Ensuring sustainable building of your new home

When planning your new home its important to make sure you choose a builder that understands and has worked with sustainable design features, green energy solutions and has safe waste management practices during the construction phase. 

At Exclusive Steel Homes our building specialist work closely with our architects to ensure that our designs utilise environmentally certified materials with 100% recyclable and non toxic chemicals and through meticulous planning we work to maximises the natural contours of the land to ensure natural light and cooling to reduce utility usage and offer sustainable green energy solutions designed specifically for your home to improve your households carbon footprint. 

However, to help you understand some key points to look out for when researching builders during the planning stages of your build,  we have listed some tips below to ensure your builder / building contract complies with the highest sustainable principles.   

Tips for sustainability outcomes

  • Ensure that drawings and specifications clearly indicate sustainable design requirements and include penalties for substitution of inferior materials and products.
  • Ensure the documentation clearly describes any sustainable design methods or materials that are not yet standard building practice and includes advice on how to implement or source them.
  • Consider nominating important, high-cost items such as windows in a prime cost schedule to avoid substitution.
  • Include unambiguous instructions that prevent changes or substitution without approval by you or your designer.
  • Ask builders to check quotation documents for sustainability compliance risks and note or allow for any contingencies in their quote.
  • Ask builders to recommend alternative solutions that suit their trade and supply chains, while delivering equal or improved environmental outcomes.
  • Consider the use of contracts that link payments to the achievement of specified environmental outcomes (for example, details of environmentally certified materials, window and glazing specifications, and reuse or recycling details).
  • Develop a schedule of reusable materials and negotiate their reuse with your builder.