This week's LA Times Home and Garden section spotlights the King House, a home which Laure and I saw, and fell in love with, a few months ago during the Dwell on Design home tours. Upending the designs of traditional homes, it's set back on its lot, allowing the front of the house to act as a modern day porch, welcoming the neighbors; the green and white exterior pattern mimics the pattern of sunlight coming through the trees; broad glass doors open up the home to the exterior. Whether your home is modernist or not, energy efficiency and water rationing are two challenges that we're all facing in our quest to live in harmony with our environment. The Scout and the Realist Idealist spotlight two possible solutions. More, pics and links, after the jump...
The King Residence in Santa Monica: This unique home, located in the Sunset Park section of Santa Monica, turns the normal idea of home -- with a backyard and a front yard -- on its head.
Taking the plunge with a composting toilet: In her occasional column, The Realist Idealist, Susan Carpenter examines her experiences when she decided to install a waterless toilet in her home.
Negative Spaces: It's a positive trend: New glassware designs come with a visual trick: beverages seemingly suspended in mid-air
Blankblank's Heliocentric lamp sheds new lights on fluorescent lamps: While we love the energy efficiency of fluorescent light bulbs, their cold glare is less than flattering or inviting. So designers are starting to embrace the later, creating fixtures that make the harsh illumination look pretty.
Cisco Bros.' John Derian collection re-imagines Victorian style: John Derian, who has helped popularize neo-Victorian style in home accessories, has teamed with Cisco Brothers to produce a 7 piece line of upholstered furniture which reference 18th and 19th century English styles.
[image: Glenn Koenig for LAT; Sancor Industries; 2Jane; Blankblank; Cisco Bros.]
Alexis' Modern Glass House 
Before & After: A Bathroom Goes From Pinky Peach to Sleek and Chic
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Tom Black Espadrille
20 Scrumptious Brunch Recipes 
Magic One-Ingredient Ice Cream 5 Ways: Peanut Butter, Nutella, and More
Comments (3)
I read the article about the composting toilet (more correctly, a diversion toilet, since the effluent is not composted). The NY Times just ran an editorial piece on just this device:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/opinion/27george.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=urine%20toilet&st=cse
A few issues:
First of all, I'm annoyed by Susan Carpeter's snarky asides about Berkeley and the Bay Area. Berkeley is hardly hippie haven these days, Susan. It's full of wealthy professionals more interested in cutting edge design and status PC items (can you say Prius?) than in something as crass as a non-designer toilet. And the rest of us in the outlying areas of the Bay do not walk around stinking of patchouli.
Second, your periodic use of the diversion toilet will make it less effective. It needs new material constantly in order for the material to break down, in as much as it does break down (it does not compost).
Third, what kind of plumbing do you have that your toilet keeps backing up? You need to have some serious sewer work done. You probably have roots gowing into your outflow pipe. It's a health issue. And you say that you and our son flush 30 gallons of water a day in the standard 1.6 gallon/flush toilet. That's 18 flushes a day!
Fourth -- and I had these questions after reading the NY Times piece as well -- there is "material" that people deposit into a toilet that is not strictly urine or feces (women bleed, everyone gets ill now and then and urps up food and bile, and then there is the gastrointestinal flu bug...). Do these materials pollute the buckets? The point of the diversion toilet is that urine is a far less infectious material than "solids", and it is the urine that is primarily intended for use in the garden. The thought that someone in an urban or suburban area might set up one of these devies and just blithely dump waste on their gardens is disturbing. It seems that this is something that county and municipal codes need to specificaly address.
Finally, I wonder whether you vented the lines for your toilet, or whether you installed a trap in the pipe for odor control. And do you wash it down after use? How do you keep it clean?
True composting toilets are used in some parks and reserves in the Hawaiian islands. I have used them. They do not smell offensive, if properly maintained, but you can see the waste of other people in the receptacle. I find that difficult to deal with.
For the record, my rural home has a septic tank, which leaches into a field. I have looked into alternative sanitary devices for power outages, but have never found anything I can deal with. The closest thing to acceptable was a toilet that incinerates waste. Here is one model:
http://ecojohn.com/products.html
Indeed -- Mrs Carpenter, wannabe hippies think Berkeley. REAL hippies think Eugene. (That's in Oregon.) Anyone who's had contact with the true hippy culture simply can't take her snide remarks about "the Bay area" seriously -- it's a shame an article about something so useful is written so badly.
Forestdweller thanks for the NYT article, which is MUCH better!
That poor little lima bean can't figure out how to close the door.