It’s early 2011 and The Levi House project is in its very early stages.
The website just went online and will begin to chronicle our path towards realizing the dream of a low-impact, environmentally friendly, low-power home in which to raise our family and reduce our dependence on external systems.
We’d like to incorporate as many “green” concepts and technologies as we can in this home to help spread the word to like-minded individuals. Unfortunately, this isn’t going to be a financially realistic objective for us. We’re going to go as far as we can, but we’d like to go further so our home can serve as a model for as many people as possible.
Accepting Donations!
If you’d like to help with the project, but aren’t what might be considered a “corporate donor”, if you’d like to help, we’ll gratefully accept any token you’d like to offer to help with the project!
Indoor Lighting – Natural
For starters, we’d like to light the space primarily with natural lighting. To accomplish this we plan on orienting our home strategically on the site such that windows provide the majority of our light in the day. Because this requires a large amount of windows, and windows are not traditionally as energy efficient as are insulated walls, we’re looking for a window manufacturer who would like to showcase their “super-efficient” windows with low-E and high-R values. We also plan on having a functional cupola with clerestory windows to providing lighting to the interior of the space, as well as natural convection-based cooling in the warmer months.
If this is you, please contact us so we can discuss a sponsorship opportunity.
Additionally, we hope to include tubular sky-lighting for interior spaces where traditional windows and clerestory windows are not a viable option. If your company provides or manufactures these types of skylights, please contact us so we can discuss a sponsorship opportunity.
Indoor Lighting – Artificial
The sun doesn’t shine at night, and sometimes additional light is needed (enclosed spaces, under cabinets, for specific tasks, etc.). In those instances no amount of windows or sky-lighting can provide the illumination you need, therefore supplemental lighting is required.
Incandescent lighting is pretty much only good for heating — though light is a side-effect. Some would argue it’s the other way around. In either case, compact fluorescent lighting (CFL) is progress, it still emits a significant amount of heat and there are other reasons that CFL may no longer be the best choice.
We hope to light The Levi House entirely with LEDs — Light Emitting Diodes. If your company provides or manufactures these types of lights, please contact us so we can discuss a sponsorship opportunity.
