Sustainable Home in the Amazon

Hi, my name is Cal and I am in 7th grade. Today I have made a sustainable house for a 7th-grade science project. This is not a hard build but if you are a kid I would ask for adult help. You have to find a box, something like an Amazon box will do. Once you get your box, you will need to unfold the whole box and make it flat. Once you do that, you should make it into a rectangular prism using your glue gun. This will look like an apartment building. Then you will make solar panels using your gems, glue gun, and popsicle sticks. You are going to use your green construction paper next to the outside of the walls. This will represent eco paint and the cardboard under it will represent your sustainable forest wood. You will keep going and make all your sustainable aspects. Once you are done with that, you are done with the build! The home that is being made is in the tropical rainforest.

Glue Gun, Cardboard box, Popsicle Sticks, Gems, Stickers, Construction paper, Paper cutter/scissors

There are 5 major biomes. There is the Freshwater biome, the Tundra, the Forest, The Aquatic, and the Grassland biome. There are also sub-biomes. Each student was presented with a sub-biome that their house had to be in. My sub-biome was clearly the Tropical Rainforest. The rainforest I picked was the Amazon rainforest. In the Amazon, you can expect temperatures in the 72-93°F (22-34°C) range. The precipitation levels that you can expect in this biome are 80 inches in some areas and up to 430 inches of rainwater per year. The coordinates of the Amazon are 3°S 60°W / 3°S 60°W. We are in Brazil in the state of Pará.

I simply designed the home to be like an apartment building. It isn't an apartment building but the shape is like an apartment in Boston. All you have to do is make a simple sketch of the shape of your home. You have to make sure that you have all of your aspects on the sketch. This is important because this is where all your ideas. You will see what a sketch for the building can look like. When you are done with your sketch, you can start building!

Next, you can start working on the main build. Once again, you have to find a box, something like an Amazon box will do. Once you get your box, you will need to unfold the whole box and make it flat. Once you do that, you should make it into a rectangular prism using your glue gun. This will look like an apartment building. Then you will make solar panels using your gems, glue gun, and popsicle sticks. You are going to use your green construction paper next to the outside of the walls. This will represent eco paint and the cardboard under it will represent your sustainable forest wood. The TESLA power wall is fairly easy as all you have to do is take a piece of cardboard and write TESLA in all capitals. You will use your square stickers to represent your energy-efficient windows. Once you have all of that down, you need to use a plastic/styrofoam cup as your water tank. This should go on the side of the house. For trees in the Amazon, you need to make cut-out trees and glue them so they stand up. These can be on any side of the house. You will need to use a square sticker to represent a water filter in the ground. You can use regular glue from your glue gun or you can use glitter glue to show pipes going to the local water supply, and all of your plants.

First, let's start with the solar panels. Solar panels should be used because it will save energy by using energy from the sun instead of resources like the ground. Next, there is your sustainable forest wood. This is more about cutting trees. Sustainable forestry will balance how much wood you get so that you don't ultimately hurt the ecosystem. It focuses more on not harvesting the whole area of trees but rather extract some of the resources. Then we have our water tanks. These collect rainwater and use it in things like your bathroom and sink. There is also a water filter that filters the water and we take what the house needs and send some to the local water supply. This will have a positive impact on the house and the community. We have the TESLA power wall next, as this stores energy from the solar panels. This is useful for the Amazon because there isn't tons of sunlight because of how much rain there is. We have energy-efficient windows as well making it so we use less heat/AC by trapping the air and keeping it from escaping. This is better because we will be able to limit out heat and AC, especially the Ac because of how hot it is in the Amazon. We also have eco-paint. The eco paint doesn't have any toxins like Xylene, Ethyl acetate, Methylene, chloride, Glycol, Formaldehyde, Benzene, Phenol, and Quaternary ammonium compounds making it a lot less harmful to the ecosystem. The smart meter monitors how much energy you use so you only use what you need. This will save energy so you won't be taking so much energy from your power wall. Last but not least, we have the drip irrigation system. This is a system that focuses on your yards and gardens. This makes it so it saves water by giving only the amount needed from the plant directly into the roots.

To sum all the information up, I want to explain what I learned and how I could improve for people reading this. I learned many things while doing this project such as there can be many toxins in paint, that the tropical rainforest can get up to 430 inches of rain, I could go on and on. The main thing that I really learned about while completing this project is that biomes are amazing. There is so much cool information about different biomes and sub-biomes. Biomes are very important and they help keep the world go around. I also learned how sustainable building is amazing in the way that people build to help their ecosystem and they build around it instead of building through it. Some things that could be improved are the paint and the irrigation system. The irrigation system shows 3D pipes instead of the glue for the paint I suggest using some kind of paint instead of construction paper. That is all and I hope you have fun making this sustainable home for the Amazon Rainforest!