User:Muffinon/Sandbox

Pages to work on

 * Home automation
 * Building automation


 * Add over-illumination links to building energy-related pages

Green building techniques

 * Deconstruction (building)
 * timber recycling
 * construction aggregate
 * dimension stone

Low-energy and Green Buildings:
Sustainable design
 * 1) Sustainable architecture/Green building
 * 2) Reduced energy in buildings
 * 3) Types of low-energy buildings
 * 4) Low-energy house
 * 5) Zero-energy building
 * 6) energy-plus house
 * 7) Passive House
 * 8) Home energy rating systems (combine them all into one? to make them easier to find?)
 * 9) House Energy Rating (Aust.)
 * 10) Home energy rating (USA)
 * 11) EnerGuide (Canada)
 * 12) National Home Energy Rating (UK)
 * 13) List of low-energy building design techniques

Definition
The term appropriate technology came into some prominence during the 1973 energy crisis and the environmental movement of the 1970s. The term is typically used in two arenas: utilizing the most effective technology to address the needs of developing areas, and using socially and environmentally acceptable technologies in industrialized nations.

Technology is considered "appropriate" if it meets the following requirements: it is hygenically safe, technically and scientifically sound, socially and culturally acceptable, environmentally sound, and economically viable.

Developing areas
The term has often been applied to the situations of developing nations or underdeveloped rural areas of industrialized nations. The use of appropriate technology in these areas seeks to fill in the gaps left by conventional development which typically focuses on capital-intensive, urban development.

Appropriate technologies are not necessarily "low" technology, and can utilize recent research, for example cloth filters which were inspired by research into the way cholera is carried in water. A type of high-efficiency, white LED lights is used by the Light Up the World Foundation in remote areas of Nepal to replace more traditional forms of lighting that do not cause the health problems associated with kerosene lamps or wood fires.

Intermediate technology
Coined by E. F. Schumacher, the term intermediate technology is similar to appropriate technology. It refers specifically to tools and technology that are significantly more effective and expensive than traditional methods, but still an order of magnitude (10 times) cheaper than developed world technology. Proponents argue that such items can be easily purchased and used by poor people, and according to proponents can lead to greater productivity while minimizing social dislocation. Much intermediate technology can also be built and serviced using locally available materials and knowledge. This intermediate technology is conducive to decentralization, compatible with the laws of ecology, gentle in its use of scarce resources, and designed to serve the human person instead of making him the servant of machines.

Industrialized Nations
What exactly constitutes appropriate technology in any given case is a matter of debate, but generally the term is used by theorists to question high technology or what they consider to be excessive mechanization, human displacement, resource depletion or increased pollution associated with industrialisation.