Principle

Many of the principles enunciated so far concern energy: minimizing, locally sourcing, decarbonizing, etc, and wise energy use is doubtless a major pillar of sustainability. But it is not the only pillar. Our houses are homes for living beings, situated in a living environment.

Equitable sustainabilty on a planet with finite resources demands we greatly shrink our 'ecological footprint' - the amount of resources, including energy, consumed to provide for us. Domestic life accounts for a substantial part of this: our homes, how they are built, and how

A considerable amount of energy produced and consumed in homes is wasted - i.e. it fails to deliver occupant value. This has many causes, including grossly energy-inefficient systems, poor usability or operator controls, etc. But one salient cause is the lack of home

We rely on our homes to be bastions of comfort (or at least security and safety) in adverse conditions as well as fair, but their design frequently fails to keep this promise on many levels. For example, in climates where extended sub-freezing temperatures are

Since the reactive house is autonomous, it must produce most of the energy consumed in it. Most, but not all: notable exceptions include considerable embodied energy in many 'imported' goods consumed in the house (food, clothing, etc). It is well beyond the apsirations of

The reactive house - a term meant to invite comparison with passive house (passivhaus) - is autonomous (in roughly the sense described by Brenda and Robert Vale in their 1975 treatise on the same): the only 'grid' connection it possesses is to the information