Living in the Future: The Advantages of a Smart Home Lifestyle.
How to save money on bills every month in a super modern and beautiful smart house. How to make yourself less dependent on energy suppliers and their recurring bills, while still enjoying all comfort of a super modern and beautiful smart house? The answer is: technology and measuring
systems. Find out how this couple makes smart use of domotics that measures energy usage, and how they discovered there is actually an affluence of energy offered by natural resources around us. If you're ready to live with nature, this makes central energy production by suppliers almost superfluous.
Do check out this smart winter house in summer outfit.
Among the Haspengouw orchards, Bart and Graziela built a wood-framed
house in 2018 that is way ahead of its time. The triangular, wide-open
5000 m2 terrain was allowed to remain wild except for a path through
the field, and is the perfect setting for a sustainable and
comfortable two-family home. The residents are almost self-sufficient
in everything: there is electrical energy, water, heating and cooling,
even fresh eggs from the chickens. Graziela: "Thanks to this house I
have learned to live with nature. The glass facade at the back, 6
meters high and facing south, is like a life-size TV screen and shows
the course of the sun (and the birds that fly from one nature park to
the other). The sun heats the house in the winter, and provides hot
water for the shower all year round. On a dark, rainy day, we're happy
too, because the house is always bathed in daylight, and that's when
we know the rainwater tanks are replenished. That means that water
filtered and mineralized by plants will be available. For free, a gift
from nature." The trees will serve as a natural source of shade in the
summer together with the smart controlled blinds which do the passive
cooling. Sustainable living also means healthy living, and so Bart and
Graziela used only healthy bio-ecological materials such as flax, wood
wool, cork and paper flakes as insulation in the house. Design
aficionados will love this well thought-out architect's house because
it has been furnished with classic design pieces from Knoll, Ligne
Roset, Brand van Egmond, and Eames. The bed linen is from Yumeko, with
fair trade and sustainable fabrics. For the oak parquet floor not a
single tree had to be cut down. The planks are in their second life in
this house. Their first life took place on the manufacturer's
exhibition floor. A nice example of circular thinking. Domotics and
electrical controls do the rest: the house, like its inhabitants, pick
up every ray of sunshine and gratefully uses the sun to create comfort
and warmth. If the solar energy can't be used directly through the
tall daylight windows while Bart works from home, a 1,000-litre heat
battery neatly stores it for use when it's less sunny or in the
evening. The cute retro light Bart bought from a neighbour indicates
in the bathroom with a colour how hot the shower water is. Guests who
come to stay in the holiday home have a separate adjoining cottage of
75 m2 at their disposal, which feels like a luxury cabin in the
countryside. You will also see the orange soup bowl on the terrace:
the hot tub that you can heat with wood. Not ecological, you said?
Well, it is: there is almost always plenty of filtered rainwater in
this house, so if you want to make things easier, you can fill in the
tub with the surplus hot water from the heat battery. After a lovely
bath in nature, simply drain the water into the plant filter, which
mineralizes and recycles the water. Then the water is ready to be used
again.
Location: Herk-de-stad, Haspengouw, Limburg, BE, 1 hour from Maastricht.
Construction: wood frame with healthy recyclable and / or circular
building materials
Energy: home automation, solar controlled smart heat pump,
photovoltaic panels, solar water heater, helofytenfilter rainwater
Construction: wood frame with healthy recyclable and / or circular building materials (eprojecten.be)
Living space: 163 m2 (house), 75 m2 (vacation home).
Instagram: @huisvanhout
Facebook: @huisvanhout
www.huisvanhout.be
Video production by mindfulbuildingandliving.com/