One of the hardest things about planning a sustainable home is knowing where to start. There is so much information available about solar, wind, geothermal, tax rebates, building materials.on and on and on..that it can be overwhelming. But there are two simple rules that form the basis of green construction: (1) Build no larger than you need; and (2) insulate as well as you can. Today, let’s talk about rule number (1):

In the 1950s the average home in the United States was 983 square feet. With each decade, house size has increased. The 2005 census posted a record average size of 2412 square feet, and it’s expected to increase by nearly 67 square feet this year. At the same time, the average household size has fallen from 3.25 to 2.5. That means the average home in this country now has 300% more space per person, compared with fifty years ago.

Why does that matter? It matters because houses that are larger than they need to be consume more of everything: more lumber, more concrete, more shingles, flooring, drywall, trim.even more furnishings. And when the owners move in, there’s also more fuel required for heating and cooling. All of these things impact our environment. For example, because of the vast quantities of trees that are cut for lumber to build houses, we are losing forests at exponential rates. Forests help hold groundwater; when forests recede, water tables drop.which is why we’re seeing arsenic levels rising in wells here in Wisconsin and elsewhere around the country.

Experts globally assert that 80% of the greenhouse gases come directly from the built environment.houses contribute 80% of that amount, and commercial buildings 20%. Plus an average of 8,000 pounds of waste is taken to the landfills from each 2400 square foot home that is constructed. All totaled, houses are considered to have a larger impact on our environment than any other single source.

Virge Temme

Virge Temme

One couple I recently worked with, who are strong proponents of sustainable living, started planning their home, they were convinced they needed a large walk-out basement, an “enormous” mud room for processing produce from the vegetable gardens; a full room devoted to library use, in addition to the usual living, dining and cooking spaces. Add to that the husband’s conviction to an extensive and now-unnecessary professional wardrobe, and the home grew to almost 2900 square feet.

By combining library with living spaces, using space-saving commercial kitchen strategies to compact the food processing areas, and donating the motherlode of good clothes to the Goodwill, we were able to reduce the overall size of the home to just 1713 square feet, plus a two-car garage with workshop The overall construction footprint is also nearly 1000 square feet smaller than in the first plan, which allowed many more trees on the property to be preserved. Their home, to paraphrase William Morris, “has nothing which is not known to be useful, nor believed to be beautiful.”

It’s unlikely that we will, or even could, stop building homes. The worldwide housing market is exploding, with no end in sight. But we can each make a positive contribution to our environment by simply assessing our own lifestyle requirements, and building only as large as we need. How is that done? By looking at your life as you truly, genuinely live it, and being conscious that every choice you make, and every square foot you add, will literally affect the world.