Utopia

Homes

For centuries mankind has searched for a Utopia: a society of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions.

Homes in Utopia will be built with "green" in mind, with renewable energy sources incorporated from the get-go. Solar panels will be installed when the roofs are constructed (ideally, these will be the panels that look just like regular shingles, not the huge, ugly black glass panels that are in wide-scale use). Ideally, these will be the home’s primary source of power. Most homes will still have to be connected to "the grid" for surplus power (this isn’t a requirement, however). This statute will have to be flexible, changing as technologies evolve.

Homes will be built to collect rainwater and snow runoff from roofs. It’s a shame that so much clean water today is lost by not collecting it from precipitation. It’ll require tanks to store until needed (preferably underground). This idea is still experimental in my mind, but I think it’s a dandy one, and is already used in some homes. When water from personal tanks is depleted, surplus water will be taken from the municipal grid. All this will be transparent to the residents.

All homes will employ on-demand water heaters. These are not science fiction or experimental, but real-world devices just now starting to be used on a large scale. No more cold showers! These will be required because the waste in energy caused by traditional water heaters (which I currently use, by the way) is unacceptable to me.

Every home will be built with conduit connecting every room. This is of course for networking—who knows which rooms will need it? Wireless networking, in my experience, is just too flakey. The justification for using conduit instead of simple cable is elementary—who knows what the best conductor will be several years in the future? With conduit, it doesn’t matter; you can just run the new stuff when it becomes available. Optical fiber can be run initially for those that desire it.

Utopia will also have a requirement against tract housing. We lived in a tract housing development in Colorado Springs and in Utah. They’re just plain boring and uninspiring. A community can have diverse housing and still be beautiful. If you don’t believe me, take a drive through downtown Colorado Springs. All the historical houses there are vastly different, but all are pure works of art. This is what communities in Utopia should be like (sans the busy streets).

As for everything else, current high-quality building standards will be used (e.g. for electricity, etc.). I’d love to require high-quality insulation to be installed in all new homes (as opposed to cheap stuff like our house in Utah had), but I’m afraid that this would raise the prices of new homes too much to be practical.

Nifty, but not required

Home portal: Every homeowner will have a personalized web portal they can visit that shows the current level in their personal water tanks and how much energy they have in reserve (or are drawing from the grid).

Nifty, but not required II

Automated homes: Homes will be wired to be environmentally controlled by a simple, central computer. It’ll monitor who’s where and what temperature each room should be. Our house in North Carolina approached this: it had separate thermostats and heating and cooling for the upstairs and downstairs.

I’d like to investigate the current ideas in home automation. All these are still very experimental.

Good ideas that won’t be required

Berming: Though bermed houses are proven more economical, they’re just plain ugly. They won’t be forbidden, just not required.