PT Sep-78 - Herbert W. Armstrong Library and Archives

A California-based nonprofit research institute has
come up with a practical and commonsense approach
to the energy crisis which completely short -circuits, the.
traditional methods requiring high technology and
massive capital investment. Involved was the
transformation of a dilapidated frame building into
an energy-saving and resource-efficient environment.
Informed peopJe now agree that the average family's house and lifestyle,
especially in the more urbanized and industrialized nations, will
have to undergo fundamental changes towards being more environmentally
sound based on reduced energy and resource consumption.
But how should this be done? Where is there a model, a totally integrated
example of energy- and resource-efficient living in a typical house? Suppose
an average urban family of four, motivated to change their lives, but forced
to live within the normal urban constraints of limited time, space, and light,
asked: How can we achieve environmentally sound living? Can you show us
a "different" rather than a "lower" standard of living?
An answer is now available: The Integral Urban House, 1516 Fifth St,
Berkeley, California 94710. In 1974 a California-based environmental organiza~ion
, the Farallones Institute, decided to commit its resources to develop
a practical working model of such a house and life-style. They bought and
retrofitted an aging Victorian on a 6,OOO-square-foot lot By thoroughly
redesigning the house and grounds they aimed to illustrate exactly · what a
motivated urban family could
accomplish. By 1978 they had
completed the prototype, which
is open to the public. "A family
in this house creates only 10-35
percent of the environmental
impact of a family in a typical
American house," said Tom Javits,
director of the house.
What makes the family living
in this house different? In brief,
they:
• Raise all their owri vegetables,
most of their own fruit,
plus honey.
• Produce their own meat
from chickens, eggs from chickens,
and fish from a fishpond.
• Recycle all vegetable, animal
and human wastes, calling
the materials "resources."
• Use solar energy to heat their space, water, and food.
• Use wind energy to aerate their food-fish pond.
• Control all insect pests with physical and biological controls rather than
with poisons.
• Reuse household water, which is recycled to the garden through a "gray
water" system.
• Generally make the best possible. use of the resources available.
To learn how all this worked, I watched Tom Javits and three other house
residents. do their weekend chores. "Remember that when all the
systems of the house are set up," said Javits, "they can be maintained in
about eight hours of work per week, or two hours per person. The house
ABETTER
ENERGY-SAVING
IDEA
THE
INTEGRAL
URBAN
HOME
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