Steamboat Springs, CO Real Estate and Community Blog

1.  Build a smaller home. Bigger homes use more resources. Rooms that aren’t used often, like formal living rooms or extra bedrooms, require heating and cooling year round. Design multi-use rooms instead of single purpose rooms that are used a few days a year.

2.  Take advantage of Steamboat’s sunny days. Build homes with southern exposures (especially try to have a driveway with southern exposure!) to take advantage of the intense Steamboat sun. You can minimize the summer sun intensity and still take advantage of the warm winter sun by using overhangs or special window tinting material.
3.  Take advantage of Steamboat’s sunny days, Part 2. Use solar panels in our sun-friendly environment. Studies show home buyers will pay $5000 more for a home with solar panels.

4.  Buy quality materials. If you spring for the 30 year shingles instead of the 15 year variety, that’s less material that winds up in the landfill when you go to replace them. Build your home so the quality is there for decades—not cheap fixtures and carpets that need tossed in the dumpster every five years.

5.  Use local products. For example, use Colorado lodgepole pines (the ones being cut down all over the Rocky Mountains because they are being ravaged by pine beetles) instead of Brazilian cherry from South America or bamboo from China. The energy used in transporting those materials is huge. And if you use lodgepole pines, your floors will have interesting patterns and a blue tint.
6.  Update your water heater and appliances. Old appliances—especially water heaters—are the biggest energy wasters in the house. Get new ones.
7.  Seal windows and doors to make them more energy efficient. Tubes of caulking, cans of spray foam, and proper insulation are one of the lowest priced, easiest ways to keep your home air-tight.
8.  Don’t buy products full of chemicals. It’s been in the news how the FEMA trailers were built with products containing formaldehyde. The trailers are now making the people living in them sick. The same thing can happen with carpets, high VOC (volatile organic compounds) paints, and other chemical-filled building products.
9.  Conserve water. Plant as little grass as possible and use xeriscaping techniques to limit watering. Cluster plants that need a lot of water together so you only have to keep a small section of the yard irrigated. The rest of the yard can be filled with drought-tolerant varieties.
10.  Change your lightbulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs. They last longer and use a fraction of the energy regular light bulbs use.