The ClimatePro team has been pretty busy this week, traveling throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, bring our award-winning window film installation talents with us. Here are some recent shots taken by our team in the San Francisco Bay Area. Have a great weekend!
Designer Gary Hutton remodeled this stunning A. Quincy Jones home, custom-built Eichler home, located on the waterfront in Belvedere, CA. There had been previous attempt to revive the house, or as Gary says, the house was “unsympathetically remodeled in the eighties. ” Having procured the original plans from Jones’ widow, Gary’s team not returned the house to its original glory, they created an environment that served as a perfect platform for the client’s art collection. It’s stunning, isn’t it?
Home photography by Matthew Millman, via Houzz
You can probably imagine how invested we are with lowering your heating costs. After all, using our 3M Window Films can help you reduce your energy costs by up to 27%. Additionally, there are some great tips out there, designed to help you with your energy conservation goals, especially when it comes to heating (and cooling) your home. Here are a great list of tips from the US Small Business Administration:
- “Tune-up” your heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) system with an annual maintenance contract. Even a new ENERGY STAR qualified HVAC system, like a new car, will decline in performance without regular maintenance. A contract automatically ensures that your HVAC contractor will provide “pre-season” tune-ups before each cooling and heating season. You save energy and money, and your system may last years longer with minimal costs for yearly maintenance fees.
- Regularly change (or clean if reusable) HVAC filters every month during peak cooling or heating seasons. New filters usually only cost a few dollars. Dirty filters cost more to use, overwork the equipment and result in lower indoor air quality.
- Control direct sun through windows, depending on the season and local climate. During cooling season, block direct heat gain from the sun shining through glass on the East and especially West sides of the facility. Depending on your facility, options such as “solar screens,” “solar films,” awnings, and vegetation can help keep facilities more cool. Over time, trees can attractively shade the facility, and help clean the air. Interior curtains or drapes can help, but it’s best to prevent the summer heat from getting past the glass and inside. During heating season, with the sun low in the South, unobstructed southern windows can contribute solar heat gained during the day.
- Use fans to maintain comfortable temperature, humidity and air movement, and save energy year round. Moving air can make a somewhat higher temperature and/or humidity feel comfortable. Fans can help delay or reduce the need for air conditioning, and a temperature setting of only three to five degrees higher can feel as comfortable with fans. Each degree of higher temperature can save about 3 percent on cooling costs. When the temperature outside is more comfortable than inside, a “box fan” in the window, or large “whole facility” fan in the attic can push air out and pull in comfortable air from the outside.
- Plug leaks with weather stripping and caulking. Caulking and weather stripping let you manage your ventilation, which is the deliberate controlled exchange of stuffy inside air for fresher outdoor air. To learn more about indoor air quality in your facility visit the Environmental Protection Agency’s EPA Indoor Air Quality.
All great suggestions. Which one do you plan to add to your energy conservation program?
Check out these beautiful interiors from around the web. One of our favorite things about Eichler homes is the diverse way that people treat their interiors. From contemporary to a touch of retro, you can find so much variety infused into each Eichler home. Which one matches your style?
via eichlersocal.com
via valleymodern
via onekindesign.com
via Kevin Freeland
via tipsforho.me
via modwalls.com
It’s pretty amazing that there is so much information available about using gardens and greenery to conserve energy. There are so many great energy conservation ideas out there, from planting trees for shade to the use of rooftop gardens, that it’s hard to pick just a few points to share. For instance, did you know that, according to this article from Better Homes and Gardens:
- A well-positioned tree can save up to 25 percent of your home’s energy for heating and cooling.
- A tree-shaded yard can be up to 6 degrees cooler than a sunny yard. A shaded lawn can be up to 25 degrees cooler than sunny pavement.
- Shading your home’s roof can increase your air conditioner’s energy efficiency by more than 10 percent.
- A single shade tree equals the cooling power of 15 air conditioners — and it runs for free!
- Three house-shading trees can cut your cooling bill by as much as half.
- Windbreaks can cut winter heating bills by 10 to 30 percent.
Those are some impressive numbers! I recommend reading the entire article to get some tips for planting in your area. If you’d like a more detailed understanding, try this breakdown from Colorado State University. It’s a fascinating discussion of windbreaks, planting schedules and more.
Now, if you’re like me, these are interesting facts, but we like pictures! How about this amazing house that was featured on Inhabitat. It showcases the home of Justin Bere, lead designer at + Bere Architects. Justin literally used plants as part of a comprehensive energy conservation plan for his beautiful house. You can read all about the build and the unique design principles behind it here.
