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Archive for the ‘Projects’ Category
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
There was a time when people pooh-poohed solar home design as the stuff of science fiction. Today, we see Global Warming, pollution, rising energy costs and depletion of our natural resources, and realize that solar powered house designs are no longer fiction. And, you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg to do it either. We can walk you through the process of passive solar home design, and use technology that won’t bust your budget.
There are several key factors to consider in solar home design, especially when going the passive route. Where are you planning to build? What are the wind patterns in your area like, and what’s the terrain? In passive solar house designs you generally use windows and what’s known as thermal mass to help heat and cool your home. By having small windows on the summer side of your home, and large on the winter, you can help keep your dream home comfortable. Thermal mass refers to things like the masonry used in your walls and/or fireplace chimney. In this type of solar home design, the stones absorb heat during the day, and give it off at night; thus your home stays about the same temperature at all times. Here again, positioning your home and the stonework depending on your location is important.
The virtues of passive solar house designs are that they’re simple, require little maintenance, and have few moving parts. In initial costs can also be minimal as only a change in building material is needed. Now, stepping up to a full solar-powered home can entail a lot more work and investment. Yet, some people see it as important to reducing their carbon footprint. Also, if you’re building a rustic mountain home, you may be miles from the nearest utility, and running power out to you can be problematic, at best.
If you want to go fairly low-tech, you can install a solar powered hot water heater. That simple feature can reduce your electric bill quite a bit. If you have a pool, and want it heated as well, there are solar powered pool heaters. Depending on where you, if you have good sun exposure, a full solar home design may work for you. By installing photovoltaic (PV) solar-power panels on your roof, they will convert sunlight directly into electricity. During the optimal times of year, you can completely power your home this way.
In fact, some electric companies will buy the excess electricity that your solar house design generates! Just think, the dials on your electric meter running backwards. Or, you could say: running the right way. Not only can you be proud of having a completely solar powered home, but you’ll actually be helping your community. For some people, that’s a source of great pride.
No matter what kinds of solar home designs you want to use, we can help you work them into any style of home you want. And, if you’re unfamiliar with all the solar-powered technology that’s out there, we can help you pick out the best systems for your dream home.
Tags: dream home, dream home design, mountain home plans, passive solar, rustic, solar home designs
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Sunday, December 27th, 2009
These days, people love the idea of going over their own small home plans, getting them just the way they want. Well, at KADTEC, we’ve got you covered. Utilizing the latest in 3D CAD software, we can create a 3D architectural rendering of any home you can imagine. Why look at flat, boring blue prints when you can take a virtual walk through any of the efficient home designs you can conceive of?
It doesn’t matter if you want a big home or a small home design; the key to KADTEC is that we specialize in unique home designs. These days, small modern house designs have many benefits. Given the state of the financial system, small home plans are easier to build; they are more affordable, and they can give you a mortgage that is easier to handle. Also, if you do your own small home design with an eye to the future, to expanding, you can have your efficient house design, and still build it for a reasonable price. Down the road a piece, when you can afford it, you can add on those additional rooms.
KADTEC can handle the civil drafting for your small home plans. A small home design also has the virtue of being faster and easier to build. The bigger and more complex your dream home design is, the longer it’ll take to build. Also, you want to keep the future in mind. What sorts of energy efficient house plans are going to be coming available? A large house could take extensive renovation to make use of any breakthroughs in energy technology. Along those same lines, small home designs are more energy efficient. Right now, the future is very uncertain. You don’t want to get yourself into your home only to find it’s too expensive to maintain. You want to make sure that your utility bills are manageable. Going with an energy efficient home design, you can save money over the life of your home.
For that matter, there’s the simple issue of architectural styles. How many times have you looked at a home and instantly known when it was built because of the tacky style of the place? Home styles are like fashion styles – they change. What’s stylish today may be downright hideous in five years, and then home remodeling becomes an issue. A large home presents the problem of being hard to change and update when styles change. For that matter, you can change your mind about your home. The layout you love today, you may find it really doesn’t work for you, as you settle into your dream home. Even if you don’t want to expand your house, you may find that you want to remodel certain aspects of it. With small home plans, they are also easier and cheaper to implement.
When building a house, keep this in mind: it’s not like a haircut! If you don’t like your small home plans, it won’t grow back. That’s why getting a good design right from the get-go, viewing the home in a 3D rendering, and keeping the layout small and simple is the best way to get your dream home.
Tags: dream home, dream home design, dream home plans, eco-friendly, energy efficient, modern, small home design
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Sunday, December 13th, 2009
The idea of log home designs has a lot of appeal for some people. Maybe it’s the idea of going back to nature, or you’re thinking of how Abraham Lincoln grew up in one. They can be beautiful, but they also have problems associated with them. Rather than going with a log cabin home plan, there are great mountain home designs available that are much better.
Log cabin home designs look quaint and pretty from the outside, but they’re fraught with troubles. Termites are everywhere, especially out in the wilderness. Unless you want to go to the expense of getting the logs for your log home building and cabin treated, those little buggers can literally eat you out of house and home! And, if you do treat the logs, now you’re putting chemicals into the environment, not very eco-friendly. Then there’s properly sealing the log home designs so you get a nice tight seam between the logs. Yes, modern chemicals and sealing compounds are good, but getting the log cut so that they fit together close enough for a firm seal is labor-intensive, and expensive. And finally, there’s the issue of getting through those walls. A plus of log home architectural design is the insulation that the logs provide. But, that’s a double-edged sword. Anytime you want to run a utility line, a pipe, or anything else in and out of the house, you have to do some serious drilling!
Instead of log home designs, take a look at the great mountain home designs that KADTEC has to offer. Step one, meet with the staff to look over our portfolio of previous works. From them, you can get some ideas as to the perfect dream home for you. If you have an architect already lined up, our staff can coordinate with them in your mountain home design. If you don’t have an architect, KADTEC can help you find one. Also, the company is in the process of getting its architectural license. No matter what services you need to design your home, we’ve got you covered.
Once you have a basic layout, KADTEC can advise you on making your rustic mountain home plans as eco-friendly as possible. These days, there are lots of green home construction methods available. How do you know which ones are right for you? The staff at KADTEC are experts at green house design, and can guide you in the process of selecting the best elements to work into your mountain home plans.
So, before you let some builder talk you into a log home building plan; check out the better alternatives that KADTEC has to offer. Remember, this is your home, the place you’re going to want to stay in for a long time. Log home designs may seem quaint, but you want the best design possible; that’s what KADTEC can do for you.
Tags: dream home, dream home design, dream home plans, eco-friendly, green home, log cabin, log home, mountain home plans, rustic
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Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
Getting your home designed the way you want it is really only half the battle; you’ll want home landscape designs and ideas to finish it off. We at KADTEC don’t do landscaping, but we have a great bunch of landscapers that we work with regularly. When you find just the right lot for your dream home design to be realized, you’ll want to get a good home landscape design to go with it.
Landscaping can be as varied as the styles of homes that we can design for you. These days, there are landscape and home design software programs that allows you to review a plethora of home landscape designs and ideas before you ever stick a shovel in the ground. That’s an important feature of any landscape architecture design. As we’ve all seen from recent events, times are a bit tough these days. You do not want to waste time and money on a lot of different full sets of blue prints, only to find just the right home landscape design. That’s the virtue of landscape architect software; you’re landscape architect can create a variety of virtual layouts for your home, and then you can select the one you like.
You have a number of issues to consider when reviewing the home landscape designs and ideas for your dream home plans. First off, where are building? Are you planning to on a coastal home design, or maybe a mountain home plan? Each of these is a unique environment that will impact your home landscape design. A home built near the beach means that the soil is sandy, and the air is very salty. Plants that are very sensitive to salinity won’t thrive in such a situation. You need to be sure that your landscaper knows about such things. If you’re building in a northern clime and/or the mountains, you’ll want to avoid tropical plants. If your landscaper doesn’t think of that, your plants will wilt in the first winter’s frost. Then there are what are known as invasive or nuisance spices of plants. If your landscaper has home landscape designs and ideas that include such spices, your landscaping plan won’t be approved! Those kinds of plants are damaging to the environment.
Then there are other home landscape designs and ideas related to green home plans and being eco-friendly. It’s no secret that, these days, more and more people are concerned with the environment. That concern can extend to your garden and landscaping. A really good home landscape design can incorporate hardy plants that don’t need a lot of care. Desert plants can survive on much less water and fertilizer than other plants. For that matter, you can get a garden composter so that you use organic matter to create natural compost and fertilizer. If you can avoid putting chemicals into the soil, the local environment will be that much better for it. For that matter, if you or any of your neighbors use well water for drinking, you’ll want to minimize dumping chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides into the water table.
Tags: dream home, dream home design, dream home plans, eco-friendly, green home, landscape design, mountain home plans
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Friday, October 16th, 2009
There’s no denying that we live in “interesting” times, shall we say? Making sure that you have energy efficient house plans is of critical importance these days. Gas prices vary widely, and sometimes getting enough home heating oil is tough, especially if you live in a remote location. This is where energy efficient home designs are vital.
There’s a lot of debate as to the causes of Global Warming, but no one can deny that the world is warming up, and greenhouse gases are the driving force behind it. So, if you want to reduce your carbon footprint, energy efficient house plans are the way to do it. Maximizing your insulation, putting good shingles on the roof, and installing high efficiency appliances can be the key to achieving all of this. Many times, the construction methods used by the builder can be critical. It’s important that, when building a green home, it gets built right. Here’s one example: some builders will cut a notch out of the wall insulations when installing an electrical outlet. Each of those notches is a tiny hole in your insulations. If they do that for every outlet, it can add up to the equivalent of an open window in lost energy! Do you want to leave a window open all winter and all summer? What affect is that going to have on your energy efficient home design? Not only is your money essentially billowing out the window, but you’re pumping still more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This is where KADTEC can help you by insuring that the energy efficient house designs outlined in your home blueprints are carried out properly.
Today, there are a variety of energy efficient house designs you can choose from when laying out your dream home plans. It doesn’t matter what architectural style you want: a Victorian home design, some cottage home designs, and even something as different as German architecture. All of these types of homes can benefit from eco-friendly products. Building a green home doesn’t mean having to sacrifice anything, if your engineer knows about all of the green architect resources available.
Energy efficient house plans can incorporate something as simple as passive solar home designs – the windows oriented to get plenty of the winter sun, and little of the hot summer sun. Then there are full solar home designs you can look into that will give you maximum energy efficient house plans. There are solar hot water heaters, and solar panels to go on your roof to supplement your electrical system. Depending on where you live, your energy efficient house plans could include a windmill. Placed in the right location, one of those can generate a lot of electricity. You can also check with your local utility, and see if they have a buy-back program with people who generate their own power. Some municipalities require their electric companies to buy power people generate themselves. As a result, if your energy efficient house plans prove very efficient, you may end up selling your excess power!
Tags: cottage, dream home, dream home plans, eco-friendly, energy efficient, green home, passive solar, solar home designs, Victorian
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Saturday, September 26th, 2009
Do you want to design you own dream home? For some, it’s a Victorian home design or a little gingerbread house nestles amongst some maple trees. For others, it’s a luxury mountain home with the Grand Teton Mountain Range (or some other range) as the view out their master bedroom window. Or maybe you’ve always dreamed of a little beach home design in the Florida Keys or on the Pacific shores.
Well, it doesn’t matter if your dream home is a Tuscan villa, German architecture, a ranch home design, or an eco-friendly minimalist home design; KADTEC can help you design you own dream home. We have the technology – 3D home design software, and other programs that will allow us to guide you through the process from conception to construction of your dream home plans. With our knowledge in engineering, you can focus on the layout and design of your own dream home, and we’ll take care of the calculations, plans, and permits.
Once you’ve selected the location for your dream home, you need to consider how you want to lay out the property. Is your land very steep? If so, you may have trouble with erosion when it rains. We can grade your lot to prevent that. Do you want to design a dream house that’s a split level home? That may require a stemwall or retaining wall; we have structural engineers in-house who can handle that, and help you design your own dream home, and then pass the home design on to your architect. We also have a number of excellent landscapers that we work with regularly. They can use landscape architect software to give you a veritable Garden of Eden on your property, yet make it something easy to maintain with a good sprinkler system and a little tending by you.
These days, many people want unique dream home plans, especially given the concerns about Global Warming. So, if you want to design your own dream home to include solar home designs, green home plans, biofuels, and the latest in energy efficient home designs, we’ve got you covered there as well. We can design an eco-home that
Everyone has ideas about the sorts of rooms they’ll have in their dream home. Whether it’s a home gym, home theater, library, your own private office, rec room or workshop, we can work with you to create the perfect layout for you. Do you want a master suite with walk-in closets and separate bathrooms? We have the knowledge and expertise to create that. Also, it doesn’t take an architect to create house plans; we can handle all aspects of the layout, and then take care of the permitting for construction.
Tags: beach home, dream home plans, eco-friendly, energy efficient, green home, luxury home, ranch home, Victorian
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