Because of our experience in building new homes, we are accustomed to delivering a high level of finish and working closely with our clients to develop, refine, and execute a quality job. Home builders are also used to working under tight deadlines and budgets, giving us a perspective that most remodeling contractors can’t match.

Our building business affords us greater leverage than a remodeler to negotiate prices for materials and labor with our suppliers and trade partners. We enjoy long-term relationships with our team of trade partners, who know we’ll have more work for them down the road.

A good builder value engineers every project, before and during the process, reducing unnecessary or redundant costs for materials and labor. We also order materials as we need them, rather than all at once, which cuts down on theft, damage, and waste. By utilizing more sophisticated and reliable business practices than the average remodeler, our building business has a greater pool of financial resources to keep headaches and cost overruns in check.

These combined savings can help us to meet your budget or align your project with a budget that you can afford. The money that we save through negotiation, value engineering, and a streamlined operation may even allow you an expanded or upgraded project!

Also, the average rate of return on the investment can be compared to buying a tax free bond that pays 15 – 20%, depending on the type of fuel that you normally use to heat water, and the amount of hot water your household or business uses. Contact us for a free site evaluation.

Returns on your investment are guaranteed as long as the sun keeps coming up!

The details (and cost) of every house is different, and the cost of your house is entirely up to you, not your builder. Only you know how much you can afford and what you want in your new home. It’s our job to apply our expertise and experience to define your wants and needs and then build a home that meets, or exceeds, those expectations while remaining within your budget. That’s why it is so important to determine and then share your budget with us from the first moment you select us to build your home.

Still, the square-foot cost question persists. So it might be helpful to understand what affects the cost of a new home to gain a better pespective…

The costs of similarly sized homes can vary due to their location, the footprint of the building, complexity of the foundation and roof, interior and exterior materials, finishes and fixtures, lot and landscaping concerns, and other construction and design characteristics that are not directly related to the square footage of the house.

In addition, costs including impact fees, permits,and state and municipality code requirements can add thousands of dollars to the cost of a new home, regardless of size. Labor and material costs can also vary based upon the time of year, availability of building materials and workers, weather conditions, and the complexity of the project.

The list of variables goes on – and square footage is only one of them. Better to get a full understanding of our process and expertise and marry those skills with what you can afford and desire in your dream home.

A Professional Engineer is legally certified to design and approve structural drawings, and is also requried to keep his license current with annual continuing education courses that pertain to his profession.

Those products provide measurable benefits in terms of energy savings and improved use of natural resources, but genuine green builders use a systematic approach to design, construction, and the operational durability of the project. Personalizing the green building approach to each homebuyer’s needs and budget, and balancing the value that the client places on the benefits of green building are also key.

All homes leave an environmental “footprint”, and the materials we build with consume natural resources such as trees, metal ores and oil. A green builder’s goals are to reduce the amount of natural resources required to build a house, and then to lessen the amount of energy used by the house once completed.

To achieve those goals, we use building materials, products, and systems that make the best use of every resource harvested while also performing better than traditional products. For example, an engineered beam uses smaller, fast-growing trees. Twice as much of each log can be used to make an engineered beam as compared with a comparably sized “glue-lam” beam created in a sawmill. An engineered beam can also span longer, open spaces and resist warp better (a house that is free of even the smallest gaps does not waste energy).

I’m pleased to be able to offer our clients the best of both worlds – a beautiful true custom home that is built to the highest “green” standards of our time.

If you’ve ever been curious about solar, check out our website for info on how these systems work, and how you can get the government to pay for part of it’s initial cost! Our system is American made, and we are happy to provide a free site evaluation.

www.advancedsolar.biz

Catch the sun!

These homes, built during the last five years, are equipped with advanced wiring and cabling networks that enable the owners to add, reconfigure and accommodate more electronic systems and products — from security cameras to iPod docks — without extensive rewiring.

This type of network, in both its design and components, effectively “futureproofs” a home for new, low-voltage and cable-enabled consumer technologies. No one can predict the future, but a low-voltage home wiring scheme that provides a wealth of capacity (or bandwidth) together with flexibility of use goes a long way to anticipating consumer electronics to come.

Imagine, for example, that you want to link the personal computers in the house to a central printer in a home office. An advanced wiring system serving multi-port data, telecom, and cable outlets throughout the house allows the owners to plug in PCs anywhere and be connected. If you want to move a high-definition TV to another room or hook up a whole-house music system — and add or replace components within those and other networks — an advanced wiring system makes that flexible use easy.

The heart of a structured or advanced home wiring system is its design. In older homes, high-voltage electrical service is provided to every appliance, light fixture, outlet, and switch in what’s called a “daisy chain” configuration. There is no way to reconfigure the chain and its use without digging into the walls to rewire the house.

For a structured wiring scheme, each wire and cable is looped to a specific outlet and back to a centrally located service box — a design called a “home run.” From that central panel, an owner or professional electrician can configure and reconfigure which wires serve which outlets and can add capacity without tearing up walls.

In addition, the advanced wiring system serves only products and systems that need low-voltage electricity, which includes the vast majority consumer electronics such as PCs, MP3 players, security systems, and high-def televisions. While high-voltage wiring continues to supply electricity to major kitchen appliances and general lighting, the low-voltage wiring and cable supplies only the level of electricity that consumer products need to operate, thus reducing consumption and the cost of energy.

The meteoric growth of structured wiring systems in new homes and the “futureproofing” they provide, offer a clear distinction and immediate value for buyers considering whether to purchase a new home or buy or stay in an older home.

A: As “green building” becomes a more popular term and method for housing construction, more products claim to provide ecological or resource-efficient benefits. Sometimes such claims are dubious or at least overstated. The term “greenwashing” refers to a product or supplier for which the claimed environmental benefit is minor or dependent on other features or products to deliver on its promise, requires more energy to create and supply than it saves, or is simply unfounded and unproven.

These are just some of the realities of modern life that drive some of our clients to consider and eventually add space to their homes. To find out if you’re destined for a room addition, even before you call a professional remodeler, consider these preliminary planning steps:

What do you need? A room addition should have a purpose that truly solves a need that no other remodeling option can address. Figuring out what that need (or needs) is will go a long way toward determining the size, location, and overall scope of the addition.

For instance, the need for a home office — driven by a telecommuting or self-employment opportunity — generally means a smaller addition in an out-of-the-way location for privacy.

A family entertainment area, by contrast, will likely be a large, open space and easily accessible from the other main living areas of the house, such as the kitchen; it may also be best served by a half-bath and offer access to the outdoors.

What do you like? We recommend that our clients take time to create a “catalog” of photos and articles from magazines that illustrate their tastes. For a professional remodeler, it is a valuable tool to creating and delivering a truly successful and satisfying addition.

Check with the neighbors. Your goal for a room addition should be to bring your current house up to or maybe just beyond the value and features of your immediate neighborhood.

It’s also important to get educated about any codes, covenants, and restrictions imposed by your neighborhood or homeowner’s association, if one exists.

Stay in character. As a professional remodeling contractor, our goal is to make room additions a seamless part of your existing house, as if the new section was there all along. For any addition, we look for ways to extend or match your home’s original roof forms, exterior materials and features, and proportions.

Money matters. Before you contact a remodeling contractor, decide how much you can afford for a room addition. We typically advise our clients to determine a budget in monthly terms, like a mortgage or car payment, to get the clearest idea of how it will impact their daily lives and overall expenses. Figuring out a budget also includes financing, either from savings, a loan, a gift, or some other source.