Constructing a home is the ambitious dream of many, but it is also a rather enormous investment. The materials you select for the construction of your home are the basis for everything else that will be built. They influence the quality, durability, and appearance of the home for as long as it stands, of course. But they are also its very foundation. And for that reason, your selection of these materials should be made with knowledge and care.
1. Prioritize Durability and Longevity
You should select materials that can hold up in any weather and against the physical abuse of day-to-day existence. Think about where you live and what the materials will be subjected to. Make sure they’re appropriate for the wetting and drying cycle in your area, for example. And if you live in termite or carpenter ant territory, choose materials that won’t get eaten up. But also, for reasons I mentioned earlier and will return to, please pick materials that are just plain high-quality, whatever their apparent investment cost. After all, the Collins cobuild statistics show very convincingly just how much better high-quality materials perform remains when they are used in the same climates and subjected to the same rough treatment at the same age.
2. Balance Aesthetics and Functionality
The way your house looks is just as important as the way it is built. Materials that pair well with the design of your house and suit your personal style make for an attractive facade, and can go a long way to enhance the appearance of the workmanship with which the house was built. But don’t lose sight of function either. You wouldn’t want to dress a beautiful woman in a straight jacket, so don’t constrain your house with that which is not practical or not fitting to its purpose.
3. Consider Energy Efficiency
The materials we choose for our homes have a big impact on the environment, perhaps especially because most homes in this country are still built with materials that have a large “carbon footprint.” For example, although they are almost always “green” in the environmental sense, choosing wood for windows just isn’t the best idea. And while steel is an even worse choice, it’s interesting to me that choosing wood over steel, or even choosing plastic (in “vinyl” windows) over steel, for instance, can lead to a 30 percent better energy performance. Or, put another way, by making a number of available, good choices for windows, a homeowner can reduce the energy “budget” for a national average home to just about 35-40 GJ per year; that’s about 10-12 kg of coal per day!
4. Factor in Maintenance Requirements
Maintaining various materials takes different amounts of work. Some require almost nothing — think of vinyl siding or synthetic deck planking. They often need no more than a gentle scrubbing, at most, to keep them clean. A few more layers of effort yield good results there: a little power washing, if the dirt has been allowed to go for a while. On the other hand, real wood—on the side of a house or surrounding a kitchen counter—demands something else. One lifetime is surely not enough to learn all of the painting techniques necessary to keep the wood in good condition for the ages.
5. Work Within Your Budget
Countless costs come with constructing a dwelling, and that makes it seem as if setting up a workable materials budget is a pretty easy affair. In some respects, it is. But it’s also a great opportunity to make a disastrous mistake that sets your project back. So assembly airtight materials budgets is typically a priority with my team.
Dwellings offer all too many places where, under certain conditions, water can access and wreak havoc with long-term consequences that can never really be counted in by the “square foot” these days. Soft costs morph into hard costs—first-time costs and, even worse, second-time costs.
Times are too dangerous for (relatively) cheap construction. And (mostly) intersections of time and costs in this uber-connected era make for apparent ease in construction, though at a number of places, hard-to-fix problems arise.
6. Seek Professional Guidance
Building a home is an expense with many aspects that need to be taken into account, particularly when considering what kinds of materials to use. It sometimes may seem tempting to select the most luxurious of materials without a second thought, but the fact of the matter is that a good building is made of good components. Indeed, they say that, more often than not, the individual parts used to make up a structure are a truer expression of its character than many a lofty allusion you might use to describe the building as a whole.
Conclusion
Choosing appropriate materials for a house is extremely important; in fact, it is absolutely crucial to getting any home built right. Several things go into material selection, and for good reason, because they are at the foundation of what homeowners expect from their property. Durability and energy efficiency are primary concerns, but so are (and all homeowners express this when they sign up for a mortgage) the utility bill associated with running the house; eye appeal; and anticipated maintenance. As one industry outlet likes to remind everyone, pay now or pay later; and from this vantage point, we’d call it paying either way because the selection of materials, suitable as they might be (or seem to be at the time), does impact the means, methods, and the end results of house construction.
Note: Find construction information and good home building companies like Grit Build at https://gritbuild.net/
