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House Rules: The World’s Greenest Home

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This past weekend, I spent a hot minute flipping through a friend’s dead tree edition of The Atlantic. Apparently, in my online perousing, I had missed this feature on a California couple building “the world’s greenest home.”

It all comes across as a wondrous fantasy—part Rivendell, part Gattaca. They even share their swimming pool with local turtles.

The house has no paint, ducts, or HVAC, and it uses no fossil fuels. Sliding glass walls let in the breeze during the summer, and in the winter the home’s ground-source heat-exchange system pumps water deep underground to be warmed by the Earth’s thermal energy, then pushes it up to heat the floorboards. The home’s climate, lighting, and irrigation will be controlled remotely—by iPad, of course.

Click here for a full map of the compound. Prepare for jealousy.

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