Mortgage and construction loan costs
Posted on June 13, 2011 |
If you compared a house to a car, you could say that a car is made up of the same type of systems, within systems, made up of individual components as well. As an example, a car is made up of many systems such as electrical, comfort, frame, power, and so on. A house has its own set of systems. A house is put together by interacting the structural, mechanical, esthetic systems and more. All of these systems depend on each other to make the overall system function properly. In the case of a car, you could have the most efficient fuel system in the world. Your car can get over 60 miles per gallon, but if the electrical system stinks, how good is the fuel system? In a house, if the HVAC system is the most energy efficient system known to man (or woman), but the shell of the house “leaks like a sieve”, what good is the HVAC system?
All of the systems depend on each other because they all interact with each other. For those that truly understand this, there is an opportunity to enhance the efficiency of all the systems…including the effect on the cost effectiveness of the decisions as to which system or component you choose to use. In future articles I will elaborate and show examples of how this works. For now, it is important to understand the concept.
Since everything is intertwined in the house, this means that every decision not made before you break ground will also influence all of the decisions you have made. This is one of the reasons why it is so important to make these decisions early in the design process. This also means, that even though you may make a decision to choose a more expensive option, that decision may actually be the most cost effective choice in the long run since the effect it may have on other systems could in fact drive the cost of those other systems down. This concept becomes very important when discussing some of the hybrid Energy Efficient systems now available.