My son and daughter and myself approach energy efficiency through conservation. Although we do the usual EE things like using compact fluorescents, cycling our water heater, replacing our electric drier with sheltered solar drying, and setting our thermostat low in winter and high in summer, we had a most exciting time converting our yard to natural landscaping.
Our backyard habitat was a magical place, a woods outside our windows where legendary hobbits and unicorns might wander, a quiet place of fireflies and toadsong, a place where we gathered herbs and composted our kitchen offal. In the summer it was easily 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the neighborhood and in winter it was sheltered from the brunt of storms. It took an extended legal battle to make it official and in 2001 the city of Fairfield backed down.
We are currently gearing up to build an underground, passive annual heat storing home using rammed earth and ferrocement, as well as creative use of resources from the Hamilton County Environmental Services Interchange Database.
