Green Home Improvements with Energy Efficient Sunrooms

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A sunroom is a lovely and popular home addition that can be a relaxing retreat, a breakfast area, or a playroom for kids. Sunrooms are inexpensive to build and generally increase your home’s equity. But did you know that a sunroom can also be a part of your strategy to increase your home’s efficiency? Indeed, a sunroom is a simple way to incorporate solar energy into your home heating plan, as they stay comfortably warm throughout most of the year. Opening the windows and doors that adjoin the sunroom to the rest of your house will allow the radiant warmth to come in. An exhaust fan will pull the warm air from the sunroom into the rest of the house. If you really want to get technical, you can even use a thermostat to automatically control when the fan turns on and off.

Growing plants in your sunroom isn’t just pleasing to the eye; growing a potted kitchen garden of herbs and greens will reduce your grocery bill, and at the same time the plants will act as humidifiers and air purifiers. The moisture in the air will better conduct heat, and therefore require less energy use. You and your plants will get the most benefits from the sun’s light and heat if your sunroom faces south or southeast. Using clay pots is also a good strategy as it ass thermal mass to the room, which keep the room from overheating during the day, and retain heat at night.

Before you get ready to build, make sure you know exactly what you want. However, doing a little scavenging beforehand could save you a bundle, and might inspire your creativity. Look around at specialty window stores, home centers, and architectural salvage centers: you might run across a discounted set of windows that someone ordered, and later abandoned that particular project. Try to find windows with low-emissivity coatings and/or gapped windows with gas fill. These will go far toward insulating your sunroom by keeping the cold glass from sucking all the heat out on cold nights.

While the easiest and fastest plan of attack is to hire a professional to build your sunroom, if you are handy, you might consider saving some money by building it yourself. You can purchase the necessary materials and sometimes even pre-measured installation kits from specialty sunroom manufacturers. These kits are quite simple to put together even if you aren’t a master carpenter. Types and weights of sunrooms vary so that you will either have to build the base on the ground, or you might choose a lighter set-up that you can simply install over an existing wooden deck.

Keep efficiency at the forefront of you mind when you are building your sunroof. In warm climates, you’ll want to put a good, insulated roof on your sunroom, or else it will turn into an oven. Likewise, in cooler climates, a clear roof will stay nice and toasty year-round. There are plenty of accessories that will help you circulate the air and reflect the sun’s heat when it is unwanted. You might install moveable cellulose shades; roof vents and skylights will help if you have a solid roof on your sunroom. If the windows are straight up and down, they will absorb less heat, whereas if they are slanted, the room will warm up quickly.

Creative Energy Exteriors is the leading hom,e improvement company and provider of sunroom designs serving Richmond, Charlottesville, Fredericksburg, Williamsburg and Central VA.

Solar Tubular Skylights for Enhanced Home Energy Efficiency

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Skylights are popular home additions and when carefully planned can increase the efficiency of your home. However, skylights can also be a serious source of energy loss in homes: on chilly nights, the cold glass can really suck the heat out of a room, and on hot days you may find yourself cooking like an ant under a magnifying glass. Factor in the possibility of leaks and drafts and you have a full-on energy vampire living in your home. Of course, there are many ways of avoiding these pitfalls, such as making sure the skylight is installed in the proper location, using a retractable cellulose shade, and choosing special glass, such as glazed, gapped, or low-emissivity. These are all great fixes, but you may find yourself spending more than you bargained for on what you had hoped would be a simple improvement.

What if there were a similar home addition that could allow you to enjoy all the benefits of a skylight without these problems? And what if the benefits of a skylight could extend beyond the immediate area it occupies? A solar tube skylight may be the answer you are looking for. Solar tubular skylights are becoming more common. These energy-saving home additions capture the sun’s light and illuminate your home without using one watt of electric power. What you’re about to learn is not science fiction; this is real, and it’s fabulous.

A solar tube skylight is really quite different from a conventional skylight in that it is so much more. There really should be a better name for it. Nevertheless, you can install a solar tube skylight in any room in your home, provided there isn’t another room above it. You’ll need to be sure that the solar tubes will have full access to sunlight and away from the shade of trees or other buildings. The way solar tube skylights operate is a three-part process. First, vertical solar tubes on your roof, or another bright, sunny area collect the sun’s light and, using reflectors, redirecting the light to one place. Next, the light is reflected through the tubes, from the top to the bottom. Finally, the light comes into your home through a diffuser, which distributes the light more evenly in all directions.

One of the best things about solar tubular skylights is that they are competitively priced with traditional skylights: you can spend as little as $400 and as much as $1100 for the parts and installation. The main difference across price points is brightness: the more expensive solar tubes collect light more effectively. If you can get by with less light, by all means, spend less money. Do note, however, that you’ll want to get a UV-protective diffuser to avoid sun damage. You can install multiple solar tubes in your home, and they can work wonders cheering up dark corners in rooms with few windows, and can improve workspaces and kitchens with natural, white light. Solar tubes are also capable of providing natural light throughout your home, even in rooms without skylights.

www.CreativeEnergyExteriors.com is the leading home improvement company and installer of Charlottesville replacement doors with dedicated service and installation teams serving not only Charlottesville but also Richmond, Fredericksburg, Williamsburg and surrounding areas.

The Top Home Improvement for Increasing the Value of Your Home – Remodeling your Bathroom

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Whether you’re preparing your home for resale or you’ve simply grown tired of your interior dcor, a good way to give you home a fresh look is to update the kitchen or the bathrooms. There are improvements for every price point that range from the subtle to the dramatic. Whatever your reason for taking on a remodeling project, planning is everything, so do your homework thoroughly before you begin so you’re not taken aback by the amount of time and money you’ll end up investing. It’s the worst feeling in the world to start a great project and later find yourself unable to see it through.

Doing the project yourself will save you a great deal of money, but it will take time, hard work, and perseverance. The good news is, with kitchen and bathroom improvements, you generally get back in equity about what you put in, money-wise, so these additions are certainly worth it. To get a good idea of what kind of renovation you want to do, and the resources it will require, start watching home improvement shows, reading books and magazines, and looking at home improvements online. Some popular bathroom renovations you might consider include updating your bath and shower stall, putting in new fixtures, installing tiled floors and/or walls, or just updating the dcor. Hardware stores often stock great planning pamphlets for bathroom remodeling projects that give you an exact strategy, complete with a schedule, a shopping list, and even accessorizing tips.

If you can’t afford to buy new fixtures, you may be able to paint or refinish existing ones. If not, check at architectural salvage centers. There you can find unique and inexpensive pieces with a personality all their own. These stores are also a great place to find inexpensive flooring materials, which can make a world of difference in a remodeling project. And sites like Craigslist are really great for finding bath fixtures as well. You’d be shocked how little people will let go of a claw foot porcelain tub (and matching sink and toilet) when they just want it off their property. Like they say, one man’s trash…

You can also remodel for efficiency by changing your water heater to a high-efficiency model. If you go tankless, you’ll reap the extra reward of more closet space! You can also change your toilet to a low-flow or dual flush model to save water, and add a diverter head to your shower. If you know your bathroom could really use an update, but you don’t have the funds or time to tackle a big remodeling project, not to worry: there are so may changes you can make without breaking the bank. A simple coat of paint, when combined with new towels, mirrors, curtains, and some matching accessories like a soap dispenser, candles, and tissue boxes can work wonders. For more of an update, change out the hardware: new towel racks, curtain rods, a toilet paper caddy, the flush handle and toilet seat, even door knobs and drawer pulls can be traded in for a fresh look. If you want to splurge a little bit, change the lighting.

www.CreativeEnergyExteriors.com is the leading home improvement company and installer of Fredericksburg vinyl windows with dedicated service and installation teams serving not only Fredericksburg but also Richmond, Fredericksburg, Williamsburg and surrounding areas.