Your Future Home - July 2016

It's an exciting time to be building or renovating a home.

Brand new technologies such as energy efficient appliances, heat sources and lighting means our energy consumption is dropping.

It's a good thing, too, as energy prices continue to spiral upwards.

New generation solar panels and battery technology means that, for rural customers, offgrid living now makes more financial sense than paying to be connected to the grid.

That equation is going to work its way towards urban centres as the prices drop.

At the same time, people have begun to realise that newer is not always necessarily better - there has been a marked swing back to natural materials for building (check out the clay blocks on page 18), insulation, lining materials and ensuring the 'breathability of a house', rather than making it an airtight enclosure (read
about health-based building on page 14).

All of this ensures a cleaner waste stream and lower embodied carbon emissions from the process of building.

Trouble is, it's difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. There's a whole lot of information out there, some of it reliable, and some of it dubious, but it's hard to tell which is which.

Here's where Your Future Home comes in. We aim to educate you on your choices, and take some of the hard work out of the research. Enjoy issue two!

Download this publication to keep as a useful reference or view the publication below.

If you would like copies or to advertise in the next 2016 edition, contact Chris Murgatroyd on (07) 577 7774