Sunhouse360º Offers New Turn In Eco-Friendly Homes [Video]

There’s nothing like sunshine to brighten up the day. These solar-powered, rotating, eco-friendly homes will keep things bright all day and conserve energy, with versatility, sustainability, and innovation.

Next year will see the introduction of new and futuristic solar-powered, environmentally-friendly homes that will literally put a whole new spin on life.

A new startup in Marbella on the Costa del Sol in Spain is developing homes that turn 360 degrees to follow the light of the sun. Sunhouse360º will debut their first energy smart home in 2016, which is said to be the first of its kind in Europe (a German company recently worked on something similar, but not so proactive) and the idea could easily catch on worldwide.

The circular construction is elevated off the ground and allows the home to rotate to capture the sun throughout the day, thereby heating the home and saving energy, too. Collecting energy using solar panels, the eco-friendly homes can rotate in either direction, while the floor-to-ceiling windows capture not only the sun’s rays, but also potentially breathtaking views on all sides.

The first intelligent, rotating house – Sunhouse360 – to be built in Marbella https://t.co/9mRS6TlsZu

— Marbella Events (@whatsonmarbella) November 9, 2015

The Local interviewed Sunhouse360º co-founder Jose Carlos Moya about the new eco-friendly homes. According to Moya, in owning one of these homes, you are not just limited to having sunlight in one place, but can, if you wish, choose to target a particular area of the house.

“You’re not just limited to one place. If you say you want sunlight in the kitchen all day, you can have sunlight in the kitchen all day.”

According to estimates given by the company, this new environmentally-friendly design can save up to 70 percent in energy costs. They also state that carbon dioxide emissions will be reduced by 68 percent, and electrical consumption for heating water in the home will reduce by up to 80 percent, a definite plus in these economically-challenged and climate change-related days.

Moya and Bertrand Coue, the two partners involved in Sunhouse360º, apparently came up with the idea for the eco-friendly homes around two and a half years ago while looking at different types of motors that could allow for the rotation of a house. They established that the best way to do things would be to incorporate the motors into the design of the home itself, and have been developing their model ever since.

German architect Rolf Disch reportedly came up with the first solar-powered house back in 1994. His house captured more energy than it used by also rotating to track the sun. There are reportedly other similar ideas on the market, too, but Moya says that their smart home is the first of its kind to actually use smart technology to detect the best position to take in the sunlight.

“The feature that is fundamentally different is the software of the ‘eco’ rotation where the house can check the temperature and decide where to orient itself.”

Owners of the eco-friendly homes can choose from three different modes, using a pre-programming feature to position the home to attract the sun exactly where they want it to be. Reportedly, each full rotation takes 15 minutes and, other than the changing view from the floor to ceiling windows, people inside the home will not be aware of the movement.

The company aims to complete the first of its eco-friendly homes for a private client in Marbella on the Costa del Sol in 2016, but they have reportedly already received much interest from around the world, including inquiries from Scandinavian and Asian countries.

Moya said that initially they were surprised by the level of interest received from other countries, but added there are many countries in Europe, particular in the colder north, where having more sunlight in the home is very important. According to Moya, within the next year, they will already be working on the first five to ten solar powered, eco-friendly homes.

Present cost for the smart rotating homes is €3,000 ($3,215) per square meter, which brings a house of just over 250 meters to a price of €760,000 ($814,081). While this figure might be out of the range of the average potential home owner these days, Moya did say they are also working on developing more compact, lower cost homes using the same technology.

The video below takes a 360 degree tour of one of the planned eco-friendly homes, clearly showing their many advantages, both in architectural design and the ecological and environmental sense.