This home may be tiny, but it can go anywhere – it’s basically a luxury tent. The POD-Idladla, as it is called, is entirely solar-powered and can be customized to meet personal preferences.
The homes are also designed to stand alone or can be connected to other modular pods. While the POD-Idladla is built to house two people comfortably, adding more mobile pods can create a structure capable of housing up to twelve people.
The house was designed by a South African architect named Clara da Cruz Almeida, who worked with Dokter+Misses. The pair had previously designed a similar home called the Indawo/lifePOD, but the ability to add extra modules makes the POD-Idladla more flexible. The transparent plexiglass walls in older designs has been replaced with metal siding that’s opaque.
The solar-powered home has a slanted roof to maximize exposure to sunlight and the exterior is painted green and white to reflect as much sunlight as possible, keeping the interior cool. In addition to solar, some customization options will equip the homes to use other types of alternative energy.
The layout includes a kitchen, office, bathroom and dining/living room on the ground floor, with a loft style bedroom accessible using a ladder. The storage is all inside the walls, and the homes use folding furniture to maximize space.
At only $15,765-$55,175, the solar-powered homes are a great option for those who would like to own their homes but find the costs of buying a home prohibitive. Indeed, the designers are targeting younger populations. They hope to draw in people who are interested in buying homes, but are also very aware of the impact they have on the environment and wish to reduce their carbon footprint.
The fact that it can be installed literally anywhere doesn’t hurt, either. The pods will soon be for sale in South Africa, and hopefully the US in the near future.
Images (c) POD-Idladla
A THOUGHT:
Motor Homes are designed to be ‘self-contained’ or ‘off the grid’ (for a while). But they use diesel AC generators to support their typical AC home layout – which mimics the owners ‘bricks n mortar’ main dwelling. Yes, they do use Diesel Generators, and they are largely powered by Diesel Engines to propel the home, but they conceptually have the same misconception about Solar AND AC appliances.
EXAMPLE:
A full size in-home refrigerator compressor is basically an AC motor pushing/compressing the freon. Taking it apart and replacing the AC motor with a new continuous duty DC motor, will provide the same performance. Solar, being essentially DC, through micro processors, could run the compressor, charge the battery that runs the compressor. BUT, the conversion would cost about as much or more than purchasing a similar duel power motor home refrigerator.
Solar technology and ideas continue to be unavailable to the mainstream – because they are afraid and/or uncomfortable with Solar, Diesel, and Change. The general public will buy anything that ‘marketed’ to them. But what they don’t realize is the connection between modern day appliances, their automatic AC to DC inversion process, and the Solar to DC connection.