SunSmart℠ Energy Saving Features & Why You Should Care
LifeStyle SunSmart℠
The superior building components that make up the LifeStyle SunSmart℠ building package — which comes standard on every home we build — allow your LifeStyle home to last longer and live better, all while shrinking your monthly energy expenditures.
SunSmart℠ Energy Saving Features & Why You Should Care
Your double-pane windows and glass doors feature a vacuum-sealed interior space along with low-emissivity (low-e) coated glass that minimizes radiant heat transfer between the indoors and outdoors.
Why should you care?
Each window and glass door in your home is equipped with an extra level of insulation, while deflecting outside heat. The low-e coated glass also minimizes the invisible heat and ultraviolet (UV) rays admitted to your home without reducing natural light. This means your home’s windows and glass doors offer you abundant natural light without the threat of fading your interior furniture and finishes.
Why should you care?
We carefully insulate all walls adjacent to attic spaces using R-38 batt insulation where necessary to avoid even small gaps that can allow excessive heat transfer to occur.
Why should you care?
We carefully insulate all walls adjacent to attic spaces using R-38 batt insulation where necessary to avoid even small gaps that can allow excessive heat transfer to occur.
If your LifeStyle SunSmart℠ home has a shingle roof, it features a radiant heat barrier under the roof decking. (This radiant barrier is not needed for tile roofs because tile mounting already offers extra heat protection.)
Why should you care?
This shiny reflective foil intercepts much of the sun’s intense heat radiation, preventing it from heating up the air in your attic, thus making your air-conditioning system more efficient.
Your LifeStyle SunSmart℠ home features R-38 ceiling insulation, providing twice the protection of R-19 against unwanted heat transfer from super-heated attic spaces into your home’s interior living spaces.
Why should you care?
The higher the R-value, the more resistance to stop heat moving from one place to another. R-38 ceiling insulation helps keep your home cooler and reduces the load on your air-conditioning system, thus saving you cooling costs.
This technically advanced water-heating system works like a refrigerator in reverse. Instead of generating heat directly like a conventional electric water heater, the hybrid water heater uses a heat pump to extract and transfer heat from the air into an insulated storage tank.
Why should you care?
Your hybrid heat pump water heater saves you approximately 60% on your annual water-heating expenses when compared to a conventional electric water heater. Heating water with a conventional electric water heater is estimated to cost you $585 annually, while a hybrid system is estimated to cost you only $192 annually. That’s a savings of $393 per year.
If your air handler is installed in your garage, it is working extra hard because of the super-hot air surrounding it. How much more sense does it make to place this unit in an air-conditioned space?
Why should you care?
Simply put, by installing your air handler indoors, it operates more efficiently and ultimately reduces your cooling costs, especially during the hot Central Florida summers.
Your LifeStyle SunSmart℠ home provides a better seal between window and door frames and the surrounding concrete blocks of exterior walls.
Why should you care?
Superior wall and ceiling penetrations mean your home will be better guarded against leaks and pests. As an important side benefit, the system used to provide that better seal also significantly strengthens those joints – an important consideration for your safety in high-wind conditions.
Your LifeStyle SunSmart℠ home has a second furring strip between the outer surface of your home’s drywall and the inner surface of adjacent concrete blocks that increases its R value from R-4.1 to R-7.1
Why should you care?
This second furring strip doubles the volume of air trapped in the space between. This dead air is a very efficient insulator all by itself. Taking this extra step is a simple and very cost-effective measure to improve not only the energy efficiency of your home, but its comfort level as well.
These special kitchen and bath fans effectively manage indoor humidity by exhausting the moisture created in these areas of your home to the outdoors much more efficiently than standard windows.
Why should you care?
One of the best ways to improve indoor air quality is to get rid of stale, odor-ridden and over-humidified air by actually moving the air outside of your home. Exterior-vented fans will remove excess kitchen and bathroom humidity before it can spread throughout your home, greatly decreasing your home’s chances of forming mold and rot.
Each appliance in your LifeStyle SunSmart℠ home carries an EnergyStar® label – the government-backed symbol for energy efficiency.
Why should you care?
Appliances in your home typically account for about 20% of your total energy use. EnergyStar® appliances use less energy and less water than conventional appliances, as well as help reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses and air pollutants at the source. This means you save on your monthly electric bills, while simultaneously helping to save our planet.
In a typical home, 20 percent of the air that moves through the duct system (your home’s air-circulation system) is lost due to leaks, holes, and poor connections. Your LifeStyle SunSmart℠ home uses better-quality joining products and workmanship to ensure this doesn’t happen. As a result, your home’s ductwork experiences less than 3% – 4% leakage.
Why should you care?
Tightly sealed and well-insulated air ducts allow your air-conditioning system to work more proficiently. Sealing also helps improve indoor air quality by reducing the risk of dust, moisture, pollen, pests, and noise from entering the ducts and circulating throughout your home.
LifeStyle Homes offers you the option to add a solar system to your home. Solar panels capture the free power of the sun and use it to power your home. The size and orientation of your system’s solar panels will be the largest factors in determining how much energy your system will produce.
Why should you care?
There are numerous environmental and economic benefits to installing a solar system on your home – but perhaps the most intriguing reason to “go solar” is the enormous effect this clean energy can have on your monthly electric bills. Homeowners who choose to install a solar system will see their electricity expenses significantly slashed, if not eliminated altogether.
LED lighting represents the next wave of high-efficiency lighting. LEDs, or Light-Emitting Diodes, are illuminated by the movement of an electrical current through semiconductor material. They’re not built with the same parts as incandescent bulbs (no filaments, oxidation, etc.), so they don’t burn out. Instead, their brightness simply fades over a long, long period of time.
Why should you care?
There are three main reasons why LEDs are the highest standard of lighting on the market today. First, they’re estimated to use 75% less energy than incandescent bulbs because they give off less heat and only emit light in one direction. Thus, less wasted energy. Second, LEDs are cool to the touch, making them a safer option. And last but not least, with an estimated lifespan of 30,000-50,000 hours, LEDs will last an incredibly long time.
In a sense, your heat-pump HVAC system is a transporter of heat. And because this is Central Florida, where outdoor weather oftentimes calls for indoor cooling, your HVAC system primarily works as an air-conditioner, transporting heat outside of your home. When heat is needed inside your home, however, it runs the cooling cycle in reverse, minimizing the use of inefficient glowing heat coils.
Why should you care?
Because your heat-pump HVAC system moves heat instead of generating it, it is inherently more energy efficient than a conventional air conditioner. The SEER rating, meanwhile, is much like a car’s MPG rating, informing you of your HVAC’s system’s efficiency. LifeStyle Homes has chosen a 16 SEER system for our SunSmart℠ homes, providing you with an optimal balance of cost, efficiency, and thermal comfort.
The superior building components that make up the LifeStyle SunSmart℠ building package — which comes standard on every home we build — allow your LifeStyle home to last longer and live better, all while shrinking your monthly energy expenditures.
Click on the LifeStyle SunSmart℠ hotspots to reveal each energy-saving feature, and discover how each one will distinctly improve your quality of life.
