Space Efficiency, Your Costs and the Environment

The single most effective thing we can do to provide efficient, affordable, maintainable and environmentally responsible shelter for ourselves, our schools, our businesses and families....is to live and work in smaller spaces.

A 10-15% reduction in the living area you have planned for your building project will produce equivalent savings in the following areas over the lifespan of the structure (80-100 years)

Building Cost

Building Permit Fees

Plumbing Permit

Electrical Permit

Sanitation Permit

Sewage treatment system sizing

Tap fees (maybe)

Taxes

Electric Bill

Heating fuel consumption

Cooling Costs

Furnishing Costs

Maintenance Costs

Insurance

Mortgage Payments

Mortgage Interest

Replacement floor covering costs

Redecorating costs

Hired construction phase labor

(because it was too big to do it yourself)

Demolition and disposal costs

If you want an eye opeining experience, go down this list and estimate the cost of each of these items over an 80 year life span (or whatever time frame you expect to own the home) based on reducing the house size just 10% and see what you're getting ready to spend, one dollar at a time...total it up. Usually, even the most cursory calculation of this sort will end up in a figure that will allow an individual to retire two to three years earlier than expected, or take them on a nice long trip to a dreamed-of exotic place.

Competent, efficient design can allow 20-30% reductions in building size without jeopardizing function and esthetics. The transition in life-style changes...learning to be happy with less...can be rewarding and the place to start.

The consequent impacts on the environment are proportional to outright cost savings.

There is no way that any of the conventional energy sources we're now dealing with (at very cheap levels) are going to do anything but go up...as are building and maintenance costs.

Space efficiency is the best investment you can make for your future...in straight dollars and cents.

Living in Smaller Spaces...How Small?

If you're unfamiliar with how many square feet are needed for a living room, bedroom, etc...and you're getting ready to plan your home...the best thing you can do is to go through other homes, or the one you're in now...find the rooms you like, sketch them, measure them and calculate their square footages. In a week or so, you'll have a basic program for the functional spaces of your home (see Basic Building Program Sheet).

Since 1960, the average size of the American home has doubled (now 2500 sq ft) and all of the usable old growth forest in the Pacific Northwest is gone. Our building industry is now leveling British Columbia and third world countries to fuel our consumptive habits.

Many of us on the cutting edge of environmental building have long since reverted to living in very small, highly efficient and consequently very affordable dwelling units.

I have lived in the last eight years in a 92 square foot home...a converted 14 ft travel trailer. That space accommodates a kitchen, shower, bath, couch area, double bed, computer system, all the Smart Shelter Resource files, a consulting business, a four-channel music recording studio function, a library, wardrobe, music instruments, tv, vcr, stereo and a tabby cat.

It's exactly the size of the cabin on a 38 foot yacht and eight years is about the time it takes to sail around the world...I've gotten ready without ever getting my feet wet. My friends are paying $600/month to rent 1400 sq ft homes in Montrose. That's $7200/year or $57,000 in the eight years I've been here...money I haven't spent. It costs about $12,000/year to cruise on a yacht worldwide...that's close to five years at sea.

I have no reason or desire to change spaces for something bigger.

One of the first all solar homes in Telluride...built in the late 70's by Architect Eric Dowd...is 350 sq ft and comprises an entire, comfortable and cheap living environment in a town of million dollar condos.

Not everyone wants to adapt to these stretches of space efficiency...but everyone can benifit...and so will the environment ....from reducing the sizes of our living spaces. They serve as examples of what can be done with the willingness and goal of living lighter on the land.

Programming Your Room Sizes and Plans

The following guidelines are offered as a quick way for you to estimate the size of your home and consider whether you're optimizing space efficiency in terms of what we know is reasonable and workable to expect from rooms of certain sizes. This is intended as an estimator to get you started with your building program and set some space efficiency standards...but you will need, once you've done this preliminary round, to take the calculations a step further by measuring and sketching actual rooms you've visited and like...to assure you're not building something you're not going to be able to live with later. A home too small for the adaptability of your lifestyle is not going to sustain your comfort level in the future.

Room sizes are rated in general terms of whether they're considered efficient, reasonable or excessive in size by environmental building standards. The ultimate choice, of course, will depend on your tastes.

Efficient Reasonable Excessive

Living Rooms 120 Sq ft 160 250

Master Bedrooms 120 160 200

Secondary Bedrooms 100 120 180

Master Bath Suites 30 45 70

Bathrooms 25 35 60

Utility Rooms 20 30 60

Dens/studies 100 140 180

Kitchens 60 80 120

Dining Rooms 100 140 200

Breakfast Nooks 20 30 80

Sun rooms 50 120 200

Stairways-per level 50 80 150

Garages/per car 200 240 300

Decks 30 80 150

Short grass watered 80 300 1/4acre

lawn areas

When you total your building program, based on how many rooms of which type you're designing, you'll need to add additional space for interior/exterior wall partitions and circulation space. Typically this amounts to 15-20% of a floor plan...in strawbale buildings or others with thicker exterior walls...the higher end of this range is appropriate.

The following are general guidelines for what is reasonable to expect in terms of the total size of several different functioning homes.

Efficient Reasonable Excessive

Studios/one person 250 400 800

One Bedroom 400 600 1000

Two Bedroom 600 800 1400

Three Bedroom 800 1200 2500

If your plans can't be accomplished within these parameters, it could be because your adaptability and tastes can't be brought to sustainable building standards...many of us change slowly. If that transition appears too difficult...don't do it...or go live in a rented or transition space on the order of these standards and see if you can adapt, before you invest in a mistake....this isn't a philosophy or life-style for everyone.

The other possibility is that your plan could benifit from competent or professional analysis and revision for space efficiency. Designers who have worked with these plans and guidelines for long periods of time are adept at shrinking houses, opening up spaces, optimizing function and location in a structure to produce brighter, happier, more functional, more open-feeling spaces with radically reduced floor areas. An investment of a couple to a few hundred dollars in competent design can save you tens of thousands of dollars (and high environmental impacts) not only in the construction phase, but in the heating, lighting, insuring...taxes...etc.over the lifetime of the house.

Warning: not all design professionals are invested in or experienced in producing space efficiency...if this is what you want, make sure before you employ one that they know that efficiency is a primary goal and that they have the knowledge and experience necessary to do this.

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moral: Don't build it until you've milked it for every ounce of space efficiency

possible...you'll love the results...and so will the planet.