A construction company in Florida is marketing environment-friendly homes that were inspired by hobbit homes bases on the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Made of pre-fabricated modular micro houses, the “hobbit holes” are made by Green Magic Homes.

The units are designed to be part of a landscape, similar to the homes of the small people in the movie trilogy which was shot in a remote part of New Zealand converted into a tourist attraction called Hobbiton.

The Green Magic Home units are not regular housing units. The firm uses fiber-reinforced polymer which it layered under grass and soil. This distinct setting permits the owners of these green homes to grow veggies and fruits on their roofs.

These homes, according to the firm, need not be built in a cold climate zone but could be constructed in regions with extreme climate such as deserts or frigid areas with snow.

It takes Green Magic Homes only three days to build a one-bedroom hobbit house which measures 400 square feet. A two-bedroom unit would take between five to six days to put up. Cost is estimated at about $35 (AUD$48.50) for every square foot. However, there is a shipment cost from the company’s factory in Cancun, Mexico. But the company could ship the housing materials to any country in the world.

To build the unit, it is assembled on site using glue and stainless steel screws through flanges that are sticking up. The homes are then covered with up to 8 inches of soil on top. The hobbit houses could handle about 44 pounds per square floor of live load.

But Treehugger points out that the use of fiber-reinforced plastic panels, built similar modern fiberglass boats, “is not exactly the greenest of technologies,” although it concedes that depends on the resin used. If Green Magic Homes uses the common phenol formaldehyde resin which emits high level of formaldehyde in the manufacturing process, then workers’ health are endangered.

Because of the amount of plastic use amid the green consensus of eliminating the non-biodegradable material from buildings, the homes built by Green Magic, nevertheless, are still “an interesting, quick and more affordable way of doing an earth sheltered home.”

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