Saturday, April 14, 2012

Rainwater Harvesting

Green Architecture (green building) is an outcome of a design which focuses on increasing the efficiency of resource use - energy, electricity, water and building materials - while reducing building impacts on human health and the environment during the building's lifecycle, through better design, construction, operation and maintenance.
Green architecture are design to reduce the overall impact of the built environmente on human health and the natural environment by:
  • Efficiently using energy, electricity and other resources
  • Protecting occupant health
  • Reducing waste, pollution and environmental degradation
  • The use of natural materials that are available locally
I am interested in a house designed by Eimar Boesjes, an architectural software developer and internet entrepreneur with his wife, landscape designer, Anita Van Asperdt. Check out these links:

The house called Rainwater is a complex composition of four simple volumes - residence, guest house, office, garace - each capped with a planar steel roof rakishly tilted to channel rainwater down to a single cantilevered corner.

The divergent roof planes almost intersect, and the volumes converge into a single coherent element. But the singularity is elusive. No matter where you stand - above, on either side, or below - you never see the same combination of house, or, for that matter, the entire house. At least one of the volumes, one of the rooftops, is always hidden, just around a corner.


Front View



Back View



Rooftop View

Anita Van Asperdt and Eimar Boesjes treat rainwater as valuable resources rather than a problem. The metal roofs of their house are designed to collect and direct rainwater into an 8,000 gallon underground cistern where it is stored for later use. According to them, the wet season in their area will provide them with enough water to irrigate their landscape and perhaps reduce their dependence upon municipal water utilities for indoor use.



Rainwater Collection System and Filter Placement Detail

The rain water catchment system consists of painted steel roof structure. The water is artfully channeled from the rooftop to truncated downspouts that spill onto granite boulders at ground level. These boulders sit atop concrete footings that house pipes leading to the cistern inlets.


Boulder covers filter slots

What is an eco house?

An eco house is built in such a way that reduces energy consumption and waste. An eco house reduces the buildings negative impact on human health and the environment, through better design, construction, siting, operation and maintenance. An eco house is a combination of sustainable design, sustainable development and sustainable living. 

Eco houses are designed and built as part of the larger ecology of the planet; the design and construction of the building are done in harmony with the natural environment. Buildings are one of the most damaging polluters on the planet, consuming a lot of all the energy used in developed countries and producing over half of all the climate-changing greenhouse gases. 

A successful eco house should give the us the "best of both" by providing less of an impact on the environment along with a healthier place to live and lower ongoing running costs.