OP Here: All of those are really good ideas. It's an experiment me and my wife are living, I wouldn't claim we got everything right. We do use a fair bit of wat

OP Here: All of those are really good ideas. It's an experiment me and my wife are living, I wouldn't claim we got everything right. We do use a fair bit of water, it works out to ~35 gallons a day. Google claims that an average family in US uses 300 gallons, just looked it up. So I guess we aren't doing too bad. All of our water features are low flow, of course. There are a few improvements which could really improve water usage. Our 2 biggest uses are showers and the toilet. If we could collect the shower water, and use it as gray water to flash with, it could be a good saving. We also wouldn't really need to go to a composting toilet. For instance, our RV toilet uses tiny amount of water to flash with, and it works just fine. Unfortunately, the way this house was designed, it makes it very difficult (basically impossible) to make plumbing changes. The entire house sits on a concrete slab, and all of the plumbing pipes are cemented in. The best way to go is to start collecting rain water, which just requires a big (2000 gallon or so) tank. We would need to place it below the house level, in the canyon to the right of the house. It's something we investigated, and intend to do as soon as we have the budget for it. Drilling a well would be an option, and I didn't want to give an impression that we are not doing it simply because of the money. The other issue is that all of our neighbors wells are drying out at the moment, and it's not clear what's going to happen to them in a year. As for the heating and cooling, this house is really good in that regard. The walls are very thick, and very insulated. They are at least 80% thicker than what I used to have in San Diego. The house maintains heat very well. In the summer time we use a swamp cooler (another water using device). We do not have an air conditioner. The swamp cooler does the trick by blowing outside air through a water impregnated paper membrane. It's basically a huge humidifier. Electrically it's very efficient, only using around 150-200 watts. It can bring the temperature down by 15° - 20° F. We also have fans all over the place. The roof top solar panels also add to the cooling of the house by blocking some of the direct sunlight. The house has lot's of windows, with wooden shutters to block out the sun. All of the windows are double panel, insulated, with aluminum frames, so there isn't much heat leaking out there. The doors do need upgrading however, and that's what we are doing now. I really love some of the ideas that I have seen when googling "earth-ship." Thanks for the reference! In any way, it's an experiment in progress, we are about 1 year into it. If we were designing this house from scratch, we would have made different design decisions. Such as gray water system, 12V DC as a secondary electrical system around the house, a rain water collection system, permanently installed backup propane generator, a green house, etc. For now we will work with what we have, and slowly upgrade some of these things, as possible.