This dissertation addresses the issues of climate change and depletion of non-renewable resources of energy and water, and aims at eliminating the use of non-renewable resources of energy and water for the building operation in single-family detached residences in the U.S. With this aim, this study investigated the feasibility of the off-grid, off-pipe design approach in six climate locations across the U.S. to achieve self-sufficiency in a house for building energy, indoor water use, and household wastewater and sewage disposal using only on-site available renewable resources. For the analysis, a 2,500 ft2, 2000/2001 International Energy Conservation Code standard reference house with typical building and usage characteristics was selected as the base case. The six U.S. climate locations included: Minneapolis, MN, Boulder, CO, Atlanta, GA, Houston, TX, Phoenix, AZ, and Los Angeles, CA. The renewable resources considered for this study included: solar radiation, wind, biomass for building energy needs; rainwater for indoor water use. In addition, the building site was considered for the disposal of household wastewater and sewage. The selected climate locations provided different scenarios in terms of base-case building energy needs and availability of renewable resources. Depending on these, energy and water efficiency measures were selected for reducing the building needs. For the reduced building needs, the sizing of systems for self-sufficiency was performed, including: solar thermal system for building’s space heating and water heating needs, photovoltaic and wind power systems for building’s electricity needs; rainwater harvesting system for indoor water needs; and septic system for the on-site disposal of household wastewater and sewage. In this manner, an integrated analysis procedure was developed for the analysis and design of off-grid, off-pipe homes, and was demonstrated for six U.S. climate locations. The results of the analysis indicated that achieving self-sufficiency for energy, water and sewage disposal was possible is all climates provided the systems for the collection and storage of renewable resources were large. On the other hand, the utilization of these systems was small for locations, where the year-to-year and seasonal variations in the weather conditions and availability of climate resources was large. For increased system utilization, minimization of the peak building needs, utilization of harvested energy for secondary purposes, and considering alternative systems for such applications are preferred.

The thesis brings urban planning and sustainable development. Introduces low-energy construction and its types. Closer focuses on self- sufficient house, describing his characteristics, principles, and selection of suitable location. Finally, the work addresses the legislation associated with the placement of a self-sufficient house on suitable parcel.

Creating the concept of buildings is the primary task of architects, designers in the field of architecture and engineering. Although the basic requirements remain the same across time , possibilities of their solution are constantly evolving and changing. In addition, with the increasing globalization, in context of the housing and the architecture is expected new requirements go beyond the horizons of the interests of bouth investor and designer. Global view of each project and the evaluation of its traces left in our environment and society, although is much discussed but rarely taken into account or even just considered. In this context, we are witnessing the development of new trends of the concepts of buildings, consisting in the use of natural materials, in reducing the environmental burden of a surroundings, in reducing energy demands, or even in an effort to achieve energy independence thus trends, whose common denominator is sustainable construction, hence sustainable development in general. Feasibility of the creation of the concept of energy self-sufficient building doesn´t consist only in the precise solution of the assigned task from the perspective of the designer or investor, but also in finding such a solution which, even with using new trends and principles, will not go against the initial idea itself. The present instrument processed and presented in this dissertation has the ambition to move global view of the project into the perspective of a particular individual design process and in small way contribute to the creation of better projects from the perspective of sustainable development The term of energy self-sufficient buildings are not clearly defined. To work with them it was necessary to determine their basic definition that describes their diverse conceptual variations and allows precisely define the solution area. To correctly select the optimal solution in terms of sustainable development is necessary the assessment and mutual comparison since the beginning. As a basic tool for this assessment was used and partially modified SBTool, which is built on three basic pillars of sustainable development - SOCIAL - ENVIRONMENTAL - ECONOMIC. SBTool tries to determine the degree of left traces of the approach from the perspectives of these three aspects and evaluate the effectiveness of the selected solution. This tool allow to compare the different concepts for the same project among themselves, their parts but also various projects among each other. All of course with regard to the development of various aspects in the time.