House Planning: Building a Sustainable Family Home
You are a junior architect tasked with designing a sustainable family home on a
rectangular plot of land measuring 30 meters by 20 meters. The home includes a
rectangular living room, a kite-shaped sunroom, a trapezoidal kitchen, a composite-
shaped garden, and a triangular-prism attic. The design also incorporates a tiled
patio with a tessellating pattern, a right-angled triangular shed, and congruent
decorative panels. Your job is to make calculations to ensure the design meets the
family's needs and budget constraints.
1.The plot is 30 meters long. Convert this length to centimeters and millimeters.
If the boundary fence posts are placed every 250 cm, how many posts are needed
along the length of the plot?
2.The rectangular living room has a length of 8 meters and a width of 5 meters.
Calculate the perimeter of the living room. If wallpaper costs $15 per meter, what
is the total cost to wallpaper all four walls?
3.The living room floor is to be covered with square tiles, each with a side length
of 50 cm. Calculate the area of the living room in square meters, then determine
how many tiles are needed to cover the floor (solve carefully and do unit
conversions, if required).
4. The kite-shaped sunroom has diagonals measuring 6 meters and 4 meters. Calculate
its area. If the glass for the sunroom costs $50 per square meter, what is the
total cost for the glass?
5. The trapezoidal kitchen has parallel sides of 5 meters and 3 meters, with a
perpendicular height of 4 meters. Calculate the area of the kitchen floor. If
flooring costs $30 per square meter, what is the total cost to floor the kitchen?
6. The garden is L-shaped, formed by a rectangle (10 m by 6 m) with a smaller
rectangle (4 m by 2 m) removed from one corner (think, it’s very easy, just a game
of choosing the right operation + or -). Calculate the area of the garden. If grass
seed costs $2 per square meter, what is the cost to seed the garden?
7. The attic is a triangular prism with a triangular base (base 5 meters, height 3
meters) and a depth of 10 meters. Calculate the volume of the attic. If insulation
material fills the attic at a cost of $10 per cubic meter, what is the total
insulation cost?
8. A cylindrical water tank for the home has a diameter of 2 meters and a height of
3 meters. Calculate its volume (use π ≈ 3.14). If 1 cubic meter equals 1000 liters,
how many liters of water can the tank hold?
9. The cost to paint a room is given by the formula C = 5A + 50, where C is the
cost in dollars and A is the wall area in square meters. If the living room walls
have a total area of 40 square meters, calculate the painting cost.
10. The architect buys 3x meters of piping for plumbing and 2x meters for heating.
Later, x meters of piping are returned. Write an expression for the total piping
remaining and simplify it.
11. The cost of wiring is 4y dollars per meter. If 2y meters of wiring are needed
for the kitchen, write and simplify an expression for the total wiring cost.
12. The area of a rectangular window is given by (2x + 3)(x + 4) square meters.
Expand this expression to find the area in terms of x. If x = 2 meters, calculate
the actual area.
13.The total cost for garden features is 12x + 18 dollars. Factorise this
expression to find the common factor.
14. The shed is a right-angled triangle with legs of 3 meters and 4 meters.
Calculate the length of the hypotenuse to determine the diagonal support beam
length, rounded to two decimal places.
15. A ladder is placed against the house to reach a 6-meter-high window. The base
of the ladder is 2 meters from the house. Calculate the ladder’s length, rounded to
one decimal place.
16. A diagonal path across the rectangular plot is 34 meters long, and the width of
the plot is 20 meters. Calculate the length of the plot using Pythagoras' theorem,
confirming it matches the given 30 meters.
17. Two triangular roof supports, ABC and DEF, are congruent. Triangle ABC has AB =
5 m, BC = 6 m, and angle ABC = 90°. If DE = 5 m and EF = 6 m, use the RHS test to
confirm congruence. Find the length of AC (and thus DF) using Pythagoras' theorem.
18.A composite wall section consists of a rectangle (6 m by 3 m) and a trapezium
(top base 6 m, bottom base 4 m, height 2 m). Calculate the total area. If paint
costs $12 per liter and 1 liter covers 10 square meters with one coat, how many
liters are needed for two coats, and what is the total cost?
19.The budget for the fencing (from question 2) and flooring (from question 5) is
$2000. Calculate the total cost of both. Is the budget sufficient? If not, by how
much is it exceeded?
