What Are Habitat Houses Like in North America?

The “typical” U.S. Habitat House:
Some of the design criteria for a “simple, decent” house include the following:

• Living space of about 1,000 square feet (exact size depends on number of bedrooms)

• One bathroom

• Covered primary entrance

• Three-foot doorways and three-foot, four-inch hallways to allow wheelchair access.

While all U.S. Habitat houses share similarities, the differences in climate and construction techniques ensure ample individuality. Plus, homeowners are given opportunities to customize their homes when possible. Average house cost around $60,000 (U.S. dollars)

Sustainable construction practices:
Creative construction techniques help Habitat maintain natural resources while providing quality houses. In Taos, New Mexico, Habitat houses are built with adobe, a mixture of clay and sand that is wetted, molded and dried to make bricks. Adobe is a traditional building material in the Southwest. Electric coils in the flooring provide radiant heating in the winter, and the high insulation value and thermal mass of the bricks helps keep the houses cool in the hot desert summers.

High insulation value is an advantage of another construction technique called straw-bale construction. In this type of house design, straw bales are place in exterior non-load-bearing walls. Radiant floor heating can be used in this type of construction as well as in adobe houses.

Energy efficiency:
Environmental responsibility is a concern for Habitat in the U.S. and all over the world. Metro Denver (Colo.) HFH dedicated its first “green home” in 1997. This house is designed to be energy efficient and environmentally responsible with features such as passive solar heating from south-facing windows, enhanced insulation values and a programmable thermostat. HFH of El Paso (Texas) designs houses with features such as white shingles (to reduce heat absorption) and water-saving plumbing fixtures.

Climate:
Within the United States, climate conditions vary widely. Winter in Duluth, Minnesota, means January highs of 25 degrees Fahrenheit (-4 Celsius) and, in some areas, continuous snow coverage from mid-December to mid-March. To cope with the cold, Habitat houses in Duluth have walls filled with 6 inches of insulation, 16-18 inches of cellulose (recycled paper fibers) in the attic and several feet of insulation surrounding the foundation. Also, water pipes must be laid 6 to 7 feet deep to get below the frost line.

Accessibility:
Throughout the United States, Habitat affiliates are encouraged to build with special attention to wheelchair accessibility for both homeowners and visitors. Greater Birmingham (Ala.) HFH built an “Ability House,” with no-step entrances and interior doorways and bathrooms that are larger than standard. Costs of these special features are minimized when accessibility features are taken into account from the design stage. Currently, Greater Birmingham HFH and other affiliates build all Habitat houses to be accessible.

Attached units:
For some affiliates, especially those in the Northeast and urban areas where land is expensive, building and renovating attached units makes the best use of financial resources. There are environmental benefits also: shared walls contribute to energy conservation by minimizing heat loss or gain. They also eliminate some of the cost of exterior cladding.