Building In the Winter. Are You Crazy?
The most often asked question we get at this time of year is, “is it possible to build in the winter?” The answer is always a resounding… YES! You can build in the winter and in fact, it may be more advantageous to build now vs. building in the busier spring/summer months.
The one hurdle may be your foundation depending on your building location and even then there are ways to overcome this. Once your foundation is in the major obstacles of starting in the winter are over especially when building with a Pacific Homes building package.
Advantages of building in the winter months:
- The permitting process at your local building authority office is typically faster in the winter.
- If you have a mortgage on the land you will have less carrying time by starting sooner than later.
- You will have an easier time finding qualified contractors and subcontractors because of the slower building season.
- You may be able to get better pricing during this time as contractors still need to work.
- Winter is most likely the ideal time for custom home building as everyone’s schedules including your own are not as tight as they are in the summer and your contractors can meet your building schedule vs. juggling several jobs at once.
- You will be in your new home quicker by choosing to build in winter instead of waiting until the spring to start.
- A more esthetic reason is that while building typically your yard is dug up and filled with dirt and mud. By building in the winter you can get started on your landscaping earlier in the spring and by summer you will be enjoying your new home as well as the outdoors.
Now if those reasons aren’t enough for you to get started building right now how about the advantages of building now with an energy-efficient prefab Pacific Homes building package?
By choosing our prefabricated building systems to build, instead of weeks or possibly months until you are clad to the weather, with a Pacific Homes package your house is typically locked up in 4-10 days. We build in a climate-controlled factory so your wood-frame structure has very little exposure to the weather. In addition, if you choose one of our pre-insulated Pacific SmartWall® panels for your project not only will your house be built faster the walls will already be insulated and more energy-efficient! This means less energy required to heat the house during the rest of the building process.
One of the projects that we shipped to Calgary, AB over the winter months included our energy-efficient 2×6 Pacific SmartWall® System. It was a 2 story, 4000 square foot house with a complete basement foundation that was heated with radiant in-floor slab heating. The house package took only 10 days to get locked up with the doors and windows installed. Outside the house, the temperature ranged from -20°C to -30°C (-4°F to -22°F) but inside the house, the temperature was +10°C to +15°C (50°F to 59°F) with just the in-floor slab heating the entire house on a low setting. The subcontractors on the project couldn’t believe the temperature inside the house.
Why wait until spring? Contact us right now to get started on your building project!