GreenYour.com

Houses have ecological impacts on the earth both at the time of construction and throughout its life cycle. For example, a smaller house requires fewer trees to frame and less land is disturbed when the house is built than with a larger house. Plus, fewer natural resources are consumed in the furnishing, remodeling, heating, and cooling of a smaller space over its lifetime.

How to buy a small house

Your local real estate agent or eco-broker can look for a home based on number of bedrooms, square footage, and other parameters. But before you talk to an agent, carefully determine your living space needs. In The Not So Big House, author Sarah Susanka suggests that you define your new home as a series of places for various activities rather than a string of separate rooms.[1]

• Can the family room do double or even triple duty: an area for homework or paying bills, a table for playing games, and a sofa and TV for entertainment?
• Do you need both a living room and a family room? What daily activities will you do in each?
• Will a kitchen with a large eating area allow you to eliminate the need for a dining room?
• Can a walled-off dining room serve as a home office, eliminating the need for another bedroom?
• How many bathrooms do you really need and what size? Can you and your partner juggle bathroom time and be content with one full and one half bath? How often will you really use that jet tub?
• Can siblings share a bedroom? Will the oldest child be moving out soon? If so, can that bedroom eventually fill another space need?
• When your list is done, be sure to communicate your needs to a realtor before you go house hunting.

Find it! Resources for buying a small house

Buying a small house helps you go green because…

• People who live in small living spaces generally have fewer possessions and consume less.
• Small homes require fewer resources for construction and less land.
• Small homes consume less energy for heating and cooling.

Since 1950, the size of the average US family has decreased while new homes have tripled in square feet per person.[2] According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), in 1970, houses with 2,400 or more square feet comprised just 10 percent of the market in. In 2005, that market share increased to 42 percent,[3] and one in five homes are more than 3,000 square feet.[4]

The big-house trend may be slowing, however. In a survey on the American home by the Taunton Press, only 10 percent of homeowners polled said they need more living space and 19 percent actually said they want smaller homes. The desire for a smaller home is to be expected for older couples whose children have left the nest, but the survey also showed that 29 percent of respondents younger than 35, who are just starting to rear children, were interested in smaller houses.[5]

What is a small house?

Can a small house be defined by square footage? On the other side of today’s big-house trend, some people live in what are known as micro, compact, mini, tiny, or little houses of less than 500 square feet. These dwellings have received national media attention. The Oprah Winfrey Show featured a segment—Tiny Homes, Big Ideas—on a man living in a 96-square-foot home. And the New York Times featured an article—Think Small—about a couple living in a 65-square-foot home. The Small House Society website notes that size is relative: “A space that might be considered small for a family of four would be large if only a single person were living in it. The goal is for each person to find the right size space that fits their life and comfort level.” Instead of defining how many square feet defines a small house, the Society simply encourages the use of smaller living spaces that foster sustainable living.[6]

Square footage is not the measuring stick of a small house for author Sarah Susanka either. She writes that the trick is to find a house where every room is used every day.[7] For example, The Tauton Press survey notes that only 2 percent of home owners listed the dining room as an important area.[5] Therefore, the dining room is a feature home buyers may want to skip when looking for a new home. A home with fewer or smaller rooms automatically reduces your square footage requirements and, therefore, your eco-footprint.

Energy use

Energy use in the home generates more than 20 percent of domestic greenhouse gases. Between 50 and 70 percent of the energy used in an average American home is consumed by heating and cooling systems.[8] In an attempt to lower a home’s energy consumption, many new homes or remodeled homes on the market offer energy efficiency technology, such as increased Insulation and double-pane windows. Some even have a green house certification. Yet, a study published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology found that a small home with moderate energy efficiency uses substantially less energy for heating and cooling than a large house built to very high energy-performance standards.[9]

Resources

Small homes consume fewer resources during construction. A 2,082-square-foot single-family house requires approximately 13,837 board-feet of framing lumber, 11,550 square feet of sheathing, and 16.92 tons of concrete. In comparison, a new 5,000-square-foot house can use three times the resources, even though the square footage increases only 2.4 times. This is because larger homes tend to have high ceilings and more custom features that require more resources.[2]

External links

• TinyHouses.net
• The Washington Post - Can Big Be Green?
• AlterNet - Big Houses Are Not Green: America's McMansion Problem
• Christian Science Monitor - Incredible Shrinking Houses An article about a couple living in a 1,100 square-foot-house.