Common Sense Look At Making Smart Houses

I really don't understand why houses haven't evolved with the knowledge of science. Our habitat, our dwelling is where we spend the most time, and yet we live in a box-like structure that is nothing more than a synthetic cave.

Anyone who peruses YouTube can see folks building rocket mass heaters that heat houses with minimal amounts of fuel, and store the heat like a thermal capacitor in a big rock or concrete mass in the house that radiates back its heat all day.

Well I have a better idea base on Nature or bio mimicry. Everyone schooled in physics knows that water stores heat better than rock or concrete. Suppose you had a huge mass of water in your house, say a sealed plastic reservoir with an anti-freeze and an anti-fungal agent. This mass of liquid would be a circulatory system for the house or dwelling.  If you needed heat, it would not only collect the heat from a heat source like a furnace or a stove, but the reservoir would be connected to solar collectors. The liquid circulatory system would spread the heat around the house.

The thermal mass capacitor would cool in the summer and heat in the winter using heat pump technology.

Each house would also have a ambient heat conduit that would force the warm air at the top of the room near the ceiling to the floor.  These could be passive or solar operated.

This business about air exchange baffles me as well.  I don't understand why houses do not have a ventilation system where the entire volume of the air in the house is exchanged on a daily basis. In the winter the heat from the air could be recovered with a heat exchanger, and the reverse with air conditioning would take place in the winter. The air would be HEPA-filtered to remove pollen, dust and allergens.

I don't understand why every surface pointing to the sun is not covered with solar energy converters. Every little bit counts.

I don't understand why high traffic areas do not generate electricity in a house with the piezo effect by people walking over the floor, or for that matter, driving in front of the house, or walking on the sidewalk in front of the house.

I don't see why windows can't be covered at night with automated shutters to preserve heat or air conditioning.

I don't see why the heat cannot be recovered from bath water going down the sewers.  I don't see why houses don't have passive reverse osmosis systems to obviate the need for plastic bottled drinking water.

I don't understand why houses do not have built-in composters to handle wet garbage, and instead of garbage collection, have compost collection. Surely someone can advance the art of composting to reduce the carbon footprint of garbage pick-up.

There is lots of room for improvement, and the technology is cheap enough now to implement. We need a massive education for the architects, city planners, and home buyers to re-evaluate what they should be looking for in a house.