Big Houses Are Not Green: America's McMansion Problem

[marmar]

from AlterNet:


Big Houses Are Not Green: America's McMansion Problem

By Stan Cox, AlterNet. Posted September 8, 2007.

The recent mansion boom produced millions of energy-wasting homes with thousands of square feet that Americans don't need -- not the behavior of a society that's thinking about a sustainable future.


In Los Gatos, Calif., controversy has raged this summer over the city planning commission’s approval of a proposed hillside home that will occupy a whopping 3,600 square feet – and that's just the basement. Atop that walkout basement will be 5,500 more square feet worth of house.

The prospective owner says he’ll build to "green" standards, but at the Aug. 8 meeting where the permit was approved, the city's lone dissenting planning commissioner stated the obvious when he told the owner, "You have a 9,000-square-foot house with a three-car garage and a pool. I don't see that as green."

The just-popped housing bubble has left behind a couple of million families in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. It has also spawned a new generation of big, deluxe, under-occupied houses bulked up on low-interest steroids.

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) estimates that 42 percent of newly built houses now have more than 2,400 square feet of floorspace, compared with only 10 percent in 1970. In 1970 there were so few three-bathroom houses that they didn't even to show up in NAHB statistics. By 2005, one out of every four new houses had at least three bathrooms.

Smaller families are living in bigger houses. In the America of 1950, single-family dwellings were being were built with an average of 290 square feet of living space per resident; in 2003, a family moving into a typical new house had almost 900 square feet per person in which to ramble around.

Not surprisingly, monster houses are especially popular in Texas; in Austin, regarded as the state’s progressive haven, 235 new houses of at least 5,000 square feet each were built in a single recent year; 41 of them had between 8,000 and 29,000 square feet. In the size of our dwellings, North Americans are world champions. The United Nations says houses and apartments in Pakistan or Nicaragua typically provide one-third of a room per person; it’s half a room per person in Syria and Azerbaijan, about one room in Eastern Europe, an average of a room and a half in Western Europe, and two whole rooms per person in the United States and Canada (not counting spaces like bathrooms, hallways, porches, etc.) .....(more)

The complete piece is at (scroll down a bit): http://www.alternet.org/environment/61523/

[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. what a waste

:cry:

We currently have about 250 sq. ft per person in our apartment. It's hard to find a 3 bdrm under 1000sq. ft. :(

[Warpy]

2. The real problem isn't the billionaire barns

it's all those mini mansions that are popping up like poisonous mushrooms, the ones with only two or three bedrooms, but massive amounts of interior space devoted to game rooms, media rooms, family rooms, living rooms, dining rooms, and rooms just for the hell of it. All those rooms require heating in winter and cooling in summer and they are multiplied by millions.

[CrispyQ]

6. A former boss of mine lives in a 10,000 sq foot house

& pays $900 a month for air in the summer. ~gasp!

There was a time, in Colorado, when the expensive energy months were winter, but now our summers seem longer & hotter & everyone has air. Well, I don't, but most people have some sort of cooling device besides just a fan. My husband & I joke that we have started the first Global Warming Bootcamp. :D

[izzie]

9. I can see the business of small Inn's making a come back

I grew up in a summer resort and all the really large homes became some types of Inns. Some are still around.Some become rooming houses. One an old people place and things like that. Many were just lost in the Crash. Fact it is how my father bought his home. It was built as a summer house and never even lived in and sat from 1921 to 1937 when my father bought it and made a year round home out of it. It was not very big in number of rooms but each room was pretty good size. You know when I grew up we lived in a different style. Many homes were sort of shut off in the winter because coal cost so much and people tended to have very cool homes with a lot done just in the kitchen and living room. Kids did not play in bed rooms as they were cool most of the time. Rooms had doors and it was just easy to shut things off. I have told people this and they think I am nuts. Why would you live in that big house if you did not use it all? I guess we just did not need to keep it all at 72 all the time. Maybe coal was hard to get during the war but I am not sure about that. Even in the late 30's every one I knew lived like this. I wonder if it was just a Northern NE thing?

[Warpy]

11. I've always lived that way

I prefer sleeping under a pile of blankets in a cold room, so it just doesn't make sense to heat the bedroom(s).

The only thing I disliked about being so poor my heat consisted of being rolled up in an electric blanket and keeping the "heat" at 48 was having to keep my loom studio closed. Being tethered to an outlet wasn't much fun, either.

Refrigerated air conditioning is being pushed right now, but I can't see swapping over. Here in the desert, an evaporative cooler works just find and adds only $15/month to the electric bill. Refrigerated cooling is ten times that and upward.

[izzie]

21. I recall our heat was at 68 when we were around and lower at

night.Bed room windows opened at night and sweaters to put on if you were cold sitting around any place, and we were not poor. With the down stairs all open in so many homes I do not think they could shut off rooms and the room as you come in the house to keep it cool or warm are long gone. I live near a large house and these people use air conds. in three bed rooms for the few very hot days we have in NE. Course you will find they run all summer and yes they scream about the cost of lights. Course the whole house is heated at 72 and it is very big. They were b---ting to me and I said well for a few hundred dollars each you could had very nice Fr. doors and shut off most of the house you do not use. (I have only seen them use the den 6 times in 6 years, the Christmas tree room, so it should not be hard to do.) You would have thought I told them to blow up half the house. I see a lot of these large homes going up all around me here. I am glad I do not have to heat them. To have the big home seems more important to some people than the smarts of living with it and the cost of it all. What can I say? It jacks up cost to the people who are trying to cut back just as it does to these people who are so foolish with the heat they have to use.

[yellowdogintexas]

12. not at all, I grew up in KY, and we never heated or cooled the

whole house at one time. Our first house had electric heaters in each room, no furnace, and later on one window ac unit which we had to beg our mom to put on because she hated it.

the next house was a 1920's craftsman style home with huge rooms, high ceilings, big windows and lots of shade around. Not air conditioned. We had a big exhaust fan in the attic and it pulled air through the house at night. In winter, electric blankets, or room heaters. We closed off unheated rooms not in use. Most people in older homes did this. southern homes were designed to be cooler in summer and for heat to rise to the second story in winter. Fireplaces all over the house, etc.


Oh yeah, this was 1950's and 1960's

[izzie]

22. That seems sane to me,

It does seem odd that now with people in a family all working every day they seem to need even bigger homes heated or cooled to just the right feeling all day and they are not even there to enjoy it only pay for it. While most women were home all the time when I grew up and they were for ever saving fuel as they lived in the home.It may be that I grew up with people who came out of the great depression as I was born in the early 30's. But you seem to be proof that some people are always careful about the waste of large homes and how to use them, so who is to know just what is going on.

[daninthemoon]

3. Cool...So my house isn't small, it's eco-friendly!!! Thanks!

[NMDemDist2]

4. when we sold our 1150sf house in AZ hubby wanted 1800-2000sf in the new house

I asked him if he planned to clean it :rofl:

I'm very happy in my 1330sf house, and still don't keep it as clean as I'd like, it's more space than we need except the three times a year we have the inlaws visit for a week.

my ex and I had a 3000sf home and I hated it, what a waste of space IMO

[CrispyQ]

5. We've turned into gluttonous hoggs.

My husband is reading Richistan & he's been sharing bits & pieces with me this morning & I am sick at the behavior of so many who are doing well. It almost pleased me to hear that less than half said that wealth has made them happier. x(


"Happiness doesn't come from having things; it comes from being part of things."
~Chris in the morning, Northern Exposure

[iamahaingttta]

7. We are not a rational society.

Chickens coming home to roost...

[mainegreen]

8. If it takes more than 15 seconds to reach the fridge or bathroom, I dont want to live there.

These 10 minutes to get where you want to go houses suck. And god forbid you misplace something. You'll never find it.

[cliss]

10. Ok.....I'm going to come out & say it.

(The article gave me no choice)

There is something strangely self-annihilating about the house issue we see nowadays. It's like the signs are all there that it's time to S-T-O-P building bigger and bigger houses, and yet we keep doing it.

Going against Logic
Houses are getting bigger, despite the following amazing facts:

1) The demographics don't support it. Families are getting smaller & smaller. Currently, SINGLE households are the largest group in the US, even bigger than married households. They tend to be smaller. If reason followed logic, we would be building smaller and smaller houses.

2) The "graying" of America. There is something like 45 million baby boomers who are getting ready to retire. A typical retired couple does NOT want a 10,000 sq. ft. house. They typically downscale, and get a smaller house which is more manageable.

3) Demographics: there aren't enough young people coming up the ranks to replace the ones who are retiring, or downscaling. I think the US is not even at a replacement rate, statistically.

4) Electricity rates are set to soar. The homes that are being built use MUCH more electricity. One homeowner near us pays about $1,100 per month in electricity. Two years ago, it was $700. That's absurd.

5) Lumber, materials building costs are going up. Average cost of building a larger house is much higher.

6) Subprime collapse. Need I say more?

7) Too many houses being built. No comment here.

8) Suburbs / rising price of gas. Analysts predict that as the price of gas goes up, many McMansion suburbs will become empty "ghost towns". Neighborhoods of 50 homes with 1 inhabited home. People will tend to move closer to the cities in order to pay for gas, for going to work etc. The housing tracts which are the furthest out will be the hardest hit.

9) These disgusting housing tracts devour land, which could otherwise have been used for agriculture. With global warming, the U.S. is going TO NEED every square inch to grow food. The rest of the world is going to be running out of food, and we're one of the few which is a NET food exporter. We need to bulldoze the damn things and start growing stuff, instead.

[yellowdogintexas]

13. and the houses are not even pretty, unless you get into the

really up-upscale designer homes. Tract houses, even the uber square foot ones are ugly ugly.

Single first time buyers are doing the condo route quite a lot, or buying the older 2br 1 bath 1 car garage homes now being vacated by the elders who built them.

[daninthemoon]

15. tell ya what else i don't like about all the houses built the last twenty

years or so. houses take up the whole lot with no yards to speak of. i couldn't live like that, and it's gotta be worse for the environment in general. my yards are my favorite part of my property

[Mist]

14. I've thought about this lately--I wonder if realters and builders are using a restaurant trick:

Sometimes when restaurants want to raise their prices, they'll add more food to the plate then jack the price up a few bucks. The 1.00 cost of some extra steak translates to 4.00 or so on the price of the meal.

I think the cost of adding extra footage in homes is an excuse to keep prices high. It's not as if "the customer is demanding it." Lots of people would rather live in smaller houses, and avoid the high energy costs that come with mini-mcmansions, but minimcmansions are all that's being built in many communities.

[emmadoggy]

16. My sister lives in a brand new, roughly 5,000 sq. ft. house.

That's including a finished basement and two-levels above ground. They have four bedrooms on the top floor and 1-2 in the basement (one of those two is currently used as an exercise room). They are a family of 5 - three small children. They do have guests (family) at least 2-3 times per year who do fill up all the bedrooms, but most of the time it's all just big empty rambling space. Husband works outside the home, my sister works from the home, kids are in daycare/school all day. Weekends seem to be spent mostly shopping/errand-running or carting the kids to birthday parties.

The first time my siblings and I saw the house we all joked to her how huge it was - we might get lost - and her reply was, "You think it's big?" This is their 3rd McMansion and the biggest one yet. Frankly, running up and down all the stairs constantly was exhausting to me (and dizzying - both flights, to the upstairs and to the basement, have one flight half-way with a landing where you then turn around and take the second flight the rest of the way. So going from the upstairs to the basement was down,turn,down,turn,down,turn,down,turn. :crazy:) The Master bedroom closets (his and hers) are the size of my son's bedroom - each. The Master Bath - huge.

They drive a minivan and a Suburban. Their "neighborhood" is a twisted maze of more of the same. Leave their "neighborhood" and across the street is another vast "neighborhood". They are everywhere you turn.

My sister's house is certainly lovely & luxurious and I envy a lot of the storage space, but beyond that? Just too big. And I couldn't stand living in those cookie-cutter "neighborhoods". Blech. It's also no wonder to me that families are so fractured these days too - with a house that big, you could all be in different corners of the house and never see each other! I can't imagine trying to keep track of small children in a house like that without lots of gates and blocking rooms off.

I understand the lure of luxury and I succumb to materialism as much or more than anybody, but I couldn't deal with the lifestyle that comes with it. I prefer the small town, more simple, slower-paced, less expensive lifestyle (which is still becoming more and more expensive).

[applegrove]

17. Same problem happened after the depression. All the Victorian mansions had

to be torn down because nobody could afford to maintain them what with the wages of workers going up (paying help a few cents a day was no longer an option). A few of those huge houses survived and became law offices or the like. But mostly they were way too big for a time that had passed. The same will happen to micmansions I believe.

[Kolesar]

23. Millionaires row was destroyed because the owners willed that their mansions be torn down...

...after they died. This was in Cleveland. A few mansions survived, and one of them is the Western Reserve Historical Society.

[IDemo]

18. A growing number of people are taking it to the other extreme

http://www.resourcesforlife.com/groups/smallhousesociety/

[Yael]

19. From that link:

Just how cool is this place?

[Kolesar]

24. Where do I wash my hands? ... eom

[Yael]

25. This is just one model

Framed as the "backyard study" or some such thing. I think its cool.

[Kolesar]

28. I'll be by!

I have some extra tomatoes and zucchinis if you want...

[Colorado Progressive]

20. Colorado is one of the top three Mc Mansion states! I think it has a green rep,

but maybe thats just because I live here. Anyway, about a month ago in the Sunday Homes section of the newspaper they had this huge article about these great new "Green Homes!" They were 6000 square feet, but used 20% less energy than a standard home.

WTF???? As I read the article all I could think was that the builder had clearly missed "Green Building 101", because there is nothing green about a house that huge. Aside from the construction material used to build it, the building footprint is humongous. And, even "green", its still using the resources of a 4800 sf house to heat and cool. Are people THAT stupid, that they think their Green Mc Mansion attitude works? What moran would even believe it?

Our house is 3000 sf but we both work out of the house (from home, whatever, workspace is here so we dont commute), we have two kids, and our heat source is a centrally located wood stove (epa approved!!!!). If yer cold, stand near the wood stove! Bedrooms were never meant to be 70 degrees, studies have shown its healthier to sleep at a temp around 60 (more comfy too I think). Our wood is reclaimed forest fire forage too. To just turn on a furnace and blast heat through the whole house is stupid if you can avoid it. We have spot heaters if it gets really cold.

[Yael]

26. "Green" is a relative buzzword (ab)used

to make the uninformed feel better about themselves. I am sure that the new H4 "Green edition" is not far behind.

[Colorado Progressive]

30. Yes. Like the word "organic" which has virtually lost its meaning. nt

[losthills]

27. I don't think "size" matters in this case.

Whether a house is "green" or not depends on how it was designed, how it was built, how it produces hot water, and how it is powered, among other things.

A larger house could be more eco-friendly and have a smaller carbon footprint than a smaller house if it is designed properly...

[tinrobot]

31. But a smaller, well designed house would be even better.

It would use even less materials and energy than the big "eco-friendly" house.

[dbackjon]

29. And yet, there is a shortage of affordable, 1200-1800 square foot houses

I'd like something in that range, but they are hard to find...

[tinrobot]

32. What about all the stuff it takes to fill the house?

If you have a 6000sf house, you need 6000sf worth of furniture, televisions, appliances, and all sorts of other objects to fill it. That stuff takes energy and resources to manufacture.

Most people already consume way too much stuff, bigger houses are yet another bad incentive to consume even more.

[krkaufman]

33. I hope that LEED certification takes sq ft per occupant into account.

Good that they're building "green," but size matters, too.

[razzleberry]

34. buy phoney carbon offsets, absolves you of McMansion sins

millionaire ex-politicians need your money.