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Downsizing the McMansion: Study gauges a sustainable size for future homes:
What might homes of the future look like if countries were really committed to meeting global calls for sustainability, such as the recommendations advanced by the Paris Agreement and the U.N.'s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development?
Much wider adoption of smart design features and renewable energy for low- to zero-carbon homes is one place to start -- the U.N. estimates households consume 29% of global energy and consequently contribute to 21% of resultant CO2 emissions, which will only rise as global population increases.
However, a new scholarly paper authored at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) assesses another big factor in the needed transformation of our living spaces toward sustainability -- the size of our homes.
The paper published in the journal Housing, Theory & Society makes the case for transitioning away from the large, single-family homes that typify suburban sprawl, offering new conceptions for what constitutes a more sustainable and sufficient average home size in high-income countries going forward.
The article surveys more than 75 years of housing history and provides estimates for the optimal spatial dimensions that would align with an "environmentally tenable and globally equitable amount of per-person living area" today. It also spotlights five emerging cases of housing innovation around the world that could serve as models for effectively adopting more space-efficient homes of the future.
"There is no question that if we are serious about embracing our expressed commitments to sustainability, we will in the future need to live more densely and wisely," said Maurie Cohen, the paper's author and professor at NJIT's Department of Humanities. "This will require a complete reversal in our understanding of what it means to enjoy a 'good life' and we will need to start with the centerpiece of the 'American Dream,' namely the location and scale of our homes.
"The notion of 'bigger is better' will need to be supplanted by the question of 'how much is enough?' Fortunately, we are beginning to see examples of this process unfolding in some countries around the world, including the United States."
Maurie J. Cohen. New Conceptions of Sufficient Home Size in High-Income Countries: Are We Approaching a Sustainable Consumption Transition? Housing, Theory and Society, 2020; 1 DOI: 10.1080/14036096.2020.1722218
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday March 10 2020, @10:33AM (18 children)
For criticism, housing is a target rich environment. There's a lot of sheer stupidity and stubborn adherence to outdated customs.
From monitoring my family's energy use, I know that roughly 50% of an American house's energy usage goes to just heating and cooling. This is on an older, 1970s home with one A/C unit, before the McMansion fad peaked.
The first use of solar energy should go to heating, especially of water. It's so easy to do. But this usage is near nonexistent in the US. I have read that Israel has solar water heating everywhere. In the US, however, solar water heating is incredibly, amazingly costly. Last time the water tank needed replacing, I was quoted $17,000 to convert to solar. They got it all the way down to $6000 or so by throwing in rebates, price cuts, and government assistance. Still too high. Annual bill for the gas to heat the water was perhaps $200. 30 years is far too long a pay back time. Yeah, they argued that it would increase the value of the home. I also looked into switching to tankless. That would have cost about $1500 in equipment, plus whatever the labor would be. Needed to change to a larger diameter gas pipe (and I sure as hell wasn't going to try doing that job on my own, risking a gas leak or even an explosion, as I totally lack experience working with gas piping), and a larger diameter exhaust flue, install an electrical outlet for the heater's control system, and add some additional support as the tankless was wall mounted rather than freestanding. And it would have reduced the energy use by perhaps, I don't know, 20%? Or we could just get a new tank for $300. The new tank was near twice the efficiency of the old tank, thanks to the old tank having very little insulation.
Another really stupid thing is the clothes dryer. There's this ancient tech known as the, uh, clothesline. But, damn, people love dryers. Impatience, perhaps? Or that the clothes are not stiff? Or, the embarrassment of having your drying underwear flapping in the breeze where everyone can see? I've tried drying my clothes indoors, only to have the S.O. claim that this promotes the growth of mold.
The fireplace is yet another. Do not be confused into thinking the typical fireplace is a serious means of heating a home. Any more, what fireplaces are really for is entertainment.
And still more are the automatic sprinkler system, the slab foundation that will crack sooner unless it is regularly watered by said sprinkler system in which case it will crack a few years later, the privacy fence (much more prevalent in the southern US), the use of tiny bricks and bricklayers, the complicated and steep roof line just for looks, the wastefully rambling floorplan that makes keeping an even temperature indoors twice as costly, the idiotically high interior ceilings with light fixtures 5 meters above the floor to make replacing lights more fun, stairways that are still dangerous, and crazy attic access locations.
To sum up, a great deal of housing seems almost calculated to bleed the homeowner dry, so that lawn care, home improvement and repair, and energy utilities can make more money. The US is very warped that way.
(Score: 3, Touché) by xorsyst on Tuesday March 10 2020, @11:41AM (9 children)
In the UK, a lot of dryer use is because for 10 months of the year, it's likely to rain a little on any given day, which makes hanging outside annoying. For some reason, people aren't aware that this is a solved problem with products like http://www.clothesmac.com [clothesmac.com] which really do work.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @11:53AM (2 children)
I'm no weather girl, but where I live, if it's raining, the humidity goes up to 100%.
Clothes only dry when the humidity in the air is less than the humidity in the clothes.
With those concepts in mind, it looks like your product is another greensploitation scam.
(Score: 2) by xorsyst on Tuesday March 10 2020, @12:50PM
Not my product :) We have one similar to that and it works really well. British rain tends to be occasional light showers that aren't enough to raise humidity but are enough to drench exposed washing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:06PM
Live in the southeastern US. Humidity levels in the summer are sky high. If you leave something outside even if it doesn't rain which it will nothing is ever drying out. It will mold over and rot first. So no clothes line for us.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 10 2020, @12:40PM (4 children)
Hang your clothes up in the laundry room where you probably have an exhaust fan to whisk moist air outside already, or in the garage where there's lots of room and it's dry. We have a collapsible wooden rack we use in our apartment when my wife hand-washes delicate garments.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:24PM
Blow the air we spent a bunch of energy air-conditioning out the window?
At least with a heated tumble-dryer we are getting it over with fairly quickly. With your system it would take all day to dry a load, while blowing all of the air conditioned air out the window.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by Mer on Tuesday March 10 2020, @07:18PM
Having a room all for the washing machine? Now that's wasteful. Put it in the kitchen or the bathroom.
You point still stands (for the bathroom, not the kitchen unless you want your clothes to smell like lunch).
You do have to schedule around showers but hey, showering at set hours is a good habit.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:42PM (1 child)
"laundry room" ..."garage where there's lots of room"... "collapsible wooden rack we use in our apartment"
Your apartment has a laundry room and a garage? When I lived in an apartment I had a stackable washer-dryer in a closet just big enough to hold it, one parking spot in a parkade, and a rule prohibiting clotheslines on the balconies.
And if I put up a wooden rack somewhere I'd lose the use of that room until i took it down.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday March 11 2020, @12:07PM
Your own parking spot? Luxury. In modern Britain we have to walk 5 minutes to road where t'car's parked, and pay council for privilege of parking there!
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday March 10 2020, @03:52PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:02PM
Your observation is correct. Housing is calculated to bleed the homeowner dry. There are many means to mitigate, or even reverse, most of it as long as you're willing to brave the perceived risk of the neighbors thinking you're weird.
First, insulate the heck out of your house. Everyone can. It's cheap and has the quickest payback time. I rented a blower from Home Depot and insulated my father-in-law's house for $1,000; I was only going to take it up to R-38, the sweet spot, but they gave me a volume discount on bricks of cellulosic insulation that saved me $300 so I wound up taking it up to R-60. They have an oil heater which used to cost them $5,000 to heat the house every winter; now it costs them under $1,000. So the effort paid for itself in about 1 month of savings.
If you can switch your HVAC to a heat pump (homes sitting on naked rock are out of luck, but those on soil/sand/gravel/clay can) then you win all kinds of ways. You can hook up the water heater to the heat exchanger, heat your home with it in the winter, and cool it in the summer. It can be a big initial outlay, but the savings are dramatic and the payback time is fast.
Residential solar has been falling like a rock and has reached grid parity in more than 30 states. Once you have that installed, you can put in a battery bank like a Tesla Powerwall for darker periods, and a smart tie to the grid to sell excess power back to the utility (if there is net metering where you are). Solar can run your heat pump, too, so at that point you can go off-grid if you want.
Lawns are a waste of space for the most part. I ripped up a bunch and converted it to gardens, fruit-bearing shrubs like raspberries and blueberries, and garden boxes. The fresh produce we grow feeds us from spring to fall. If we were more industrious we could can stuff and live on that through the winter also. Some people go a different route and xeriscape so they don't have to water or tend to the outside at all.
YMMV may vary in the implementation. Some people have to contend with weird Home Owner Association restrictions and that sort of thing. Some people can't swing the cost of doing it all at once, in which case implementation in stages can get you there--insulate, put the savings in a short-term interest-bearing vehicle, leverage it up to tackle the next step. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @04:29PM (4 children)
I have some nitpicks but I mostly agree with you.
I really think McMansions are sold to the public as a hidden trade off. "In a small property you need to take time to de-clutter and organize. In a huge property, you don't. Since you're so busy working because we spent the last fifty years stripping away the progress of the labor movement, you don't have time any more. As a solution, I give you the McMansion. And the best part is, since it costs more to buy and to heat and cool, you'll be working even longer hours! But it's okay, because you have all that space."
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:44PM (3 children)
I don't even think it's that, it's just the equivalent of a 1970s gas-guzzler. I've visited friends who live in McMansions and, at least in some cases, seen rooms completely empty of anything because they were superfluous. Even when they were furnished, it was very sparsely, and from the condition of the carpet it looked like they had little to no use. They don't need, or have a use for, a house that big, but the property came with a McMansion preinstalled so that's what they live in.
Which also means that an economic analysis of this is pointless, do you want to be the only person on your street who doesn't live in a McMansion? Or, if all the places available to buy are McMansions, are you going to bulldoze it and build a tiny home in its place? It's a social issue, not an economic one.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by toddestan on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:55AM (2 children)
A big part of it seems to be that's all they build as single family homes go. You either get a McMansion, or something like a townhome with a shared wall. Nothing in between. If you want a small single family home, go buy something built in the 50's. If you want something a bit larger, go find a neighborhood built in the 70's or 80's.
Even if you find a place where you can buy the land and then build your own house, you'll find a bunch of rules and restrictions on what you can build (minimum square feet, so many garage stalls, restrictions on building materials and style, etc.) that all the houses end up pretty much the same anyway.
If you want to build a smaller home, you basically have to go way out of the city and build it in a rural area.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday March 11 2020, @04:38AM (1 child)
It's more profitable for the builders to build a McMansion.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Thursday March 12 2020, @12:50AM
Yeap, that's a big part of it. Builders found out that in many ways, the cost of things like pouring the foundation, doing the plumbing, installing the flooring, etc. isn't that much cheaper in a small home than a big home. Yet they can sell the big home for a lot more money. Hence one of the reasons homes got bigger.
Same thing with autos. Jacking up the suspension, throwing bigger tires on, and adding some plastic cladding is cheap, but now it's a SUV that you can sell for way more money.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday March 11 2020, @01:50AM
In the northern US and Canada, solar water heating is an unfunny joke. The portion outside needs antifreeze to prevent bursting in cold weather.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Wednesday March 11 2020, @06:45AM
Rambling roof line: We have hurricanes! The will act like a wing and lift off the house if its area is all in a single roof line, or not steep enough to act like a spoiler. If you strap the roof to the walls well enough it can't lift off, and the walls to the foundation a cat 5 can lift the entire structure. If the roof fails or a built in garage door fails wind will hit the far wall from the inside and push it down, then the whole house falls. (see Andrew collapsing houses in Florida)
If you're going to make a push, why not one to make solar electricity mounts and wiring pre-installed in homes at the point when it would be cheap - when the walls aren't skinned. Along with choosing roof profiles that make solar work best and pre-permit approved installs for 'same model' builder homes you'd bring the cost of installation down. (if there are 150 identical houses in a subdivision, they should be able to get permit pre-approval if they duplicate a prior install)