The latest trend in the green movement – other than EVs – seems to be greenhousing communities. Considering everyone needs a place to live, this is a perfect focus for injecting green technology into daily living. Arvada, Colorado is all over this concept, going farther than solar roofing, or LEED certification goals. They’re setting up a community that will completely eliminate the use of fossil fuels.
Called Geos, the 25-acre area will have 250 homes from smaller 850 square feet to mansion-sized 3,500+ square feet placed in four neighborhoods. While that’s a whole lot of houses, they’ll be keeping a whopping 40% of the area as green space.
Using active and passive solar energy for daytime heating and electricity, the homes will be placed and constructed to maximize sun exposure, with rooftops housing PV panels. Excess power is stored in the grid. For un-sunny days, winter heating, and summer cooling, geothermal energy will be used.
Each home will be hooked up to a very cool energy monitoring system (not sure what model…) so the homeowner can keep an eye, and leash, on energy consumption.
The community is breaking ground this fall, and homes will be flying up – the first will be available during Spring of 2009. My only question now is how green they’ll be in terms of building process and materials...hopefully, very.
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