A new way to look at being "green"

I think there is some anti green sentiment out there, the term has become so overused that its meaning is being very diluted. I would like to have a better term. Sustainable could work. I would interpret Sustainable as practices that stretch our resources, protect our enviorment, enhance our lives, increase the livabltliy of a project.

Probably the single most important item in making a project sustainable, in my opinion, is to build a structure that lasts and that people want to live in. Another very important way to build sustainably is to not build overly large structures. Now, everyone has a different definition of "not overly large", and I don't want to say a retired couple shouldn't build a 3000 or 4000 sq ft house, when they could comfortably live in 1600 to 2000 sq ft. While there may only be two people living in the house, they very likely will have the kids, grand kids, and other visitors. One could look at what the energy (carbon?) foorprint of the house to see how compatable the structure is with our sustainable ideal. I like the methods Energy Star uses for this over LEED. For one thing the cost of Energy Star certification is much less than LEED and therefore will be more likely to be considered for certification.

Another idea could be to look at the total floor area vs. the potential number of habitants. The above retired couple may build a 3000 sq ft house when they could get by on 1600 sq ft, but they will not be the last inhabitants of the house. In fact we all hope/expect the timber frame houses we build to last for hundreds of years, and in the life of the house it will see several, even many, different families enjoying it.

If we take the total number of bedrooms x1, and add 1 to give us a reasonable number of souls the house could sustain and divide the square footage of the house by that number it gives us a number (the Habitant Ratio, or HR) that we can easlily use to compare one house to another. It would look something like this: 3000 sq ft / (4x1) + 1 =600, thus the HR for the above example would be 600.

With this formula we could compare the efficiency/sustainabiliy of different size houses to each other on the basis of how much resources they use per person the house is likely to support. Good design (who defines good design?) plays an important role in all this, of course. Good design in energy useage is measurable. Good design is layout is more subjective. In fact we could take the yearly energy comsumption, as determined by the Energy Star certification, divide that by the number of souls determined above (5 in this case), to give us an energy per habitant per year, and multiply that by the Habitant Ratio to give us a new number.

Some may say who needs even 3000 sq ft house, but not all 3000 sq ft houses are equal, of course. If the 3000 sq ft included a basement or walk-out basement, and is two story above, the energy footprint, and the resources used to build, will be less than say, a 3000 sq ft ranch on a crawl space, As we know, building a basement to replace a crawl space is relatively inexpensive and relatively energy efficient when using ICFs, for example.

Comments?