2022’s Best Cities for Self-Sustaining Homes

What are three common challenges that come with creating a self-sustaining home?

1. A lack of knowledge on how a homeowner or resident can do so.
2. A market that mostly values cheaply built homes with relatively short life spans.
3. A lack of knowledgeable community to support one another.

What are three benefits of owning a self-sustaining home?

1. The opportunity to use local and sustainable products.
2. A deeper relationship with the home you occupy and care for.
3. A smaller environmental footprint than the average home.

How can the average homeowner make their existing property more self-sustainable?

1. Capture and retain water on site.
2. Use natural building materials to retrofit or maintain the home.
3. Grow your own food on site, using native and traditional plants and landscapes to enhance the property’s biodiversity and beauty.

Where can aspiring self-sustaining homeowners find inspiration for their home design?

Great resources exist online. You can also take natural building workshops and classes. I am certified in a few different techniques. You can also look to indigenous and traditional knowledge local to your area and how they worked with nature to build their homes and structures.

What are three common challenges that come with creating a self-sustaining home?

1. The most important step is to use photovoltaic panels or other renewable energy sources to produce as much energy as your home –– and car –– consume in a year so as to end your greenhouse gas emissions for those purposes.That means not just adding PV, but improving home insulation, replacing the furnace and hot water heater with heat pumps, and replacing the gas stove with an electric or induction model. Totally electrifying the home, in other words. This can often be done whenever you would have to replace your old furnace anyway.
2. Reducing water use is another main step towards self-sufficiency. Depending on the current water efficiency of your home, it may mean replacing toilets and dishwashers with the most water-efficient models and installing flow restrictors in showerheads.It may mean collecting stormwater for irrigation and installing greywater systems to collect sink and shower water for reuse in toilets and landscapes. And most importantly, it means replacing water-hungry turf with xeriscape landscape designs.
3. The third main sustainability challenge is rethinking our consumption patterns. Products we buy contain embodied energy and resources that increase our ecological footprint. Buying less, reusing existing goods, recycling materials after we use them, and sharing products with others are all good strategies.Consumption refers to things we eat as well. Eating less meat, dairy, and packaged foods is particularly important in order to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Plus, it’ll probably improve our health.

What are three benefits of owning a self-sustaining home?

1. Long-term savings from reduced operating costs. Some up-front investment may be required, but rebates and incentives are often available.
2. Beautiful, climate-appropriate landscapes around the house.
3. The satisfaction of knowing we’re doing our part to live in healthy and environmentally responsible ways.

How can the average homeowner make their existing property more self-sustainable?

1. Find a local expert who can guide you through the process.
2. Read up on the best strategies for your region.
3. Talk to friends and neighbors, especially those who have already retrofitted their homes or changed their lifestyles.

Where can aspiring self-sustaining homeowners find inspiration for their home design?

1. Check out your local bookstore to find inspirational books and magazines.
2. Your local utility company may have good materials about energy- and water-efficient design.
3. Regional magazines like Sunset Magazine often have inspiring examples.

What are three common challenges that come with creating a self-sustaining home?

1. First and foremost, it may not be legal to go off-grid in your community or jurisdiction. Check the local building and zoning department. If your community has adopted the International Property Maintenance Code, then you may need to consider relocating to another area. Unincorporated or rural areas are places where you are more likely to successfully build and live in a self-sustaining home.
2. The second would be selecting the most suitable and reliable sources of water and technology for onside energy production: mainly solar, geothermal, hydro, or wind.
3. And third, managing waste and proper disposal of waste.

What are three benefits of owning a self-sustaining home?

1. First and foremost, Independence.
2. Second, taking into account the initial costs, there are long-term savings (no electric, gas, water, sewer, or trash collection bills).
3. And perhaps most importantly, it supports a lifestyle that brings you and your family in tune with the natural environment and the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills for adapting to environmental change.

How can the average homeowner make their existing property more self-sustainable?

First, check to see if you can legally go off-grid and disconnect from the utility grid.

Then find out as much as you can about the local climate throughout the year, e.g., prevailing breezes, the extent of solar penetration through windows and skylights, the plant ecology on your property and the soil and drainage conditions, availability of water sourced from wells or rainwater collection, and the amount of waste you produce (biological and other).

Also, assess how dependent you are on fossil fuels (car, truck, motorcycle, heating, generators, lawn mowers, etc.).

Depending on the climate zone you live in, the transition to self-sustainability can be easy or challenging. If you live in a climate where you are less likely to rely on mechanical cooling and heating systems, then you have a clear advantage and can focus on other aspects of autonomous living.

Research the variety of plumbing and sewer options for retrofitting or replacing your existing system.

We waste a huge amount of drinking water with each toilet flush in a conventional plumbing system. A composting toilet is the best option, a septic tank might impact the quality of the groundwater and nearby lake or stream ecologies, and the most basic is a latrine pit – best suited to remote areas.

You can also collect rainwater and use it to irrigate your onsite agriculture, or if you have a lot of rainfall, the water can be harvested for domestic use, provided it is of good quality.

Where can aspiring self-sustaining homeowners find inspiration for their home design?

Indigenous building practices are very inspiring because they traditionally build with locally sourced materials and have adapted the homes to the local climate and weather conditions.

Depending on your climate zone, you may also want to check out a classic text, “Design with Climate: Bioclimatic Approach to Architectural Regionalism” by Victor Olgyay. He investigated climate adaptive architecture in four climate regions: hot-humid, hot-arid, temperate, and cool. The book was originally released in 1963, but an updated version is now available through Princeton University Press.

Primal Survivor publishes an inexpensive and helpful guide, “The First Step to Going Completely Off Grid and Becoming Self Reliant,” available online at their website. Their main website also publishes a list of places where there are no restrictive building and zoning codes.

If you live in Florida, Compass Solar has a very helpful website.

What are three common challenges that come with creating a self-sustaining home?

1. Money: Recognizing that upfront costs can be more than they would be for a ‘regular’ home.
2. Systems: Understanding the complexities of running and managing unfamiliar self-sustaining systems –– especially if the system is electronic, computer, or data-reliant.
3. Behavior: Understanding that occupant behavior may need to adapt to living within the new systems. It can require more thinking about the house and interaction with it.

What are three benefits of owning a self-sustaining home?

1. Freedom from often less-reliable utilities, depending on how well and thoughtfully it is designed.
2. Savings over time can be an investment for the future in utility costs –– if properly maintained.
3. Conscious lifestyle –– living more in touch with one’s relation to the context.

How can the average homeowner make their existing property more self-sustainable?

Making simple, low cost improvements can reduce grid reliance to a degree. Imagine if your power and water went out –– or decreased greatly –– right now. How would you cope and keep comfortable? Or how could you prepare for such a situation in advance?

Even doing simple things can reduce grid reliance, such as caulking, sealing, weatherstripping, maximizing wall and attic insulation, shading (trees, trellises, etc.), solar-heat controls (exterior awnings, interior curtains), and new windows (multi-pane, thermally broken, with treated glass).

For water use, rainwater harvesting is always helpful –– and reducing consumption with xeriscaping. Rainwater can be used for flushing toilets, watering plants, and various other non-potable needs.

Where can aspiring self-sustaining homeowners find inspiration for their home design?

For aspiring homeowners, I would suggest that they first find a licensed professional architect that has the desire and experience to design a ‘self-sustaining’ home.

Much like the upfront investment in off-grid systems, the cost of hiring an architect is also an investment in the holistic design and construction (and enjoyment) of a home. It’s usually a small percent of the construction cost.

Architects can also find ways to include a sophisticated ‘delight’ component within the design of a home that an otherwise competent homebuilder may not consider.

What are three common challenges that come with creating a self-sustaining home?

We would say one of the most common challenges of creating a self-sustaining home is lacking the knowledge of best practices –– having a source to locate existing products or learning new ways to increase the efficiency of the home’s energy use, how to collect and save water, or even how to develop edible landscapes.

Some of these sustainable practices need to be carefully attuned to the climate and eco-systems we live in –– for example, some plant varietals may not grow in your biome or may require much more (or less) water and sunlight than are readily available within your locale.

To better connect to our surroundings, we have to understand them, foster the natural elements that can connect us better to these surroundings, but also augment our micro-environments (our interior spaces) to incorporate additional natural elements that connect us to the natural world. This could be as simple as having an herb shelf in your kitchen or turning a room into a veritable greenhouse.

Other aspects might be more mechanical, such as more energy-efficient light bulbs, smart thermostats, adding double-pane, operable windows, or a well-placed skylight that can impact your thermal comfort while saving energy and money.

As architecture designers, we typically look at multi-faceted designs that not only solve a singular issue, but also create surprising solutions that work with existing spaces to better attune our interior environments to the best parts of the external environment.

What are three benefits of owning a self-sustaining home?

Americans spend approximately 90 percent of their lives inside. While mechanical ingenuity may allow us to control our temperature and humidity to the degree, it also can insulate us from the benefits of air outdoors.

These enclosed, separated bubbles can have 2–5 times the number of pollutants than the outside air, and if we learned anything from the COVID pandemic, it’s the importance of the air we breathe.

A self-sustaining home can better connect to the outside environment by incorporating operable windows, an attic fan, and even better air filters to ensure a healthier interior environment with better air quality.

Even house plants can increase the amount of oxygen within a home, stabilize temperatures, and increase the quality of life indoors. A well-placed window can also bring the natural world in or attune a room with the natural world and connect our bodies to the diurnal cycles and our circadian rhythms.

If we begin to expand our idea of occupiable space beyond our four walls and a roof, we can begin to create microclimates through outdoor spaces that can extend thermal comfort to our front, side, and back yards which could become extremely enjoyable during different times of day or year, depending on their solar orientation and spatiotemporal desires.

How can the average homeowner make their existing property more self-sustainable?

One really easy one is going to your city website to learn of any incentive programs that they may be offering. Here in arid areas of west Texas, water is an essential element to life, and several local governments in our area have offered a rain barrel assistance program that provides rain barrel kits and connections to allow homeowners to collect 55 gallons of water when it rains.

Based on my roof size, it only has to rain a half-inch for my barrel to be filled. With the success of this and the infrequency of rain coupled with the cost of water, I invested in three more barrels to collect rain around my house which is used for our peach and apple trees and the flower beds.

We have removed some of the water-intensive plants and replaced them with drought-resistant varieties, but having the ability to collect water incentivizes efficient use of water and allows my native flowers to thrive even with little rain during the ongoing drought.

Another is a smart thermostat. This allows the homeowner to set a schedule for their thermostat to more efficiently maintain a cooler environment when they are home. This can save hundreds of dollars every year, and these smart electronics go on sale usually a couple of times a year but can pay for themselves within a year or two.

Energy-efficient bulbs, like LED, are very good and can save energy (and money) over the long run, but as an architect, I really like solutions on the exterior of a home, such as planting a deciduous tree, a trellis, or even a canvas overhang on the sunward side of the house that can limit the direct solar gain on a façade, blocking the heat from even impacting the house.

If planned correctly, these elements can block the harsh summer sun, while allowing for solar exposure to increase during the winter. For example, deciduous trees naturally drop their leaves in the fall and winter and allow for greater solar exposure when it is most desired.

Where can aspiring self-sustaining homeowners find inspiration for their home design?

There are so many online ‘e-zines’ and more traditional magazines that offer a plentitude of sustainable ideas and hacks for retrofitting existing homes. Of course, if there is a larger design project, home addition, or even exterior remodel, hiring an architect and/or landscape designer can provide excellent results to increase the quality of our lives by connecting our interior environments to the world around us.