Why Build New?

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Building a new home affords you so many advantages while customizing your living space for your lifestyle. You get the space and the number of rooms you want in a layout that appeals to you. New home designs are bright, open, healthy, and comfortable. They take advantage of advanced tools, materials, and techniques, and are built with low-maintenance and energy-efficient materials. Buying a home is major investment and move in your life—a custom-built one gives you the widest range of options and features possible to enhance your life.

New homes have high standards

The National Building Code (NBC), is a set of minimum design and construction requirements to ensure that your new home is a structurally sound, healthy, safe, and secure place to live. It covers the foundation, framing, outside walls, windows, doors, roof, heating system, fire hazards, air quality, interior sound/noise, and the safety of structures like stairs, bannisters, hand rails, etc. The National Building Code ensures that you benefit from cutting-edge building knowledge and technology.

The National Building Code is applied even before the soil is turned, as a builder's plans must be approved before a building permit is given. Your home is then inspected at various stages throughout the construction process by municipal officials, utility inspectors, and the builder to ensure that your home complies with the code.

The building code is updated periodically by building, fire and government officials, designers, home builders, and consumers. A new revision is scheduled for 2005 and will be the first major change in 10 years, so houses built this year will benefit from the most curent, approved technology and building practices.

Safety Features

New homes are built to modern construction and safety standards using current products and materials tested and regulated for safety.

  • New homes have safe, new wiring and electrical components that are well-grounded.
  • Construction materials have fire ratings for specific uses, and smoke detectors on each floor should be wired directly into the electrical to avoid battery failure.
  • Precautions are built into new homes to prevent fumes from the garage and heating system from entering the house's indoor air supply.
  • Glass in lights, doors, and bathrooms have safety and shatter standards to protect you and your family.
  • Window installations can be designed to resist break-ins
  • Other safety features to consider are built-in wiring for a security system, a fire water-sprinkle system, proper lighting, bathtub grab-bars, non-slip flooring in the bathroom, on stairs, and in mud-areas.

Improved Indoor Air Quality

Canadians spend a large portion of their time at home indoors, so having a healthy home is very important.

There are are multitude of things that can negatively affect the quality of your air at home from simply the building materials and finishes to your furniture and household contents, and the combustive heating system. Excessive moisture and humidity and improper ventilation can result in mold and mildew. Your hair, dander, flaking skin cells, pet hair and litter dust, and emissions from electronic equipment all contribute to air contamination. Adding to that our typical daily activities such as cooking, bathing, laundry, and use of household cleaners it becomes obvious how important indoor air quality management is.

Allergies, asthma, general lethargy and other health issues can be aggravated or contributed to by poor quality indoor air. A continual supply of clean, fresh air is of paramount importance to achieving and maintainting good health.

Because every aspect of your home affects air quality, from start to finish every aspect is considered in new constructions:

  • Design and construction
    • air leakage and excess moisture are prevented
    • dampness and cold spots are eliminated to increase comfort and prevent mold
    • energy-efficient windows prevent condensation, which can not only cause excess humidity and mold, bus also damage
    • room layouts designed to promote air movement and prevent stagnation
  • Ventilation
    • Mechanical ventilation is built into every new home, using exhaust fans to get rid of stale or excess moist air generated in the course of everyday living.
    • Many new homes come with a Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV) are very common in new homes. They continuously intake, filter, and circulate fresh air throughout the house while exhausting the stale air. Appropriately named "heat recovery," before exhausting the stale air, it uses the heat from it to warm-up the cold incoming.
  • Heating and cooling systems
    • Cutting-edge heating and cooling systems run cleanly and safely, exhausting combustion gases separately from the fresh air intake that is burned.
  • Building materials
    • New homes offer the choice to select building materials that minimize air contamination including water-based paints, non-solvent-based glues and grouts, healthy insulation, formaldehyde-free wood products, and pre-finished hardwood flooring.
  • Finishing products
    • you can opt for hard-surface flooring that doesn't trap dust and won't be hospitable to mites. Modern surfaces and sinks are easy to clean with mild, non-toxic cleaning agents.

To ensure a healthy environment in new homes, daily activities in every room in are taken into consideration in the overall air-flow to ensure a supply of fresh, odour-free, clean air for health and comfort. A new home affords you choices—and the opportunity to easily build and maintain a healthy indoor air environment.

Highest Quality Homes

Today's professional builders capitalize on proven construction techniques as well as the latest innovations to produce homes that are designed and built better than ever before. Thoughtful planning and attention to detail produces homes that are a pleasure to live in.

Hi-tech tools make construction easier and more accurate, and many components such as trusses, cabinets, and flooring are precision-made in factories beforehand. This results in improved quality and no need for storage in the outside elements before installation. Thanks to years of research and development, you now have the widest range of building component options than ever before. There's a vast array of new, low maintenance materials available, providing greater choice for everything between windows and flooring, and from their structures to surface finishes—all in the name of design and comfort.

Modern Architecture

New home designs address new lifestyle needs and desires. They are attractive, spacious, highly functional, and very comfortable. Many custom builder's standard model designs can be customize to suit your needs.

  • Spaciousness
    To add to a spacious feeling, new homes are often built with sloped or cathedral ceilings that are nine to 11 feet high. This and the energy-efficiency of new homes allows for larger windows that really open-up your world—without costly heating bills. Clutter can be cleared with these common new home standards:
    • generous bedrooms closets
    • bathroom drawers, cupboards and shelving
    • spaceous linen closets
    • creative kitchen storage solutions for accessories
    • accomodation for appliances of all sizes
  • Open layouts
    A current popular design trend in open concepts is “the great room.” The great room is a large, open informal living space, usually central to the home. Individual “areas” within this space are defined by partial walls, bulkheads, lighting, and flooring to create accessible working, eating, and relaxing living locations that are very spacious.
  • Natural Light
    With energy-saving technological improvements in windows, newer homes can fully capitalize on healthier, natural light without the sacrifices of serious heat-loss in winter or overheating in summer.
  • Kitchens that Accomplish
    An inspiring and often social part of the home, home owners demand both beautiful form and efficient function in kitchens that are a pleasure to cook in, and easy to clean. A new home enables you to accomplish all this with custom layouts and workspaces, and a plethora of design and finishing options.
  • Flexibility for Families
    As your family grows and changes, so do your needs. With this in mind, new home layouts are designed from the ground-up to be flexible and adaptable. Rooms can be converted into nursery, offices, extra bedrooms, or entertainment nooks and specials needs such as wheel-chair access can be considered.
  • Convenience by Design
    Easy living is the result of thoughtful design and features in a modern home.
    • no shortage of storage space
    • mudrooms with large closets
    • oversized pantries
    • built-in recycling bins
  • Quality of Life
    New homes look and feel good. The rooms are individually designed to draw you in with the appropriate ambiance in mind. Enjoy the shiny, gleaming surfaces of a new kitchen, or sink into the pleasing curves and comfort or a naturally warm den design. New homes are attractive and inviting.

Environmentally Friendly Products

Home-building technology is becoming both energy efficient and earth-friendly. It now takes less energy to heat and cool homes, and there are new systems that efficiently combine functions such as space and hot water heating.

Tightly integrated advances in materials, methods, and design ensure that comfort and convience need not be sacrificed for environmental responsibility and energy efficiency in new homes. You can choose from a variety of environmentally responsible products for construction needs from foundation to finishes.

Energy Efficiency for Savings and Comfort

For numerous reasons, new homes tend to consume less energy than older homes—and more comfortably.

  • Windows
    Energy-efficient double-glazed windows are usually standard in new homes. Upgrades options that further minimize heat loss and condensation include:
    • inert gas between layers
    • low-E coated glass
    • insulating spacer
    • better frames
    • extra layers of glass
    • fixed windows that don't open

    Your builder can recommend a combination of different types of windows to best suit your home's architecture for maximum energy savings.

    There is an Energy Rating (ER) rating system that makes it easier to compare better quality windows. The highest-efficiency windows rate positive, which means they can actually contribute to solar warming of your home.

  • Heating systems
    Since heating your home composes the largest part of your energy bills, it makes sense to take advantage of some of these major saving opportunities:
    • high-efficiency furnaces
    • space and water heating hybrid furnaces
    • in-floor radiant heating
    • “heating zone” controls
    • programmable thermostats
  • Appliances
    Major household appliances are also large energy consumers. Selecting energy-efficient models can pay-off in the long run so check the EnerGuideTM label to comparemodels. EnergyStar® refrigerators, and dish and clothes washers are the most energy-efficient models.
  • Additional Savings
    Consider other ways to conserve energy:
    • energy-efficient lighting
    • automatically timed lights
    • motion or light sensors for outdoor light
    • fans with timers
    • low-flow bathroom showerheads

Lower Maintenance Costs

New homes have lower maintenance costs than older homes, and you won't need repairs or costly, surprise, and hard-to-estimate renovation costs.

New Home Warranty

One of the great advantages of buying a brand new home is a warranty. New home warranties are required by law in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec.

Minimally, new home warranties protect you from defects in workmanship and materials, and major structural failure. Some cover mechanical systems, temporary living expenses, and moving and storage costs if you must temporarily vacated due to failure or repair. Whatever your basic package, you may be able to upgrade and get extended coverage.

Be sure your builder is registered with a warranty company, and that they explain the warranty in full before you sign the contract. Know what you are covered for—and what is not covered.