The ideal home of the future, especially in Southern California will be a micro-infrastructure.
The electricity will be provided for by the Sun, and the roof and home will yield enough water to provide for all the exterior water usage. The land not occupied by our homes will either not consume, or it will provide food for our families and neighborhoods.
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| Native vegetation is drought resistant and attracts wildlife like hummingbirds and butterflies. |
The time for the ideal of the future is now.
Southern California just got hit by a water balloon, and it burst upon impact. The water supply for FOUR MILLION PEOPLE for a year just evaporated. “In the span of 92 days, we lost out on water that could have been used to supply more than four million people for an entire year. That’s a huge amount of water,” said State Water Contractors General Manager Terry Erlewine.
The ideal home of the future would be built on a raised foundation, such as in this example;
In an ideal situation there would be an informal organization in each neighborhood where people discussed what edibles would be grown and how to share the food because as we all know when there is a garden, even a small one, it usually provides more food that can be eaten by one family, so having a co-op of sorts would build up the communities by getting people talking and working together. Such a neighborhood would pay little to nothing for produce, it would help to decentralize food production and the citizens would have fun!All the homes downspouts would lead into a cistern, that was built into the foundation of the home. The entire footprint of the home would be a cistern and the grey water from the home would be filtered before feeding into the storage. Post cistern filtration would be used to render the water potable for use in showers or for cooking and a city water feed would top off the cistern between rains. Solar panels would array the roof producing most of the homes electricity needs and the majority of the landscaping would be edible food gardens or xeriscaped or artificial grass.
Part of the impact in the story about the water cuts is that it will have a big impact on new home construction in Southern California because if there is no water, there can be no new building. With no construction, the economy can never fully recover. It is socially responsible to not let the water from your roof go to waste. Rain water harvesting is not just a fad or trend; it is a requirement for growth.
Wide spread use of rain water harvesting systems in San Diego and other parts of California will free up potentially billions of gallons of water per year, allowing for economic recovery and growth.
