Interesting article…upgrades in techno

Interesting article…upgrades in technology are being implemented into literally every aspect of our lives. Will it ever be too much?

How being prepared will help you get the design you want

The concept is simple. The more information that is given, the more accurate and complete the result will be. An accurate result reduces unnecessary stress and can save you money.

At the moment you decide you want a new home designed specifically for you, that is when you should begin preparing. Preparation may include: collecting magazine clippings, taking photos of other homes, writing down needs, wants, and dreams, finding a lot to accommodate desired square footage,  check for plans on your designers’ website that may fit your needs, or even sketching out possible layouts.  By doing a few things to prepare, your designer will have a great starting point, and be able to produce a beautiful custom design to fit your needs, goals, and lifestyle.

At Habitations Home Plans, we love it when our customers can give us as much information up front as possible, to better assess their needs.  However, we understand that time is often something that our customers may not have much of.  So, even if you have not been able to collect as much information as you would have liked, we can help you collect information and show you options that may fit your needs.  Also, whether you have information or not, we ask questions that will help you remember things you may have wanted in your new design, that may have been otherwise overlooked. We take the design of your home very seriously, and will do everything in our power get you everything you desire in you new home.

Good Luck!

Quality Energy Efficient Windows

Valley Glass Windows:

Choosing the right window can make or break the appearance of a home. The Valley Glass Aspen 6900 Series has a bold and independent look that, without doubt, sets it apart from all the other vinyl windows on the market. The even, symmetrical lines of the window produce an architecturally sound product that truly stands out.

Glass

Most vinyl windows on the market use a thinner glass called Single Strength (3/32″) as their standard glass. Single Strength is more cost-effective for the manufacturer, but isn’t the most durable product. Single Strength is thinner, making it more susceptible to glass breakage. We use a heavier glass called Double Strength or DS Glass (1/8″) as our standard glass. Double Strength Glass adds considerable strength to your windows, making glass breakage much less likely. It also helps reduce noise.

Low E Glass (Energy Efficient Glass)

Energy efficiency has become a focus of every homeowner. We have provided our windows with Solarban 60 Solar Control LowE Glass from PPG. Solarban 60 LowE is an energy-efficient glass that helps keep heat and ultraviolet light out while keeping your furnace heat in. PPG has devoted years of research and testing to develop a number of the most efficient glass types in the industry. Solarban 60 helps each window achieve the necessary U-Value to pass the new energy requirements. You can feel comfortable in your home knowing that even our standard windows provide the energy efficiency many other companies make you pay extra for.

Solarban 70 Glass (Higher Efficiency Glass)

With rising energy costs, finding energy-efficient building materials has become a very popular demand. PPG has responded to these demands by developing a higher-grade LowE called Solarban 70. One of the concerns of homeowners in our climate is heat build-up. Have you ever sat next to large windows in a great room during the afternoon and felt the heat pounding in? Solarban 70 was designed to combat solar heat gain. Solar heat is measured through a term called the Solar Heat Gain Coefficient. This coefficient measures how much solar heat is actually passing through your windows. To prevent solar heat from entering your home, you would want to choose a window with a low Solar Heat Gain Coefficient. Solarban 70 has one of the lowest Solar Heat Gain Coefficients and still lets in a decent amount of natural light.

Valley Glass windows boast many features that improve window quality and efficiency even more.  These include a long-lasting silicone spacer system, a dual-cam locking system for tighter and more secure seals, and a concealed outside screen…more on Valley Glass windows.

Happy New Year!

We want to send out a BIG thank you to everyone for helping us make 2011 a great and successful year. We have designed many wonderful homes and have made some great new friends through our clients and builders. We are truly blessed!
We look forward to creating even more friendships and helping all future home owners and all contractors accomplish their 2012 goals.
Hope to see you soon:)

Advanced Framing Techniques or OVE

At Habitations Home Plans www.habitationshomeplans.com we try to be a bit choosy with what we call out on our plans and the details we show.  Just like with our peanut butter, hopefully you recall “Choosy mom’s choose Jif”  :)  Anyway, with the big surge in Green Building, energy savings, renewable materials, etc. we have definitely seen some great products but we have also seen some products that are not worth the money and effort and some that are completely false claims and don’t have anything to do with green building.

One thing Habitations has seen and is working to incorporate in our corner of the industry is the Advanced Framing Techniques as well as developing better ways to achieve a thermal break in exterior walls which improves the efficiency of a structure immensely.

Take a look at the following link regarding OVE.  http://blog.builddirect.com/greenbuilding/green-building-advanced-framing/comment-page-1/#comment-1384

If you’re interested in Advanced Framing, lowering the overall lumber bill on your next home along with energy savings every month and how to incorporate it into your next home give us a call at 801.476.1860 or 800.378.0123.

And the Winner Is…

In September, the NWHBA announced the winner of it’s 2011 Parade of Homes Peoples’ Choice award and, once again, a home designed by Habitations took the prize! The European-style home, located in South Ogden, was built by Stephenson Homes and was an obvious favorite of many patrons. See details and photos of the award-winning home by clicking here.

UtahStyle Feature Home

Habitations found itself in the news once again this summer when one of its custom home designs was featured in the August issue of the new local magazine, UtahStyle. The Victorian-style home, located in Huntsville, Utah, is owned by Brian and Jana Watts, who, from the start, wanted every detail of their home to have the authentic look of a home built in the late 1800’s.

The Habitations team was up to the challenge, designing a home perfect for the era, complete with ornate trim, beautiful Gothic windows and a full wrap-around porch. The result: it is nearly impossible to tell that the home is a new build and not a well-preserved original Victorian structure.

This latest accomplishment is further proof that Habitations is expert at home design in any style. From traditional to modern, cottage to craftsman, the Habitations team has the experience and knowledge to create a home for even the most discerning customer. One of our Home Designs was published in the Summer 2011 UtahStyle magazine.

Check it out on pages 70-77.

2011 Parade of Homes Spotlight

We hope everyone was able to stop by and walk through home #22.  This home was absolutely stunning!  Bryce Stevenson and his crew from Stevenson Homes did an amazing job building this home that Habitations Home Plans designed for one of our clients.

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During the Parade of Homes, 2 News did a spotlight on this home.  You can see the video HERE.

You can also view a great video slideshow of this home HERE, courtesy of John Shupe at Prudential Utah Real Estate and

Habitations New Team Member

Hey, Habitations has a new hire. Here is a little about our new hire.

A Graduate from Brigham Young University – Idaho with a Bachelor’s of Arts in Interior Design in 2010, Stuart brings a new skill set to the Habitations Team. He is currently a member of ASID (American Society of Interior Designers) and has won awards within the association. He has knowledge in kitchen and bath design, residential design and drafting, architectural rendering, interior space planning, lighting, construction, and materials/finishes selection. Previously an intern with Habitations Home Plans, Stuart demonstrated his creativity through conceptual home design and worked with the habitations team to help serve our clients. Stuart has a strong passion for design and is a strong asset to our company as we move forward in this market. He is eager to introduce new services to our firm including: Interior space planning, lighting design, and interior design color and style consultations. We feel this will help our clients receive a more cohesive design and a better end result. Stuart is a firm believer that Design, whether good or bad, has a profound influence on our lives. Please join us in welcoming Stuart as he begins his career with our team at Habitations Home Plans.

Experience

When you’re talking about experience in terms of architectural design and custom home planning, what are people really talking about?  There’s all kinds of experience, some valuable and some unimportant and not any help at all.  Here are a few examples.

There’s construction experience “Do you know how that is going to work in the field”?  There’s structural experience “In order to do that how big does that beam have to be?!?”  Material selection experience “What are the best materials when looking for maintenance free exterior material for a certain style?”  Site planning experience “Are you sure that the windows in that gathering room are taking full advantage of the views?” and “How difficult will it be to daylight that part of the home with the existing grade the way it is?”

Then you have the unhelpful experience of having 15 or so years behind a computer screen and great knowledge of the computer program and you can sure draw fast but how effective and accurate are those drawings, do they perform their job of communicating the clients’ wishes to all parties involved during construction?

At Habitations, a big horn we toot is our experience.  We have assembled a great team with experience in all areas we believe are valuable when dealing with the design and construction of a new home.

Just a small list of the experience we have to offer our clients is:

Custom Framing Experience in our final designs, not just small home framing but experience with large custom homes.  Our Production Manager who leads our final design team has over 10 years of experience framing large custom homes.  This knowledge is transferred through to our construction drawings insuring buildability, clarity and efficiency.

Site Planning (see one of our YouTube videos) the home is only half of the equation.  We have years of experience working with surveyors, excavators and landscape architects to determine the best placement for the home, gps mapping views out of the home and working out ways to reduce excavation and retaining costs while maximizing the attributes of the lot which the client wants to capitalize.  Excavation costs and retaining are not small costs when building a new home and they can add up quickly.  It’s amazing how far a whole load of retaining rock doesn’t go.  Homes that are not designed with the site in mind up front can easily cost 20k more in excavation and retaining on the low end.

Material selection: You’ll see this comment a lot from Habitations “Our goal isn’t to sell plans. Sure we would love to sell you plans and we want you to love your plans but our goal IS that you are tickled pink with the final product, not the plans…the house”  We therefore spend a lot of time and energy researching and staying up on the latest and greatest materials available for construction.  Whether it’s green, lower maintenance, new technology, more energy efficient, etc. we are constantly working to collect information on it and help you make decisions with that information for your new home.

Creative experience:  How do you find the perfect blend of creativity with efficiency in the design, a great looking home that has a lot of character but doesn’t cost a zillion dollars to get the character?  Honestly, Habitations Home Plans is the perfect blend.  We’ve been drawing plans and studying styles for a long time.  Check out our Plans on the Board Page.  Right up front, with conceptual design, we are thinking both creatively and structurally, making the home look great but keeping the structure manageable so the home can actually be built under the client’s budget.

Lastly, “There it is!”  Have you ever been driving around and then come across a home that just looks perfect, everything about them has been done just right, it has good balance, material placement, it just all works together and looks great, if you have, you’ve probably seen a Habitations Home Plans home.  These homes don’t just happen, they don’t just fall out of the sky.  It takes experience and a great design team with great service.  With all of these items I have listed above, it all comes together as the final product.  Miss or subtract one of these vital ingredients of experience and you end up with one of those homes that looks like a lot of money went into it and you know the client had good intentions but something just isn’t right, and in many cases it’s more than just something…it’s a lot of things.

Always remember, your home is one of the, if not THE largest investment you’ll ever make.  Not only is it an investment, you’re going to look at it and live in it…it’s home!  Make sure you talk to someone at Habitations and consider how important the plans are to the overall project.  Make it the smartest investment you’ve ever made.  You’re not buying plans, you’re building a house! www.habitationshomeplans.com