by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
“Simplicity means the achievement of maximum effect with minimum means.” - Albert Einstein
What is a Slow Home?
Think of a “Slow Home” as you would think about “Slow Food”. In other words, think about the opposite of “Slow Food” which is processed food, fast food, like McD's and the like. That would equate a “fast home” as a standardized, homogeneous, wasteful home that is not advantageous for the environment, making it like nasty fast food for our bodies. The interiors and exteriors of Slow Homes tread lightly. They are simple to live in, benefit the environment and help to keep inhabitants of the home healthy.
Slow Home Studio claims: “The difference between a fast house and a Slow Home is not defined by style, size, age, type or cost but by the quality of the underlying design. It’s about the fundamental organizational decisions that define how well the house responds to its context, how efficiently the rooms are organized together, and how effectively each individual space functions. In a fast house, this underlying design is flawed. In a Slow Home the underlying design is logical, effective and helps to make our lives easier while reducing our environmental impact.”
Is your home Slow or Fast?
The research indicates that only 10 percent of North American houses are Slow – 20 percent have significant design problems that make them fast. The remaining 70 percent of houses fall somewhere in between these two extremes and depending on the specifics of their design, they may or may not be Slow.
A test to find out as to whether your home is fast or slow can be downloaded from the Slow Home Studio website and might be well worth having a look at if you want to do something about the speed of your home.
So why not take the test?
Most people wouldn't know how to tell the difference between a fast house and a Slow Home and how should they be able to; the concept is a rather new one. Therefore, take the Slow Home Test to find out whether your home is fast or slow. Download the PDF, print it out and do your own scoring.
How did you score?
Once you have established whether you live in a fast or a slow home you can then look at what you can do about it and how you can slow it down if it is fast.
What you can do about the house depends (a) on whether you own it or rent and (b) whether things can be easily changed.
How to slow down your home
To start with take an audit. Look at positive changes that you could and can make. Don't labor on those that you can't do or have no control over (if you don't own your home, for instance) and then get to work on making those changes that you can make.
My number one point would be to reduce the energy consumption of your home as much as possible, and this can be achieved often by very simple means.
Insulation and such as regards to heat loss is something that you can only deal with if you are the homeowner and the same is true with regards to double glazing and such like. Don't labor on this point and similar ones if you can't do it because you don't own the home and also not if you are not in the financial position to do anything about it.
Electricity
Let's start with reduction in energy consumption with electrical power. Here is where small steps can go a long way.
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Turn off lights in rooms where there is no one and any unnecessary lights anywhere.
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Pull any chargers for cell phones, etc. out of the sockets when they are not in use. Such devices still, in the main, with the exception of one or two so-called intelligent chargers, drain power even when they are not in use and are only plugged in.
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Take appliances out of standby mode. This is another one of those areas of huge “phantom power” usage. Any device, TV or whatever, in standby mode can drain nigh on the same amount of power as when in actual use. Scary, eh?
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Fit compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). They save a bunch of lolly. Yes, they do have an issue with mercury, being, basically mercury vapor lamps, in a way, but so are strip lights. They all need to be dealt with responsibly. They have also, now, been accused of causing diabetes too. What next? From what I can see the accusations regarding diabetes are nothing but speculations by one doctor in the realm of “dirty power”.
In the European Union and Britain you have no longer go a choice but CFLs when buying light bulbs; incandescent bulbs,t he old kind, are illegal now to buy and will be made illegal to use, so I understand, soon too.
LEDs, obviously, are much better still and if you can get them, and especially if you can afford them, then I suggest you use them.
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Kill the air conditioning and dress according to the weather. Opening windows (and doors) to create a through drafts can be as efficient in cooling a home, is cheaper (it costs nothing) and is so much better for you and the Planet.
Heating
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Turn the thermostat down to 18Celsius, even in cold winters. Do you really have to sit around in a thin T-shirt? Put a sweater or sweatshirt on. It works. Better for you and for Mother Earth.
As I have said before, if you own your home and can afford to do it then there are a number of other steps that you can take to reduce your impact as far as heating energy usage is concerned.
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Double Glazing
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Wall Insulation
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Loft Insulation
etc.
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Shower in cold water – it is easy getting used to and you do get clean, don't worry. Better for you and Mother Earth. The same is true for the washing of hands, in most cases. Waiting for the hot water to come through the faucet, unless you have one of those boilers that provides instant hot water, also wastes loads of water.
Water consumption
Water is another one of those resources that we seems to be using as if it would be something that we would need to worry about, in the same way that we treated oil and coal. We believed it would be there for ever and ever. Our usage of water, by industry and homes, is outstripping regeneration and the water cycle of rain and the water returning to the sea and coming back to us as rain, etc., no longer functions. We must reduce the amount of water that we, ultimately, send to the sea for, I believe, that much of the rising sea levels are due to the amount of water that we send via the sewers to the sea, and this also changes the salinity of the sea water. All not good.
We must reduce the way we use and abuse water. Below a couple of ideas as too how to do that.
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Take a shower instead of a bath. A four-minute or so shower is best. It uses several times less water than taking a bath. A bath even just half full uses somewhere in the region of 5 gallons of water, which is just sent down the drain afterwards.
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Fit aerated shower heads and faucet nozzles. This reduces water usage by a great amount too.
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Don't rush to flush! Each and every time that you flush the lavatory you send at least two, if not three, gallons of drinking water down the drain.
As the sayings go, “Don't rush to flush if it is only a pee” and “If it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown flush it down”, is how we should proceed in this matter. A great deal of water can be saved in this way and this, again, is good for your wallet and for the Planet.
There are, I am sure, a fair number of additional ways in which to work towards creating a real slow home but I shall leave it at those suggestions given here.
Growing your own food if and where you can could add another dimension tot he slowing down of your home as much as other parts.
Go, and stop that runaway home now!
© 2010
This article will form part of a chapter of a book on how to slow down our lives and everything to the good of Mother Earth currently in work.
