Efficency in homes.

There is a LOT of lip service on tv and in the media today about "home efficiency". How to design a home or building to be more efficient in heat and cooling, lighting, etc. And that is exactly what this is, lip service. They have not said one thing that is any different from what I have in my Architect and home design and energy books I have in my library from the 60's and 70's. They talk about long eaves, thermal mass, and passive cooling. yet it's impossible to buy such a home. Builders flat out refuse to build these homes because they cant get maximum profits. The typical cookie cutter home that everyone owns is a very bad design. No design to siting the home on the lot, nothing to take advantage of sunlight on the south side. I have even seen homes that have the bulk of their windows on the northern exposure. On top of that the massive lack of skylights in homes, poor thermal design, money spent on cabinets, real wool carpet, and marble counters instead of triple pane windows and real high efficiency HVAC.

But you are not stuck with the really poor engineering and design of your smaller home. Smaller homes take to improvements better than the 2900-8600sq foot mcMansion. The typical 1000sq foot bungalow will enjoy major efficiency improvements when insulation is improved. replacing all the windows with efficient ones is far cheaper for a larger gain. adding the new technology skylights on single level smaller homes is easier as fewer are needed, the roof to ceiling distance is less, and the roof pitch is typically lower. Starting with Skylights. The tube type skylight is very energy efficient and will bring a a LOT of light to a dark hallway or room. Smaller homes having less dark areas can make up a lot of light fill with 1 to 3 of these tube skylights. Doubling the insulation in the home would cost less than $1200.00 and save that much easily over a single season. and upgrading the windows, when you have only 10-15 of them instead of 20-30 windows is significantly less with a larger gain. Most smaller homes and older condos are built on a budget. Therefore any improvement in insulation and windows is typically a HUGE improvement.

without spending a HUGE amount of money you cant fix the short or non existent eaves or add in a thermal mass or add more windows to the south wall. but there ARE things you can do to improve your current home. Even apartment dwellers can do things to improve. Put up the clear window plastic is a very large improvement. More expensive is to have plexi-glass cut to fit in the window openings and using rubber seals, but still very effective. If you have south facing windows that are having a problem letting a lot of heat in during the summer, removable mirrorized window tint will make a huge difference in reflecting that light and heat back away from the inside of the home.

Smaller Storage.

In search of better storage in the bedroom My wife and I started brainstorming in the Ikea catalog. WE found that with a little bit of work and expense we can build a storage bed for far cheaper than one could be bought. We also discovered that the tall wardrobes give us far more storage in the bedroom than standard dressers would. 2 of the nearly 8 foot tall wardrobes and a little ingenuity gives us nearly 3X the storage a pair of standard dressers will in the bedroom... This is a HUGE benefit in a much smaller bedroom. We are used to having a 15X25 bedroom with closet. Moving to a far smaller 10X15 bedroom presents storage issues. Without a dresser to set a TV on, you can bolt a articulating arm to the side of the wardrobe and mount the TV to that which allows it to be off the ground and can easily be moved out of the way a smallish 27"-32" LCD mounted high on the wardrobe this way would be very comfortable to watch.

Another benefit of making your own storage bed is you can do things differently... as seen in the image above, these clever people did the same thing I am talking about. at ikea hacker this bedroom adds a lot more storage to the bedroom with a small increase in height and no special woodworking abilities. They simply combined 2 bed frames and 2 shelving units.


In a smaller space it's VERY important for everything to do double or even triple duty. your bed and everything in your bedroom should store things or use all the space you have to the maximum it can.

OPINION: 2009 is the year of smaller living!

End of a year, This is my opinion piece of things to come.

2009 we will see more and more people flocking to smaller homes. People will embrace the under 1000 sq foot living space for their family and shun the huge McMansion and it's huge expenses. Families will build because of being closer physically. when the kids cant be down in the game room all the time playing games on the 108" plasma while your wife is upstairs in the bedroom watching her shows and you are in the den ignoring everyone else... you don't get a family connection. If everyone is within a few feet of each other, you have to interact. Interaction is good. Embrace this. Honestly, reducing to get rid of stuff means also getting rid of your kids TV, your bedroom TV, your kitchen TV, the bathroom TV, the laundry room TV, the Closet TV, and the garage TV. One TV that's it. if you FORCE everyone to be together for TV you build bonds. plus getting rid of all that stuff will make you feel better and probably cut your electric bill by $100 a month. Reclaim the bedroom as a bedroom. It's not your kids dorm room, don't let them do that and use it as a way of getting away from you. Don't use yours as a way to ignore your family and the house. I see these changes making people happy. I see an explosion of small business start-ups because of it.

Technology will continue to change but DRM and content police will hamper it severely, things we should have in our home will not exist because the great grandson of some dead director deserves to not work and live off great grandpa's work.

HDTV for a smaller space.

If you are aiming for a smaller space, you can take advantage of smaller HDTV sets. If you sit within 6 feet of the TV set a 42" plasma or LCD will be almost too big. a 37" set will be just about right. If you plan on sitting 6-8 feet away a 42" will be just right and if you can sit from 8-10 feet away, then you dont live in a small home, you live in a huge home. Also dont worry about 1080p versus 720p. unless you sit really close to the set you really will not notice. Plasma TV's are best for bright rooms with lots of windows, LCD's are best for darker rooms with some ambient light.

Either way, you can get it wall mounted to stave lots of space, or a custom cabinet that mounts it on the face and you can swing it out of the way for storage behind the set. I have seen IKEA book shelves modified to have the plasma tv mounted on the front and a swing arm to swing the tv like a door to access the storage behind it.

If TV is not a centeral part of your life, then a smaller set is always a good choice. a 32" set in a smaller living room is a very good choice and can fit on some bookshelves. LCD sets create less heat.

Finally, when you go shopping for a set turn up the volume. Listen to the set to see if it sounds good if you do not want the expense and space taken for a surround sound setup. Some great looking set's from LG and Sony sound horrible as they have very tiny speakers.

TV Show Review: Small Space, Big Style

I set my MythTV to record a new show out there on HGTV. It's called Small Space, Big Style. and it's covering decorating and design in real small spaces. This is not your typical HGTV show where they call a home with 1800sq foot, "A very small home"... They showcased a 450 sq. foot apartment and other real small living spaces. This show is realistic! Some fantastic ideas and great design examples.... Although I seem to notice a trend... A Lot of the people they are choosing are incredibly "quirky" and a bit out there. I have watched over 3 of the episodes already and have enjoyed every one of them, finding that I have been rewinding to rewatch a part about a item over and over to get more info about how they did that change or storage, etc....

My wife commented and said.... Are you going back to your Christopher Lowe phase again? I laughed, but wondered if the beer I was drinking would stain the cashmere sweater I just got :-)

Hey manly men can enjoy design!

Smaller Winter stuff: Cleaning out the closets.

I went looking in our vacuum bags that are stacked in the top of the hall closet for my ski mask. It's 16 degreesF out and I needed to snow-blow the driveway. After opening the last bag, I counted 6 winter coats, 32 pairs of gloves, 18 scarves.... the list went on and the living room is full of stuff. Go through your winter coats and stuff and pare it down a lot. take the rest to your local homeless shelter so that the unfortunate can have something warm to wear this winter.

I really do not need 6 winter coats. I need 2. and that really is a want and not a need.

Now my wife will not part with her 8 coats... but that's another story....

how automation makes smaller living bigger. the PVR

Instead of having 3 big cable boxes at home to record the TV shows, I have it all tucked away in a nice cabinet/technology rack. I also for-go the cable boxes and use a computer running a system called "MYTHTV" that allows me to record what I want and save it for me to watch later, watch on my laptop/ipod/etc... we eliminated the TV in the bedrooms because the mythtv can stream to the laptops to watch TV and recordings there. sick in bed? grab the laptop and watch live tv you can pause, or watch your recordings. in the kitchen? set the laptop down and catch your food tv shows as you cook. It eliminated a lot of equipment and makes TV do what we want instead of doing what it wants.

A mythtv is a high end solution. it takes lots of computer skill and is more expensive than most solutions. but it's the most usable. Any skilled computer shop can build you one for well under $800.00 with 2-3 tuner cards in it by using a easy to install setup called Mythbuntu..

It's not a toaster. it's a complex computer. But it made a HUGE difference in my home. It does things we need that TiVO can not do.