Chateau Homes can offer home design drawing services to develop new designs, or to modify one of our own plans, or modify your house plans. In all cases we will draw the home in our 3D house modeling software to determine the exact geometry of all the surfaces, analyze the structure for efficiency and produce fully detailed shop drawings. When we produce the home design drawings we are a long way to having our shop drawings completed at the same time saving both time and money.
Sustainability, low energy use, safety and performance, how wood houses are best for you:
Our panelized homes, also called pre-fab homes or factory built homes, are built with sustainability and low energy use in mind.
Wood houses are perhaps the most benign and perhaps beneficial homes on the environment and can assist in reducing greenhouse gasses and global warming. British Columbia is home to most of the worlds 3rd party certified sustainable forests and these forests produce the best wood in the world to build highly efficient and safe wood frame houses. A wealth of information on this subject can be found at http://www.bcforestinformation.com/
Also this well regarded private / industry research facility, Forintek publishes useful and informative articles that can be found at http://www.forintek.ca
Low Energy Use
Wood frame houses are some of the best in the world for their high insulating characteristics requiring much less energy for heating and cooling. Additionally as wood requires much less energy than concrete or steel to produce the act of building is also the most energy efficient.
Safety and strength:
Wood houses are proven to be the safest in earthquakes and if constructed properly withstand hurricanes and storm surges. In Canada it is common to pick up old wood houses intact and move them to a new location where they get a new foundation and a new life with a new view.
Wood houses are as safe in fires as houses built from light steel or concrete. It is a fact that most fires occur in the furniture or decorations in a house and that most injuries are from smoke inhalation from these items burning.
Termites can be very destructive when it comes to wood. Fortunately there are some simple things that can be done to prevent termites and carpenter ants from being able to cause this damage. The first is to screen off all openings in the structure with fine wire mesh and to keep all wood materials away from the ground. The second is to pressure treat the wood with salts of borate. Borate is a wonderful material that is used in soap and cosmetics and that is impossible for the termite to digest thereby stopping it from eating your house for lunch. Wood stakes treated with borate have stayed intact after years of exposure in a termite field in Hilo Hawaii, the Formosan termite capital of the world. Borate provides and additional benefit in that it raises the combustion point of wood making it more fire retardant and limits the growth of mould and fungus.
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