I’ve long been a fan of Sarah Susanka, author of the Not So Big House series of books and champion of designing homes “for the way we really live.” If you haven’t heard of Susanka, this is her claim in a nutshell: homes should be livable, beautiful, comfortable, and a lot smaller than the McMansions that have sprouted likes weeds across the suburban landscape.
As you may have guessed, this last bit was what first attracted me to the Not So Big House. I’ve written elsewhere (for example here and here) about the environmental burden posed by the upward trend in American home size over the past half century, so I don’t want to belabor the point here. Suffice it to say that home size is a huge driver of residential energy use, and that in order for the residential sector to be part of the solution to the environmental challenges we face, we need to be building smaller, a lot smaller.
But sustainability probably isn’t what attracts most people to Susanka’s books. I would venture that what most people find appealing is the emphasis on livability. Which isn’t to say Susanka is silent on sustainability. She often touches on the environmental benefits of her approach, but what’s front and center is the experience of occupying smaller, more comfortable, functional and thoughtfully designed homes.
In some respects, the Not So Big House is a very simple and intuitive idea. Just consider where you spend your time at home. Where do you eat? Hang out? Entertain? Most people I know, myself included, rarely use their formal rooms. Perhaps the dining room is called into service a handful of times each year for holidays. Perhaps the living room is called into service during large parties (and we all know how often we host large parties). But for everyday living, and even regular entertaining, most people use their comfortable and informal spaces. What Susanka is saying to me (and others like me) is this: Next time you buy or build don’t invest in space that you’ll rarely use. Invest in design details and high quality finishes that will transform all of the house and not just a few select rooms into your home.
She’s convinced a lot of people, including me, that a Not So Big House is a better house. But I’ve started to wonder: is it also, as I initially thought, a more sustainable house? Last week, I received an email newsletter from Susanka announcing the opening of a Not So Big Showhouse in Libertyville, Illinois. While I was impressed by the space plan and design details, I was disappointed by the overall size of the home, which at 2450 square feet is actually larger than the average new American home built in 2010.
I don’t know the myriad factors that informed the overall dimensions of Susanka’s latest showhouse. There are surely constraints and concerns that are not apparent from the outside. But I do know that the message “smaller is better” gets lost if the showhouse isn’t actually smaller. Not to mention that show house will use more energy than it otherwise would have.
Which brings me back to the point I decided not to belabor earlier: the bigger you build a house, the more energy it will use. Unless of course you build the bigger house to higher energy performance standards than you would have if you had built it smaller. But this would never happen, except perhaps in Wonderland.
So what is the right size, not just for livability but sustainability? Well… fortunately there are some proposed answers to this question out there. In fact, there is currently a very lively discussion happening on green building advisor among folks who would like to pin some hard and fast numbers onto the ideal of building smaller (as part of a broader discussion of what makes for a “Pretty Good House”). The numbers proposed, and hotly debated, are 1000-1500-1750-1875 square feet for 1, 2, 3, and 4 occupants respectively. Whatever you think of those particular numbers (I suspect many homeowners would think them too small), it’s really good put them out there and debate them, even if consensus proves elusive.
Is the Not So Big House too big too be sustainable? I would say that as embodied in Susanka’s new showhouse it is. That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up on the Not So Big concept. On the contrary, I want to refine the concept–and, yes, try to attach some hard(er) and fast(er) numbers to it. The Not So Big House has an incredible amount of potential to help transform the residential landscape, so that our homes are more functional, more enjoyable and part of the solution to the environmental challenges we face. But we can’t realize this potential if we keep building homes that are As Big As the Average American Home.
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Two years ago I reported dramatic reductions in my home energy use on this blog. Between 2007 and 2009 I cut my gas usage by 34% and my electric usage by 55%. Needless to say I was pretty pleased with myself for this achievement and none too shy about spreading the news. I was also happy to share because I believed that my experience could serve as a model for others seeking to lower their energy bills and that my savings were replicable.
My message? That behavior change had incredible power to drive down energy usage. This wasn’t what I anticipated when I first began to work at reducing our home’s energy use: I had expected that efficiency upgrades (insulation, air sealing and better equipment) would have a much bigger impact on our energy use than conservation (things like turning lights off, adjusting thermostat settings, or washing our clothes in cold water). Of course, I was practicing and preaching the virtues of making sustainable choices all along, but I didn’t really think these would have a big impact. Boy was I surprised when I began to evaluate our savings in light of the actions we had taken!
By way of illustration, consider our summertime electricity use. Between June-September of 2006 we consumed just over 1200 KWH each month. Between June-September of 2011 we used 600 KWH each month: half of what we consumed 5 years prior.
Can you guess how we did it? Yes, we insulated our attic, which allowed or air handler to run more efficiently (just think how much 
harder an air handler has to work if it’s located in a 100 degree attic, as opposed to a 78 degree home). But, no, we didn’t install a more efficient HVAC system. And, no, we didn’t even seal our ductwork. Mostly we just turned the AC off and ran fans instead (except on the hottest days; even I’m not crazy enough to suffer through several days of 90+ degree heat without using central AC). So… we cut our summertime electric bill in half simply by flicking a switch–oh, and “investing” in fans, like this ceiling fan we put in our bedroom.
Pretty simple, right? Well, yes and no. Take another look at that chart. Do you notice that the trend line started to edge back up slightly after bottoming out in 2009? Although we used slightly less electricity in the summer of 2011 than in the summer of 2010, in both years we used more electricity that in the summer of 2009. At the same time, we’ve also been backsliding a little on gas usage, and our total energy use (in BTUs) was slightly higher in 2011 than in 2010.
What happened between 2009 and now? Not much, other than our two new entertainment systems. While these systems use more electricity than our old-school TV did, we don’t use them all that much and power them down completely when we aren’t using them (we keep vampire power to a minimum in our house). So they don’t account for much of the uptick.
I suspect that this uptick is mostly due to a loss of focus. We just aren’t paying as close attention to our energy consumption now that we’ve achieved such marked reductions. And we’re slipping back into some bad habits: we’re leaving lights on more; we’re more likely to bump up the thermostat when we’re chilly; we’re using our clothes dryer more.
So what does this mean? First, that the power of behavior cuts both ways. Just as behavior change can result in dramatic reductions in energy use, backsliding can easily erode those savings. It reminds me of lifestyle changes: who among us hasn’t achieved weight loss or exercise goals only to watch them slip away as bad habits return to roost?
Which leads right to my second point: behavior change sounds simple. After all, most of us know what’s required in order to lose weight, be stronger, or cut our energy bills. We may even be successful at achieving these goals in the short-term. Yet as time goes on, many of us fail to sustain our achievements and end up back where we started. In short, behavior change is much harder in practice than it is in theory.
Which leads to my third point: behavior change alone won’t get us where we need to go. We can’t just tell people to conserve and expect them to do so. We can’t even teach them how to conserve and expect them to do so. We need to do a lot of other things too like:
- design and engineer our infrastructure to facilitate conservation
- sett goals, create support systems (Weight Watchers for energy use?), provide rewards for success, and perhaps even penalize people for failure.
- reevaluate and aggressively realign our political and economic systems to prioritize the public good over corporate profits, and the welfare of future generations over short-term and myopic fixes to immediate problems.
Lacking a holistic vision, policy and strategy, behavior change is likely to fail in the long-term. We may succeed in the short-term but soon enough we’ll be back to consuming calories and carbon-based fuels we can no longer afford.
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What a terrific time I had at Build Boston this year! I attended several extremely thoughtful and thought-provoking presentations and met some of the pioneers in green building and energy efficiency.
Who knew that Massachusetts’ progressive energy policies would make building net-zero homes (homes that produce as much energy as they consume) so affordable? Carter Scott of Transformations, Inc. did! His experience has shown that the simple payback for a photovoltaic system on a home with decent solar orientation is as little as 6-7 years.
Who would have thought occupant choices could have such a large impact on overall energy consumption? Through his thoughtful retrofit of his own home, Marc Rosenbaum of South Mountain Company has shown that small decisions–such as thermostat set points–make a big difference in energy use.
Who would have thought that a simple spreadsheet could do a better job predicting household energy use than a complex modeling program? Michael Blasnick’s work indicates that detailed energy modeling does not have a good track record projecting actual energy consumption, particularly in older homes.
I was also honored to give a talk entitled Green That Means Something with Jonathan Kantar of Sage Builders, LLP. If you weren’t able to attend the talk, you can view our slideshow on slideshare. Of course the slides (of which “A Historic Opportunity” is one example) only tell a small part of the story, so here’s the main gist:
Jonathan and I set an ambitious–and somewhat audacious–agenda for our talk: to provide a set of sustainability goals for single-family homes and a road map for achieving those goals. This agenda grew out of our experiences trying to build and remodel homes that are part of the solution to environmental challenges–challenges such as climate change, water scarcity and indoor pollution.
It also grew out of our awareness that conventional design and building practices often exacerbate these challenges, or at the very least do little to help solve them. Far too many residential building projects miss the boat on durability, energy efficiency, water conservation, and indoor health.
Now, before you protest, try this little thought experiment. How often do you…
- Build an addition only after determining that it isn’t possible to meet functional needs within the existing footprint?
- Factor watering needs into site and landscaping plans?
- Evaluate building materials for potential off-gassing?
- Assess operational energy needs during the design phase of a project?
My guess is that for homeowners and residential building professionals alike, all too often the answer is NEVER. Jonathan and I set out to change this. We were also fortunate to have an engaged audience. I’ve posted several of their questions below along with our responses:
In your opinion are there any materials that are currently being widely used in homes that, in the future, are going to shown to expose occupants to unacceptable health risks?
Rachel: The short answer is yes. The building industry has a long history of relying on materials that, over time, turn out to pose unacceptable health risks to occupants and are eventually abandoned. I think that this problem is trending downward for a couple of reasons. First, the value of ensuring good indoor air quality is gaining broader acceptance. Second, materials are subject to increasingly rigorous emissions standards and testing by both government and third party organizations, and that information is more readily available and accessible than ever. This trend is increasing as market demand for safe products and transparency increases.
Why are you recommending that over the next 20-30 years we transition to using high efficiency air-source heat pumps to meet space conditioning needs?
Jonathan: The technology involved with air-source heat pumps has changed drastically over the past 5-10 years. There are now some units that truly produce three (3) times more energy (heat) than they consume. And several of these units can operate efficiently in temperatures approaching 0 deg. (F). Since these units are powered by electricity, the 3 to 1 ratio of produced to consumed energy is important. This efficiency rate, known as the coefficient of power (COP), represents the minimum amount necessary to offset the amount of energy that is lost in the production and transmission of the electricity to your house. As the COP drops below 3, then there are other heating sources that become more attractive. Of course if you have lots of solar electric power, than there is not much of a “penalty” for using electricity to handle your HVAC needs.
The case studies you shared show pretty impressive reductions in modeled energy use. Have you been able to verify these reductions with actual energy use data?
Rachel: I presented my experience at my house. While this is not always the case, my family has been able to use less energy than our energy model predicted we would. Marc Rosenbaum has also presented data on several similar homes that his company built indicating that actual energy use can differ from projections either way and that occupant behavior can significantly affect results.
As you can see, we got some great questions. And we’d love to continue the conversation! So check out our presentation and post your thoughts. And if you attended the conference: How are you building on Build Boston?
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I’m going to be giving a talk at Build Boston next month with Jonathan Kantar of Sage Builders on Green That Means Something. Yes–the implied subtext is that there’s a whole lot of “green” out there that doesn’t mean all that much. But if you read this blog regularly, you already knew that.
Anyway… one of the problems that we will be addressing is missed opportunities in green building. Homeowners typically get only a small handful of chances to dramatically improve the performance of their homes–say, when we put on a new roof or upgrade mechanicals or finish a basement. But very few of us have the foresight to take full advantage of these, no matter how green-minded we may be. In fact, some of us, present company included, have been known to squander an opportunity and even make it harder to improve performance in the future.
Back in 2003–before I had drunk the sustainability kool-aid–my husband and I were living in an 1800 square foot, 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath home:
Originally built in 1895, the home had been added onto in the 1980s (the addition is visible on the right hand side of the photo) and the basement had been partially finished. We had lived in the home a couple of years, had our first child, were beginning to feel that we needed “more space” to accommodate our changing needs. Where would the grandparents stay when they came to visit? Where would we put all the toys? Where would we eat every day, since the dining room was “too nice” for young kids?
Without giving it much thought, we decided to add on (it never occurred to us that we could do otherwise):
We added on a bathroom, mudroom (with laundry), an office/guest bedroom, and a kitchen, bringing our total square footage up to 2400. We turned our old kitchen in a family room and opened it up to the kitchen to create a combined cooking, eating, playing and casual gathering space:
As much as we have enjoyed our new space, from a sustainability perspective, the addition was not a good move. This is largely because of the energy penalty of those additional 600 square feet–space that would need to be heated, cooled and electrified for the rest of the home’s lifespan.
Could we have mitigated the damage somewhat if we had upgraded our insulation at the same time? Perhaps. But the effectiveness of any “damage control” would have been undermined by the design, which took a home with some complicated geometry and made it that much more so. A bump-out here, dormers there, varied roof lines–all these architecturally interesting forms make it harder and more expensive to air seal and insulate properly.
Finally we missed an opportunity to fix our basement space, which we were already using as living space but wasn’t insulated, sealed and ventilated properly. If we had not done an addition, we could have conditioned our basement properly and used this space to meet our changing needs (if done right a basement can be comfortable, beautiful and have excellent indoor air quality).
But we didn’t do this. We did the addition, increased our energy footprint, and made it much harder to reduce this footprint in the future. No matter how “green” the choices are that we’ve made since then–from installing a high efficiency boiler to changing out light bulbs to using fans for summertime cooling as much as possible–they won’t be able to make up for this missed opportunity.
Which isn’t to say that we haven’t tried or won’t keep trying. In fact, we have made good progress towards reducing our energy use since 2004. But we were starting much further back than we would have been if we’d made different choices back in 2003.
One good thing that has come out of this is my commitment to help others avoid the mistakes I made. At my Build Boston talk, I’ll be using my own home as an example of green that means something and green that, well, doesn’t mean a whole lot; and my own remodeling experiences (including but not limited to the infamous addition) as a template for how to and how not to advance along the path to a sustainable future. I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes. They’ve become the basis for the standards, goals and tools I’m developing to help others–homeowners, architects and contractors alike–make sure that their projects truly are part of the solution to our environmental challenges.
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Ask almost any building performance expert what the first step is that you should take to cut your utility bills and improve the energy efficiency of your home, and the answer will inevitably be to weatherize. And that’s as it should be. Most of our homes are rife with air leaks. According to the US Department of Energy (pdf), in the average American home 30 cents of every dollar spent on heating and cooling is lost to air leaks and insufficient insulation. That’s a lot of money to let slip–literally–through the cracks!
If you live in a drafty, underinsulated house you should no doubt focus first on weatherization. But, as important as they are, air sealing and weatherization may not be enough to ensure an environmentally and financially sustainable level of energy use. There are other increasingly important drivers of residential energy consumption that can’t be addressed by air sealing and insulating.
Since the 1970s the amount of energy that Americans use for space conditioning (heating and cooling) has fallen rather dramatically, from about 70% annually to just less than 50%. This is largely due to improvements in the efficiency of our mechanical systems as well as tighter, better insulated building envelopes.
And yet total residential consumption has remained flat over the same time period. Any guesses as to why this is? Here’s a hint: just think about all the electronic devices you have in your home now that you didn’t have 30 years ago. In the space of a generation the amount of energy we use to run our home entertainment systems, refrigerators (yup, an increasing number of us have more than 1), and other electronic gadgets has nearly doubled from 1.77 to 3.25 quadrillion Btus annually.
Now consider how much bigger the home you live in now is than the one you grew up in. It’s bigger, right? In 1950, the average US home was 1,100 square feet and the average household size was 3.4 people. Flash forward to 2009: the average new home is 2438 square feet and the average household has 2.6 people. In just two generations home size has increased by 120% and average household occupancy has dropped by 24%. Square footage per household member has tripled from 324 to 938 square feet.
Efficiency gains are just barely keeping pace with increases in consumption. Which means that for most homeowners, air sealing and insulation are simply not enough to keep energy costs in check over the long term.
We also need to pay much closer attention to plug loads, making sure that our electronics and appliances are as efficient as they can be, and asking ourselves hard questions about what we really need. Do we really need that second refrigerator? Two game systems? Fifteen recessed lights in our kitchen? When building or renovating, this would include asking hard questions about home size as well. Do we need a formal living and an informal family room? An eat-in-kitchen and a formal dining room?
Of course conservation on its own is not a realistic strategy for improving home energy performance. But, then again, neither is weatherization.
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Four plumes of smoke from Texas wildfires are visible in the lower left quadrant of this NASA satellite image
When someone says green building what’s the first word or phrase that comes to mind? Perhaps its energy efficiency or natural materials or indoor air quality. Whatever you think of, it probably isn’t bad weather. What on earth does weather have to do with green building?
The spate of horrific weather we’ve had over the past couple of weeks–Hurricane Irene followed in short order by Tropical Storm Lee along with wildfires in Texas–has got me thinking a lot about this question. Of course, none of these or any other severe weather events can be directly attributed to–or blamed on–climate change. However, there is widespread agreement among climatologists that global warming already is and will continue to have a dramatic impact on global weather patterns, often with destructive consequences. As we face more and more severe weather, we will need to adapt our infrastructure, including our buildings.
It may not be widely known, but building resilience has emerged as a key tenet of the green building movement. Last year, Alex Wilson, Executive Director of Building Green, published an influential series of articles on his top green building priorities, and building resilient homes made his top ten list.
Resilience requires improving the capacity of homes not only to withstand storm damage but also to remain livable in the event of extended power outages, loss of heating fuel, and water shortages. While for some buildings, such as hospitals, active systems such as generators have a crucial role to play in maintaining livability, Wilson argues that passive systems should be the top priority for most buildings because of expense, safety risks and logistical problems associated with generators.
What would these passive systems look like? While some systems would be the same in different climates, there would also be some differences. In a cold climate like Boston, building for passive survivability could include (but isn’t limited to) features such as:
- enough insulation to keep indoor temperatures above 50-55 without additional heat
- sufficient natural ventilation and daylighting to provide fresh air and light without electricity
- solar systems that could provide hot water and electricity for at least part of each day
- onsite water storage and filtration
- composting toilets
For me, what immediately stands out about this list are two things. First, what makes a building livable during service disruptions is also what makes it energy efficient and environmentally responsible. In short, resilient buildings are green buildings and vice versa. Second, the vast majority of existing buildings–including our homes–are nowhere even close to meeting even a low threshold of passive survivability.
My limited personal experience with critical service disruptions, including loss of power during Hurricane Irene, illustrates this second point extremely well. When I lose power during the winter, my home–despite the significant investments we have made in insulation and air sealing–quickly becomes intolerably cold. When I lose power during the summer, the heat and humidity can overwhelm the ability of windows and doors to cool the house. If we were to ever lose water we would have to rely on bottled water. If we ever lost sewer, I’m not sure what we’d do.
The long and short of it is this: the livability my home–like most homes in this country–is extremely vulnerable to disruptions caused by bad weather. Which is yet another good argument for building green.
Image Credit
NASA JPL, Ed Olsen
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If you’re in the market for a new appliance, be on the lookout for this label:
I know, you thought Energy Star appliances already were the most efficient on the market. So what’s this new Most Efficient designation? And how’s it different and better than plain old Energy Star?
Energy Star, which has been around now since 1992, typically certifies products that perform 20% better than federal standards or than market average. While there is no question that the Energy Star has helped transform the appliance marketplace, it has faced criticism over the years for not raising the efficiency bar high enough or fast enough. And most recently it has been hurt by GAO testing that exposed fraudulent certifications.
I think it’s fair to say, though, that Energy Star has been working hard to rebuild its reputation: it has strengthened its testing and verification procedures and in just the last month has committed to push the efficiency envelope further with the new Most Efficient program, which certifies the most efficient appliances in seven categories: clothes washers, air-source heat pumps, central air conditioners, furnaces, geothermal heat pumps, refrigerator-freezers, and televisions.
The new Most Efficient program holds great promise to drive appliance efficiency further and faster than the existing Energy Star program. Manufacturers whose products are Energy Star rated can apply to have these products certified as Most Efficient. But not many will qualify as the bar is set pretty high: although the criteria vary by category, the program has been designed so that only the top 5% of products will qualify. In addition, the bar will continue to rise over time, driving innovation rather than rewarding the status quo.
For consumers the Most Efficient program is a welcome resource. When we’re shopping for appliances we’ll be able to quickly and easily identify the best of the best (at least in term of energy use). We won’t have to scrutinize energy score cards and make lists to know which of the products will cost the least to operate over the long haul. We can simply look for retail signage or check online to see which appliances have received the designation (as of today there were 15 dishwashers, 2 refrigerators, 18 TVs, and 43 air conditioners & heat pumps).
So next time you’re out shopping for appliances: don’t just look for Energy Star; look for Energy Star Most Efficient!
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Back when I was a kid, pollution was considered an outdoor problem: fouled water ways, smoggy air, litter. Thanks to monumental legislation like the Clean Air Act and cultural shifts–anyone remember Woodsy Owl and Give a Hoot, Don’t Pollute?–we’ve made a lot of progress over the past quarter century cleaning up and preserving the great outdoors (which isn’t to say we don’t have a long ways to go). And, yet, at the same time, pollution inside our homes–yes inside!–has in all likelihood gotten worse.
Indoor air pollution is a distressingly common problem: EPA studies have found that levels of volatile organic compounds are frequently 2-5 times higher indoors than out, and sick building syndrome is estimated to affect 30% of buildings worldwide. While there are many sources of indoor air pollution, the materials we use to build our homes–those same materials that are supposed to give us shelter–are all too often part of the problem. Known and emerging concerns with building materials include:
For many building materials, the jury is out about the extent to which toxins in the products put occupants at risk. On the other hand, toxins are–to put it mildly–never a good thing. Even if they can be installed in such a way as to minimize risks to occupants, they may still pose a risk to installers. Not to mention that toxins always pose upstream and downstream health concerns.
Consider, for example, PVC: used in a wide range of building products, from plumbing pipes to siding, PVC releases carcinogenic dioxins during manufacturing and disposal by incineration. And yet for certain applications, PVC is widely considered to be safe to building occupants. PVC floor tile may off-gas endocrine disrupting phthalates into your home, but PVC siding–well, not so much.
Does this mean it’s OK to use PVC for plumbing and siding? Well… it depends on who you ask. The health impacts of manufacturing and disposal are enough to put PVC in any form on my “Do Not Use” list. But homebuiders and homeowners have to weigh different and often competing priorities when making decisions about materials. Budgetary constraints often require compromises. PVC siding is highly durable and has lower maintenance needs than wood siding–not to mention that it’s cheaper. Do these benefits outweigh the health costs of PVC? There is no easy answer to this question.
But knowledge is power. Thanks to growing consumer demand and maturation of the green building industry, there are a number of resources out there to help consumers navigate the maze of building products. Some of my favorites are:
- The US Green Building Council’s Green Home Guide. Geared towards the consumer market, this website contains a host of articles about and an extensive product directory of healthy building materials.
- The Healthy Home Plans website offers very clear and highly informative articles about indoor air quality and healthy building materials.
- The Perkins + Will Precautionary List. While geared more towards professionals, this also a good resource for consumers looking to create a Do Not Use list. When chemical exposure is a top concern, it’s good to create such a list and to share it with everyone who is involved in your building project.
- Healthy Child, Healthy World. This site is targeted towards parents and includes a great Q&A section on toxins in building products.
The best advice I can give is: do your homework. You can’t begin to avoid health hazards in building materials if you don’t know where they may lurk, how dangerous they may be, and what the alternatives are.
Image Credits: How Stuff Works & Green Home Guide
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The Integrated Design Process. Source: Buildinggreen.com (Image courtesy of 7Group and Bill Reed, graphics by Corey Johnston)
Planning–and planning some more–is the key to a successful green building project. Many of the successes of the green building movement can be attributed to adoption of a collaborative and holistic approach to the design process called integrated design. In a nutshell this means that all of the parties who will contribute to the project, from the site planners to the HVAC contractor to the landscape designers, begin working together at the very earliest stage of design and stay involved throughout the project. Integrated design not only increases the likelihood that the project will be delivered on time, on budget and with minimal mistakes along the way. It also enables performance criteria & standards to be incorporated into the design, increasing the likelihood that the building will use energy and water efficiently, be easier and less costly to maintain, support occupant health & well-being, and hold its value over the long-term.
Unfortunately well-integrated and strategic planning is less common in residential construction, particularly in residential remodeling. This leaves homeowners vulnerable not only to project delays, cost overruns, and mistakes but also to a home that is less durable, less resource efficient, and less healthy than it could have been. If the performance ball has been dropped during the design process, or was never picked up in the first place, the contractor–no matter how skilled–will likely not build a high performing project. Plain and simple.
Fortunately, there are things you can do as a homeowner early on to increase the likelihood that your renovation project will meet your functional objectives & aesthetic criteria, add value to your home, and provide long-term financial, health & environmental benefits.
Source: Homeenergyabout.com
Establish Your Baseline
Even before your architect starts working on a floor plan, find out how much energy you are using. Look at your bills for the last 2-3 years and calculate your consumption. Get an energy audit done so you know how much insulation you have, where the major air leaks in your home are, and how efficient your current heating and cooling systems are (If you live in Massachusetts, take advantage of a free energy assessment through MassSave).
Energy is the most obvious aspect of home performance to measure upfront. But there are others to consider as well: you can calculate your water consumption and have your irrigation system audited by an EPA Water Sense certified irrigation professional. You can also choose a to work with a contractor who will inspect your home before design has begun. The feedback you get from such an inspection may prove invaluable: you may find out that you have potential backdrafting problems, or that you have rot you’d never noticed. You can then address these problems upfront and, hopefully, find it easier and less costly to remediate them.
Assemble a Team Who Can Deliver Green
Which brings me to my second piece of advice: Don’t just choose your architect and worry about your contractor later. Make sure that the design process is a team effort, informed by the experience and expertise of all the relevant building professionals. Moreover, make sure that the team can deliver not just quality and value but long-term resource efficiency, health and durability.
The doesn’t mean that you need a team with LEED experience or qualifications, which is less relevant to the remodeling world than it is to new construction. More important is expertise in doing energy retrofits, a track record of building projects to last, and the know-how to ensure good indoor air quality. Some Boston-area firms that I think offer these assets include Byggmeister, Sage Builders, LDa Architects, and Zero Energy Design.
Fireclay Debris Series feature 60% recycled content. It's a great, green product (I have it in my home) but it does not make your home green.
It’s Not About Products & Finishes
If you’ve read this far you probably know that green building is not–at its most fundamental level–about bamboo floors, recycled tile, or FSC certified cabinetry. Products and finishes are the icing on the cake: they add color and flavor to the cake but don’t affect its essential “cakeness” (unless you’re a 4-year old). The point is, don’t be fooled by the amount of time and energy it takes to pick products and finishes into thinking that they are essential to the performance of your home. While some product and finish decisions are, in fact, essential to performance (such as plumbing fixtures, appliances, and anything that may offgas), many are not. Things that are invisible and that homeowners often have little role in selecting (like insulation and ductwork) are often more important to performance than those homeowners do select. If you want to renovate green, you need to pay attention to these and make sure your team is focused on them too.
Look Down the Road
Most of us don’t have the financial resources to fix everything about our homes at one time and so our improvements need to be phased over time. At the beginning of any particular project it’s important to think about what may come next, both in terms of your lifestyle and your performance goals. You don’t want to miss any opportunities in the current project, or do something that would get in the way of future improvements. At their best, homes are works in progress: we and they are always learning together how to better fulfill our needs with less impact on the environment.
The key to avoiding home stagnation or regression is long-term thinking. Even if you think you may not own your home in 10 or 15 years, thinking that far ahead (or even farther) is not only the right thing to do, it will eventually be in your financial self-interest as well. For the day will come–hopefully sooner rather than later–when performance, especially energy performance, will be factored into home valuation and mortgage underwriting. Which means, among other things, that your high performing home will be worth more when you do sell it.
Not to mention that you’ll also save money, have fewer maintenance headaches, and enjoy a healthier living environment in the meantime!
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Image Credit: The Lazy Environmentalist
Have you ever looked at your energy bills and dreamed about an array of solar panels on your roof soaking up free energy from the sun? You certainly aren’t alone in your dreaming, especially given the generous income tax credit the federal government is offering for renewable installations through (30% of the costs with no upper limit). Who wouldn’t want to take advantage of that deal?
Of course, to turn this dream into reality you need a conducive building and site (orientation, roof plane, natural shading, etc.) make your home a good candidate for solar. But let’s assume that an experienced solar professional has determined that your home is a good candidate for solar. You still need to ask yourself whether the investment makes sense. Just because your home can produce a solar power, doesn’t mean it should–at least not at first.
Before I explain what I mean and why I say this, I’d like to return to a post I wrote last year about the energy savings I have been able to achieve at my home. If you read this post, you know that my family has cut our energy use by close to 50% over the last three years. It wasn’t be installing solar. Rather, we employed a combination of efficiency and conservation measures designed to reduce both our seasonal and our base energy loads.
Yes, I can “hear” your questions: Seasonal load? Base load? What are these? And what do these have to do with solar?
Seasonal energy load refers to the amount of energy used to heat and/or cool a home, depending on climate. New England is a heating climate but air conditioning has become increasingly common over the last couple of decades, meaning that many homes experience seasonal increases in their energy use in both winter and summer. At my home, we cut our seasonal load by (among other things)
Buderus Condensing Boiler
- air sealing and insulating our house,
- installing a new super efficient natural gas boiler, and
- leaving our central air conditioner turned off for most of the summer (we have found that fans work well for all but the hottest days of the summer).
Base energy load refers to those energy uses that aren’t dependent on temperature changes and that stay pretty constant throughout the year. While there can be minor seasonal fluctuations in the energy we use to run our appliances, electronics, and lighting, and to provide hot water, these fluctuations are much more modest compared to those in the energy we use to heat and cool our homes. At my home, we cut our base energy load by (among other things)
LED Lights Over My Kitchen Island
- switching over 95%+ of our lights to energy efficient bulbs and fixtures,
- turning lights & appliances off (completely off) when they aren’t in use, and
- running our clothes washer on cold.
In short, we cut our energy bills in two ways. First we changed our behavior, a lot. Second, we invested in our home’s energy systems, knowing that these would provide yearly, long-term savings on our energy bills (and improve our comfort at the same time).
Now… let’s pretend that we hadn’t done all these things and instead installed solar panels (it turns out our home isn’t a good candidate for solar, but let’s just pretend it is). Our electricity usage would have been higher–50% higher!–so we would have needed a lot more solar panels.
Even with the 30% federal income tax credit, wouldn’t you rather install $10,000 than $20,000 worth of solar? As Martin Holladay, one of my favorite green building gurus, puts it: “Spending thousands of dollars on solar hardware for a house that hasn’t been carefully air-sealed and superinsulated is putting the cart before the horse.”
My advice: put the horse before the cart. Make your home as efficient as possible. Cut what you can (you’d be surprised how comfortable you may be without air conditioning). And then look into solar.
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I’m an architect-developer trained in another era. I’ve been fortunate to experience an excellently-designed tract house in New Rechelle, NY which was designed by an architect for a subdivision developer (other houses of this subdivisioin resembled this one). It contained 1,600 sf, was a 2-story quasi-colonial with center-entrance, and featured a 14′x20′ livingroom, a dining room, a small TV/Library plus kitchen and 1/2-bath on the first floor, and 3 bedrooms and bath on the second (plus had a basement recreation/entertainment room with access to the back yard – this was a later addition, and not included in the above-quoted 1,600 sf).
I then used this experience to design 3 types of modular houses for a non-profit development corporation based on 1,200 sq. ft. 3-BR houses! In addition, I was able to design some condominiums in an original inner-urban townhouse of Boston, one of which was a 2-BR apartment taking up 800 sq. ft which featured a living-dining room of approximate 12′x22′ size.
I would also suggest looking at the many Levittown subdivisions of Long Island, where large numbers of post-WWII generations raised two- or three-children families in very small houses.
If you wish to make quantum leaps in energy conservation, begin by designing urban multi-story row houses. Thereafter, look at what the existing houses measured where the parents of the baby boom generation raised their kids reasonably energy-efficiently.
Comment by Peter Papesch, AIA — February 18, 2012 @ 12:17 pm
Thanks for your comments Peter. It’s amazing how much the “ideal” suburban home has grown over the past half century (120% according to Alex Wilson: http://www.buildinggreen.com/live/index.cfm/2010/10/19/Green-Building-Priority-5–Build-Smaller). I think it would be fascinating to compare the relationship between occupied and overall square footage over this time period. I would wager that occupied space (which is tricky to define, I realize) has grown much more slowly if at all.
In any case, I would really like to see the green building community talking more critically and more honestly about the issue of home size. And I would like to see figureheads for smart residential design, like Susanka, pushing the envelope (or rather shrinking square footage).
We need to convince the public that smaller is better, and we can’t do that if we don’t actually build smaller homes.
Comment by Rachel White — February 21, 2012 @ 9:11 pm
Interesting discussion on ideas about home size. How do we pinpoint the necessary area for a family home? I think the key is function and use. Are we sitting with homeowners to plan their need for space as opposed to just coming up with a standard design and square footage. Situations fluctuate, children leave the nest, married children move back in sometimes with their own children, divorce creates less need for rambling abodes…Creating a functional, energy efficient home with some flexibility of room function may be needed here….
Comment by Margie McNally — March 15, 2012 @ 8:16 am
Thanks for your comments Margie. Situations do indeed fluctuate, which is why it’s important to design spaces that are flexible and adaptable to changing needs. Susanka’s show house accommodates does a good job accommodating changing needs. For example, it would be possible for aging or infirm occupants to live entirely on the first floor.
Yet, overall the house is still too large (in my opinion)… Which leads me to believe that flexibility and adaptability are necessary but not sufficient conditions of small(er) homes.
Comment by Rachel White — March 19, 2012 @ 6:29 pm