Designed to function completely off-grid, the potential use of renewable energy is off the charts. Whether you decide to generate your electricity with solar panels or the small vertical axis wind turbine, you’re all set with the Homestead House. The sun will passively heat and cool the building, and heat the water at the same time. And whenever it rains, that rainwater will run right off the roof arches and into storage containers for later use.
The Homestead House is a prefab concept made from salvaged steel. And the prefab design doesn’t just make it customizable, but also extremely simple to “bolt” together.
That’s right; with simple tools you can literally bolt this entire structure together. You’ll definitely be saving costs by avoiding the use of skilled labor. For those of you who love putting things together, you’ll find building your own home fun. There are so many ways to put these clusters together; you can adjust the entire building to suit whatever your needs.
Most of my work investigates ways to integrate alternative energy gathering and storage systems into the built environment, so they can be powered partly or entirely independent of the conventional utility grid. In every case, the esthetics that evolve from all of my work comes from the invention of new ways in which these designs function. – Michael Jantzen
After the arches are bolted together, you probably won’t need an additional secondary support structure to keep it up. Because of this, you can take it apart, move it and put it back up. That’s what we call “recycling.” The only question is when it will come out of the concept stage and into the manufacturing stage.
