The team examined how a 20K Home could be adapted to meet Fair Housing Act (FHA) size requirements, set to make rooms navigable to people who use wheelchairs or walkers. Also, this project looked at how the house could be designed to share outside space with an existing house on the property, made the porch more comfortable when the mosquitos abound, and improved ventilation.
To accommodate the FHA requirements, the team expanded the Mac’s Home design, adding 12” of space to both the bedroom and the bathroom, increasing the width of the home from 16’ to 18’. That increased width required a new structural system: an extra-strong flooring system using engineered lumber (donated by Boise Cascade) and a 36’-long laminated veneer lumber (LVL) beam as a girder spanning the house’s entire length. This version of the Home moved the back door to the south end to open onto the shared space between houses; the door placement has the extra benefit of making a house addition easier to plan in the future.
This design also added screening to the now-larger porch to minimize mosquitos. To encourage passive ventilation, this design iteration raised the ceiling to 9’6” to accommodate operable transom windows above the front and back doors and included double hung fiberglass windows throughout.
