Sustainable Home for Everglade, Florida

In school, a project was building a sustainable house for a certain ecosystem and learning about it. The biome for this home was Freshwater Grasslands. The specific area this house is for is Everglades FL where there are swamps and freshwater. As you can see you can also have a little area to show some of your surrounding habitat. This home also should be done over the course of a few days because the clay and paint has to dry.

• clay, any amount
• Anything to cover the surface your working on
• toothpick for details
• other tools are optional
• Paint
• Paintbrushes
• Hot glue

First you get your clay and you want to make your walls and floor, do not make a roof yet. Once you make the walls add some square holes as the windows and keep an area open for a door. Next make circle or rectangular shape and attach it to what is the back of the house, this will be the river/swamp. Now for the door, make a rectangle that can be whatever size you want and whatever thickness you want. After you do that you are going to take a toothpick and poke a holes going all the way down the side of the door and twist the toothpick and make the hole in the clay a little bit bigger than the toothpick. This will make it so the door can opens and close, also do not keep the toothpick in the clay while it dries it will get stuck. Once the door dries hot glue the toothpick where you want the door to go and put the door on.

After the clay structure dries you can start making the furniture. For the bed make a thick rectangular shape and make the size how ever big you want to fit your home, you can make whatever else you want for the bed such as a pillow, blanket, etc. Next you make a toilet, roll a piece of clay into a ball and flatten it a little, then use your toothpick and make a hole going straight through the partially flattened circle. You want to wiggle the toothpick around to make the hole as big as you want, for the lid make a smaller ball and flatten it too, and shape it to a shape you want. You can also add a little wall separating the toilet and kitchen, to make the refrigerator make a thick rectangles shape and use your toothpick to make lines on the surface of the clay to look like doors. For the sink and counters you will want to make a thick square with rounded edges, and draw a line with your toothpick going all the way around the top to look like the tile. Also draw lines as the doors, for the sink repeat the same thing as the normal counter but crave out a little area on the top to act like a sink. Then for the faucet roll out a small piece of clay and make it look like a snake, take it and squish it on the the back of the sink and make another snake just smaller and stick it on to make the handles. Hot glue all the furniture where you want it in the house.

For the roof you are going to make solar panels and how to do this is get a piece of tinfoil does not matter how much just remember you can always get more. Fold the tinfoil how you would like the solar panels to look the unfold them, use the hot glue to go back over and stick the tinfoil down. After you repeat that step so your roof will be about halfway covered hot glue the top edges of your walls and attach the solar panels. Then you don't have to but you can make four quarters on each solar panel using the hot glue, and let that dry. While you let that dry make two think triangles and stick them together at the bottom, and make a checker board design on the top. Stick the alligators head onto the swap water and press down where the two triangles are connected, make short decently thick snakes and stick those wherever on the water also, you can also add whatever texture to the water. You can also hot glue the alligator and swap plants and anything else that needs to be hot glued.

When everything is dry and sturdy you will need some brown, blue, white, black, gray, some green, and whatever color you want the bed. For the outside of the house use your brown all the way around but not on the inside just on outside walls, mix some white into some brown and paint the inside of the house with that light brown. For the bed do whatever color you want, toilet is white and for so more detail you could add so brown in it, the wall separating the bathroom and kitchen can be either a light gray or light brown. For the fridge it will be a medium colored gray same with the tile part of the counter and sink, for the actual sink use a light gray, you can also paint a little human of you want to add some spice. For the door make it either a medium brown or medium gray, solar panels should be a black and the hot glue lines on them should be a dark grey. For the pond make it different shades of blue and the alligator should be a medium green and plants should be a dark green.

When you have finished all of that congratulations you finished your sustainable home for the Fresh-Water Grasslands in the Everglades FL! If any parts do fall of you can use more hot glue and stick them back on. Good job!