydream project.

Take your time in thinking and planning your eco-home.

A Natural Habitat is an experience in sobriety: The fruit of a long work of reflection that satisfies solidity, aesthetics, and an economy of long-term to the planet and to your ecological life-style.

This long reflection has for objectives:

1. Exploiting the form of natural environment (start acquiring an artistic view of the world)

2. Knowing how to defend the occasional onslaughts and assaults of the existing environment (nature changes around you by its own volition and particularly by mankind)

3. Integrating smoothly and harmoniously with the landscape.

The long reflection is a process of imagining your habitat going hand in hand with nature, termed “Bio-Climatism“.

This reflection is the result of absorbing the locality, the sun, the wind, the natural availability of raw materials and the forms that match with the environment.

Conceiving the habitat to be in accord with its context and to mesh within…

At the beginning of the 19th century, the concentration gas particles in the atmosphere was 280 per million (ppm).  The consensus wants to elevate this concentration to 450 ppm (sort of degrading mankind life expectancy in order to save on the cost of caring for the elderly?)

The construction sector consumes 43% of the total energy produced in the developed countries. Over 25% of bad gas emissions emanate from construction work. Energy consumption of household appliances increased 25% in the last 25 years.

A few hints:

1. Follow the sun trajectory: In temperate zones, and during summer solstice, the sun  forms an angle of 60 degrees with the land, and only 20 degrees during the winter solstice. Thus, let the low winter rays pass and heat the inside wall bricks, and avoid the summer rays from entering your home (by planting high trees…)

2. Natural light is important for your health during the long winter season, otherwise, you might suffer from “winter blues” resulting from over excretion of melatonine, (a drowsing hormone). Let day lights enter your home or be a statistics (one out of 5 suffer from depressive winter blues)

3. Ideal inside temperatures: For kids rooms (between 18 to 20 degrees Celsius),  for adult rooms (16), for living room (19)…

4. Know that lowering the temperature by a single degree saves about 7% on the energy bills.

5. Let in Fresh air: Just opening the windows for 10 minutes in the winter is enough to circulate new air. In summer time, wait for the external temperature is 2 degrees lower than inside to aerate the house.

Note 1: Extracted from the wonderful “Ecological Houses: From Conception to decoration” by Claire Leloy

Note 2: Argyle is called Keramas in Greek. The archaeologist Passeri coined “Ceramic” in 1768.