In another forum where I occasionally visit, there was a thread about a woman who was building an 8500sqft "green" home - just for her.  No additional family.

And while most folks obviously felt that an 8500 sqft home was an extravagance that could never be considered to be "green" (other than paint color perhaps), on the other hand, I would be very curious to see how the energy performance numbers of this house (or a comparable - perhaps hypothetical house) could compare to a "typical" 2500sqft house in the same area before making a judgement.

Obviously, "being green" isn't about building 8500 sqft homes for one person, but it would make a very interesting argument if the larger house was actually more efficient than the much smaller house. Again, also taking into consideration the materials and labor used to construct the larger house...

So, imagine if someone were to construct an 8500 sqft house that incorporated super insulation, geo-thermal, high performance windows, winter solar gain on the south side, solar panels for electricity and hot water, and many of the other bells-and-whistles that would make a house as energy efficient as current technology allows.

Now imagine if that house were also built as much as possible of locally produced materials - possibly even to include recycled lumber - etc. And what if that house ended up as a zero or even net energy producer rather than energy user; would that house be considered to be "green" despite the size?

I would think that while there is no definitive answer (only opinions), it would be very interesting to hear (well, read) what other folks think of this particular situation...thoughts?

Oberon/mdelzer,

Good topic. We are building a new home at 5000 sq-ft +, and have thought many times how green can this be?? But a few points of defence of a bigger size home and the folks living in it can be green. The space we are building is on a lake and we expect many guests and our children to visit, extra rooms. Winter will be the slow season and I don't plan on heating all this all the time. Radant heating with many zones should make this easy to just heat used area. May take a few day notice to heat up the dormat space....The construction is ICF with additional insulation on the exterior. We also hope to have Geothermal heat/cool. We both work out of the home so days go by where we never leave the home. Within our home also have our offices, we need that seperate space for "work", (justify some of that extra space). Our roof will be a flat concrete deck and the stairs go to the top. Max use and a good view.

A trailer is small space but is very un-green.

Patrick T

Oberon;

we all have different needs , maybe the woman with the 8500 sq. ft. house is down-sizing