0tterbot wrote:
sorry, by "small" or "modest" or whatever i said, i meant, "has three
bedrooms (or two BIG bedrooms, like a proper old-fashioned house), but no
"rumpus room" as big as a football field, or "parent's retreat" or any of
that crap they come up with. kwim?

http://www.ezyhomes.com.au/manadalay.php
http://www.beachlifehomes.com.au/kit...kitplans_id=58
http://www.kithomes.com.au/326-budget.html

those are cute. i did see a lot of cute, little ones. but we're a family of
4. i (at the time) just wanted a normal-size little house. there wasn't
enough that was practical & modest.

Something like this perhaps?
http://www.ezyhomes.com.au/images/ou...Floor-Plan.jpg

or this:
http://www.beachlifehomes.com.au/kit...kitplans_id=55

I see lots of designs in this range. I see an awful lot of "home
theatres" as well, but apparently lots of people want those.

Customers want environmentally
sound houses until they have to pay for them.

"environmentally sound" does not equal "ridiculously expensive" (nor even
"more expensive")

It definitely equals "more expensive" (at least in up front cost).
Any insulation is going to cost more than no insulation. Larger
eaves cost more than "tuscan" eaves. Timber or tile floors cost
more than carpet. Termimesh costs more than poison. A
greywater system costs more than linking straight
into the sewer. A rainwater tank costs more than a sump. Timber
window frames cost more than aluminium. I could go on ad nauseum...

I designed my sister-in-laws house recently, and I specified
reverse-brick-veneer walls, which have pretty much ultimate
thermal performance. The cost is about $10 to $15K over
conventional double brick. How many buyers are prepared
to pay that for something you can't even see?

and i think that last sentence of yours isn't quite
correct anyway - the ostentatious brigade don't give a shit, & they
evidently(?) comprise a fair segment of that market, _if_ the market is
genuinely supplying what people "want".

There are lots of builders who don't target the "ostentatious" end of
the market. A quick flick through the weekend paper shows that the
majority of builders are targeting something a bit above the "first
home builder" (a vanishing species) but certainly not ostentatious.
Pretty plain actually.

there should
be more in the middle - not a granny flat or weekender, but not an
ostentatious piece of rubbish which takes several hours just to vacuum. and
that's all i'm saying :-) you'll have seen yourself there's just a gap in
that middle section of the market.

No, I don't really. Are you talking kit homes here or project homes?
I see a shortage of houses that have real design flair, that look a
bit different from the other houses in the street, that use
unconventional
materials, or that include serious environmental modifications as
standard. In short, the market is depressingly conservative. But
there are lots of houses of around 150sqm or less which are modest
in appearance and function.

.... actually, I think the kit home market is generally better than
the project home market in most of these respects.

Much of the passive design involves correctly orienting the house
on the site. Most builders will let you move windows and modify
window size at little cost, and passive design largely involves
relatively minor customisation to suit the house orientation.

one should not have to customise to fix designers' ignorance or mistakes. it
is they who should be making as good a product as possible, because that's
(supposed to be) their job.

Passive solar design revolves around designing to suit the site
and climate. You can't design a passive solar house without
knowing where it is going to be located and which direction it
is going to face. So there is always going to be a certain amount
of customisation to make it happen. The problem is particularly
tricky for kit home builders, who might ship one house to far
north queensland and the next to southern victoria.