Reasons for an architect to design your house are many. But let’s focus on just a few. 5.
Here they are:
1. YOUR HOME IS A HUGE INVESTMENT .
2. VALUE.
3. YOU GET WHAT YOU WANT.
4. MADE FOR YOU & YOUR SITE.
5. HEALTH.
Let’s take a more detailed look at each of these concerns:
1. YOUR HOME IS A HUGE INVESTMENT (make sure capable professionals design it).
You are going to spend tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars on your house. Perhaps even more, depending on your wishes and budget. Let’s think about the cars, trucks and SUVs that you drive everyday…Would you trust some guys at a local garage to throw together a vehicle for you?
One in which you would drive your family at low, medium to high speeds daily, and perhaps take on a long vacation across the Country? Of course not. You want highly trained automotive specialists from design studios within GM, VW, Toyota, Ford and the like designing your cars! Sure. Well, how about your house? Wouldn’t you think that you and your family at least deserve the same concern for safety, efficiency and design quality in the very thing in which they live (your house) that they do inside your vehicle? Yes, you all do.
Why take chances with your house. Have a real, licensed architect designing your residence. You want your house to be safe to resist forces such as wind, rain, snow, sleet and not leak. You want energy efficiency so that your house sips, rather than guzzles your energy dollars. You want your house to last your lifetime and beyond.
Thinking that “minimum code”, your local building department or your residential contractor are going to watch out for your best interests is not necessarily what can happen. We see situations all the time where “minimum code” is woefully inadequate to handle things that you and most people take for granted.
You may think that your insurance policy protects you if your house falls down, rots, grows mold, makes you sick, costs you untold thousands on escalating energy bills, but this is not necessarily true. Insurance policies may have clauses that exclude poorly designed residences.
It is suggested that you consider protecting yourself and your family by having a real architect design your house. The level of education, experience and knowledge is vastly different between a licensed architect and an unlicensed individual whom has no legal oversight or any qualifications whatsoever.
2. VALUE:
the architect’s fee can be saved in having lower costs for the life of the house.
• Lower Power – Energy Bills: Your architect can design your house to have much thicker and more efficient insulation. This can save you big dollars, as energy costs continue to rise. You could have monthly bills of less than half of what people with non-architect designed houses pay, depending on your location, specific design, insulation types, amounts and micro climate. Also, your design can feature low-cost, more efficient windows that frame your desired views, yet block undesirable elements like heat and cold. The design an architect produces also is in tune with your site, to locate and angle your house to capture desired views while shading your residence in summer and letting the sun in in winter. This of course, further reduces your energy costs through “smart planning.”
• Lower Maintenance Materials: your design can have materials that a residential architect knows about, that will last years, if not decades longer than other materials, and with less upkeep from you. This saves you money every year and give you more time to do things that would be more enjoyable.
• More efficient equipment: such as your HVAC (Heating, Ventilating and Air-Conditioning) systems being specified to give you choices for greater energy efficiency, reducing your monthly heating and cooling costs.
• Roof overhang analysis and design: your residential architect designs your roofs to shelter your walls and glass from summer sun, while letting in winter sun, thereby saving you energy and therefore reducing your monthly power bills. This is easy for a licensed architect, practically unknown among less well-educated unlicensed people.
• Other items, too numerous to mention in this single online article.
3. YOU GET WHAT YOU WANT:
not having to settle for someone else’s dream; you get to enjoy your own. What you want doesn’t exist anywhere else. You have gazed at magazines until you went to sleep, searched online for months or years and you cannot find the house design you want. You are unique. You want a house that truly accommodates exactly what your needs dictate. That is a classic prescription for an architect. He or she will listen carefully to your description of what you are after and ask questions and then design a house to meet those needs.
Your house will look like you want it to, you will have that large kitchen with central island you have always wanted, your master bedroom will accommodate your antique bed, you will have that large fireplace and more.
4. MADE FOR YOU & YOUR SITE:
the design will be tailored to your lifestyle and specifically for your land. You want a certain amount of bedrooms and bathrooms. Your architect will make that happen. You have special site slopes; your architect will solve those issues and turn lemons into lemonade. You want to focus large window areas toward a spectacular view, which is the main reason you bought your land: your architect will make sure that you have large glass areas framing those great views. You want to easily be able to drive into your garage, because you have lived with a current situation that makes that difficult. Your design will solve that. You have always wanted a hobby room: you shall have it. The one person on the planet that is skilled at designing houses is a residential architect. You deserve to have one designing yours.
5. HEALTH:
your house can affect your health and that of your loved ones. Make sure a knowledgeable professional designs and specifies materials, systems and features that help you all to become and remain healthy.
For instance, the EPA, up to this point, hasn’t really addressed the issue of formaldehyde emissions coming from normal household insulation. A knowledgeable residential architect keeps track of things like this and specifies materials that are low in such emissions or have none whatsoever. Also, this design professional will specify your ductwork to be impervious and start and stay clean through the construction of your house. This rarely happens. Remember Legionnaire’s Disease? It started with water dripping due to a leak and condensation in hidden building areas, and exposing this to fibrous duct material whose recirculating contaminated air flew around the interior of the building, exposing nearly everyone. Only a residential architect seems to know these things and specifies certain materials and procedures to help you start with a healthy house and maintain a healthy house, which ordinarily becomes grossly contaminated during the construction process, with a pro like an architect watching out for you and your family’s health.
Give the HOME ARCHITECTS ® a call to discuss these reasons and to hear more. 1-828-269-9046. Rand@HomeArchitects.com
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