First Autonomous House 001

House 001 is our primary testing facility—a fully instrumented residential prototype that serves as the foundation for all our research. This is not a demonstration house; it is an active R&D platform where systems are tested, modified, and validated under real conditions.

Key design goals: affordability constraint; high comfort & indoor health; fossil-free; minimal intervention; design for disassembly & recyclability; circular/low-carbon materials.

The facility serves multiple functions: testing autonomous living systems in real conditions; validating cost-to-comfort trade-offs; foundation for scalable prefab/modular concepts.

House 001 is continuously instrumented for monitoring energy flux, material degradation, and inhabitant interaction cycles. Data from House 001 directly informs all our other projects.

Technical Report

Autonomy Goals & Reality

The team targets year-round self-sufficiency. Currently, with 6 kW solar panels and 25 kWh of LiFePO4 battery storage, we achieve independence from mid-February till mid-November.

Peak daily generation reaches 17-18 kWh, with excess energy charging two electric vehicles. Stage 2 plans add 4-5 kW of panels. A 4 kW wind turbine spent over a year beside the house on a shortened 4 m mast roped to a tree — 31 kWh generated in total, almost all of it in storms, the expected result at that height — pointing the winter gap toward panels and storage, with small winter-only roof turbines still a candidate.

Water Management

Consumption measures 1.5-2 m³/person/month with all systems operational. Recent testing (2025) includes aerators, MBBR filtration systems, and condensate collection from AC units and dehumidifiers. Nine months of water autonomy appears achievable.

Energy Efficiency Analysis

Heating-season EUI: a measured 42.77 kWh/m² of electricity. Earlier reports multiplied it by an assumed COP of 3 into a heating demand of ~128 kWh/m² — a conversion we no longer stand behind: the heat pump's COP was never metered, and that season the house was heated mostly by air after its designed thermal-mass delivery (sand in the walls and floor) failed. The 20 cm natural-insulation envelope sits well above the Passive House 15 kWh/m² benchmark; the exact multiple is honestly unknown — as is what the house would consume in its designed air-to-water-to-thermal-mass mode. Maybe someday we will find out.

Carbon Impact

Savings run to roughly 17 metric tons CO₂ equivalent by 2026 and counting: 11 tons one-time from low-carbon construction, plus about 2.4 tons every operational year — solar for the house, solar-charged EVs that replaced the family's petrol car in 2024, and fossil-free heating — with about 0.1 ton a year from planted ivy.

Technical Lessons Learned

Insulation : Loose sawdust settled and is still in place; blown-in cellulose identified as the fix, not yet scheduled
Construction : In-house wooden I-beam panels proven in prototypes; a rooftop sauna floor built from them was removed when the walls proved too flexible for the added roof load
Foundation : Proper ground preparation and screw connection critical
Heating : Underestimated piping requirements for radiant systems
Ventilation : Per-room recuperators work well in normal occupancy but turn loud under a full house; air leaks traced to kitchen/bath exhaust check valves, not the units — centralized HRV chosen for community scale