If you’re considering designing and building your dream home, you’ll want to invest in energy efficiency. Newly built homes are required to meet newer building codes that are more stringent, especially when it comes to energy efficiency and the thermal envelope. Ensuring your new home is compliant to more efficient codes will improve your home comfort, health, safety, and durability, as well as provide lifelong savings.
Tips to prepare your new home for maximum efficiency
- Make sure your new home includes smart home technologies and high-efficiency appliances to better control your energy usage. Common smart home devices include programmable thermostats to adjust the temperature of your home, smart lighting to customize and control your home lighting, smart appliances to reduce waste, and energy monitors to help you identify energy-saving opportunities and make your home a better place. Unfortunately, you can’t anticipate the changes of smart home apps and other efficient devices that will be coming to the market, so you always want to build in the capacity for new technologies.
- Keep in mind that wireless technologies will not always replace wired devices. Make certain to create chases in the walls to go from floor-to-floor or room-to-room – like a PVC pipe in the wall with an outlet in front so you can find it. That will enable you to add wires without running into beams that you didn’t expect to be there. The smart home of the future will require both.
- Your HVAC system will waste energy and work harder if your home is not properly insulated, ventilated, and sealed. While reducing your heating and cooling costs, adding insulation like CertainTeed InsulPure™ fiberglass insulation can help keep your home at a comfortable temperature all year long and create a healthier environment.
air quality performance.
- If you are starting with a new construction, make sure your home is built to the Passive House Standard. The Passive House approach focuses on reducing your home’s energy consumption and increasing its performance. To reach the Passive House level and meet green building standards, your home must be super-insulated and properly sealed. The tighter the building envelope, the less energy you need to run efficiently. While doable, retrofitting the thermal envelope of your home is costly, so you want to be sure your Dream Home is prepared for energy savings right from the start.
Consult with us today and find out how we can help you build energy-efficient homes that improve your comfort and reduce your energy bills.
We’re always available to assist you with any questions you may have. Please let us know what you need:
