New Houses Get a Little Smaller

  • Huge houses are on the decline. (Photo courtesy of Brendel Signature)

The American dream of home ownership has become a trend of bigger and bigger houses. The square footage of new, detached houses crept upwards for decades even though families shrank. Recent economic troubles have stopped the big house trend. Shawn Allee reports:

Transcript

You might not know it but the American dream of home ownership has translated into bigger and bigger houses.

The square footage of new, detached houses crept upward for decades, even though families shrank.
Shawn Allee reports recent economic troubles have stopped the big-house trend.

Housing stats kinda say it all.

Just after World War II, brand new single-family detached homes were about 1100 square feet.
By 2007, they were twice as big.
One builder, Andrew Konovodoff, says 2007 was the peak.

Konovodoff: My analogy is, you go to McDonalds, you can up-charge or supersize your meal and get a couple hundred extra french fries.

Alee: People did that with homes?

Konovodoff: Yeah. Money was available. People bought more home than they needed. Now, I think people have trended back the other way.

Konovodoff’s right.
The U-S Census bureau says brand-new homes shrank for two years straight, and home builders say they’re going to build smaller for at least another year.

That hasn’t happened in decades, and builders like Konovodoff are adjusting

In the smaller square footages you won’t see a formal dining room … you’ll have an eat-in kitchen. We’ve pushed out the formal dining room.

Konovodoff says he’s considering even smaller designs.
He says it’ll be trickier to make a good living, so he’s not exactly happy with the trend.
But there are people who are glad houses are getting smaller.

One of them’s Alex Wilson.
He edits a magazine called Environmental Building News.

Wilson: In building a house, we need lumber, new windows and a whole range of building materials. It’s just common sense that a smaller house will use less materials. Even with any material, a so-called green material made from recycled content, there’re still impacts from manufacturing that product and shipping it to the job site. So, when we use less, we reduce environmental impact.

Wilson says the size of new homes has dropped just a bit … maybe the equivalent of a big closet or a tiny, tiny dining room.

He’d like homes to see homes get even smaller, but that won’t happen until our heating and cooling bills jump higher.

Wilson: I think if we were paying five dollars a gallon for gasoline and equivalent prices for natural gas and heating oil, then we would see a much more dramatic drop in house size.

Wilson says most of us won’t demand or build small houses until we truly fear a life-time of high utility bills.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Smaller Homes Being Built

  • A national survey of home builders found 59% are already building smaller homes or planning to build smaller homes in the near future. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

This week, the US Department
of Commerce announced new
construction for single-family
homes increased 1.7% since June. Lester Graham
reports… what the announcement
didn’t say is that, on average,
those new homes are smaller:

Transcript

This week, the US Department
of Commerce announced new
construction for single-family
homes increased 1.7% since June. Lester Graham
reports… what the announcement
didn’t say is that, on average,
those new homes are smaller:

For the past 35 years, houses have gotten bigger and bigger. The square footage has increased 53%.

But, starting in the second half of 2008, that changed. And the trend to smaller houses is continuing this year.

Steve Melman monitors trends for the National Association of Home Builders.

He says, during past recessions, new house sizes decreased because smaller was more affordable. As soon as the economy recovered, the trend toward larger homes continued.

He says that might not be the case this time.

“This could be a change in that the homes might incorporate better design, better energy features, green features, but not necessarily increase in size.”

A national survey of home builders found 59% are already building smaller homes or planning to build smaller homes in the near future.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Legislation to Make More Efficient Homes

  • The bill would require new homes to immediately be 30% more energy efficient. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

This session of Congress has pledged to take on
the issue of climate change. A bill in the Senate
is already awaiting action. But the House has
already passed the sweeping Clean Energy And
Security Act. One piece of that bill could change
the way homes are built in this country. In short,
they’d use a lot less energy. Tamara Keith has more:

Transcript

This session of Congress has pledged to take on
the issue of climate change. A bill in the Senate
is already awaiting action. But the House has
already passed the sweeping Clean Energy And
Security Act. One piece of that bill could change
the way homes are built in this country. In short,
they’d use a lot less energy. Tamara Keith has more:

The bill would require a re-write of building codes. New homes would immediately have to be 30% more energy efficient. And the requirements would keep getting tougher from there.

The idea is controversial. But for Alex Dean, building efficiently is just the way he does business.

“It’s building to a higher standard. And we really enjoy building fine projects for people who want it done right.”

Dean is the CEO of the Alexander Group, a home design, build and renovation firm in Maryland. He’s showing me around a green remodel.

(sound of key in door)

“This is the entry from the garage into the new addition.”

Dean and his team are putting an addition on a home in an upscale Washington, DC suburb.

He’s designed every detail with an eye to energy efficiency, starting with the insulation. He used a spray foam. It costs about twice as much as the insulation required by current building codes.

“You know, it’s worth it, and in the overall scheme of building the house, it’s not that much money.”

On this hot humid day, you can feel the difference the fancy insulation makes.

Keith: “It’s cooler than it is outside.

Dean: “Yeah, yeah.”

Keith: “And there’s no AC running in here right now.”

Dean: “No, not at all. And this building is directly in the sun. But that’s how effective this is. This is keeping some of the coolness from last night when it was in the 60s.”

That means he can install smaller heating and air conditioning units that use less energy.

The windows are double paned. The lights, all compact fluorescents or super efficient LEDs.

It’s projects like this one that make Bill Fay confident home builders will be able to handle greener building codes. Fay is the executive director of the Building Energy Efficient Codes Network.

“We know it’s achievable. And we know it’s achievable using affordable technologies. It’s just now a matter to have the resolve to do it.”

Past efforts at greening the building codes met with stiff opposition from home builders and failed to make it through congress.

Koteri Callahan is president of the Alliance to Save Energy and she says the stakes are high. Buildings are huge energy wasters.

“Every house and every office building that goes in the ground today is going to be around for decades and decades and in some cases centuries.”

But these days, the ground isn’t being broken on very many homes. The industry is in a serious slump.

Bill Kilmer is the head of advocacy for the National Association of Home Builders and he doesn’t want members of congress to forget about the industry’s struggles.

“Consumers certainly in the last year are stepping back and said, ‘what can we afford.’ And so we’re trying to take a mainstream, if you will, that says, ‘people want this.’ How can we get to that point, and how can we get there reasonably, and take afford-ability into account.”

Kilmer says the building industry is taking environmental issues seriously, and recently created a voluntary green building certification program.

But, he says the House bill moves too far too fast. He says builders would like until 2012 to meet the 30% efficiency goal.

“You really don’t have the equipment or the materials that are ready and ramped up to make the adjustments in the marketplace to bring those things to bear, without a tremendous cost burden that’ll be added on to the production of the housing and that obviously is going to be passed on to someone, and that’ll be the consumer.”

This question of affordability is a big one. And it seems like everyone has a statistic to make their point.


For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

Related Links

Where to Put Solar Power Plants

  • North America's largest solar plant, covering 140 acres, is located near Las Vegas (Photo courtesy of the Nellis Air Force Base)

Environmental groups have pushed for decades to get the federal government solidly behind solar energy. Shawn Allee reports some of them don’t like the government’s most recent effort to promote it:

Transcript

Environmental groups have pushed for decades to get the federal government solidly behind solar energy. Shawn Allee reports some of them don’t like the government’s most recent effort to promote it:

The Federal Bureau of Land Management developed 24 “solar energy study areas” in Western states.

The idea is to identify federal land that might be be good for solar power plants.

Some environmentalists scoured maps of these solar study areas and got concerned.

Jeffrey Morgan is with Tahquitz Sierra Club in California.

Morgan says a solar plant can take up hundreds of acres, and construction could disturb desert tortoise and cactus habitat.

“They have no concept the desert is a vital, living place with a vast diversity of species, unspoiled landscapes and many, many other things. They they just see it as a waste-land. That’s just not true – it’s not a waste-land.”

The Bureau of Land Management says the “solar energy study areas” are just that – they’re for study – and the government would not let solar energy developers disturb critical wildlife habitat.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Recession Proof Construction

  • One company created a website that acts as kind of a Craigslist just for reclaimed building materials (Photo courtesy of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction)

In the middle of a recession that’s

crippling the construction field,

there’s at least one sector of

industry that’s doing pretty well.

That’s “material reuse.” Taking pieces

of old buildings and using them in

new ones. Advocates say used materials

could save developers a heap of money.

Samara Freemark has the

story of one re-use company that’s both

green and in the black:

Transcript

In the middle of a recession that’s

crippling the construction field,

there’s at least one sector of

industry that’s doing pretty well.

That’s “material reuse.” Taking pieces

of old buildings and using them in

new ones. Advocates say used materials

could save developers a heap of money.

Samara Freemark has the

story of one re-use company that’s both

green and in the black:

You’ve probably heard what’s going on in the construction industry
these days.

(news montage of housing crisis)

But in middle of all that bad news, there might be one bright spot.

“We’ve actually been expanding quite a bit. I guess it’s one of the
only times I’ve heard
of where that’s the case.”

That’s architect Brad Hardin.

He got interested in reusing building materials pretty early in his career.
He likes the way
the old stuff looked. And he likes the idea of saving resources. And
he’s also kind of
horrified by the tens of millions of tons of construction waste that get
tossed into landfills
every year.

But actually getting his hands on used materials, so that he could reuse
them- that turned
out to be a real pain in the butt.

“You know you’ll be literally going out to someone’s yard and getting
rained on, or
sorting through someone’s basement– it was kind of a hit and miss
process.”

A big part of the problem was simple logistics. Imagine you’re knocking
down an old
house to build a new one. You’d like to sell off whatever pieces of the
old building you
can. But how do you find someone to buy all that stuff? Where do you store
it while you
look for a buyer? And how do you ship the materials?

Harry Giles is a professor of green architecture at the University of
Michigan.

He says most developers don’t want to bother with all that hassle. In the
end, they usually
just end up bulldozing everything. Giles says that’s because there’s no
real secondhand
market for used construction materials- not like there is in a lot of other
industries.

“If you take the car industry, a lot of it is geared around the reuse of
materials. Not just
taking the car and crushing it, but taking it apart and finding useful
components on it.”

You know, like a salvage yard.

And that was the problem Brad Hardin wanted to solve – how to create a
secondhand
market for spare building parts. He figured that if he could do that,
reusing building
materials could actually end up profitable.

So last year he started a company called Planet ReUse. The company’s
website acts as
kind of a Craigslist just for reclaimed building materials. Buyers and
sellers can find each
other on the ‘net.

And Planet ReUse tests all material to make sure it’s up to code. That
way the buyer
doesn’t end up with, say, eight tons of rotten planking. And Planet ReUse
arranges all the
shipping- trying to hook up sellers to nearby buyers. That saves money and
fuel.

By removing those basic barriers, Hardin says his buyers save about 20%
compared to
buying new. And Planet ReUse still makes a profit.

And it’s also a start to reducing those millions of tons of landfill
waste.

So, what kind of stuff does he sell on the site?

“How much time do you have? Steel, flooring…”

It turns out there’s money in just about everything you can salvage from
a building.

Harry Giles says that cash is the key to cutting down waste.

“If people see that it’s a lucrative business to actually salvage
materials, that will drive it
much faster than concern for the environment.”

And it’s not just buildings. Remember President Obama’s inauguration
stage? Well, that
got torn down, and Planet ReUse is trying to get the pieces to New Orleans.
They’ll be
used to rebuild houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

It’s just one more way for Planet ReUse to prove that you can do good, be
green, and
make a little money too.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Nature’s Little Architects

  • The nest of a Swainsons warbler. (Photo by Judith McMillan)

Some of the world’s most intricate
architecture is not always constructed by
humans. Sometimes the most skilled architectural
wonders are designed by nature. Gretchen Cuda reports on an exhibit that celebrates
birds’ nests:

Transcript

Some of the world’s most intricate
architecture is not always constructed by
humans. Sometimes the most skilled architectural
wonders are designed by nature. Gretchen Cuda reports on an exhibit that celebrates
birds’ nests:

Judith McMillan didn’t find her inspiration in tree branches. She found it in the
basement of the museum where she works. She was rummaging through drawers
there when she came across a hundred-year-old collection of bird nests.

“This Museum must have 10 cabinets full of bird’s nests.”

She was fascinated and immediately knew she had a new subject for her art.

McMillan is a photographer who has been volunteering at the Cleveland Museum of
Natural history for 20 years. In her latest exhibit, titled “Nesting”, she captures some
of natures most inspiring, and often overlooked architecture – the nests of birds.

(sound of exhibit crowd)

“I was looking for nests that were different from each other so that you could see that
these birds were little architects. And there were so many different kinds of materials
used – and then the eggs could be so different. Some with little tiny speckles, some
with different colors some with little calligraphic streaks around them, so it was that
variety that I wanted to capture.”

All the photographs are in black and white – because she really wanted people to
concentrate on the architecture without being seduced by the color. She’s fascinated
by the way different birds chose very specific materials to work with – everything
from marsh reeds, grape vine, or little knotty twigs – like this one.

“This is a vermillion flycatcher – it’s almost like it’s made of pick up sticks in the way
their pushed together.”

And to emphasize the diversity of structures birds can create she shows me an
Orioles nest that’s five inches deep and formerly hung like a basket from a tree.

“I actually had to shine a flashlight down in it when I was taking the photograph in
order to get the eggs to show up.”

Most of the nests and eggs were collected around the turn of the 20th century by
amateur naturalists who never thought twice about disturbing the natural wildlife.

But the practice eventually fell out of fashion as people became more
environmentally conscious and large nest and egg collections were often turned over
to museums – explains Andy Jones the museum’s ornithologist.

“People whose grandfathers were dealing with eggs as a hobby, well their
grandfathers are passing away and so they contact their local university or natural
history museum, and say, ‘hey do you want these?’”

Those specimens were originally collected just because they were pretty. These
days, they’re still beautiful, but they also serve a scientific purpose. Scientists can
look at things such as the thickness of the shells, or the type and number of birds
found in a specific location and tell a lot about the birds. They can see where birds
used to live and how far their territories reached. They can even tell if a bird that’s
extinct now once lived in an area.

Judith McMillan hopes her photographs will not only show how beautiful the birds’
handiwork was, but will also inspire people to do something about saving the birds
that are still here.

“I didn’t understand until I started using a camera myself how you can isolate
something and make people look at it differently–And I hope through my
photographs I’m getting people to take a fresh look at things. It’s hard to have an
appreciation of nature unless you really look at it and start to really care about it.”

Recent surveys have found that many songbirds are disappearing. If people don’t
start caring, those photographs and drawers full of nests might become the only
reminders of many more species that go extinct.

(song of a Cardinal)

For The Environment Report, I’m Gretchen Cuda.

Related Links

Green Insurance for Your Home

  • Homeowners can now purchase green insurance (Source: Immanuel Giel at Wikimedia Commons)

Some homeowners are paying a little
extra for a green insurance policy. Mark
Brush has more:

Transcript

Some homeowners are paying a little
extra for a green insurance policy. Mark
Brush has more:

Fireman’s Fund Insurance says it’s the first company to let you buy this extra coverage.

If your home is destroyed, they’ll pay to build you a new one using standards certified by
the U.S. Green Building Council.

That means things like using wood that is certified
sustainable, energy efficient appliances, and recycling the materials from your old house.

Don Soss is with Fireman’s Fund. He says the decision to offer the green insurance
policy was driven by the market.

“We’re very interested in offering products and services around sustainability. And there
was customer interest for it, so this was really in response to customer demand.”

Soss says their insurance policy will also cover homeowners for partial losses.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Construction Sites Mucking Up Rivers

  • The EPA says sediment runoff rates from construction sites are typically 10 to 20 times greater than from farmland. (Photo courtesy of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction)

Some home builders say the housing market
is tough enough. They don’t need environmental
regulations that make it tougher on them. But
some “green” builders say the housing industry
can improve the environment, do the right thing
for communities, and still make money. Julie Grant
reports:

Transcript

Some home builders say the housing market
is tough enough. They don’t need environmental
regulations that make it tougher on them. But
some “green” builders say the housing industry
can improve the environment, do the right thing
for communities, and still make money. Julie Grant
reports:

Have you ever driven by a construction site and seen all that dirt? A lot of that dirt is washed off the site by
rainstorms and ends up in local creeks and rivers.

Russ Gibson is with Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
He says that dirt kills aquatic bugs and fish.

The dirt covers up gravel bottom streams – that fills holes
where bugs want to live. If bugs can’t live it mucks up the
food chain. Gibson says fishermen know when this
happens.

“You’ll have some of the smaller fish and the bait fish, like
minnows and darters, will feed on the small bugs that live
there. If you don’t have bugs to feed the bait fish you don’t
have bait fish to feed the big fish.”

Beyond that, the silt from construction sites can also muddy
up where fish lay their eggs.

And enough construction dirt can fill a stream so much that it
can make flooding more of a problem.

So, how much dirt are we talking about?

The EPA estimates that 20 to 150 tons of soil per acre is lost
to storm water runoff from construction sites.

That means every time a new house is built, truckloads of
soil can wind up in local streams.

If a homebuilder pulled a truck up to a bridge and dumped a
load of dirt into a creek, people would scream. But because
construction site runoff is gradual and not as obvious,
builders get away with it.

Lance Schmidt is a builder. But he’s not your typical builder.
They used to call him a “tree-hugger builder.” These days
he’s seen as a trend setter.

Schmidt says nobody in the building industry is talking much
about construction silt.

“Believe me, stormwater’s not a fun issue to talk about. (laughs)”

But it’s one of the biggest pollution problems in creeks and
rivers.

Schmidt’s crew just dug a hole for the foundation of a small
house. He’s climbs up on one of four mounds of dirt. He
knows when it rains, some dirt can get washed away, and
end up in a nearby river. That’s why he puts up sediment
barriers. But most of the time no one checks to see if he
does.

“There aren’t any regulations as far as I know. I mean other
than if somebody was to complain.”

The Environmental Protection Agency in Ohio says it does
regulate construction sites. But, usually just the larger ones,
where there might be problems. The homebuilding industry
doesn’t really think it’s the problem.

Vince Squallice is director of the Ohio Homebuilders
Association.

“Construction and earth disturbing activities in construction is
not causing the siltation problem in Ohio.”

Squallice says farmers are mostly to blame for dirt runoff in
the rivers. It’s true that sediment runoff from farms is a huge
problem. But the EPA says sediment runoff rates from
construction sites are typically 10 to 20 times greater than
from farmland.

Squallice says builders already have to deal with too many
regulations such as setbacks from streams.

“Some of the regulations recommended to protect streams go
overboard in terms of environmental protection.”

Squallice says because of the housing bust, it’s a time to
help homebuilders, not enforce more environmental
regulations.

Builder Lance Schmidt says homebuilders need to look at it
a little differently. They can help solve a problem, keep
streams clean, and help cities with flooding problems.

“And that’s the avenue that I’ve decided to attack at. Rather
than attack the regulations, let’s sit back and find ways that
we can actually do this.”

Schmidt says there are lots of creative building ideas that
can reduce flooding, and improve the rivers for fish and other
wildlife. But in this competitive market, builders won’t do it
until everyone has to play by the same rules. And he
doesn’t expect that to happen without better enforcement by
regulators.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Subdivisions Go for Green Acres

  • Conservation Subdivisions by definition must preserve at least 50% of the total land that can be built on in a development. Local land trusts typically oversee the preservation of meadowlands, forests, and orchards -like this one - once they’re surrounded by condos and single family homes. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)

Developers are designing a new type of
subdivision that is selling even in this down
market. They say these homes sell better than
traditional ones because they give people what
they want: the feeling of living in the country
while living near the city. Lisa Ann Pinkerton
reports the new subdivisions are getting mixed
reviews:

Transcript

Developers are designing a new type of
subdivision that is selling even in this down
market. They say these homes sell better than
traditional ones because they give people what
they want: the feeling of living in the country
while living near the city. Lisa Ann Pinkerton
reports the new subdivisions are getting mixed
reviews:

(dog chain rattling and walking sound)

Robbie Dryden is walking her golden retriever Casey past a large apple
orchard in her neighborhood.

“The orchard’s great! Because when the apples start coming off the trees, my kids and I
walk down here and we just pick apples.”

But Dryden doesn’t live in the country. In fact, her subdivision is near a major
intersection, just south of Philadelphia.

“We’re off the street, so a lot of people don’t even really know we’re back here. I tell people where we live, that live in this area, and they’re like ‘where is that?’ It’s
where the orchards are. Because all the houses are kinda tucked back, so it’s private.”

Dryden’s neighborhood is known as a Conservation Subdivision. Its design
preserves the orchard and surrounding meadows forever. A land conservation
easement protects 70% of the subdivision from ever being developed.

Across the country, a few zoning boards have begun to mandate such
preservation in new residential developments.

(construction sound)

One of these is going up just a few miles east of Dryden’s neighborhood. This
subdivision is called ‘Weatherstone’. Out of its 300 acres, 180 of them are reserved as
open space, the form of small parks, a working farm and surrounding fields.
Weatherstone is being built by the Hankin Group and Vice President Jim
Fuller. He says his company preserves open space in all of its projects,
whether it’s required or not.

“It’s certainly more challenging to try to get this kind of project approved, and more challenging to build it as well,
but it’s definitely more rewarding.”

Fuller says conservation design builds the same number of homes as a traditional
subdivision. But instead of spreading the homes out, conservation lots are smaller
and closer together. That makes them cheaper to build compared to traditional
houses. That’s because the smaller lot sizes mean shorter roads and sewage
lines are needed. On top of that, since the houses are surrounded by open
space, builders can charge 10% to 20% more for the homes.

The downside, Fuller says, is smaller lot sizes can make local planning boards
nervous, especially if they’re not familiar with the idea. Building houses closer
together is known as higher density, and it’s associated with cheaper housing.

“Density is something that people are afraid of. They think that if the lots are smaller
than the values are lower, and will change the values of the adjoining houses. I think it’s been proven many times over that the opposite is
the case.”

“As a concept its fine. But it doesn’t work everywhere, that’s the problem with it.”

That’s Isobel Olcott, who serves on the local and county planning boards in
her area of Harding, New Jersey. Her board recently rejected a conservation
design that would have preserved 91 acres.

She says some townships cherish rural character. Township officials think
they can better preserve that by restricting developments to large lots.

“If they don’t want to live in clusters, it doesn’t matter how much opens space surrounds
them, they will always opt for low-density zoning.”

But across the country open space is being marketed as an amenity and
people will pay for it – even in a bad housing market.

Shyam Cannon is with the real estate research firm Robert Charles Lesser. He
says demand for these types of developments is out-pacing supply 2 to 1.

“There’s a fundamental need for water, for air, for access open space and I think the
traditional development paradigm simply doesn’t satisfy those desires anymore.”

Cannon and others say today’s generation of homebuyers don’t want a typical
suburban neighborhood. Often they want a neighborhood that simulates a
rural experience – and they’re willing to pay for it.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

Related Links

House to Vote on Esa Reform Bill

The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote on a bill this week that would change the Endangered Species Act. Critics say if the bill is passed into law, it would severely restrict the government’s ability to protect endangered plants and animals. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports:

Transcript

The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote on a bill this week that would change the Endangered Species Act. Critics say if the bill is passed into law, it would severely restrict the government’s ability to protect endangered plants and animals. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports:


The bill’s sponsors say they’re trying to reduce the amount of conflict that comes up when the Endangered Species Act is enforced. They say developers face too many hurdles when they want to build on, log, or mine private land.


Jamie Rappaport Clark is a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She says the current law already allows most development projects to go forward.


“The Endangered Species Act has rarely stopped a project. In fact, less than one percent of the hundreds of thousands of projects that have been reviewed by the Fish and Wildlife Service have ever been stopped in their tracks.”


Today, landowners have to go through a permitting process before they’re allowed to develop land that might harm an endangered species. That requirement might change if the current version of the bill is eventually signed into law.


For the GLRC, I’m Mark Brush.

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