Eco House Designs

Our term two inquiry has explored the issue of New Zealand's inadequate housing conditions.  We have considered the idea that "Kids are getting sick and cold at home, when they should be tucked up safe and warm.  Why?"  

Here is what the Year 7's writer's workshop   (Marek, Emilio, Erin, Jesse, Monty and Pupea) write-up:

This term, the seniors have an interesting inquiry. We have been thinking about how to help kids in cold homes. If this problem is not solved, this could be a major problem and a lot of children will get sick and may die. So we have to do something.  To get started,we invited heaps of guest speakers to talk to us about eco building and design.  You are probably thinking what is an eco house? Well, an eco house is a house that is energy efficient and an eco house which is friendly to the environment. The guest speakers were Pam Bell, Taruna Trivedi , Anne Kelly and Pauline Ching.  After a lot of listening and some note taking, we started researching. We watched a video about a student flat in Dunedin where the temperature goes down to 4 degrees C -  indoors!

We researched about pink batts, solar panels, grey water systems and passive solar heating. These are ways to keep a house warm and dry so kids don’t get sick.  We then started building and eco house model and they all look great. Each home is made of a different material from balsa (thin wood) to cardboard.  We have to make a decision in our group to send it to the Schoolgen Mean Green House competition, which is a national competition.  Our ideas could help New Zealand in the future.