Marie Granmar and Charles Sacilotto’s house in Stockholm, Sweden is built inside of a greenhouse, which insulates it from the cold and the harshness of the weather, and takes advantage of the best of what nature has to offer. The house also provides them with free food and free heat in the winter.
Winter lasts a long nine months where they live. The average temperature in January is below freezing, so there is no doubt their home a huge asset. The average temperature in the home is a comfortable 60 degrees.
They use a wood burning stove to provide them with supplemental heat if needed, but they get most of their heat from the sun. Plus, the family can sit outside on their balcony or roof-top terrace anytime they want and gaze at the stars or sunbathe.
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Maria said that 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 but that’s not really a problem because we open the windows and we enjoy the heat. We like the sun!”1
The family loves to hangout on their roof-top deck, where there is a large space for sunbathing, gardening, reading or playing with their son on his bikes and swings.
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Besides keeping their bodies warmer, the greenhouse also keeps their plants warmer. The footprint of the greenhouse is almost twice the size of the home, leaving plenty of room for a wrap-around garden. And because of the Mediterranean climate they’ve created, they can grow produce that isn’t usually grown in Sweden, like grapes, figs, herbs, tomatoes, and cucumbers. They also have apple and cherry trees outside the glass.
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The greenhouse is equipped with a rainwater collection system for free water, and a composting toilet system that gives them free fertilizer for their plants. Another bonus is the plants that thrive in their home return the favor by cleaning the air and providing them with more oxygen. 
The toilet system begins with a urine-separating toilet and uses centrifuges, cisterns, ponds and garden beds to filter waste water and compost the remains.
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Looking ahead, the couple is already working on designing a system to capture excess solar energy during the summer and store it for use later in the winter. Maria and Charles added:
“If you want to be self sufficient, and not dependent on bigger systems, you can have this and live anywhere you like.”
“It’s all a philosophy of life, to use nature, sun and water to live in a another world.”1
The inspiration for their greehouse came from Swedish architect Bengt Warne who built the first “Naturhus” (Nature House) in Stockholm in 1974:
There are now a few of these self-sufficient homes that have been built in Sweden and Germany. Wow!
