Let’s make sustainability very, very boring

Sustainable practices in housing have been branded as a luxury, rather than a necessity.

Over the last decade, passive construction practices somehow emerged as an amenity, not a requirement. Responsibly-sourced, local materials are an add-on option, not the default.

The solar, wind, and geothermal industries are, inexplicably, not spending fortunes in PR dollars to fight against being labeled as “alternative” instead of “responsible” or “standard”?

Sustainable housing has a huge branding problem.

Even as you’re reading this, you probably have one of two visions of a sustainable home designer. The first? Crunchy. Maybe patchouli-doused and profit-averse. Fooling around with prototypes and more concerned with experimental housing concepts than appealing to real-world market requirements. The second is more cynical. A greenwashing, development swash-buckler. Converting fears of a bleak future into short-term gains.

Sustainability is the pitch, not the practice.

But, there’s a common-sense middle ground. That’s where HUTS lives.

At HUTS, we have had the benefit of receiving project inquiries from (and listening to) tens of thousands of people who don’t see sustainability as an extra amenity, but as a foregone conclusion:

“I want a smaller house, but not tiny.”

“I don’t care about receiving capital-P Passive House designations, but I want to do way, way better than the code requires.”

“Why would my building materials get shipped across time zones?”

“I don’t want to waste energy on a leaky house.”

“How can I spend less on construction and reduce my monthly heating and cooling bills?”

“I want a new house that doesn’t suck.”

As it turns out, developers are thinking about sustainability all wrong.

It’s not a luxury add-on.

It’s not a second wall oven, or a Peloton room, or a sauna.

It’s not an aesthetic or a bullet point in a marketing brochure.

It’s also not a religion, marked by restrictive practices.

You don’t need to shower for 30 seconds, or live with chickens pecking around the backyard, or outfit your house with DIY Rube-Goldbergian contraptions to source energy.

I’m incredibly biased, but I think you need to do what we do at HUTS.

You need to build a house that’s a little smaller than you think you need (with smarter space planning). Less material, equals less shipping, equals less waste, equals less pointless square footage to heat, to cool, and to manage.

You need to take advantage of the natural conditions of your lot (topography, sun path, prevailing wind direction, weather patterns). The sun is pretty good at dictating our environmental conditions, and it’s better to work with it than against it.

You need to use materials that are more local than not.

You need to have tighter floor, wall, and roof assemblies specified.

You need to consider solar, geothermal, and other readily-available, battle-tested systems (there are so many subsidies to help finance it).

When faced with the choice, go for electric over fossil fuel appliances and mechanical systems.

We need to treat sustainable practices in housing not as a shiny new thing. But as the boring thing to do. The established thing to do. The obvious thing to do.

Here’s our collective task for the week: Let’s think about common sense sustainable practices as the standard. Let’s think about fossil fuels, giant empty houses and shitty materials as the “alternative.”