[Greenbuilding] ok - why do houses have to have stay the same tempinside?

[Erin Rasmussen]

I was thinking of the temperature thing in the context of my block of nearly identical 1950's tract houses.  We've got a lot of different philosophies among the people who live on my block, and that's reflected in our utility bills.   So we all have similar houses, with varying degrees of insulation, and we all have similar furnaces etc. although I think I may be the only one on my block with no air conditioning, and we all have really different approaches to dealing with warm and cool weather.    We're all pretty happy with our houses, so the constant temperature thing is probably not the thing we're most happy with  :-) because even when they're fairly weatherproofed, these houses don't have it.

So  then I was thinking bigger  - like what's a house really for? and do you really need a lot of money to be happy in your house? So the answer to the second question is obviously no. So  I think it's when you're able to use the house for the things you'd really like it for like: sleeping without having to put up with the drunk in the next house; or showing off your really cool toy collection; or having a kitchen where everything is just how you'd like it; or having a place for your kids to play without getting run over.  Whatever that thing or things are , if your house helps you do that,  you're generally happy with it. 

I guess I'm thinking of building or retro-fitting houses as pulling thing into alignment - where it's easier for people to do the thing that makes them happy in their house, and also use less resources and less of an impact on the planet.  So this is probably not a new idea - probably one that gets stubbornly re-invented every few years. :-)  but it's got new urgency for me with the whole massive climate change thing that's happening. And I'm thinking that as the weather and a few dozen other things totally change around us that planning houses based on historical weather patterns may become increasingly irrelevant, and we may be thinking about these things in a different way in the future. 

 - Erin