SWEATING THE DETAIL 3: more micro-tricks for making smaller homes work better.
In the quest to slash construction carbon the level of required change is so great that we need to pull out all the stops. Here are a few more tips on details to help smaller buildings work well. They aren’t game changers in their own right, and some improve utility rather than actually make things smaller (e.g. the study door), but they are all steps in the right direction.
Most of the micro-tricks also help move the quest for housing affordability in the right direction too, which is another good reason to pursue them.
The same core message: Please remember to be honest about what’s driving design decisions, and double check they still align with the real design intent.
More on doors: In “Sweating the Detail 1” we discussed some of the carbon impacts of “the shifting baseline” trend towards bigger doors. However there’s more to doors than just size.
Cavity sliders are wonderful in the right place, but come with downsides. Typically 2 or 3 times the price of a hinged door, they have about a 50% bigger carbon footprint, are harder to maintain, and restrict fixings and services in the cavity section of wall. They’re also more likely to need a structural lintel.
In the “before and after” plans below (from a standard plan off the web) it’s easy to change the door from the passage to the kitchen into a hinged door (at 1), with immediate cost and carbon benefits, and possibly useful extra utility in the wall behind the fridge.
The same applies to the door into the study, plus that’s a candidate for another trick that’s often missed: if the study door is pulled just a little away from the corner (2), that immediately increases the usefulness of the wall beside the door. Moving the door just 300 mm gives space for a bookshelf, 5-600 mm for a cabinet.
"BEFORE" section of a standard plan.
“AFTER" section of a standard plan. Numbers link to the text.
There may be excellent reasons for an external door to the kitchen (3), although that seems unlikely for a standard plan. Here it comes with several downsides: it compromises the utility and safety of the kitchen by making it a throughway, interrupts a continuous bench between the cooktop and sink (a recommended safety feature), and negates the chance of a bench across the end of the kitchen.
We hadn’t seen this plan when writing Sweating the Detail 1, where we mentioned the potential challenge of closing a toilet door when inside, or a clash between the door and wash basin. This plan has a clever solution (4) illustrating both: the door, unusually, opens outward, enabling a short toilet and eliminating problems with clearances. Naturally this wouldn’t work so easily opening out straight into a corridor.
Sweating stairs: The stairway here is relatively efficient, but stairs often merit more thought than they are given, and the basic message is don’t just settle for the first stair that seems to work. Even the example here illustrates a couple of points.
Half-landings as shown in the “before” plan are common and tidy but represent a potential waste of space elsewhere in the building. If changed to a quarter-landing (5) by adding the single, red, tread, or to a “winder” (red plus blue treads) they would gain height more quickly, enabling removal of up to three treads out of the main flights with resultant space saving. This could give better laundry headroom (though that seemed okay in this case), more flexibility at the top landing (not shown), and allow removal of the projecting bottom tread if not wanted.
And increased stud heights create longer stairs. Stairs to the first floor of a house with a 2.7 m stud will be some 500 mm (two treads) longer than for a 2.4 m stud. Whether the plan is enlarged, or the space cadged from another room, a price is paid in carbon and cost.
We promised to discuss showers and haven’t, sorry! That will happen in Sweating the Detail 4, where we’ll also look at applying the important concept of “constant usable space” when considering the construction of the external envelope.