Overlooked Elements When Building a New Home

Let's jump straight to it. Building your new home gives you so many more options than buying an existing building or renovating something that doesn't quite meet your needs. It enables you to deliver to your family a purpose-built home that takes all of your wants and needs into consideration.

However, building your home as opposed to renovating does not mean you get to avoid common mistakes — people undertaking this huge task still overlook important aspects of the process, much like they would if it were a more straightforward renovation.

If knocking down your home and starting fresh, or you're purchasing land to develop your perfect home on, here are some overlooked elements of building a new home that people more commonly skip over.

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three story home being built with men at work inside it

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Site Planning

Where the house sits on the plot is important. Orientation impacts sunlight, heating, and cooling demand and natural light inside the home, for example. And if your home is poorly positioned, you will find you're relying on artificial lighting and your HVAC more than you would need to if you'd put more thought into orientation.

On top of this, you need to think about proper draining. An incorrectly graded site or a site where water has no appropriate runoff away from the foundations will result in moisture problems, and structural damage is a real possibility.

Lastly, you need to focus on access. The driveway placement, garage access, and service access for utilities, etc., even waste collection, should be thought of here, too. It's not just about the house; it's about how well it can function in the area you want to build, even if it's a direct site replacement.

Storage and Functional Space

It's not as glamorous as, say, redesigning the primary suite, but the amount of storage and the functional space is important.

Mechanical rooms, laundry placement, pantry space, linen storage, garage, and general utility space are typically the areas that get minimized to make space for other things. But in a working home, they are priority rooms.

If you don't have enough storage, your home is going to feel cluttered really quickly, and if you don't have functional rooms for things like cleaning supplies, bulk groceries, coats, shoes, bags, etc, where will they end up? When you're planning your new build, these parts need more than a cursory glance.

Energy Efficiency

The majority of US homes are energy vampires. They suck energy and are simply voids that are extremely hard to heat and cool evenly, resulting in huge energy bills.

Building energy efficiency into your plans means you can combat this issue as you go and layer efficiency in your choices. From materials, room placement, layout, ventilation, your windows, and so much more

Look for effective energy efficient home ideas that cover aspects such as solar readiness, EV charging capacities, efficient water heating systems, and so on. They're not luxury features but must-haves that make life comfortable and keep our bills lower.

Final Thoughts

There's so much to think about when considering building a new property. And the more thought you put into all parts of the build, the more practical your home will be and the more you can enjoy it for longer.

This is a contributed post.

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