Making a Simple Sustainable Home in a Coral Reef Biome

Hello, My name is Jaden and I'm currently in the 7th grade at Central Tree Middle School. Currently in 7th grade, we're learning about sustainability and the importance of it. Our teacher wanted us to understand how somethings we do every day can effect the environment in a negative way along with actually understanding the natural biomes found on earth. The purpose of building this model of a sustainable home was to teach and inspire people on how important it is to help the environment because after all, it is our home. I also wanted to show people that going sustainable can benefit cutting down general energy costs, while also making their home lives more comfortable and enjoyable. The model home I built was mostly made out of cardboard and some other normal household objects so if anyone else wanted to build one, they wouldn't have go out to buy stuff especially during these tough times. I simply started out by getting a bunch of carboard boxes, which my mom just stores all of them in the basement. Then, I made sure to grab all the other tools and materials that would be needed for the building process. For the building process, I cut the cardboard based off of a sketch design I drew. After that, I just hot glued all the pieces of carboard together to make a base and added all the other details(Small and big) included on the sketch design. Finally, I painted the final product and added any other details necessary and voilà, the model home was completed. Keep in mind that this model was made to represent sustainability for homes in an aquatic environment(Preferably in a coral reef biome), meaning that some of the sustainable aspects are intended for only coral reef biomes.

For the materials and tools you will need to follow along with the design and building process, if you want to replicate my model home, will be fairly easy to find in your homes. I wanted to make sure they were all simple materials and tools because I wanted people like students to experience the same enjoyment using their creativity without having to stress that they didn't have one supply I had. Building the base of the house will require carboard, a ruler, any type of writing utensil, a box cutter or a X-Acto Knife, a hot glue gun, scissors, and that's all. You can use any type of carboard(I just used amazon boxes) and that basically goes for all the other materials in the list, but make sure the box cutters/X-Acto knives and scissors are sharp enough. As for the final stage, you will need paint(You can use the colors I use, but it is not required), paint brushes(Preferably large), more carboard, slim wooden dowels, white copy paper, and some markers.

A biome is a multitude of flora and fauna that have specific characteristics and traits, which are built for the particular environment they live in. Biomes can vary from being very different and to being very similar and they can be found all over the seven continents. There are 6 main biomes, which are the freshwater biome, the marine biome, the desert biome, the grassland biome, the tundra biome, and the forest biome. There are also smaller biomes that are in these larger biomes called sub-biomes. There are a vast difference in how much sub-biomes a single biomes have like one could have 3 and another could have 2.

Freshwater biomes include lakes and ponds (standing water) as well as rivers and streams (flowing water), they also include wetlands. The marine biome is the biggest biome in the world and about 70% of the earth. It includes five main oceans: the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic, and Southern, as well as many smaller Gulfs and Bays. The desert biome covers about one-fifth of Earth's surface. The four main types of desert include hot and dry deserts, semi-arid deserts, coastal deserts, and cold deserts. The grassland biome is both hot and dry. The sub-biomes include the savannas and the temperate grasslands. The tundra biome is the coldest out of all the biomes and has frost-molded landscapes, extremely low temperatures, little precipitation, poor nutrients, and short growing seasons. The sub-biomes include the arctic tundra and the alpine tundra. The forest biome are the only biome that has four distinct seasons. The sub-biomes include the tropical forest, boreal forest, and the temperate forest.

The particular biome my home is designed for is the coral reef sub-biome in the larger marine biome. If getting even more specific the exact coral reef biome which my house would be located in is the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia, corrdinates:18.2871° S, 147.6992° E. This specific location on earth allowed me to make decisions on how the home would be designed because of the environmental factors found in the location. Like the precipitation levels, sunlight, and landmass, which all can vary depending on the biomes. This is why I believe that designing homes to be sustainable is important because a lot of homes today aren't built to the utmost energy efficient and environmentally friendly as it can be.

For the design process, I started out by sketching out a blueprint that I could start out with and build off of. They weren't pretty or very artistic, but they were still understandable and it was only the first step on the actual design process. I also went on various websites on sustainable houses to get some inspiration and ideas to add to these blue prints and even looked over some Instructables. The two most inspirational builds and that I highly reccomend to check out are https://www.instructables.com/Build-a-Model-Cardboard-House/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkWVdMjnPsE. During the process of the blueprints, I also answered some questions on some issues I would have to consider for the actual building part of the project. Like how might the location affect some detail, how energy and water will be collected and stored, and some basic household needs(lighting, windows, doors, and etc.). A big struggle for me was how to make the house truly sustainable because of how the location I had was far away from much land, meaning that some sustainable aspects people can build into houses I cannot do. After getting pass the struggle I finally managed to finish the final blueprint and was ready start the building process.

Probably the most important part of this project was doing the actual build of the sustainable house model. First, I made sure I had all my tools and materials all close by and started measuring all the places where I would cuts on carboard using a ruler and any writing utensil that would make a big enough mark for me to see. The exact measurements for the main body of the home are 5" up and 7" across for the front wall piece, 6" up and 7" across for the slanted roof connecting the main roof and front wall piece, 6" up and 14" across for the two side walls, 10" vertically and 8" horizontally for the main roof, and 8" across and 5" up for the back wall. Then the measurements for the smaller building connected to the main body are 5" across and 4" up for the two side walls, 4" up and 6" across for the back piece, and 5" across and 6" up for the slanted roof. Finally the measurements for the balcony are 6" vertically and 9" horizontally for the floor, 2" up and 6" across for the two wall pieces on the vertical side, 2" up and 9" across for the two walls on the horizontal side. You can always change the measurements based on what you feel comfortable with when building.

After measuring each piece, I started cutting using a X-Acto knife(I recommend a box cutter, but I didn't have one with me at home). Also, be very careful when using sharp objects because I don't want anyone getting hurt. After cutting all the pieces of carboard out, layout out them in a organized way. Then, get a hot glue gun and plug it in while you wait for it to heat up, double to check to see if you do have every single piece you need. When the hot glue gun is ready, start out by gluing the main body pieces so then its easier to know where the rest of the pieces will go. When hot gluing make sure to go slowly and carefully making sure you're gluing what you're supposed to glue, don't start this process if you're in a timely manner.

After getting the base of the home all put together, it'll be time for putting in the big and small details like the sustainable mechanisms. This part will be much more into detail in the next step, which is talking about the sustainable aspects. Finally, the last step in the building process will be painting. I recommend using the leftover carboard boxes to act kind of like a stand for the model home or newspapers, so you don't end up getting paint all over the floor. You can use whatever colors you want, I just used basic colors like black, white, green, and blue because I had a short supply of paint at hand. After you've completed this last step, you're done!

One of the most important parts and the main reason of why I built this mode of a home was to show the sustainability side of it. I've incorporated 7 of the 9 aspects I've planned to fit into the model(Some of which I couldn't do because I couldn't figure out a way to do it). One of the seven sustainable aspects were rain water collectors. Rain water collectors take perfectly natural water into water that homeowners can use without any costs and can be stored for later use, which I've incorporated because the Great Barrier Reef has a average precipitation of about 79 inches of rainfall. Meaning that the amount of extra water would really benefit my home if it was actually built. Another sustainable aspect was the use of solar and tidal energy. Solar and tidal energy are completely renewable and inexhaustible, meaning it'll keep energy bills down and benefit overall energy efficiency. A third aspect was positioning of the solar panels and water turbines. solar panels and water turbines are positioned in a certain direction, it benefits using the full potential of these energy sources, solar panels facing the south and water turbines facing east or west. Having long lasting and high quality insulation was also another sustainable aspect I included into the model. Insulation is generally environmentally friendly and can be recycled, along with being to trap heat in on cold days and vise versa. A fifth aspect was energy efficient windows. energy efficient windows can greatly improve energy consumption and greatly improves the problem of temperature fluctuations, a conflict homeowners with single paned windows have to deal with. Having air tight construction was a sixth aspect. Air tight construction not only, improves air quality inside the home, but also prevents air leakage. Finally, the seventh and last aspect I incorporated into the home was slanted roofs. slanted roofs retain less water and moisture than more flat roofs, meaning that water leakage occurrences will be less likely.

All in all, this project was mostly for fun, but I did also learn a lot through the process. Although my home isn't the prettiest, I still feel proud over how much obstacles I had to pass and how I was going to fix that and that. I learned that sustainable building sometimes can be a pain because of how much extra mechanisms you have to add to your homes, but I also learned that it was worth it because of how much benefit and these mechanisms were going to bring, along with being environmentally friendly. If you're going to build a sustainable home model, I actually suggest you not building mine because at the end of the day, mine still has some flaws. Instead, you can use mine Instrucable to help you lift off your feet and who knows, maybe you can straighten out all my flaws and build one that's 5 times better than mine. It's all in the creativity.