Greenhouse keeps home 60 degrees, even when it’s freezing outside; allows family to grow Mediterranean fruit in Sweden!
Marie Granmar and Charles Sacilotto pretty much live in a bubble. A home that is insulated from the cold and the harshness of the elements, while taking in the best of what nature has to offer.
Their house is built inside of a greenhouse, providing them free heat and free food in the winter.
The home is located in Stockholm Sweden, where winter last 9-months long! So building a greenhouse around your home, is an incredible idea!
The average temperature in Stockholm is below freezing, but if you are living inside of Marie and Charles’ home, you will be toasty warm!
For example, in the video below – the couple says that it can be 28F degrees outside, while in their home it is a toasty 68F degrees!
In addition to keeping the home warm all winter long and having an abundance of fresh food to eat, the home also wards off the winter blues! The family is able to hang ‘outside’ all winter long. And by outside, we mean, in the greenhouse ‘bubble’.
During the warmest parts of the summer, their glass roof automatically opens up when it hits a certain temperature, to let the heat out so it doesn’t get too hot.
“It can get warm a few days in the summer,” she says, “but that’s not really a problem because we open the windows and we enjoy the heat. We like the sun!”
The family’s favorite hangout is the rooftop deck. Since they built a glass ceiling, they no longer needed a roof, so they removed it to create a large space for sunbathing, reading, gardening or playing with their son on swings and bikes.
There is even enough room for a wrap around porch with a full garden! Since there is a Mediterranean climate inside the greenhouse, the couple is able to grow all sorts of amazing foods, such as figs, grapes, tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs. Outside the glass they even have cherry and apple trees.
As if having free heat wasn’t enough, the couple has also installed a rainwater collection system for free water, and a composting toilet system that provides free fertilizer for their plants. Also, the plants that thrive in their home return the favor by cleaning the air and providing more oxygen.
The couple is also working on designing a way to capture excess energy for use all year round.
“If you want to be self sufficient, and not dependent on bigger systems, you can have this and live anywhere you like,” Marie said.
“It’s all a philosophy of life, to use nature, sun and water to live in a another world,” Charles said.
Charles and Marie weren’t the first ones to build a house-inside-a-greenhouse. Their idea was inspired by Swedish architect Bengt Warne who built the first “Naturhus” (Nature House) in Stockholm in 1974:
