OUR HOMES

When we think about buying, or constructing a house, we zero in on factors such as location, accessibility, easy availability of amenities, and most importantly, its aesthetic value. You would want it to be warm in winter, cool in the sweltering summer months, and you would want it to be reasonably secure-large windows that admitted the sunlight, but also kept burglars away.
The purpose of a house has changed over the years. Ever since the first homes were built, the focus has shifted from shelter. A home, for many of us, is not only a place where we can shelter ourselves anymore. It has become a reflection of our own individual tastes. We know what we want our home to look like, and we’d do everything to work toward that. Our needs today are very different from that of the Celtic family era, where all the family members lived in a single room, and sometimes brought their animals in to protect them from burglars and other predators. Their homes had no windows, and had a single opening in the roof to allow the smoke to escape.]
Since that Celtic era, a lot of factors have changed in the way homes are built. Houses built as recently as 30-40 years ago might have all basic amenities, and make for a very comfortable living, but what’s important is that has energy efficiency been an integral component of these homes? Has any effort been made to allow for rationing of the non-renewable resources on which we rely for our survival? Citing the example of quite a few houses in my area, I can safely generalize that most people aren’t even aware the homes can be built in an energy efficient manner. Using solar devices to do some of your daily work constitutes energy efficiency for most people. And that is where the buck stops for them. It must be understood that usage of solar devices is only a very small part of how homes can be made more energy efficient.