Steven Kovacs

Heather, it might be, but 1) I don’t want to shade out the blueberries 2) we have already had morning glories try to get behind our siding so I don’t want to encourage more of that behavior.

I am starting to think the awnings are still our best bet.  Maybe self installed to save some cash.

Henk, thanks!  A neighbor put in something similar to replace their driveway a couple of years ago and it seems to be lasting ok.  I didn’t put two and two together about using it to lighten the color.

@Jay - it goes: our house, 2-4’ strip, our driveway, neighbor’s driveway, neighbor’s house.  No room for trees in there no matter whose land they were on.

Hardy kiwi might be an option.  We have had enough serious mold and rot issues that having vines near the house makes me very nervous, though.  The house is wood framed with aluminum siding over original (c. 1900) clapboards.

I wish there was some way to make trees work but the property line is on the edge of the driveway.  We could rip up a strip in the middle of the driveway, maybe, and plant something there that we would have to cut to the ground for the winter.  I don’t know what would work for that.  Or we could rip the whole driveway out and put in geotextile or something similar to keep the dirt together when we park on it in the winter, but the cost of doing that would not be trivial.

I am not sure if this is the right part of the forums, but here goes.

In brief, we need a way to let in winter light but block summer heat, but can’t just plant deciduous trees.

To the immediate south of our 2 1/2 story house (in a New England town) we have a 2-4’ strip of land (planted with blueberries and flowers), then our asphalt driveway, then the property line.  In the summer, the southern sun heats up the house, and the driveway retains the day’s heat and re-radiates it.  In an ideal world we would rip up the driveway and plant trees, but we need the driveway for off street parking in the winter.  There is nowhere else on the property to park cars, since it is a small urban lot and we have mature street trees between the house and street.

We got a quote for 5 (aluminum roll up) awnings for the windows on the southern side, but the quote was for more than $4k!  DIY would be about $2k, which is still steep.  

I looked into planting Maximilian sunflowers as a living sun shield, but the strip is already too heavily planted to fit them in, and due to the slope of the land even 10’ sunflowers wouldn’t block the sun for most of the first story windows, never mind the second story.

Is there another option that might work to keep out the summer heat but let in winter light?

Thanks!

I have some seeds of Hablitzia tamnoides and thought it might be worth trying to grow it as a house plant, either in a hanging pot with the vines hanging down, or in a pot on the floor with a trellis for it to climb.  I love the idea of an edible, shade loving house plant.  Has anyone tried this?  Is the plant toxic to cats at all?

Thanks!

Does anyone have experience with soapstone?  We're redoing part of our kitchen and I love the look and feel of soapstone (and it's supposed to be impervious to heat and staining); quartz is our second choice.

Travis put it well.  Roberto, if you want to try to influence him, more power to you; at best, though, I think you'd be making a bad development slightly less bad.  Do we really want more greenfield construction, no matter how "green" the construction, given that the urban cores of so many cities (especially in the Rust Belt) could be repaired to greater effect without the need to pave over wild land?

As for infrastructure, no, not at all.  When infrastructure is built over time, the decay happens over time, and it is possible to maintain things because they don't all wear out at the same time.  When it is built all at once, maintenance tends to be deferred until it all comes due at once - and then the resources often aren't available to repair it.  See the "Suburban Fallacy" concept at Strong Towns.

This hardly sounds like it fits with "small and slow solutions."  I'd rather let a large number of individuals and small organizations improve the cities we've got.  Incremental development and repair done by locals with skin in the game and who are sensitive to local conditions makes a lot more sense to me than building a "city of the future" in the middle of nowhere, according to the vision of a single man.  If he builds this thing to completion in a single shot, will it have any room to evolve over time?  In 20-30 years when the infrastructure starts to decay all at once, who will pay to repair it?

Has anyone used the New Zealand-style shower dome (or anything related)?  The idea is to put a plastic dome over a shower, keeping hot water droplets in, thereby 1) keeping the shower hot and 2) reducing steam in the bathroom.  The latter also reduces the need to mechanically vent hot, moist air from the house, which is a waste in the winter when you want moisture and heat to stay inside).  The idea seems solid, and it seems pretty popular in NZ (where the idea originated, I think) but I'm puzzled why it hasn't spread.  I'm very tempted to build one myself out of the kind of thin acrylic that can be shaped by heating it with a hairdryer (used for things like model aircraft canopies) or something similar, but I wanted to see if others had tried this and had any advice first.

Anyone interested in sustainable cities (with or without skyscrapers) might find the Strong Towns (strongtowns.org) group helpful.  Their focus is primarily on financial and infrastructural sustainability, along with getting away from auto dependence, but they do touch on food production some.