Home Renovations that are More Energy Efficient

Building for the future means building homes that are environmental and depend on renewable sources of energy.  For some homeowners, the dream home involves the final touches like stainless steel apparatuses and open concept kitchens.  Companies are beginning to see a shift and observe that homeowners are also interested regarding energy efficiency.  They like to inquire how well the home will keep them cool in the summer.  Also, the amount it will cost to keep them warm in the winter.  As more constructors and homeowners embrace sustainability into their arrangements, companies start to view these preferences become cheaper for everyday homeowners.  They are already considering that with solar energy – solar panels are cost effective nowadays than they were ten years ago making building a net-zero home much more achievable than it has ever been.  A net-zero home is capable of generating its own energy and can create at least as much as it consumes.  The building envelope acts as the only barricade between the interior and the outside environment.  It serves as a thermal barrier and plays a significant role in determining how much energy is needed to maintain a comfortable indoor environment.  There are three suggestive ways on how to improve the building’s envelope.  First is to apply roof coatings.  Reflective roof coating decreases solar radiation from heating the roof, which lowers total heat transfer and maintains indoor temperatures down.  These coatings can slash down solar radiation by up to 50% when compared to an uncoated roof.  Another way is to install window film.  The appropriate window film can enhance insulating capacity and can add as much as 92% more insulating power to existing windows.  The third option is to add insulation to the building.  Insulation can reduce the amount of energy needed to keep a building warm in the cold season and cool in the hot climate by providing resistance to heat flow. 

A few methods on how to efficiently cool and heat the home during renovation include In-floor heating, In-floor heating works good with many different types of flooring, like tile, laminate, and some engineered woods.  Trendy additions to kitchens and bathrooms, in-floor heating allows adjusting the temperature on a room-by-room basis, simply to say that there is no wasting of energy to heat a room that is not in use.  Many systems include a disengaging technology that can avoid tiles and grout from breaking.  That is smart heating.  Geothermal heating, on the other hand, absorbs the temperature underground via tubes and channels it into your home, keeping it warm in the winter and cool in the summer.  Unfortunately, geothermal heating is a costly retrofit on a home that is already constructed. Homeowners can save on the heating bills immediately after installing it, but he or she may never recover the investment of having it installed.  However, if the building is from the land up, geothermal heating becomes a much more practical option.  A Brisbane home extensions are intrinsically sustainable because it minimizing the use of new materials and taking advantage of existing structure.