Defining and Designing Efficiency
When discussing the North Star Construction Square House designs we spend a lot of time on the subject of efficiency. Our efficiencies are broken into many different aspects starting with an efficient design process and ending with long term resource efficiency through low maintenance. When people speak of “an efficient car” they are usually speaking of the amount of fuel it uses to get from point A to point B. However, if the cost of the fuel efficient vehicle is high, it should be viewed under a different set of criteria and could very well be deemed inefficient in the overall picture when one considers how often you will have to drive to work in order to pay for the added expense of the vehicle. And in an even closer examination, if the vehicle is produced in a country where factory emissions go unchecked, (and where worker’s health and safety standards are low) then even if the vehicle is low cost and high mileage, it should very well be considered an incredibly inefficient vehicle when viewed through that broader microscope. In rethinking the housing industry, we feel that it was necessary to go back to square one in order to create a healthy and sustainable balance of efficiency.
The Design and Engineering Process
The most effective way to create efficiency within the design process is to do something once that can then be used over and over again. In working through the design of our Square Houses we set out to answer questions once and use those same answers to provide housing for many. Therefore, when we spend hours, or weeks, or sometimes months and years working through ways in which we can be efficient, we intend on using those same answers again and again. In custom home building, design answers are often produced once, never to be used again. Since our designs are part of a much larger, long term project, we are able to amortize the costs involved in design and engineering and spread them out through a decade of building. The costs generally associated with a custom home for design and engineering can easily amount to 20% of construction costs. Our design and engineering costs have been borne by us as a company investment and will be slowly recouped over the upcoming decade through numerous projects. We have not asked one single client to pay for the work alone. Instead, we have worked out a situation in which that cost is paid-down as a cooperative effort through many homes to come. Our design process is efficient because we work towards answers and designs that will be used again and again and the expense of those answers are costed-out through many projects to come.
The Building Process
Homes are expensive. Cars are cheap. But the reality is that a large amount of costly resources actually go into the production of a car while the resources used to build a home are mostly low cost, low tech elements. The reason why a car is so inexpensive is not because of the resources used, it is because of the method with which it is constructed. It is built on an assembly line. One is identical to the next. There are no custom vehicles built in assembly plants. The options available are clearly defined by the manufacturers; the paint color, the fabric for the seats, the type of radio. Those options do not, in any way, slow down the manufacturing process. Buyers are not allowed onto the production line to inspect how the seats are being installed and they are not asked for their approval as to where the radio will be placed. It is the process of the assembly line that allows all of us to purchase cars at the cost that we do. (There are companies which build custom cars. They cost about as much as a house).
At North Star Construction we have made the effort to refine our building processes to the point where we are, to the extent possible, creating a system of building that more closely replicates an assembly process than that of the standard construction jobsite. A large portion of workers on a standard housing jobsite in America do not actually know what they will be working on that day. Their supervisors, if they are good at what they do, know what they will be doing tomorrow and next week. But the workers are given tasks on day by day basis and in some cases on an hourly basis. This is incredibly inefficient. (Imagine the cost of your car if the workers at the plant did not know what they would be working on until they were told, that day, by their supervisor. Imagine a worker at BMW going to his supervisor and saying, “I’m done with that, what do you want me to do next?”)
We have written construction manuals for our homes, individual material cut sheets for each and every piece of material and each and every wall in our designs. Our materials are calculated to radically reduce or eliminate waste. Our crew is dedicated to the long term perfection of our processes and our subcontractors are equally involved in the design and production. By maintaining a long term goal with long term staff and subcontractors we have increased our company’s efficiency by training once instead of training many times. We have approached building homes as if we were a product manufacturer, but all of our structures are entirely site build homes. We consider that our designs are so efficiently pre-thought that they do not have to be pre-fab.
Efficiency of Space
The Square House is predominantly an open floor plan structure based upon our desire to produce as efficient a structure as possible. By designing an open floor plan we are able to create a space in which air migration from north to south is simple and where cross ventilation from east to west is the norm. By creating an open floor plan that still allows spaces to be divided, it allows the minimization of walls and hallways, both of which eat up usable square footage and usurp material and labor resources to do so.
Life Space
In the Square House, we have attempted to strike a balance between energy efficiency and livability. It is simple to create a box with no windows and one door which require little input of energy to heat or cool. But creating a living space, (a space in which we can live and be creative in our thinking, our actions, and our planning for the future) is what we have tried to build. We have maximized the efficiency of our wall envelope, roof structure, and sub-grade insulation so that we can open up as much wall space for glass as possible.
In creating glass wall sections, we lose high R-Value wall, so it is imperative that the balance we develop does not lean too heavily one way or the other. If we add more glass wall sections to our designs, the energy efficiency begins to tip away from being an efficient structure. If we decrease glass wall section and increase insulated wall area, our energy efficiency increases but the livability of the structure decreases significantly and the “small house” actually begins to feel like a “small house”. Although this would appear to be a figure that is incalculable, it can most certainly be seen in home sales. By designing a small home that does not feel like a small home, we have succeeded in creating a balance between energy efficiency and life space.
Efficiency through Not Doing
The most efficient way to perform a task, it could be argued, is to not do it at all. And in the discussion of maintenance, clearly the most efficient form of maintenance is the task that is not required. Our structures are designed to expose as little to the harsh world as possible. By radically decreasing the amount of wall space (see “Why we build Square” at http://www.squarehouseinfo2.blogspot.com/), we have made great progress before leaving the drawing board. But our efforts don’t end there. The materials we expose to the outside world are galvanized steel, anodized aluminum, glass, steel, synthetic stucco, concrete, butyl seals, and two painted steel doors and frames. That’s it. So when you don’t have to buy the gas to not drive to the hardware store to not buy that replacement wood door or replacement roofing material, then we have gone a long way to decreasing your impact on the environment over the years to come.
Entropy is the rule. The Universe is very, very good at taking things which exist at a higher order and reducing them to a lower order, rapidly and without prejudice. We are, however, doing our best to make sure it's not your home.
A Comprehensive Approach
We have made efforts to incorporate our concepts of efficiency into every aspect of the construction process regarding the Square House. Our approach has not been to focus solely upon one element and win that battle wholesale while losing others. Instead, we have entered the endeavor with a comprehensive approach. We have tried to view every stage through the same lens in an effort to succeed on a more grand scale.
We hope you will join us in this effort as we make more progress each year towards building the community, our company, your home.
For a tour of one of the existing Square Houses, please contact us at 1-505-660-2720
or email us at info@nscnm.com
We welcome your questions and look forward to building a Square House for you!
We are producing more info-blogs to help explain what we do and why. More will be appearing weekly so please check back at the home page of our website at http://www.nscnm.com/ for more links.
Thanks for your interest.
When discussing the North Star Construction Square House designs we spend a lot of time on the subject of efficiency. Our efficiencies are broken into many different aspects starting with an efficient design process and ending with long term resource efficiency through low maintenance. When people speak of “an efficient car” they are usually speaking of the amount of fuel it uses to get from point A to point B. However, if the cost of the fuel efficient vehicle is high, it should be viewed under a different set of criteria and could very well be deemed inefficient in the overall picture when one considers how often you will have to drive to work in order to pay for the added expense of the vehicle. And in an even closer examination, if the vehicle is produced in a country where factory emissions go unchecked, (and where worker’s health and safety standards are low) then even if the vehicle is low cost and high mileage, it should very well be considered an incredibly inefficient vehicle when viewed through that broader microscope. In rethinking the housing industry, we feel that it was necessary to go back to square one in order to create a healthy and sustainable balance of efficiency.
The Design and Engineering Process
The most effective way to create efficiency within the design process is to do something once that can then be used over and over again. In working through the design of our Square Houses we set out to answer questions once and use those same answers to provide housing for many. Therefore, when we spend hours, or weeks, or sometimes months and years working through ways in which we can be efficient, we intend on using those same answers again and again. In custom home building, design answers are often produced once, never to be used again. Since our designs are part of a much larger, long term project, we are able to amortize the costs involved in design and engineering and spread them out through a decade of building. The costs generally associated with a custom home for design and engineering can easily amount to 20% of construction costs. Our design and engineering costs have been borne by us as a company investment and will be slowly recouped over the upcoming decade through numerous projects. We have not asked one single client to pay for the work alone. Instead, we have worked out a situation in which that cost is paid-down as a cooperative effort through many homes to come. Our design process is efficient because we work towards answers and designs that will be used again and again and the expense of those answers are costed-out through many projects to come.
The Building Process
Homes are expensive. Cars are cheap. But the reality is that a large amount of costly resources actually go into the production of a car while the resources used to build a home are mostly low cost, low tech elements. The reason why a car is so inexpensive is not because of the resources used, it is because of the method with which it is constructed. It is built on an assembly line. One is identical to the next. There are no custom vehicles built in assembly plants. The options available are clearly defined by the manufacturers; the paint color, the fabric for the seats, the type of radio. Those options do not, in any way, slow down the manufacturing process. Buyers are not allowed onto the production line to inspect how the seats are being installed and they are not asked for their approval as to where the radio will be placed. It is the process of the assembly line that allows all of us to purchase cars at the cost that we do. (There are companies which build custom cars. They cost about as much as a house).
At North Star Construction we have made the effort to refine our building processes to the point where we are, to the extent possible, creating a system of building that more closely replicates an assembly process than that of the standard construction jobsite. A large portion of workers on a standard housing jobsite in America do not actually know what they will be working on that day. Their supervisors, if they are good at what they do, know what they will be doing tomorrow and next week. But the workers are given tasks on day by day basis and in some cases on an hourly basis. This is incredibly inefficient. (Imagine the cost of your car if the workers at the plant did not know what they would be working on until they were told, that day, by their supervisor. Imagine a worker at BMW going to his supervisor and saying, “I’m done with that, what do you want me to do next?”)
We have written construction manuals for our homes, individual material cut sheets for each and every piece of material and each and every wall in our designs. Our materials are calculated to radically reduce or eliminate waste. Our crew is dedicated to the long term perfection of our processes and our subcontractors are equally involved in the design and production. By maintaining a long term goal with long term staff and subcontractors we have increased our company’s efficiency by training once instead of training many times. We have approached building homes as if we were a product manufacturer, but all of our structures are entirely site build homes. We consider that our designs are so efficiently pre-thought that they do not have to be pre-fab.
Efficiency of Space
The Square House is predominantly an open floor plan structure based upon our desire to produce as efficient a structure as possible. By designing an open floor plan we are able to create a space in which air migration from north to south is simple and where cross ventilation from east to west is the norm. By creating an open floor plan that still allows spaces to be divided, it allows the minimization of walls and hallways, both of which eat up usable square footage and usurp material and labor resources to do so.
Life Space
In the Square House, we have attempted to strike a balance between energy efficiency and livability. It is simple to create a box with no windows and one door which require little input of energy to heat or cool. But creating a living space, (a space in which we can live and be creative in our thinking, our actions, and our planning for the future) is what we have tried to build. We have maximized the efficiency of our wall envelope, roof structure, and sub-grade insulation so that we can open up as much wall space for glass as possible.
In creating glass wall sections, we lose high R-Value wall, so it is imperative that the balance we develop does not lean too heavily one way or the other. If we add more glass wall sections to our designs, the energy efficiency begins to tip away from being an efficient structure. If we decrease glass wall section and increase insulated wall area, our energy efficiency increases but the livability of the structure decreases significantly and the “small house” actually begins to feel like a “small house”. Although this would appear to be a figure that is incalculable, it can most certainly be seen in home sales. By designing a small home that does not feel like a small home, we have succeeded in creating a balance between energy efficiency and life space.Efficiency through Not Doing
The most efficient way to perform a task, it could be argued, is to not do it at all. And in the discussion of maintenance, clearly the most efficient form of maintenance is the task that is not required. Our structures are designed to expose as little to the harsh world as possible. By radically decreasing the amount of wall space (see “Why we build Square” at http://www.squarehouseinfo2.blogspot.com/), we have made great progress before leaving the drawing board. But our efforts don’t end there. The materials we expose to the outside world are galvanized steel, anodized aluminum, glass, steel, synthetic stucco, concrete, butyl seals, and two painted steel doors and frames. That’s it. So when you don’t have to buy the gas to not drive to the hardware store to not buy that replacement wood door or replacement roofing material, then we have gone a long way to decreasing your impact on the environment over the years to come.
Entropy is the rule. The Universe is very, very good at taking things which exist at a higher order and reducing them to a lower order, rapidly and without prejudice. We are, however, doing our best to make sure it's not your home.
A Comprehensive Approach
We have made efforts to incorporate our concepts of efficiency into every aspect of the construction process regarding the Square House. Our approach has not been to focus solely upon one element and win that battle wholesale while losing others. Instead, we have entered the endeavor with a comprehensive approach. We have tried to view every stage through the same lens in an effort to succeed on a more grand scale.
We hope you will join us in this effort as we make more progress each year towards building the community, our company, your home.
For a tour of one of the existing Square Houses, please contact us at 1-505-660-2720
or email us at info@nscnm.com
We welcome your questions and look forward to building a Square House for you!
We are producing more info-blogs to help explain what we do and why. More will be appearing weekly so please check back at the home page of our website at http://www.nscnm.com/ for more links.
Thanks for your interest.
