When a 30-year veteran of the property and real estate industry Kevin Doodney thought about the housing affordability problem in Australia, he knew there had to be a solution. The Smarter Small Homeā¢ is the affordable concept home that was the result of his vision ā and chutzpah.
The Rich History of Smarter Small Home
While Doodney was the catalyst for the project, the result is the product of an entire team. Spearheading the design smarts was designer Brett Black low. Doodney and Black low had met 15 years before and had since collaborated on a number of projects.
The pair agreed that their goal was to build an affordable home, defined as one costing around $300,000 for house and land package. With land often representing at least half the total cost of a home and land package, they knew a small lot size was crucial. They decided on a lot size of 10 meters by 30 meters; the challenge then was to design a livable, sustainable and affordable home on it.
The Smarter Small Home was the result.
The Smarter Small Home Characteristics
Livable
It’s livable because the double-story construction minimizes the building footprint without sacrificing inside living area and leaving a sizable yard for outdoor entertaining and activities. Inside, no space is wasted and many do ādouble duty.’
Sustainable
The Smarter Small Home is also sustainable ā it has a 5.5-star energy rating, uses a range of low-embodied-energy materials and smart power-saving devices to minimize homeownersā running costs.
In addition, James Hardie asked Climate Friendly* to measure the carbon footprint of The Smarter Small Home. It found that significantly less CO2 was used to manufacture the materials used in the home, as well as to actually construct it, than that in a traditionally built home. Climate Friendly also found that the energy intensity was much lower than in a traditionally built home.
Very affordable
However, there are other homes that are livable and sustainable. The heart of the Smarter Small Home is its affordability. Here are the key ingredients to cost-effective construction that The Smarter Small Home embodies.
Design to fit, not cut to fit
Black low went looking for a number of key economical materials first, and then designed the structure of the house and floor plate around them. “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,” Black low says.
Black low feels this is a recipe for adding all sorts of costs that arenāt immediately obvious into a building because the designer or builder has to make the structure work. His approach means the design of rooms, heights and walls are to the size of materials available and any offcuts that are generated are re-used elsewhere in the design. This also helps minimize waste.
Black low feels this is a recipe for adding all sorts of costs that arenāt immediately obvious into a building because the designer or builder has to make the structure work. His approach means the design of rooms, heights and walls are to the size of materials available and any offcuts that are generated are re-used elsewhere in the design. This also helps minimize waste.
Minimize installation steps, and multiple trades Often, time is money, which means maximizing the speed of construction. A key way to achieve this is to select products that can be installed and simply finished; ones that involve the least number of construction layers.
Continuation
For example, Black low chose an all-in-one BondorĀ® sandwich panel for the roof, which meant the roof was fully installed in half a day. āOne product turns up to the site,ā he says. āWhen itās finished, we have our roof structure, insulation, sheeting, ceiling structure, and finished ceiling. Instead of having a scaffold up for two or three weeks, itās all done in half a day.ā
The sub-floor is another area where layers were reduced. Twenty-two steel screw-in piers were used instead of brick piers and joists or the traditional slab on the ground. āWhile screw-in piers have been around for ages, hardly anyone uses them,ā Black low says. āThe beauty of them is that we donāt have to come out and make a flat area and we donāt have to dig or pour footings and box up the slab. We just screw these things into the ground, we put the posts on that afternoon, and on day two we start installing the floor framing.ā
āMany of James Hardieās products are sheet products, and so a carpenter can cover an area of three square meters in 10 minutes. So we’ve chosen products that cover a big bit of area when they go on,” Black low says. After installation, they usually need to be painted.
Choose highly flexible cladding to maximize repeatability
A key driver of the affordability of development versus that of a single home is building the same floor plan. “When we’re doing this we want to make the outside of these homes look as different as possible, while still being essentially the same,” says Black low.
āThe thing Iād say about these [James HardieĀ®] products is that you can give me one standard flat sheet-like HardieFlexā¢, and I can give you five or six different finishes. It can be done without texturing or anything like that, but through using vertical or horizontal battens, or smooth ones or really protruding ones. These products just have a bucket load of flexibility at a really affordable price,ā he says.
After researching exterior cladding materials, Black low and the team concluded that there is ānothing that can touch a few of the James Hardie products price-wise.”
Source: The Small Smarter Homeā¢ Case Book by James Hardie