Energy efficient building products can be wonderful tools for conserving our environment and saving on monthly utility bills. In honor of Earth Day, we are celebrating ways you can protect the environment and “go green” by saving energy at home and how we strive to provide energy efficiency in our newly built homes.

Though our standards vary by community, Harris Doyle Homes offers a wide array of energy efficient building products such as Low-E window panes, radiant barrier roof decking, tankless water heaters and smart thermostats. Let’s dive deeper into a these four energy saving products below.

Low-E Windows

A simple energy efficient feature is the type of window used in your home. Investing in high quality, energy efficient windows can be a very beneficial decision for a home buyer, specifically the type of you choose.

Low-E glass was created to minimize the amount of infrared and ultraviolet light that comes through your glass, without minimizing the amount of light that enters your home. So what does that mean? To simplify, Low-E Windows have window coatings that keep the heat out during the summer and heat it in during the winter while still providing natural light.

You can expect to spend a little more on Low-E windows, but you’ll see the ROI on your energy bill as they reduce energy loss by as much as 30 to 50 percent.

Radiant Barrier Roof Decking

Radiant Barrier can effectively cut the amount of radiant heat entering your attic. Less heat in the attic equals less heat entering the living space.  Radiant barrier roof sheathing is reflecting aluminum installed on the bottom side of roof decking to block radiant heat transfer between a heat-radiating surface (i.e summer sun beating down on a black shingled roof) and a heat absorbing surface (i.e. insulation) in your new home. A Radiant Barrier can reflect up to 80 percent of the sun’s heat from entering your attic in the summer and can reduce temperatures up to 30 degrees.

How does this help you, the homeowner? You can see a significant decrease in energy consumption, which in turn not only helps the environment, but also effectively lowers cooling cost.

Tankless Water Heater

Tankless water heaters provide hot water only as it is needed, rather than constantly having water in a tank, reducing the amount of energy used. Tankless water heaters may cost more than a traditional model to install, but the long-term savings could provide an even greater value to the home owner.

One of the greatest advantages is reducing the costs associated with a tank sitting idle while no one is using it. High-efficiency tankless systems are built to use 10 to 50 percent less energy than standard water heaters, and last an average of 20 years.

Smart Thermostat

A smart thermostat allows automatic and programmable temperature settings based on daily schedules, weather conditions and heating and cooling needs. The energy efficient advantage of a smart thermostat is its ability to learn household routines and adjust accordingly. For example, your smart thermostat would learn that you aren’t home during the week from 8 AM to 5 PM and would adjust the cooling or heating frequency accordingly.

Harris Doyle Homes is a proud partner of ecobee, the company behind the world’s first wi-fi smart thermostat.

The ENERGY STAR® certified ecobee3 lite smart thermostat  is a standard feature for our new homes. By installing this smart thermostat in our new homes, we’re able to provide innovative, affordable and energy efficient options to our new home buyers.

Harris Doyle Homes is always looking for new and innovative ways to make our homes energy efficient and affordable for our home buyers. One of the many benefits of building a new home, is the new standard of energy efficiency required by home builders. We build all of our new homes under today’s stringent building codes, including Alabama’s newly adopted Statewide Energy Code.