Self-sufficient – the world’s first poo house

Howard Chapman, Buildingtalk Editor reviews a recent top industry Tweets on @Buildingtalk about the world’s first poo house.

Winnie the Pooh would be proud of the first house in the world to be entirely heated by its own waste products – hopefully they keep bees to produce their own honey too!

Meghan Sapp, founder of PlanetEnergy created this ‘energy island’ in the form of a Navarra farmhouse to prove that it is both feasible and profitable to be completely self-sufficient, even on a small scale.

The farmhouse is designed so that all household waste, including human poo, is converted into biogas to provide energy in order to heat the house, provide hot water and power the stove.

But human waste alone is not quite enough to sustain a household.

Sapp hopes to win more commissions for such projects with her startup company PlanetEnergy, which she founded in 2011.

Meghan Sapp explains: “The system relies on having four horses. Horses eat a lot of grass, then they poop a lot and that’s great for making biogas. But all household waste goes back into it, whether it be vegetable peelings, all the water from the shower, toilets, washing machine etc”.