The Benefits of Right-Sizing
Better Than Better Homes and Gardens
I never had any other desire so strong, as that I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them …
—Abraham Cowley
A wedding dress or tuxedo is a pleasure for an evening, but few of us want to live in a costume. So why are so many houses filled with gimmicks such as whirlpools, and multiple fireplaces, that don’t fit the actual activities of their owners?
—Shay Saloman
Since 1982, an area the equivalent of New York State has been developed—largely by businessmen who buy a chunk of farmland and build five hundred similar-looking houses on it.1 The resources required by each home include 14,000 board feet of lumber (about an acre of trees) and 19 tons of cement. It’s not just pesticides that make spring in America more silent than in our grandparents’ days—it’s also the smothering of habitats. Since Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in the 1960s, the size of an average American home more than doubled, as the average household income continued to climb (up fivefold, adjusted for inflation). How many trees will it take to build the 90,000-square-foot home designed for time-share industry billionaire David Siegel and his wife, Jacqueline? The next time you watch a pro football game, imagine a house about as big as the playing field. (Think how long it takes to return a punt from the end zone at full speed.)
When my ex-wife and I bought our first house, we wanted something smaller than we could afford. We didn’t know at the time that the word “mortgage” comes from old French and means “death pledge,” but we did sense that a big house was a heavy load to carry, and that it took a huge toll on the environment. It was 1973 when we bought a house for $17,000 in the foothills outside of Denver—a log cabin that had been added onto, but not by much. The total square footage was 1,100 square feet, and after ten effortless years of $114-a-month payments, we paid the cabin off. We grew to a family of four (plus a dog, a cat, and chickens who roosted in an old outhouse). We lived in that house and garden for twenty years, and by the time we left, the average size of a Denver-area house had swollen to more than 2,000 square feet. I now live in a 1,750-square-foot house, but I rent the 600-square-foot apartment in my basement. My 1,150 square feet is still plenty of space—especially for a divorced man or bachelor—with its kitchen, living room, bedroom, balcony, bathroom, and home office. (It also helps a lot that my neighborhood has a community building with a guest room, living room, dining room, and terrace.)
Despite much evidence to the contrary, I believe small houses will be in high demand in the next decade, not just because resource costs are destined to climb, but also because small houses are easier to customize, easier to maintain, and are often located in pre-boom neighborhoods that are closer to the things we need—groceries, banks, libraries, and restaurants. In fact, it occurs to me that we really should call small houses “regular,” and the others “XL,” because for most of our stay as humans, we’ve lived in shelters even smaller than 1950-size houses. Now that single people occupy one-fourth of American households—up from 10 percent in 1950—shouldn’t we accelerate the remodeling and building of regular-size houses? There are distinct disadvantages to XL homes, as financial planner Ilyce Glink points out: “When you buy a bigger home to accommodate your stuff, you pay higher taxes, higher heating bills, bigger cooling bills, a bigger mortgage, plus whatever the upkeep costs are for the stuff itself.”2
A 600-square-foot house over a garage at the Holiday neighborhood, and the front yard of David Wann’s townhouse in Harmony Village, with strawberries instead of grass in the front yard. Courtesy of the author
I also predict that within the next ten to twenty years, many of the Hummer homes that now dominate the American landscape will be partitioned and remodeled to accommodate multiple households, with the blessing of local zoning departments. (Already, many immigrants live three or more families to a house.) As coauthor Dan Chiras and I speculate in the book Superbia! 31 Ways to Create Sustainable Neighborhoods, their large, resource-hungry lawns may well become vegetable gardens, mini-orchards, and even fenceless neighborhood parks. In the meantime, many XL house owners are cashing out, regardless of a faltering housing market, and downsizing to elegant little cottages, townhouses, houseboats, bungalows, and lofts.
The American home is the greatest single expression of our addiction to energy. A large percentage of the power plants, roads, factories, and discount palaces service a lifestyle for which the home and yard are the epicenter. The decision to live in a smaller, more efficient, more conveniently located home offers huge opportunities for increasing one’s quality of life while reducing the consumption of resources. Says Shay Soloman, author of Little House on a Small Planet, “Live in less space but have more room to enjoy it. Does that sound like a contradiction? On the contrary, living small frees up your mind, your wallet, and your soul.”3 Admittedly, there are psychological roadblocks to overcome. The house is a perceived symbol of success in our world (ironically, it’s also a refuge from a world so preoccupied with material success). But a person who lives in a smaller house than he or she can afford probably has a healthy level of self-respect, plenty of time, and may also have a desire to do more with his or her life than consume.
According to sociologist Paul Ray, at least a quarter of the U.S. population—the “cultural creative” sector—look at what’s happening in suburbia, shake their head, and say, “I know I don’t want that.” Instead, they may choose to buy an existing house in the inner ring of the suburbs, built when 1,500 square feet was considered a good-size house. Or they may decide to build a new home that incorporates precisely the features they want, like hardwood floors and kitchen cabinets, lots of skylights, solar
energy, efficient appliances, and built-in shelving. An amusing but very affordable example is the house that Jay Shafer built for himself in Occidental, California, where three really is a crowd. His house, one of the units he now markets as president of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, is 70 square feet—smaller than some walk-in closets or tree houses built for the kids.4
But Shafer knows what he’s doing. In California, one in four people are considering moving out of state to reduce their housing costs. For example, only 2.7 percent of San Francisco’s teachers, 5.7 percent of its cops, and 4.2 percent of its nurses can afford to buy a home there.5 “I like to say that a well-designed little house is just a big house with all the unnecessary parts cut out,” he says. “When people have too much stuff in their lives and too much space that needs heating or cleaning, it becomes a liability.” Shafer’s tiny house, which includes a loft bed, dorm-size refrigerator, hotplate desk, closets, and miniature sitting area, is no liability! Many of his houses are built with small front porches, and range from 70 square feet, like his home, to 700 square feet—what Shafer calls “palatial.”6
I don’t imagine most Americans would consider living in a Tumbleweed Tiny House unless it was a vacation cabana; after all, we imagine ourselves living in what we see on TV shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, where, in one show, a tireless crew built a six-bedroom, seven-bath, seven-television house for a family of four. (Now, how will they ever pay the utilities and taxes?) But there’s a definite niche market for small houses. Many Americans might consider moving into a 1,000-square-foot home, as large or larger than the average houses still being built in such places as England, Ireland, and Japan. And 1,500 square feet may be more realistic as a moderate, transitional benchmark. When well designed, a small gem of a house is far more valuable per square foot than a mansion is.
I recently toured a “not so big house” designed by Tina Govan, a colleague of author/architect Sarah Susanka. I was impressed by the “livability” that skylights, interior glass partitions, built-in shelving, and other features give the house. It felt like a sailboat, with everything in its proper place, and the beautifully kept landscape outside the house felt like an extension of the inside. You could see diagonally from one corner of the house to the other—a feature that conveys a feeling of spaciousness. As I walked through the 1,700-square-foot interior, I realized several things at once: that it’s not really space that we want in a house, but a feeling of spaciousness. Furthermore, if we live in houses that really meet our needs, they will connect us with the world rather than cutting us off from it by being in scale with both the human body and the land where the house is located.
Sarah Susanka observes that when her clients seriously evaluate how they use their current home on a daily basis, they are usually quite comfortable with a new, custom-designed house that’s one-third smaller. She recommends that they use money saved in construction to incorporate their favorite materials, shapes, and patterns, from tile counters and wainscoting to bamboo floors—these are what add charm and a feeling of truly being at home. Concludes Susanka in the best seller The Not So Big House, “It’s time for a different kind of house that is more than just square footage; a house where each room is used every day. A house with a floor plan inspired by our informal lifestyle instead of the way our grandparents lived.” (In 1901, we should remember, the average size of a family was 4.9 people; whereas, in 2006, the average household has shrunk to 2.6 people. Even so, our houses are larger on average now than then.) Susanka fervently believes that the typical American house has too many bathrooms and too large a living room to be comfortable and cozy. It is less like a nest than like a “massive storage container.”7
Although I remain challenged when it comes to the organization of my stuff, I’ve definitely seen my enthusiasm for garage sales and home furnishing stores wane since moving to a house with less storage space. What a relief! I’m not likely to acquire house stuff unless it has a story behind it—for example, it was made or given to me by a friend, bought on a special vacation, or something like that. It’s far easier to feel “full” in a small house, and if that feeling is synonymous with being satisfied, then small really is beautiful.
Typically, utility bills aren’t popular pieces of mail, especially as the costs of electricity and heating fuel continue to climb. There’s really only one way to look forward to opening one of these monthly greetings: Live in an efficient home—ideally a “regular-size” one—that doesn’t pig out on BTUs and kilowatt hours. In the typical kitchen, a groaning dishwasher cycle is in progress to clean seven plates and four favorite mugs. And the old workhorse refrigerator—replaced by an ice-making thoroughbred—is banished to the garage, where storage for a six-pack of soda and a rump roast costs about $125 a year. Most winter nights, we forget to turn the furnace down at bedtime, and spend sweaty nights dreaming about fuel bills. As energy costs go up, these habits will change.
When my most recent utility bill came, I was curious to see how I’d done, and delighted that it had sunk to a new low: $28 for the very hot month of July, for both gas and electricity. My latest improvements were to install a solar panel on my roof to heat water; add eight newly available, dimmable compact fluorescent bulbs to unconverted fixtures; and put up new window coverings to keep the summer heat at bay. The improvements had worked! I looked in the column of the bill that compared my use of “therms” with last year’s month of July, and saw that the solar panel had cut my natural gas consumption in half. The only other gas I used was for the stove and oven—used minimally in a thermometer-popping month filled with temperatures in the high nineties. Another column indicated that I’m enrolled in Windsource, a voluntary program that entitles me to get a portion of my electricity from Colorado wind farms. At first I paid a premium for several shares of electricity to support the infant wind industry, but now a slight rebate has been given to Windsource customers because the wind industry is maturing and has actually become as cheap as coal-generated electricity.
Intrinsic Values of Small Houses
• Use Fewer Building Materials: By living in a house with a human scale, we prevent the destruction of habitat, conserve resources, and teach ourselves how to live without kitchen gadgets and tabletop knickknacks.
• Use fewer resources: For example, the large size of a U.S. household, with its long pipes, wastes hundreds of gallons of water a year—just waiting for the hot water to arrive.
• Require less time and money for payments and maintenance, which can be spent on other things, like vacations, special people in your life, or continuing education. The average annual utility bill is $1,500 and climbing quickly—so just in fuel bills, the small house yields continuing dividends.
• More likely to be found in places (like first-ring suburbs) that are near the things we need—stores, schools, theaters, banks, and so on. So there may be considerable savings and a higher quality of life from reduced transportation. Some banks are now offering “location-efficient mortgages” for that reason. We’re a better financial risk if we save on transportation costs.
• Are often “homier,” and more intimate. They make people feel larger, and less overwhelmed. We should take a cue from beaver dams, bird’s nests, and bear dens, none of which are larger than is necessary.
• Reduce the stress of constant maintenance and insecurity about theft, deterioration, and isolation. The less flamboyant our houses are, the safer we are, statistically.
• Can be fixed up just the way we want them, since there is less space to decorate and furnish.
• Enable us to focus on nonmaterial forms of wealth, like taking care of family, and participating in civic activities. Small, comfortable houses encourage humility, lack of pretense, and creativity. They confer a sense of “doing the right thing.”
It’s exciting to be part of a sustainable industry that’s growing so fast. The wind industry is one of the brightest prospects in the global transition to renewable energy. (We’re lucky we’ve been perfecting it for a thousand years.) Overall, the cost of wind power has fallen by nearly 90 percent since the 1980s. Taller turbine height and longer rotor blades produce up to two hundred times as much power as turbines did just twenty years ago. Between 1995 and 2005, the wind industry expanded twelvefold, with especially strong growth in Europe: Germany leads the way, with 19,000 megawatts of installed wind power in 2006 (the equivalent of about 50 average-size coal or natural gas power plants). Germany gets 6 percent of its electricity from wind; Spain gets 8 percent; and Denmark, 20 percent. The United States has installed about twenty-five power plants’ worth of wind power so far, and enough outstanding wind sites remain to provide at least twice the electricity the country now uses, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.8 In just the last few years, wind has become a full 13 percent of Colorado’s electrical capacity.
My efforts continue to lower my energy use and my utility bill. This year, I’ll also install a thousand watts of photovoltaic solar energy, which qualify for federal tax incentives. The “juice” from the solar panels will further reduce my utility bill and be conveniently wired to my electric meter rather than specific DC-powered appliances. Fortunately, I live in a development that won awards for energy efficiency, so my house has great solar orientation, very efficient windows, and unusually thick layers of cellulose insulation that help with both heating and cooling. (Together, heating and cooling comprise 42 percent of a typical house’s energy demand.) I live in a townhouse that’s “insulated” on both sides by neighbors’ houses, but since
the walls are a double thickness, the only sounds I hear are the faint, occasional thumps of an enthusiastic Lohre kid.
So far, I’ve survived a five-year string of unusually hot summers without air-conditioning or evaporative cooling, by letting cool Colorado air in at night and closing windows and blinds to retain the coolness during the day. This summer has required a little extra effort, though. In semi-desperation and on a fixed budget, I jerry-rigged a cooling system: a fan placed in series behind a mail-order humidifier and a 2-gallon metal bowl full of ice (which I just refreeze at night). It works great, and only cost $39. As the humidity evaporates, it creates coolness in my second-story office as a swamp cooler would, which mixes with the coolness from the bowl of ice, as in an air conditioner. Voilà, a sophisticated, nineteenth-century technology, at my service! To cool the first floor, I use another fan to bring cool air up from the basement. So what if 85 percent of Americans now have air-conditioning and I don’t? I’ll bet they don’t have the insulation my house does, or the willingness to appear a little foolish—and be a little more in tune with what the weather is like outside in the real world. (Maybe the right way to look at it is that I’m in the top 15 percent.) This do-it-yourself experiment proves an earlier point: It’s not an air conditioner I need, just coolness.
I’ve developed a relationship with resources that’s as much a sport as it is a chore. I think about the synergies among heat, sun, water, soil, the garden, and other resources that circulate through and around my house—and how I can get the most value from each of them. For example, when I take a shower, I catch the half-gallon of cold water that comes out before the hot water does and water houseplants with it. When I use the dishwasher (yes, I do have a dishwasher), I do it at night when I need the heat (in winter) or at least can tolerate it (in summer). Similarly, I use the oven when I’m cooking several things at once, on days that require more heat than solar energy can supply. I cover pots with lids because that makes the heat a third more efficient.
I compost kitchen scraps—largely the leaves, roots, and skins of organic vegetables and fruits from the garden—and later use finished compost to grow more vegetables, as well as bringing it inside for my houseplants. I’ve just come back to making “sun tea” rather than boiling or nuking it. Why not? It just takes a few more minutes for the sun to make a glass bottle of peppermint tea, which I put in the refrigerator for an afternoon break. One recent addition in my quest for resource-cutting opportunities involves my office printer. Not only do I turn it off until I’m ready to print something, eliminating the standby power consumption, but I’ve also learned how to make double-sided copies, even on my inexpensive printer, just by going into “properties” on the Print page and selecting “long-edge
binding” in the “duplex/booklet” box. The only additional effort this takes is turning over the stack, feeding it back into the machine, and clicking on “proceed.” That’s so easy even I can do it.
These are the kinds of strategies that resulted in my $28 utility bill this month, but I have to admit they are extremely clumsy compared with my friend Dan Chiras’s efforts—he hasn’t paid an electrical bill since 1996. Solar energy passively heats his south-facing house, located at 7,500 feet in elevation; and photovoltaic panels provide the house’s electricity. Dan’s present, off-the-grid home was built after he learned an important lesson from a previous house: For renewable energy to be feasible, efficiency comes first. This lesson is important to remember as the world transitions away from easy-come, easy-go fossil fuel energy.
In 1987, Dan lived in a house that was heated by the sun but relied on electrical baseboard heating for backup when the sun didn’t come out for several days in a row. His stove was also an electric range; other appliances were less efficient than they could be, and the total energy demand of the house made solar electricity economically impossible. Even with thorough conservation measures like caulking, a solar-electric system to power the whole house would have cost $50,000 to install. Writes Dan in The Homeowner’s Guide to Renewable Energy (one of the more than twenty books Dr. Dan has written), “Using energy efficiently is like giving yourself a big fat raise. And the energy you save can be used by others; your savings have become their energy source.” I love that idea—the more energy we save, the fewer power plants we’ll need.
Dan’s current house is heated by solar orientation, lots of thermal mass (tires and straw bales incorporated into the thick back walls), and superefficient windows, with an efficient woodstove as backup. He tells the story of a Denver family that used to hold season tickets to Denver Bronco games but couldn’t afford them when the prices went up. So being die-hard fans, they decided to watch the games on TV instead. But their 1970s home was like an icebox in the winter; poorly insulated and full of leaks that allowed cold air in on winter days, it felt like millions of inefficient residences throughout North America. Says Dan, “To watch the games, the family had to bundle up in jackets and sweaters and don thermal socks or huddle under blankets. It wasn’t a whole lot different than a December game outside at the stadium …” But thanks to an extensive utility-sponsored energy makeover, the house is now comfortable enough to watch the games without blankets or occasional clouds of breath. The same kinds of improvements that save more than a thousand dollars a year in their home will work in any home: Either by working with a contractor or doing it yourself, seal the leaks with caulk; install efficient, “low-E” windows if
your current ones leak; add insulation; install a programmable thermostat; and upgrade appliances—especially the heating and cooling systems and refrigerator.9
Any household in search of a smaller footprint and lower utility bill should consider having an energy efficiency consultant do an audit. Sometimes these experts are available though the local utility, and in most regions, a person can find them in the Yellow Pages or on the Web. With the escalating cost of energy comes a consolation benefit: the payback for investing in efficiency is much quicker, often competing favorably with returns from mutual funds.
Replacing a fifteen-year-old furnace with a high-efficiency model may cut heating fuel usage by 1,000 therms (as much as $1,000), since furnaces installed in the 1980s and early 1990s are only about 50 percent efficient compared with newer models that boast 96 percent efficiency now. By shopping for Energy Star appliances, a household can reduce payback time as well as CO2 emissions. (In fact, if Americans bought only appliances with Energy Star ratings over the next fifteen years, says Worldwatch Institute, the reduction in greenhouse gases would be like taking 17 million cars off the road.) Upgrading a central air-conditioning system offers less dramatic cost savings, since electricity hasn’t spiked as quickly as natural gas; but if a system is fifteen years old or else oversize, a new system can save hundreds of dollars a year because, on average, cooling consumes 11 percent of a household’s energy.
Another high priority is the refrigerator, responsible for 7 percent of an average home’s total energy usage. Such large efficiency improvements have been made in recent years that a refrigerator more than five years old should be scuttled as part of a household’s efficiency plan. The payback from a new refrigerator will be slow but steady.10
Heating water is also a big chunk of a house’s fuel bill. On-demand, in-line units are still higher in cost than conventional tank units, but their payback in both energy and water savings can be substantial. After a year of experience with solar water heating (a technology in use for more than a century in the United States), I can recommend it for any household with a good southern exposure. There are and will be good rebates and tax credits available for solar, and the showers feel so much more luxurious! I saved a bit by scavenging the panel from a family in a nearby town, but the payback period will still exceed six years. For clothes washing, a front loader is worth
the investment, saving energy, water, and wear-and-tear on clothes. These units are so well programmed, they are almost as entertaining to watch as a baby eating birthday cake. (Okay, not quite).
Mindful Steps to Cut Household Energy Use in Half
• Install a programmable thermostat for heating and cooling, and learn how to use it—it saves a lot of energy. Each degree below 68°F during colder weather saves 3-5 percent more heating energy, and keeping your thermostat at 78°F in warmer weather will also save you energy and money.
• Set the refrigerator thermostat at 37°–40°F. Clean the condenser coils twice a year to raise efficiency by up to 30 percent.
• Install curtains, awnings, and shutters to control heating and cooling, and plant a shade tree in your backyard to reduce AC costs. Shading an air conditioner can improve efficiency by 10 percent.
• Wash clothes in warm or cold water rather than hot, and rinse with cold water.
• Set up a clothesline. Clothespins aren’t hard to figure out!
• Air-dry dishes rather than heat-drying them, especially in dry climates.
• Turn the water heater down to 120°F, and insulate the pipes that exit your tank.
• Install faucet aerators and low-flow showerheads that deliver a satisfying shower for thousands of gallons less annually.
• Bake in ceramic or glass pans that hold the heat better and require 25°F less heat, but use the pressure cooker, Crock-Pot, toaster oven, microwave, or stove before resorting to the oven.
• Unplug coffeemakers, microwaves, computer printers, and other appliances when not in use, to eliminate “phantom” power loads.