We could say it is our attention to detail or our decorators’ sense of style and aesthetics. While we do have excellent design and aesthetics and we pride ourselves on our attention to detail, the differences in a house you purchase from Stevenson & Company goes much deeper. To truly understand how we are different, one first needs to look at how 99% of the builders in the United States build a house.

Almost all residential home builders build the same house. Reputable builders follow the same minimum standards required by building code from the ground up. While this code ensures the health and safety of you and your family, it does nothing to ensure that you have a quality product that will stand the test of time. Developers of building codes do not focus on how you will use your house. Evolving smart technologies impact how you operate within the home and address the on-going cost of operating your home and the potential carbon footprint of the house.

From the start, Stevenson & Co considers these issues and utilizes energy-efficient building practices. We have set a standard to create a home that is less expensive to own, more comfortable to live in, yet still have the same amenities you find in homes within the same price range. Unlike most homes built in our area, our homes avoid using Natural Gas as a fuel source for the house. Gas may be great for cook tops and fireplaces, but we prefer to use electricity as our primary way to power and heat your home. Our mechanical design utilizes electric water heaters and heat pumps, which is a more energy-efficient way to power your home and save you money.

One of the biggest differences in the way we build your home is also the least appealing topic – Insulation. Most builders use blown cellulose and fiberglass insulation in the homes they build. At Stevenson & Co, we use encapsulated spray foam insulation. Most homeowners and builders don’t know about this type of insulation or if they do, they are less likely to choose it as it has a much higher cost in comparison to traditional fiberglass or cellulose insulation. The truth is that spray foam insulation is an incredibly superior way to insulate your house. It dramatically reduces the energy use of the house, fills gaps that allow pests to infiltrate the home, eliminates drafts in both hot and cold spaces within the home and creates a more comfortable place for your family to live and relax.

To best understand how it is most efficient, you need to learn a little more about traditional insulation. Traditional insulation attempts to create an insulation envelope within your house; however, it cannot eliminate air leakage from outside or inside your home. That means that your house is continually leaking conditioned air to the outside and hot or cold air is leaking into your house at the most inopportune times. The Department of Energy estimates that up to 35% of your home’ s conditioned air is leaking in a traditionally insulated home at any given time. In a spray foam insulated home, air leakage is reduced to less than 2%, which means that your air conditioning systems works 35% less to accomplish the same amount of work. Some builders will offer spray foam insulation for an additional charge but with Stevenson & Co. we offer it as our gold standard.

An interesting feature of modern life is the way we adapt to changing technologies. Electric vehicles are arriving in force over the next 15 years, whether we like them or not. Climate change science has been embraced by policy makers over the last 20 years and they are mandating the adoption of EV’s nationwide. Stevenson & Co has embraced this reality and offers electric vehicle charging ports in the garage of all homes that we build.