Bio-What?

If and when we ever build a house, we're going to want to incorporate a couple of relatively novel designs. Given that the average builder around here has been building the same way for eighty-seven years, it may be difficult to find someone who can do what we want (because, though we want that ability, we don't want to pay heavily for the privilege), so we may find that we're scaling back what we expect to be in the midrange of whats possible.

For example: I heard, years ago, of 'grey water', which is where you reuse water that's not polluted but isn't clean, either -- such as the water from your shower. The idea is that you dump that water into a holding tank, and use that tank for non-potable functions. The stuff that gets polluted -- the water from the toilets, the water with soap residue in it, etc -- gets handled normally. Similarly, I heard of a method of heating water only as needed, rather than having a holding tank. I'm not sure how you do the tradeoff -- the cost of keeping the water hot versus the cost of heating it as needed -- but I like the idea. Pushing the envelope, I'm fond of the idea of a house that will automatically lower shades, switch on fans, and whatnot -- but I am not sure what it would take to do that, and make it work.

That's kind of what I think about this, which isn't a residential design, but is part of a college. The idea of having part of your house being a CO2 exchange area, and attractive to boot, is appealing to me. I doubt we'd ever do it, but I wonder if it'd be possible to incorporate the concept into a residence.