McMansions (stone, family room, carpeting, square feet)

[evilnewbie]

I am fine with the price of gas... I drive a hybrid...but I still like my big house.. I probably pay less gas than you... about $25 every 1.5-2 months...

[Greatday]

Originally Posted by SWB

The argument about purchasing a home with relatively small square footage as opposed to a larger one or a "McMansion" is analagous to the debate over purchasing a fuel-efficient hybrid vehicle as opposed to a large SUV, such as a Hummer. Back onto the housing debate, McMansions with 3,500, 4,000, 5,000, etc. square feet require much more in the way of home heating fuel to keep you toasty warm in the winter months and require much more in the way of energy to keep you cool in the summer months than homes half the size. In general the larger your home is, the more money you'll pay to heat/cool it. I had to chuckle at Speedy's reply of "it's MY utility/mortgage bill." That may be the case on a microeconomic level, but it is also thanks to such overconsumption on a larger scale that higher demand translates into higher costs that are passed on to all consumers, not just those living extravagantly and exacerbating the situation.

I'd love for a person in a McMansion who drives a large SUV (of which there are MANY on this forum) to explain to me as to why I should have to pay higher prices to subsidize YOUR choices? If gasoline was a renewable resource in which higher demand didn't translate into higher universal prices, I'd say more power to you. However, when you consciously made these decisions to buy McMansions and large SUVs, did the thought ever occur to you that you'd be disproportionately increasing demand for the resources required to power/maintain them, and that this increased demand would hurt many others' pocketbooks besides your own?

Let's see - we have 3500 sq ft now - and are in process of building a home that will have a little over 4000 sq ft - but, it will be real adobe block. We have, and will have a swimming pool w/spa - heated. But the heat is from solar. Our hot water will also be solar as will a percentage of other electrical needs. We own 2 SUV's, a boat, a motorhome and a private plane.

We have all of these things because - we want them. We enjoy them. They meet our lifestyle.

We are not costing you more money. We are not impacting your life.

As for your suggestion that we might be financially irresponsible, why would you suggest such a thing - particularily in light as you don't know the individual?

One of the wonderful things of life in the United States is, the freedom to do, and live, what you want to do.

I hope this answers your queries.

[Greatday]

Originally Posted by SWB

To showcase how much open space has been wasted in my own area since the 1980s McMansions craze began take a gander at some of these photos, take a deep breath, and then realize that from the 1980s-Present the population here has declined by tens of thousands while we expanded our developed metropolitan area by more than 30 square miles, if not more. In other words we picked up people from in-town neighborhoods and plopped them down onto the exurban fringe. Also bear in mind that many of these homes I'm about to show you are home to married professional couples without children just to showcase the waste in how couples think they need 5,000 square feet for just two people when many other families of FIVE are living in 1,500 square foot homes just a few miles away in the urban core. As the area's population has just started to boom in the past year with new transplants from New York City and New Jersey, I can only imagine how much worse this epidemic is going to become in the coming years. There are thousands upon thousands of homes just like these all over Greater Scranton with many more on the way.

These are just several of the MANY photos I have taken highlighting the struggles Scranton now faces with the rapid explosion of McMansion development.

Great looking homes and neighborhoods

[Noahma]

Originally Posted by Greatday

Great looking homes and neighborhoods

I was going to say, that the homes in the pictures are not that bad at all stylisticaly. There are a few things here and there that I would have done differently, but they are not too bad.

[ScranBarre]

Originally Posted by evilnewbie

I plan to build a big house 6-7k square feet... and I suspect anyone, like myself, wants to minimize as much in utility bills. Who wants to pay that much for utilities, if you don't like it, neither do we and there are MANY ways to reduce the cost of utility bills and I plan to do them. I like a large lot, not because I want to "waste" space. I like it because I like my privacy, besides that, devoting it to green trees and grass is very eco-friendly IMO...

If you're seeking to maximize energy efficiency then I have no qualms with your decision. I get angry with the whole "It's my money, butt out" crowd because most don't seem to realize that the more energy they consume, the higher they push up demand, and the higher ALL consumers have to pay, regardless of where they live. That just doesn't seem fair at all to me.

[kshe95girl]

I must say, I have seen loads and loads of these houses, and by and large, the folks that buy them have NO clue what to do with them.....$$$ does NOT=TASTE.
Why, oh why, if these folks are spending the bucks to buy, why wont they spend the extra to have them tastefully appointed?
We designers need jobs, oh, silly me, I forgot.... by the time they buy too much house, they certainly cannot afford to buy the extra $100,000 or so worth of stuff to make them look decent, and then have to put the cracker, redneck looking stuff that they had before they moved to Beverly

[Briolat21]

so now its not just that McMansions automatically guarantee that the homeowner has no taste and is tacky and obsessed with keeping up with an imaginary peer group -- its that the owner also is a eco-cidal blockhead who is single handedly responsible for destroying the planet, oh - and more importantly - making you pay more for gasoline.

Damn! Had I know I had powers like that - I would have bought a McMansion YEARS ago!

Do you think China is building a lot of McMansions then? Since from a global perspective its the BILLIONS of consumers in China who suddenly have a taste for gasoline (and cars) that are really what's driving the oil shortage, and not a middle class family in the midwestern USA...?

Oh, and our new McMansion will be a lot more energy efficient than the house I was staying in, a 3 story 1895 brick Queen Anne that was never insulated. But it was in the city, so its okay - right?? Its only evil me who moved to the burbs that is causing problems.

Oh - and that 1895 queen anne -- its over 3000sq feet. Yes, I forgot - it can't be a McMansion because its been here for over 50 years. And the whole neighborhood around there - similar sized houses, most not insulated (because the people can't afford the upgrades). Thank god those people are all so responsible to be living in already existing housing stock and not evil McMansion builders.

Umm... lets see why should you have to pay more for your utilities because my devil-inspired-suburban lifestyle is causing your gas prices to go up??

Umm... because you choose to drive a car! You could live in the city and bike to work (many people do). You can also go off the grid electrically speaking, if you'd like to get the solar thing going for you..

But since I pay more for hamburger and steak - because now there's more a demand for it again, I don't think I'm going to complain that everybody else should stop eating it so I can buy it cheaper. I just wait 'till it goes on sale.

Similarly, since health costs are spiralling as we use more and more technology to keep alive people who 30 years ago would have been toast - I really haven't made the cold-hearted appeal that others should literally lay down and die because I, a relatively healthy person, don't want to have higher insurance premiums.

I keep my thermostat in my rental place (while my McMansion is under construction, wouldn't want you to forget I'm an evil-soon-to-be-McMansion owner) set low. But the cold air from the leaky windows rushes in. If it were my house, I guess I'd fix them - but since I'm only here for 3 more months, I'll just endure the cold. Similarly since we bought our new house for its SPACE (and all the items that we have from 3 generations of family that we don't want to put into the garbage or sell for 50Cents on ebay) - we'll manage with the utility bills just fine. We'll turn lights out when we're not in a room. We'll keep the thermostat set low. And our new, properly sealed windows will do a heck of a lot better than the one I'm sitting in front of now.

Good Luck with the Bike commute -- remember your hand signals for turning!! Safety First!

[HappyNCGirl]

well said Birolat21!

[ScranBarre]

Many of the McMansions around here have OODLES of empty space, and the waste is just sickening. I hate walking into a home and seeing a 20' x 20' family room with vaulted ceilings that is only furnished with a couch, loveseat, chair, coffee table, and a painting or two with 300 of that 400 square feet just being home to beige carpeting and beige walls. Then again, I suppose that's the "airy" and "open" feeling that is currently driving the McMansion boom. I hope the owners enjoy paying to heat and cool that extra 300 square feet of wasted space in that room alone just to be able to say "My house is bigger."

I'm a minimalist by nature and try to do my best to put as little of a burden as possible onto future generations by making socially-responsible and lucid choices in life. Building a large house simply "because I can" is a stupid rebuttal that many people make. Do I respect a childless couple with a 5,000 square foot suburban tract house with brick facades and three walls of vinyl any more than I respect a childless couple with a 1,200 square foot two-bedroom condo in the city? Not at all. Does the opposite come to play in many peoples' minds. Of course. It is generally assumed that those who had the financial means to build an exurban McMansion somehow had more "foresight" to escape the city than those who have chosen to stay. I say this from personal experience as I've been met with laughter when I tell people I'm moving to Scranton. Why? It's because all of my peers will be living in newer McMansions on the urban periphery while I was too "stupid" to not have done the same. If you don't think such snobbery exists amongst suburbanites vs. city folk than you obviously haven't been around much, as if these sorts of comments come from suburbanites against city folk in my small city then I'm sure it happens on a much grander scale in many other cities as well.

Deflecting my observations of one problem with wasted energy onto another problem solves nothing. Yes, Asians are driving up demand for gasoline by driving vehicles after biking for so many years. So are Americans who are buying Hummers just to "look cool." Why should the latter be excused when they still contribute to the problem?

To put this analogously let's consider the issue of exorbitant health care insurance in this nation. As a very physically fit non-smoker who works out daily and tries to eat a balanced diet I resent the fact that health care insurance has escalated as much as it has over the years for everyone, regardless of physical condition. Two major contributing groups that have caused this larger problem to occur are smokers and obese people. Smokers are more likely to contract lung cancer, emphysema, etc. and require medical treatment. Obese people are more likely to suffer from heart disease, diabetes, etc. and require medical treatment later in life. Both problems could be corrected if people would simply stop smoking or would eat a more balanced diet while exercising more routinely. Should I dismiss smokers as a reason for health care costs to be skyrocketing because obese people cause them to rise higher or vice-versa? Of course not. Why? ALL components of this larger problem of rising health care costs need to be addressed, not just the ones we want to "pick and choose." Likewise we can't ignore the decisions of American consumers and the role they play in the larger picture of the global energy crisis simply to focus on a supplementary contributing factor such as increasing demand from Asia.

[sacredgrooves]

There are plenty of socialist/communist countries to reside in if America's way of life is not for you. Nothing is perfect, but we have a good thing here without people trying to regulate/change our values (even more than they already have).