Building your own home allows you complete control over the process. You can select the floor concept, the layout in the kitchen, the number of bathrooms and where they will be place. While it is easy to get swept away in the big aesthetic choices, here are two smaller ideas that you should discuss with your home builders.
Passive Cooling
In the days before air conditioning, passive cooling was the only method for fighting off those hot and sticky summer days. With the advent of ac many of these practices became unnecessary in luxury homes, where ac was a prime selling point, and so they fell out of use.
Some of these passive cooling techniques are simple, such as opening windows at opposite ends of your home to allow for cross breezes, but others are more technical and can only be implemented during construction. Maximizing the convective flow of your home or adding a sun chimney are common tools, but even the placement of your windows can have an effect.
If you are planning on building a new home, it might behoove you to talk to your new home builders about incorporating some passive cooling techniques. Not only will it save you on your electricity bills, but it is also a more environmentally friendly process.
Optimize Your Natural Light
Windows aren’t the only way you can let in light to your home. Natural light has a number of great benefits: it boosts you body’s vitamin D, improves moods, and helps with sleep problems. Plus it also has the benefit of reducing your consumption of energy.
The two best ways to increase the natural sunlight in your home are suntubes and skylights. We’ve talked about skylights last month, so feel free to look back at our previous post for more information on those. Here, we are going to focus on suntubes.
A suntube is a discreet, thin metal tube embedded into your roof that pulls sunlight in by way of a light catching dome on your ceiling. Mirrors then reflect the light down the tube, and it passes through a diffuser as a gentle yellow light.
Simple tricks can often get lost in the excitement of building a new home, but don’t be afraid to talk to your custom home builders about even the smallest changes to make your dream home work better for you.
