RE: [GBlist] house thoughts

["Tawney, Patricia - PNG-1" <pjtawney@bpa.gov>]

What about not worrying about what we have, but what we might expect?  What
are the resources that the world has available on an average day and what
would be our share (based on an average world population).  Whatever our
share is - we could then determine what size of home you might build with
such a share.  Share of wood, share of metal, share of paper, share of stone
etc. that are produced everyday.  Bet even the smallest of our homes are
using far in excess of our share of the world produce.  Especially when I
include the place I work, the malls I shop in, the roads I drive on etc.
But when you understand this number and you can then appreciate that for
every extra piece I use up, someone else goes without.  We deal everyday in
our work with the technical choices, we often over look the human impact
implications of those choices.  Anyone have these numbers?  What's my share?
How much am I really using.  How much should I give back?

-----Original Message-----
From: clark ellison [mailto:cellison1@austin.rr.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 11:43 AM
To: Green Building
Subject: Re: [GBlist] house thoughts


 Here in Texas there are many illegal Mexican immigrants and legal
Vietnamese immigrants living tightly packed into small quarters. What others
like this are here I do not know, these I am in contact with. These people
are not counted as they are not wanting to be seen and/or are not that
trustful of governments. Any study would be flawed with out counting these
individuals.
 How do we count the space used by transients? One night in the shelter, a
night in a cardboard box or a night under the stars? How is the footage
being calculated for homes? Some of our list "reports" lately are including
garages and gardens and home office spaces as living spaces. In turn if I
live with my wife in a one hundred square foot building but work in a
fifty-thousand square foot warehouse with four other people do we count my
share of the "office space" of ten thousand square feet? Do we add the
square footage of the twenty story downtown bank my wife works in? Do we
count their parking garage or is that only if she uses the garage?
 The 14K sq ft house with three kitchens, list areas that should not be
counted anymore that a single family home with two offices should count the
offices, unless we want to add square footage of my before mentioned
ridicules statements.
 Parameters are needed for this so each of us actually understands what the
other is saying.
 Builders caculate square footage different that the tax people do and
apparently we have many more different ways on this list.
      Just trying to get it all on the same page,
                            Clark



> John Salmen's recent post notes an average US (?) house size of about 2500
> SF.  I assume this is an average for single-family homes only, and does
not
> factor in people living in apartments?
>
> I would be curious to know what the average living space is in the US (and
> other countries), factoring in all modes of dwelling from apartments to
> single-family.  (Space per household as well as space per person.)  Does
> anyone have figures on this, or know good sources for this kind of
information?




______________________________________________________________________
This greenbuilding dialogue is sponsored by REPP/CREST, creator of
Solstice http://www.crest.org, and BuildingGreen, Inc., publisher of
Environmental Building News and GreenSpec http://www.BuildingGreen.com
______________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________
This greenbuilding dialogue is sponsored by REPP/CREST, creator of
Solstice http://www.crest.org, and BuildingGreen, Inc., publisher of
Environmental Building News and GreenSpec http://www.BuildingGreen.com
______________________________________________________________________