By Robert Helms
Do you dream of building a house by the beach? Whether you intend to permanently locate there or build a second home to escape the harsh winter, building a beach house is one of the most life-changing decisions you can make.
There are also several ways to make your beach house more sustainable. In fact, the right design can help you lessen your carbon footprint by up to 30%. Being mindful that construction can be disruptive to the ecosystem can also be helpful.
This post will discuss eight home-building tips to help you build an environment-friendly beach house.
Essential Things to Consider Before Building Your Home by the Beach
Building a long-lasting and eco-friendly beach house is possible. Making simple improvements in your house’s design can go a long way in reducing its impact on the environment. This includes the construction materials you will use and the structure of your beach house.
If you are doing quantity take-off to bid on new projects, you’ll be gaining a competitive edge with your bids as well. Taking a few things into consideration will allow you to build your dream beach home for the years to come:
Location
Perhaps, one of the significant factors when building a home is the location. This is especially true when constructing a beach house. Ideally, you need to consider several factors, including the following:
- Proximity to the beachfront
- Beach erosion trends
- Local variances
That way, you can have a safe place to build your property.
The area where you build is also something that you need to think about. That’s because this determines your neighbourhood and accessibility to nearby establishments. This includes a grocery store, restaurant, hospital, and other tourist attractions.
You might want to keep water access, privacy, and view in mind. All of these considerations will have a massive impact on your overall satisfaction with your property.
Outdoor Living Spaces
Take advantage of the views and the excellent weather by building a deck or a beach house with a wraparound porch. You can add shade using umbrellas, a sun sail, or retractable awnings.
You can also improve the ventilation with ceiling fans. Similarly, you might want to turn an outdoor space into an entertainment area or build an outdoor kitchen.
Potential Water Damage
While you might enjoy stunning views of the sea, wild coastal weather can sometimes lead to water damage. You might want to have fewer windows facing the strong sea winds or more extended overhangs in your roof.
Most coastal properties also fall into flood zones, especially if they’re pretty close to shore. In the same way, the water damage might be severe due to the waves, storm surges, and storm tides.
So, if you’re building a house in a storm tide prone area, there are a couple of considerations that you might want to follow to reduce the risk of damage. This includes building a habitable floor level to your project as high as possible from the ground. You should also provide as little resistance as possible with seawater flow on the floor level.
Finally, you should use resilient materials to immerse in seawater and ensure that they’re properly maintained.
Wind and Hurricane Protection
Maintaining a beach home can be challenging. You have to consider the natural humidity and salt-laden coastal windows that will corrode your house’s exterior over time. You need to ensure that you build a home that can withstand all these extreme weather conditions, including heavy rains and storms.
Ideally, you should build a house that’s solid enough to withstand strong winds. The winds in the coastal areas are so strong that they can wear down a place. So, your architect and engineer should also consider wind when building your home.
They might want to go with hipped or low slope roof systems to minimize the load of the winds. Apart from that, you should also install shutters to provide additional protection against storms in the area.
Similarly, your house should have fastening systems to secure the roof from uplift due to strong winds.
Professional Builder
To ensure that you have a solid home that can withstand inclement weather, floods, and high winds, you must choose a reliable coastal home builder.
A seasoned builder will know the building codes and regulations in the area. This will enable your beach house to pass all inspections from the planning and building stages to the final examination.
They’ll also know which materials to use best and the best types of foundation repair. Furthermore, professional home builders know how important it is to get up-to-date flood maps and have the soil tested for every plot of land. They also know well the ground is going to perform.
8 Ways to Make Your Beach House Environment-friendly
Here are eight practical tips for building an eco-friendly beach house:
Focus on Energy Savings
One advantage of building a home by the beach is accessibility to renewable energy sources. Depending on your location, you will probably have access to plenty of bright sunlight and strong winds.
Plus, you can use these natural resources to power your beach house.
One way is to build a residential wind turbine and install solar panels on your roof to decrease your grid energy consumption. If you want to level up things, you can use sensor-based lighting systems that will turn off automatically when not in use.
Use Energy-Efficient Appliances
Another tip is to switch to energy-efficient appliances. Our appliances at home use up a third of our power usage and account for up to 45% of our home’s gas emissions.
So, before purchasing appliances, make sure that you check the energy rating labels. There are no more stars, and the less energy used, the better. Appliances like TVs, freezers, and fridges can consume a lot of electricity.
Make sure that you also turn off appliances not in use so as not to waste energy.
Conserve the Natural Greenery
You should also develop a design with your architect or designer that will limit the number of trees needed to cut during construction. So, make sure to include trees and energy greenery in your home design. In return, trees will provide shade, cools down your home, and offer shelter for strong winds.
Another way that you can also lessen the impact on the environment is to have a smaller base and then create a space upwards.
Consider Green Roofing
A green roofing system is cost-effective and gives extra insulation. Hence, it reduces your beach house’s energy consumption.
You can use it in some parts of the roof or for the whole roof in your home. If you don’t want to up for green grass roofs, you can still go green by controlling the stormwater runoff. This is possible by installing gutters, perimeter drains, and subsurface drainage systems.
Similarly, you can also gather rainwater using rainwater catchment. You can use these to flush toilets, water plants, irrigate landscapes, and wash clothes. If you’re planning to use the rainwater for vegetation or drinking, make sure you’re not using asphalt shingles.
Choose Durable Timber
Timber is often a sought-after material if you’re building beach houses. So, when choosing timber, make sure that you select both pest and water-resistant varieties. You can go for something low maintenance like cedar. You might also want to refrain from painting them to enjoy their natural state.
If you think that timber is high maintenance, you can use other alternatives like floor veneers or wall cladding materials. This allows creating the same aesthetics without compromising the durability of the design.
Install Glazed Doors and Windows
Another great idea is to install large and low-emissivity windows since they’re more energy-efficient. These types of windows also use glass that will emit small heat levels in your space. The glass often has a thin, clear covering to reflect the long-wave infrared radiation.
Moreover, oversized windows with low emissivity will also give you your desired view. Angled windows often will let in more light to enter inside your home.
Let in the Breeze
Living by the beach, you always have access to the refreshing sea breeze. You can improve your beach house’s ventilation by adding a sliding glass door and large windows that tend to open on another side.
This prevents interior air from becoming stagnant and improves your home’s air circulation.
Construct an Outdoor Kitchen
Enjoying the outdoors is one of the joys of living by the beach. So, why not consider expanding your living space outdoors?
These days, many great products in the market allow you to build an easy and affordable outdoor kitchen.
Over to You
As impressive as it might sound, there are a couple of factors that you might want to consider before building a beach home. Thus, it would be best to consider sustainability and eco-friendliness while you are at it.
Nonetheless, you need to know the basics to build a sturdy, sustainable dream beach home designed for your comfort and will last for years. That way, you can have the opportunity to commune with nature without producing too much footprint.
About The Author
Robert is a freelance writer based in a NYC. When not writing for clients, he spends most of his time on DIY projects that can make his 800 sqft. apartment a home.
This piece was prepared online by Panuruji Kenta, Publisher, SEVENSEAS Media