In this day and age were fast, easy and convenient are buzzwords for the way we live our lives, it is no wonder that even the way we build our dream homes is as easy as assembling them at an offsite factory and having the panels delivered to your preferred site, to be constructed either by you alone or by a local contractor according to specifications.
What next, cars that come out of a box? While cars that come out of a box may not be until the distant future, kit homes or ready to build homes, however, are taking the real estate market by storm and consumers burn up cyberspace searching for anything and everything on it.
From how to purchase and how to build to how to customize plans for one, you can bet the world and its mother had already researched about it.
But then again, most of what we hear about these homes are that they may be less expensive alternatives to building traditional homes but they are also of lesser quality, almost to the point of inferior.
Another myth about them is that since they are environment-friendly homes, they entail extra expense - also untrue because kit homes already come built in with eco-friendly features like coming in timber-framed or steel-framed models or ones that can be installed with solar panels.
Timber is touted to be the most renewable building material since it doesn't get affected by any weather condition and steel is virtually indestructible and recyclable to boot.
With these two as the main materials for your kit home, how green can you get? Whether you are looking into purchasing a timber-framed or steel-framed kit home, there are certain environmental benefits to be had with them.
For one, you can check on those with a 5-star energy-efficiency rating, and there are as well, some factors that you can check to make sure you are purchasing an environment-friendly kit home like a floor layout that maximizes passive solar energy use so that you don't need to use as much air-conditioning to cool your home.
Being able to include double-glazed windows to keep your home warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer is another factor.
This reduces your energy bills by almost half since you don't have to use your HVAC systems as much.
And lastly, there's insulation which many kit homes today make use of in different ways.
You just need to ask your manufacturer what kind of insulation was used with the home you want to purchase.
These are just some of the basic requirements you can inquire about when you purchase your first kit home.
A seldom-considered but important environmental option you can also include with your kit home is the use of a grey water system, which is the water we use for laundry and the shower.
This is also the water we use to water the plants since this is the best way to deal with the problem of water shortage that contributes to droughts.
Solar panels is also one feature you can include with your home design, but it would be a much cheaper option to have them installed with your kit home rather than later, in addition to making it much more energy-efficient.