5 Amazing Tips for Building An Energy Efficient Home

The cost of energy is rising tremendously and will increase in the coming years. It is hence essential that you consider energy efficiency with the needed seriousness rather than just as a buzz word.

It is expensive and time-consuming to try and improve your home’s energy efficiency after it has been designed. You will be assured of reduced energy costs in the long run by building your home using the tips below. Compare energy prices quickly online through Usave as a quick-win starting point.

You can consider many energy efficient designs during your home’s design stage. Even though most of these designs have an upward implication on costs, governments are keen to give incentives to enhance your return on investment. Furthermore, lifetime savings of a construction outweigh the initial capital investment by far. Here is an exclusive look at five amazing tips for building an energy efficient home.

Air tightness

Air tightness has a massive impact on a building’s energy efficiency. A building with air leakage consumes a lot of energy to achieve an optimum temperature which increases the heating cost. For a building to be energy efficient, it should have proper sills, doors, sealing of joints, vents, and ducts. This way, the final construction will have reduced heating costs. A perfect adage to follow is ventilating right and building tight. This is because some of the building areas need to be ventilated such as kitchens and wet rooms. Today, ventilation systems come with heat recovery technology.

Heat recovery

Heat recovery is a crucial component in building an energy efficient house. Ventilation systems have a lot of technologies with the latest being able to improve the energy efficiency of your home. You can make use of heat recovery technologies such as Waste Water Heat Recovery Systems and Flue Gas Heat Recovery to build an energy efficient home.

Passivhaus Institut [CC BY-SA 3.0]

Count the Losses

In the past, hot water was either stored in a tank or a cylinder. According to study statistics, hot water is responsible for about twenty percent of the total domestic energy costs. Today, there is tankless water systems technology that uses a combination of boilers instead of a storage tank. As you design your home, consider installing a series of boilers depending on the size of the building, capacity of hot water requirements and several occupants in the final home. Though additional installation and venting will add to the costs incurred, this will remove the standing heat losses and storage in the future.

Powered by the Sun

With the energy costs having no signs of dropping anytime, it would be an amazing consideration to supplement your home energy or even generate solar powered energy. You can create your solar energy by use of solar thermal systems or PV. You can also supply the excess electricity to the homes around you. There is a high probability that future technological innovations will enable storage of the self-generated sun-powered energy. The costs of generating solar energy depend on the home system size, but it is energy efficient in the long run.

Insulate

An energy efficient home should have reduced heat loss from its elements including floors and walls. The walls and floors should be well designed to decrease R-Value and u-Value. Some of the available energy efficient insulation materials to use when building the walls and floors include; roof and thicker wall constructions insulations, insulated concrete forms and blown-in foam.

Usave is an online comparison site that compares the internet energy providers for you to pick the best. For any design team and any building, energy efficient building design should always be a vital consideration.