Energy Saving Ideas for Your Home

Creating a home that’s energy efficient helps the environment as well as your wallet.  Whether you’re looking to improve the efficiency of your existing home or want to build an energy efficient new home, there are so many options available.  Here’s a look at the best Armchair Builder articles covering energy saving ideas for your home.  Just click on the title to read the full article.

Home Air Leaks:  Tips to Minimize

You might be surprised to know how much air gets by your exterior doors.  This article explores the amount of air that leaks through your doors even if you only have tiny cracks or gaps.  Having a gap as small as the size of a penny around your exterior doors is equivalent to having a hole in the side of your house the size of a football.  Here we discuss small adjustments that can be made to your doors to make them more air tight.  This is one of the easiest energy saving ideas to implement.

Raised Heel Truss

Have you ever heard of a raised heel truss?  Many of the new homes today use roof trusses to support the roof structure.  These are engineered and manufactured specifically for your house plan.  The major benefits include greater spans, lower costs, and quick installation times.  One of the lesser known energy saving ideas, the raised heal truss allows the attic insulation to stay at full depth, instead of being compressed by the roof angle.  Check out this article to see why you may want to consider these special trusses for your new home.

California Corner, No Cost Energy Saving Ideas

Any guesses as to what a California Corner is?  No, it has nothing to do with Ventura Boulevard or Hollywood stars.  It’s actually an advanced framing technique that allows us to better insulate the corners in a home.  By arranging the wall studs in a certain way, the insulation makes its way all the way to the corner of the wall.  This framing method will cost you nothing but will save you over the long run.

Heat Recovery Ventilator

Houses are being built more air tight these days.  Builders work extremely hard to seal up all of the nooks and crannies of new homes to improve energy efficiency.  The problem with this is that no fresh air can get in so toxins can build up in the home.  So we need a way to get fresh air into homes without hurting energy efficiency.  Check out this article to see how a heat recovery ventilator can help with the implementation of your energy saving ideas.

How Much Insulation Do I Need In My Attic?

If you would like to improve the energy efficiency of your existing home, the attic is a good place to start.  Why?  It’s typically easily accessible and the cost will be minimal for the return you will get.  But how much insulation should you have in your attic?  In this article we discuss attic insulation requirements and review cellulose insulation costs and installation.

Cool Roof

If you live in a warm climate, you may want to seriously consider a cool roof.  The color, design, and material choice for your new roof can seriously impact the cost for cooling your home.

Energy Efficiency:  Builder Tips for a Tight Home

One of the big benefits of building new is that we can really seal up the house to keep conditioned air where it belongs.  But what are the best methods for sealing up all the gaps and cracks created from putting together thousands of different building materials?

Sizing Your Heating and Cooling Equipment

Whether you are putting an addition onto your existing home or building new, the sizing of your furnace and air conditioner requires major consideration.  Many people assume bigger is better when it comes to equipment sizing.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.  Over-sizing your furnace and A/C will be inefficient and can lead to large temperature swings within your home.  Check out this article as we discuss the proper way to size your system.

These are just a few of the more popular energy saving ideas for your home.  Be sure to stop by ArmchairBuilder.com for videos and downloadable digital resources for more savings.

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