building tomorrow's home today

Home Technology Group recently installed 2 panels of Seido-5 evacuated tube solar collectors on top of a garden shed. The heat is stored until night when it is used to help keep a greenhouse warm during the colder months.

Home Technology Group recently completed a multi-room shade installation in a condominium in Birmingham, AL. It uses both light limiting sheer shades and room darkening blackout shades from Lutron.

Many people forget that light control also includes controlling natural light. This condominium has whole walls of glass and receives a great deal of sunlight in the afternoons. The homeowners needed to limit the heat gain from the sunlight , especially in the summer months. We used Lutron Sheershade fabric for this purpose.

There are several ways to install radiant heating.
You can bury the PEX tubing into a concrete slab.
You can attach the PEX to the bottom of the sub-floor.
The PEX can be stapled to a wood sub-floor and covered with light weight concrete or mortar.

Once the tubing is in place, the finish floor can be installed. Most types of floors can be accommodated but there are design issues to consider with some.

Home Technology Group can provide consulting services by helping you work through design and implementation difficulties.

Do you ask yourself:
1. Do I need to pay for those expensive Low-E windows my builder wants to use?
2. How do I control my thermostats from the office or second home?
3. What is really the best insulation method?
4. Can I use my shades to wake me up in the morning?
5. Etc., etc., etc., etc

We can help you answer these types of questions and help you implement the solutions by providing the products, knowledge, or contractor.

Lighting control also includes natural light control. Through use of shades or drapery, a home or business can limit or eliminate the sunlight or other outside light that comes into the room.

Motorized shades and drapes can be controlled with a touch of a button or by a time clock to open or close when you want them to. If you have a room full of shades that are used to block the heat of the sun, then you already know that the shades get used for the first few weeks and then stay where they are from that time forward.

Regular fireplaces are very inefficient. They send most (more than 50%) of their energy up the chimney. The answer is to use a masonry heater. They burn more efficiently and collect more heat during the burn and release it slowly over time. This is how people heat their home in places such as Finland and northern Russia.

Home Technology Group recommends the Tempcast Masonry Heater that is produced in Ontario, Canada.

Light control in the home comes in two forms. Natural light control and artificial light control Natural light control can come from house position on the site, i.e. more sun on the south side, exterior shading from trees and shrubs or awnings and eaves, and interior shading. Home Technology Group can help assess all of these areas and provide solutions. We can also provide product for interior shading using Lutron's quiet motorized shading solutions.

A cistern is simply a collector of water.
Some people collect 'gray water' which is household water from showers, sinks, and washing machines. 'Gray water' can be collected and reused for irrigation and to refill toilet tanks.
After the gray water is flushed through a toilet it becomes 'black water'. In this system, our cistern collects rain water from our gutters and roof.
The tank is a 1600 gallon tank and seems to be able to fill completely with about 1/2 inch of rain. We then use this water in a drip irrigation system for our plantings of fruit trees and bushes.