Super Efficient Energy Study Guide eBook - How to Build & Operate a Super-Efficient House

The primary purpose of your home’s layout is to provide pleasant living. A good layout allows convenient travel between rooms, provides easy accesses to outside areas, exploits views, isolates noise, keeps you comfortable under all conditions, and does all this with elegance. For example, you will orient the living room windows toward the waterfront or the mountains, put bedrooms on the quiet side of the house, and so forth.

At the same time, use the layout to minimize your energy requirements. Create a core area that consists of the cluster of rooms where your daily life occurs. Rooms that are occupied sporadically should be located outside the daily traffic pattern so that they do not need to be heated, cooled, or lighted most of the time. For example, locate guest bedrooms and storage rooms in a separate wing. In general, keep large spaces out of the daily traffic pattern.