Today, we are going to take a look at four environmental benefits of custom home building.
The experts at L. Patten & Sons have been creating high-quality custom homes for 60 years, and know how to design and build environmentally friendly luxury houses.
Custom home building will allow you to reduce your carbon footprint and increase your environmental sustainability and energy efficiency. Let’s dig right in to learn more!
4 Environmental Benefits of Custom Home Building
1) Maximize the location
When buying land for the purpose of custom home building, it’s important to consider the environmental benefits of location and placement.
For example, you can take advantage of natural sunlight for warming purposes in the cold Ontario winters. Or take advantage of trees and shade to help naturally cool the house down in the summer months.
“During the day, the low winter sun can shine through windows are to allow heat energy to be absorbed into the building’s thermal mass,” according to Green Passive Solar.
Size also plays a factor here. As Conserve Energy Future notes, “a house that is too large is likely to cost more to heat and cool. Try to keep the place manageable and cost effective. If you are planning to extend your family and bring in few relatives, you need to put proper resources and accommodation in place.”
In short, where you build your house can affect natural heating and cooling and help reduce monthly utility bills.
A well placed home can help cut heating and cooling costs.
2) Make use of sustainable building materials
Custom home building also opens the door to use environmentally friendly products during construction.
You’re not limited to the standard products used by mass home builders, so you can make it a priority to use sustainable materials.
Each and every part of your house, such as roofing material, building material, cabinets, counters and insulation and even your flooring can be environmentally friendly.
For example, you can use reclaimed lumber, recycled plastic, recycled glass or natural products like bamboo, cork and linoleum, all of which are made of natural, renewable materials.
Building a custom home allows you to ensure the use of sustainable materials.
3) Install solar panels
With the rising costs of energy bills and concerns over climate change, it's no wonder many are considering solar panels in Ontario as a clean alternative.
While wind and water have their merits, solar is by far the most accessible, and the installation of panels is becoming increasingly popular with homeowners.
More and more people are adding solar panels to existing rooftops, and the experts at L. Patten and Sons highly recommend considering solar for any new custom home builds.
With solar energy, you no longer have to worry about leaving a large carbon footprint. Solar energy is clean and renewable, and you will be greatly helping the environment and contributing less to global warming by cutting down on your use of fossil fuels.
Some choose not to power their entire home with solar energy and decide on a smaller system to power a smaller percentage of your home, but even in that case, you are still greatly reducing any negative impact on the environment.
For more, read our article on Solar Panels Ontario: 3 Things You Need to Know.
4) Prioritize energy efficiency
As has been discussed, creating an environmentally friendly home begins with the design process and carries through the build and finishing touches.
Here are some other features you may want to incorporate into your custom home building process in order to prioritize energy efficiency:
Green certification labels: Install fixtures that carry LEED, Energy Star, R-2000 and similar labels. For more information on what they mean, visit Natural Resources Canada and the Canada Green Building Council.
Heating and cooling systems: Furnaces should be high efficiency. Look for Energy Star certification for heating and cooling (for information on Energy Star, visit nrcan.gc.ca).
Windows, doors and skylights: Energy Star products will save 7-10% in energy costs compared to conventional ones.
These small touches can really make a big difference in terms of energy efficiency.
All aspects of custom home building can help with environmental sustainability.
Trust L. Patten & Sons For The Best in Custom Home Building!
If you are ready to work with a custom builder in Collingwood or a nearby area, make sure you get the best service and experience with L. Patten & Sons.
We stake our reputation on superior quality and unsurpassed customer service, building only as many homes each year as we can devote our full attention to. It is this care and attention that we provide from concept to completion that defines our home building experience.
The result is a perfectly tailored home that is designed for living and built beyond expectation. Each home is as individual as the family that will be living in it, designed to suit their specific lifestyle and budget.
What Our Customers Are Saying:
“We were thrilled with the hard work and attention to detail from the team at L. Patten and Sons. Their guidance for us, first time home builders, was so helpful in building our dream home.
Our family is so pleased with all the details, Jerry and his team were able to find us the perfect craftsmen to perfect all the wow features throughout the house.
Many thanks.”
- The Horan Family