Building Smarter - 4 things to make your new home smarter
As we continue to have the cost of living affecting many aspects of our lives, it pays to think smarter about what we are doing and how we are doing it. Designing and building a new home is no different. In fact, given our homes are the greatest financial investment we make in our lifetimes, it only makes sense to carefully consider smart options.
So here are my four tips to making your new home smarter. I am always thinking ahead, so these are future focused. If you are not a believer in climate change, fair enough, but it would be fair to say that we are seeing unprecedented seasonal patterns that suggest our weather patterns are shifting far more speedily than historical records reveal.
Get it solar ready, government fast tracks, own power generation to lower power bills
I do give the group home builders a fair amount of a tongue lashing, but Kim Aitken from Truss House said to me one day over a coffee: "The solutions we need are design led." There has been a move away from the great architects like Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe to mitigate, reduce, and almost make redundant the value of good design. I have said, design is easy, but making design work is hard.
When we get good design fundamentals set in the principles of an approach, we set the intention to realise them, not just accidentally find them. Small Smart Spaces is my range of Architecturally Designed Homes that have Passive House, Homestar, and offsite set into their intentions. It's not about trying to make something work, it's about using what I know aligns with Modern Methods of Construction, works conducively with Passive House, and can also achieve Homestar. The trick has been to create an efficient process that works with all of these together.
Quality is guaranteed with the right combination of good products and good people
We talk a lot about buildings as products, but a home really is the spaces we create. Those spaces are created by assembling a kit set of parts, that need to work together to stand up despite natural disasters like floods and storms, and provide the barrier that protects a Healthy Home with a constant interior from a changing and variable exterior.
Key to making solutions that aspire to unlock as many results as possible is having good relationships and productive conversations with the right people. As much as choosing the right products matters, working with the right people matters just as much. Small Smart Spaces has unlocked efficient and smart ways of building because of conversations to create the best solutions. There is something magic about all the products and people who are a part of Small Smart Spaces. We all don't work for the same company, we all have different roles, but we are all open to doing things better. With that comes the risk of, as I put it, getting our butts kicked in the arena. In the spirit of Brené Brown and Franklin D. Roosevelt: it's not the critic who counts, the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.
There is a stripping down of ego and the need to be right and, in its place, collaboration builds a team of people investing in getting it right.
Village Series - Suburban Family Homes
Village Series - Suburban Family Homes
Design it to have low winter power bills, get the design to do the heavy lifting
Related to, but in some respects separate from, overheating is the need to have homes that are cheap and quick to heat in winter. With increasing power prices, and the time needed to heat a home up to a healthy, let alone comfortable, temperature, talking about energy efficient design is a smart start. The reality is that no one likes coming home to a cold home after a long day at work, only to have to wait for the heater or heat pump to warm it to a healthy, let alone comfortable, temperature. And with rising power prices, heat pumps won't be running all night, so on a frosty morning it can be a little chilly getting out of bed to turn it on. If we consider the design from an energy efficiency point of view, these occurrences can be significantly reduced, simply because we designed smarter.
Key into finance options that recognise building performance and quality
One of the things I am finding myself increasingly talking about is how we can pair energy efficient home design with solar systems. To me, that is a win win. If we can design and build homes that need less power while delivering increased interior health and comfort, then we don't have to invest as much to install a solar system to power that home. Reduce demand and supply it sustainably. On top of financial incentives that will support solar even more moving forward, banks are recognising that energy efficient design certified with rating tools like Homestar meets their own sustainability goals. The result is more favourable lending, like interest rate reductions off commercially advertised rates, to encourage home owners to take up mortgages with them.
I don't like to get ahead of myself, although I certainly have a habit of doing exactly that. But maybe the pain points of unbearably hot summers inside our homes, and the choice between an unaffordable power bill or a home that feels like a fridge in winter, is the turning point. Building smarter is starting to become more than just a new marketing buzzword. It is starting to look like the way we have to move forward if we are to have a hope of keeping our lifestyle and accustomed comfort a reality.
To talk about your new home or renovation, and find a way to make it more energy efficient and sustainable for power consumption, book a chat with me. I would love to help you make a smarter, more sustainable, healthy, comfortable home that is also more affordable for you and your family.