Q: Describe the home — what is it?
A: The Smarter Small Home™ is best described as an affordable, sustainable and liveable concept home. Builders can build the current design with a number of different facade options. The concept can also be tweaked to suit different lot sizes and configurations.
Q: What is the home made of (materials)?
A: A range of materials, chosen for their fast installation and environmental attributes, are used in The Smarter Small Home™. For example, the designer, Brett Blacklow, says that after researching exterior cladding materials, he and the team concluded that there is “nothing that can touch a few of the James Hardie products price-wise”.
He also says that then when he found that paint companies Wattyl and Taubmans provide 15-year paint warranties for certain paints used on products like Scyon™ Linea™ weatherboard and Scyon™ Stria™ cladding, he thought: “This is sensational”.
Scyon™ Stria™ and Axon™ cladding, Axent™ trim, Linea™ weatherboard and Secura™ interior flooring, as well as HardiFlex® sheets, HardiColor®, compressed for sunhoods and PineRidge® lining in the walk-in robes, were some of the materials used in the home.
Q: How does the home deliver affordability?
A: A small lot, small house, smart choice of materials and an efficient construction method were the key ingredients.
As the cost of land is often at least half the cost of a total house and land package, both Blacklow and project instigator Kevin Doodney knew that to deliver an affordable housing product, they needed to make the land size small.
They created a lot 10m wide by 30m long, which meant the home really had to be a two-storey house. “Generally doing a three-bedroom, two-storey house isn’t a wise decision,” Blacklow says. “There’s more surface area on the outside of the house, so there’s more scaffolding and it will take longer and cost more money [than a single-storey home].” However, the land saving is so significant, Blacklow and Doodney felt that with some thoughtful design, the additional costs would be offset.
Q: Why do you say the home is smarter?
A: Blacklow says that careful product selection helped claw back costs — particularly when running and maintenance costs were thrown into the mix. While the actual sale price of the home was the first key thing to get right, it was also important to ensure lower life cycle costs as well.
In many cases, time is money, so the speed of construction also drove their product decisions. The team was always thinking of products that could be installed and simply finished — ones that involved the least number of construction layers. They also tried to design the structure of the house and the floor plate around the limitations of the economical materials, Blacklow says. “Typically, no-one approaches it like that. The builder or designer comes up with a floor plan and then he works out how to make it stand up.”
Blacklow feels this is a recipe for adding all sorts of costs that aren’t immediately obvious into a building, because the designer or builder has to make the structure work. He says that with his approach “you can pare down the costs”.
Q: How affordable is it?
A: Blacklow, who developed a costing model while working as a designer of volume-built homes, added up the bill to construct The Smarter Small Home™ and came to a total of just over $140,000, including GST.
He then calculated the cost to build the home, substituting the James Hardie products with timber weatherboards and flat sheet ply cladding. He then did another calculation, substituting the piers with an ‘M’ class concrete slab on flat ground, brick veneer walls instead of lightweight cladding, and a pitched concrete tiled roof using standard roof trusses. The total costs were $150,808 and $166,261 respectively, including GST.*
Q: Is the home environmentally friendly? If so, how?
A: Blacklow designed the home using low embodied energy materials where possible, minimising waste as well as running and maintenance costs. To assess how The Smarter Small Home™ compared to the average, James Hardie asked Climate Friendly to measure its carbon footprint.
It found that about 139 tonnes of CO2 were used to manufacture the materials used in the home as well as to actually construct it. That works out at about 1.16 tonnes of CO2 per sqm. This compares to almost 195 tonnes or 1.62 tonnes per sqm of CO2 for a traditionally built home — calculated by modelling The Smarter Small Home™ design but with a concrete slab, brick veneer and concrete roof tiles.
Climate Friendly also compared its analysis of the energy intensity for The Smarter Small Home™ (3,721 MJ/sqm [megajoules per sqm])to CSIRO data that indicates that the average energy intensity for an energy intensive house is approximately 5,500 MJ/sqm, while the average energy intensity for a low energy intensive house is approximately 4,500 MJ/sqm.**
Other facts:
*As with any costing analysis of this kind, the primary intent is to illustrate in broad terms relative costs between different construction methods. Actual costs would depend on many factors, including individual building firms’ designs, locations and supply agreements.
**James Hardie has offset the carbon produced in the construction of The Smarter Small Home™ by supporting the GFL Windfarm, a 23.1 MW renewable energy windfarm in Gudhepanchgani in the state of Maharashtra, India. Operational from April 2007, the wind farm is made up of 14 wind turbines each capable of generating 1.65 MW of energy and displacing 51,618 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
Further information can be obtained at www.smartersmallhome.com.au
