Tips for Building An Energy-Efficient Home

In this Post
–Tips to Build An Energy-Efficient Home
–Water Conservation Tips
–How to Select the Right Architect

In these modern times, like every other walk of life, the concept of energy efficiency has caused a paradigm shift in the real estate industry. Nowadays, someone who desires to invest in a property may prefer to buy or design an energy-efficient home over the other available options — and for good reasons. Living in an energy-efficient home and using different types of eco-friendly alternatives to everyday items may not only allow homeowners to reduce their carbon footprint but also let them cut on their different types of recurring utility expenses. 

So, if building an energy-efficient home with modern design and features also interests you and you’re looking for some inspiration in this regard, we are here to help. In this blog, we’ll give you some useful tips on how to design an energy-efficient home that may also look aesthetically pleasing.

Let’s begin!

How to Design An Energy-Efficient Home: Important Step-By-Step Tips to Follow

If you are planning to take on a construction project to fulfil your goal of designing an energy-efficient home, then you need to take note of following pointers discussed in detail below

• Property Layout
• Home Orientation
• Home Insulation
• Using Glass in Interior
• Smart Appliances
• Ventilation
• Water Conservation

Property Layout

The very first step in terms of designing an energy-efficient home involves working on your property layout. In this step, you have to make decisions regarding the overall appearance of your home, its features, and floorplan. Considering different factors there may be different types of floor plans but in the light of the current trends, open and broken floor plans are the two of the most trending ones among them. 

A layout with an open floor plan is considered more energy efficient because living in such types of homes, you will require fewer resources to power up your home. Open floor plan may let you make the maximum use of daylight with fewer partitions and walls around, you can easily distribute it throughout your home. The same goes for the air conditioning unit, which will you maintain the indoor temperatures in your open plan. This is how the open plan makes your home energy efficient.

Note: While working on the layout of your house, don’t forget to review the construction bylaws of the society you live in. As an example, you can take a look at the construction bylaws in DHA Karachi that every homeowner needs to observe while undertaking construction projects in the neighbourhood of Defence, Karachi. Similar is the case with posh neighbourhoods in other cities like DHA Lahore and DHA Islamabad.

Home Orientation

Now that you know how the open plans make your home energy efficient, let’s talk about the site orientation and how to make the best use of it considering the environmental conditions of your selected location. Work on your home orientation by breaking it down room by room. As per the position of the sun in this region of the world, parts of a home facing east receive sunlight during the morning and are cooler in the afternoon, which are, of course, ideal for kitchens and bedrooms. On the other hand, south and west-facing rooms that receive sunlight during most of the day can be best converted into living and dining rooms. Garages, bathrooms, and laundries do best with north-facing parts of your home as they receive low sunlight.

Home Insulation

Another way to make your home energy-efficient while designing it is by installing home insulation. The climate in most of the regions in Pakistan usually stays hot and dry all year round. So, if there isn’t any form of insulation installed around your house, the heat will be absorbed from the sun rays and the trapped heat may even bother you after the sun sets in. To counter such a problem, you can insulate the walls, ceiling, and roof of your home to maintain bearable temperatures indoors. There are different types of home insulation materials available these days. There are also a number of ways to insulate the windows in your home to prepare it for the colder season.

Note: If your living space feels like an oven during the summer season, then here are some of the best ways to get rid of the trapped heat and make your home feel cool.

Using Glass In Interior

Incorporating glass in the interior is one of the most effective tips to design an energy-efficient home. Installing glass panels and large floor to ceiling windows not only uplifts the aesthetics of your home but also makes it energy efficient. Both transparent and glazed types of glass allow you to make the maximum use of natural light in your home during the day. Even at night, you can light up maximum parts of your living space with the help of using minimum lighting if you have transparent glass panels installed around your home. Here are some clever ways to incorporate glass interior when working on tips to design an energy-efficient home. 

Smart Appliances

Technology is getting smarter and energy-efficient with each passing day. Now we have energy savers and LED bulbs that we can use as home lighting to save energy. There are plenty of smart devices available in Pakistan these days that can help you make your home energy-efficient. Moreover, we can choose inverter ACs over normal ACs to bring down your electricity bills during the summer season. Other than that, there are many different types of smart gadgets that can be useful for you in terms of designing a smart home. Devices like smart blinds, smart bulbs, and smart switches can help you save a lot of electricity units by maximising the use of available energy resources. 

Smart lightings come with built-in sensors that use infrared technology to automatically turn on and off when someone walks into the room. One of the best tips to build an energy-efficient home is to incorporate smart appliances in your living space, which can be bought from some of the best electronic brands in Pakistan that are also the honourable partners of Zameen.com.

Ventilation System

Don’t forget to install an effective ventilation system while designing an energy-efficient home. It is how you can maintain ideal temperatures. The ventilation system installed in your home may feature exhaust fans, wide west-facing windows, strategically placed ducts, and hoods. Meanwhile, here are some easy hacks to make your home feel more ventilated.

Quick Fact: A well-designed ventilation system in your home does not only add to the comfort of the residents but prevents overuse of electrical appliances for heating and cooling

Water Conservation Tips for Your Home

Along with working on ways to make your home energy-efficient, you can also work on some techniques to save water at home. It can become even more practical when building an energy-efficient home from scratch than renovating the existing one. Some effective ways to save water at home include installing dual flush toilets, good quality faucets to prevent leaks, recycle water by installing some sort of mechanism of storing it instead of going down the drain, and install showerheads instead of bathtubs. Here are more details about the aforementioned water conservation tips for your home.

How to Select the Right Architect to Design a House

Now that we have given you some useful tips on how to build an energy-efficient, it’s time for us to look at some important factors that come into play when selecting the right architect for your home. The below-given pointers are some useful tips to select the right architect to design a house.

• First of all, before getting in touch with an architect, you should have a design in mind on the basis of which you can communicate with them. This will allow you to do the necessary calculations regarding your goals and the design for the home. 
• Do your homework while hunting for the architect for your property. You may be in need of an architect who specialises in home construction and can easily work on the aforementioned tips for building an energy-efficient home.
• Do some research and be aware about the cost of building energy-efficient homes in Pakistan. Don’t completely rely on the information provided by your architect and contractor.
• You may have to interview multiple individuals before finalising your candidate who would work on your construction project to make your home energy-efficient. There are several factors that will help you in terms of selecting the right architect to design a home. By meeting architect face-to-face, you’ll have better understandings about the pro skills they may have in their field
• One of the most important tips on how to select the right architect to design a house is to review their past work as an employer does before hiring or contracting an employee. It will let you have an idea of what kind of final product you can expect from your selected candidate.

Note: Learn more about the aforementioned tips for selecting the right architect for your home by taking a look at this blog.

We hope that all the above-mentioned information will help you easily take on your desired construction project based on designing a smart home. If you need further assistance on any of the tips on how to build an energy-efficient home discussed above, feel free to reach out to us at blog@zameen.com. We love it when our readers interact with us.

On a side note, you can also read our other pieces related to the construction field to fetch more useful information about the cost of building energy-efficient homes in Pakistan like 5-marla house construction cost in Pakistan, 10-marla construction cost in Pakistan, pros and cons of building a house on your own, eco-friendly flooring options available in Pakistan.

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