SuperUser posted on March 03, 2012 10:50
Researcher: bigger homes are a waste of space
Aleisha Orr
Date: February 27, 2012
Source: theage.com.au
A researcher is asking Perth home buyers whether they really need that extra guest room.
Perth is the focus of this research but it is relevant to homes all over Australia.
The Perth's love of big houses was bad for the environment according to Masters of Environmental Design researcher Dirima Cuthbert from the University of Western Australia.
Ms Cuthbert said many Perth houses were not energy efficient and building regulations did not encourage home builders to change their ways.
She said larger houses not only required more energy in the building process but in the energy use associated with a house on a day-to-day basis, like heating and cooling.
"We've been programmed to think you've 'arrived' if you get a big house, that it proves that you've done something good with your life," she said.
"You find a couple will get a four or five bedroom home with two to three bathrooms."
But she said all that space was not necessarily used very often.
"Usually when you weigh up the time use against the capacity it doesn't weigh up," Ms Cuthbert said.
She said most people spent a lot of their time away from their homes anyway, which meant there was even less reason to have so much space in their homes.
Ms Cuthbert suggested rather than buying bigger homes, people create multifunctional rooms.
"People tend to have a separate spare room and entertainment area, why not combine them," she said.
"In the old days the games room doubled as an overflow room for guests."
She also said that purpose built rooms such as entertainment rooms were difficult to re-purpose later if built with no windows like many are today.
Ms Cuthbert said her home, which accommodated herself, her husband and two children was 100sqm.
She suggested that up to 200sqm was adequate for a family of her size but pointed out that the average house in WA was 250sqm and many of those with houses that size would be singles or couples without children.
Ms Cuthbert said if people bought smaller houses, they may not find it so difficult to enter the property market.
In a survey of 400 Perth metropolitan homes, Ms Cuthbert found project home designs had changed little in 200 years, except to abandon traditional features that made them more energy efficient.
She said energy-saving verandas, deep eaves and high ceilings had all but disappeared in new housing developments.
In their place, bigger floor spaces, dark roofs, low ceilings and double-brick walls had made air conditioning a necessity.
"If people chose their houses like they choose their cars, we might see project homes − which now represent 80 per cent of new houses being built in Perth − develop new ways of reducing energy consumption," Ms Cuthbert said.
"Preliminary survey results suggested the answer was not encouraging people to do the right thing and reduce energy consumption for the sake of climate change but changing people's desires."