Low Ceilings (square foot, housing, prices, bedroom)

[EastCoast_1]

Moving from Europe and never living a house (apartment only) , makes us hard to understand local housing standards. Before posting this thread I did read a lot , but still cannot get some things.
As an example, we are looking at the home in Baltimore Area , Cape Cod style, 1957 and it seems to me that the ceiling is low almost 8' (rather 7'8") . Is it standard for this type of a home/year? or we will have trouble selling a house later on because of the ceiling?

[vec101]

That's normal and to be expected in a home built, well, I'm not sure of the exact years, but my guess is of a home built in the 1950's - 1970's.

[cohdane]

Depending on how long you live in the house, I would bet a low ceiling will be a plus, not a minus. Gas/heating/energy prices will eventually spike again, as will concerns about global warming. The people who will be in trouble will be the ones with "soaring foyers" and "volume ceilings"-- massive rooms to heat and cool with space that is unusable.

I've already seen reports of families who decided to unload their McMansions after energy costs skyrocketed last year. Low ceilings are going to look pretty good to people when they realize how much less it costs to keep those rooms comfortable.

Same with "flowing space." Why heat or cool a room if it's not the one you're sitting in-- houses that have no doors and/or walls between rooms are going to rapidly lose popularity when energy prices go up. No one wants to pay to heat or air condition a barn.

[fabumom07]

We moved from an 8' ceiling house with a single story foyer to a new home with 9' ceilings downstairs and a double height foyer ceiling four years ago. We kept the furnace at 68-70 at our old house and were very comfy, but have to go up to 73 or 74 to be comfortable in this home. So we live with a chill at 71-72 much of the time.Hope this helps.
Our old house had East/West sun exposure which helped it feel cheerful, something to consider.

[PotterGeek]

Originally Posted by cohdane

Depending on how long you live in the house, I would bet a low ceiling will be a plus, not a minus. Gas/heating/energy prices will eventually spike again, as will concerns about global warming. The people who will be in trouble will be the ones with "soaring foyers" and "volume ceilings"-- massive rooms to heat and cool with space that is unusable.

I've already seen reports of families who decided to unload their McMansions after energy costs skyrocketed last year. Low ceilings are going to look pretty good to people when they realize how much less it costs to keep those rooms comfortable.

Same with "flowing space." Why heat or cool a room if it's not the one you're sitting in-- houses that have no doors and/or walls between rooms are going to rapidly lose popularity when energy prices go up. No one wants to pay to heat or air condition a barn.

Cohdane is absolutely right. We sold our 3200 sq ft home that had the 2 story foyer and the high ceilings in the living room back in May. It cost a small fortune to heat and cool.

The house we just bought has 1900 sq ft, and eight foot ceilings. (There is a tray ceiling in the master bedroom and foyer, but that's it.) And it's a one level home, so that is a plus. Our electricity and gas bill is less than half of what it was this time last year.

[London Girl]

Originally Posted by cohdane

Depending on how long you live in the house, I would bet a low ceiling will be a plus, not a minus. Gas/heating/energy prices will eventually spike again, as will concerns about global warming. The people who will be in trouble will be the ones with "soaring foyers" and "volume ceilings"-- massive rooms to heat and cool with space that is unusable.

I've already seen reports of families who decided to unload their McMansions after energy costs skyrocketed last year. Low ceilings are going to look pretty good to people when they realize how much less it costs to keep those rooms comfortable.

Same with "flowing space." Why heat or cool a room if it's not the one you're sitting in-- houses that have no doors and/or walls between rooms are going to rapidly lose popularity when energy prices go up. No one wants to pay to heat or air condition a barn.

Agreed. We have low ceilings and this was a plus factor for us when we chose our home.

We have gas powered radiant heat - which is also zoned so we can select which parts of the house we want to heat.

We also have a woodburning stove in our family room which heats our house very effectively.

We are in the mid-west and so far this year we have only switched on our heating 5 times, our last monthly gas bill for a 2,700 square foot house was $52!!!! We have bought some seasoned wood though which would need to be offset against any gas savings - luckily we have a free supply for next year from some land we own so our wood costs then will be practically zero.

We are also going to be replacing our water heater for a more efficient model - that should save even more money. The only other gas usage is for our dryer.

[scone]

Totally normal. Low ceilings are authentic to the Cape Cod style. It was cheaper to build them that way then, and sell larger timbers to the British to build their navy. It was cheaper again, in the 50's, when you had a lot of WWII vets without much money, settling down, buying homes, and getting busy creating the Baby Boom generation. If you google "Levittown" you'll read about some of these 50's 'neo-colonials.' Welcome to the USA!