Organizing Residential Utilities: A New Approach
to Housing Quality (November 2004, 80 p.)
Utility systems are everywhere in the home. What were once
major innovations – central heating, hot and cold running
water, and electric lights – have become so commonplace
as to be taken for granted. In fact, the network of utilities
(pipes, wires, and ducts) in the home is now relatively simple
compared to those in some of the other environments that people
occupy – airplanes, ships, cars, etc. Although the systems
in the home are comparatively uncomplicated, their installation
involves inefficient, labor-intensive processes that would
not be tolerated in other products and industries, such as
those mentioned above. Utilities are run almost haphazardly
through the walls of stick-built homes, sometimes compromising
structure and insulating integrity, and always making repair
and modification difficult. In the future, utilities will
inevitably become more complicated as homes become centers
of work, learning, communication, entertainment, preventative
health care, and distributed energy production. The new utility
systems that emerge to meet these functions will likely include
advanced control systems, LED or fiber-optic lighting, wireless
and wired data networks, additional fire safety plumbing,
building-integrated photovoltaics, and ubiquitous low-cost
sensors for security, health, comfort, etc. Existing utility
systems can also be expected to expand. Conventional entangled
processes will increase the complexity and cost of construction,
and could inhibit the introduction of new utility systems.
Furthermore, new building technologies and construction techniques
have the potential to compound the problem: utility entanglement
could become a major roadblock to innovation in home construction.
This report is designed to outline methods of disentangling
utilities, with the goal of increasing the functionality of
housing, while simultaneously reducing its cost. Disentangling
of utilities should have the following positive impacts:
- Reduce cost of utility installation
- Simplify the home construction process, resulting
in less rework
- Reduce time of construction
-
Reduce home maintenance costs
- Reduce cost of renovations
- Reduce cost of customization in initial build and
renovation
- Enable increased homeowner participation
in home alterations
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