{"id":14682,"date":"2012-08-14T12:12:31","date_gmt":"2012-08-14T18:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress-367309-1145705.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=14682"},"modified":"2012-08-14T12:12:31","modified_gmt":"2012-08-14T18:12:31","slug":"the-most-energy-efficient-home-is-small-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/the-most-energy-efficient-home-is-small-right\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Energy Efficient Home is Small… Right?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n Recently, I overheard a two people arguing about the relative efficiency of an old, small, inefficient, cold climate home in the Northeast versus a newly constructed large Southern California home using energy efficient methods<\/a>. At first I guessed that because of the house size, the NE home would be hard to beat out, but then I realized that I was unsure. So I decided to do some back of the envelope<\/a> math.<\/p>\n To frame the context with some kind of starting point variables, I used a home from La Costa Life<\/a>, an upscale development in California, vs a dilapidated home in the Northeast. \u00a0Basically, I\u2019m going to use the best efficiency in the new home and the worst possible in the small NE home in any instance that is unknown (which is basically all of them). \u00a0I\u2019ll be making plenty of assumptions along the way, so hold on to your seats, and know that the conclusions would likely shift with different assumptions. \u00a0Based on my reading, I\u2019ll assume that a small Northeastern home uses 50-60% of it energy on heating, but has roughly half the square footage.<\/p>\n The best data I found was from the US Energy Information Administration. \u00a0Every four years they conduct the Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) and compile the results into reports<\/a>. \u00a0There are a lot of categories broken down, but not really enough to accurately compare the Large SoCo home and the Small Northeast home. \u00a0The main issue is that it doesn\u2019t break the energy usage into categories, just how many homes use certain types of heating (natural gas, electric, etc). \u00a0Then energy usage is lumped into averages based on things like year of construction, income level, and square footage.<\/p>\n Although they didn\u2019t directly answer the questions I had, they did get closer than anything else I found, and gave a few interesting takeaway generalizations:<\/p>\n When I crunched the numbers I found that, even after accounting for the fact that people with more income use more energy, their was a sizable difference in energy consumption between the two homes… and not the kind of difference you might assume:<\/p>\n Usage Per Household in Mil. of BTU<\/p>\n Those reduced heating costs do quite a bit! \u00a0The smaller house comparison from the Northeeast to Southern California used nearly 30% less energy<\/strong>. \u00a0Even the large SoCo house was still about 15% more efficient<\/strong> than the small NE home to maintain. \u00a0Note that I say to maintain, because if we\u2019re including initial energy inputs for the houses, then the small house is going to have a bit of a buffer zone in energy usage.<\/p>\n However, all things being equal, it looks like the West Coast is the place to be to use less energy. \u00a0To support that point, in 2005, the West Coast had the lowest emissions<\/a> per capita because of its higher usage of clean energy sources. \u00a0Looks like they have a win-win there.<\/p>\n So, if you\u2019re going to live in a large home, move to California. \u00a0It\u2019s the best place in the US to do it as ecologically as possible. Just keep in mind that a large house is still not necessarily the greenest choice: the LEED for Homes rating system<\/a>, for instance,\u00a0makes any three bedroom house over 1900 square feet increasingly more difficult to qualify for its certification.<\/p>\n Of course there are dozens of assumptions here. Passive solar homes, geothermal heating, and even insulated curtains would complicate the calculations. But it does give me food for thought, and my original assumptions were wrong in this case. It definitly underscores the importance of insulating well, as that rustic cabin in the snow with single pane windows might be using more energy than an Orange County luxury home!<\/p>\n Warren Howe is a freelance writer living in San Diego. He lives in a small house that he shares with roommates, so he gets the best of both worlds ecowise.<\/em><\/p>\n Image credit:<\/strong> La Costa Life. Used with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A small, older home in the Northeastern United States will inevitably be more energy efficient than a newer, larger one in Southern California, right? Not necessarily…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":14742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,7],"tags":[156,5926,3810,5927,5928,5929],"yoast_head":"\n\n
\n
\n
\n
\n<\/strong><\/strong>The Breakdown on Household Energy Use<\/h3>\n\n