Custom Home Comforts in Sherwood Park | Luxury HVAC & Plumbing Upgrades
Today I’m with Adrien from Hinse Brothers Mechanical out of Sherwood Park. And today we’re going to be talking about custom comfort for your custom home. Now, we’re talking homes that are in the greater Edmonton area. They can be anywhere from 1,800 custom build by a home builder or they can be anything up to 10,000 plus square feet.
Today, we’re going to talk about some creature comforts and ways that you can design your HVAC and plumbing system to be exactly what you want.
So, get us started, man. Where do you want to start? Do you want to start with the plumbing side or the HVAC side?
Well, we’ll start with the HVAC and I get pretty excited when it comes to custom builds and the different services we can offer people and I try to keep top of mind comfort for your home, right?
I don’t want a client a couple years or 5 years down the road to say, “I really wish I would have had this option or I didn’t know about this or I didn’t know about that.”
I want to give you the full spectrum of available products and available ways to increase your comfort in your home.
HVAC Zoning and Humidity Control
I’m a big fan of being able to dial in the temperature in any given area of your home.
So when it comes to in floor heating, zoning it just right so your gym isn’t hot like the rest of your basement or your wine room wine cellar is cool, and then your living space is the right temperature where you want it.
That too with two story homes and you want your main floor to be able to hit a certain temperature, you want your upstairs to be the same temperature or whatever you want.
So, we look really closely at zoning when it comes to in floor heating or it comes to any type of hydronic heating.
We never overlook the fact that you’re probably going to want air conditioning.
Even though maybe you think you don’t need air conditioning right now, I want it to always be an option.
So, we always have a forced air variable in there and we can zone out the forced air so you’re able to dial in the temperature you want in your bedrooms and different areas.
So, you’re always comfortable wherever you go.
Yeah, not just temperature, but also relative humidity in the home, too. There’s a lot of different options there.
Usually in the basement, it’s a little bit more humid than the main floor and upstairs.
So, humidity works with the zoning as well.
We work with thermostats that measure and control humidity in each zone.
So, it’s not just temperature, it’ll work with the humidifier as well.
We offer your standard flow through style humidifiers.
We also work with preferably steam injection, which I have in my home, and I’m really big on having the right humidity.
I don’t like having a dry nose or dry skin or anything like that in the winter.
So, I like to be able to dial my humidity in exactly where I want it as well.
And by zoning the system with forced air, it allows you to control that.
What have you done in custom homes to ensure that they’re comfortable?
It’s always a combination.
In floor heating is a higher end product, but in the winter time, you can’t beat it for comfort.
Your feet are warm, everything’s warm, your furniture, everything in the house feels warm when you’ve got radiant heating just coming off the slab.
Usually, we add a forced air system to the mix.
We can do high velocity, we can do low velocity.
The high velocity systems are nice because they’ll have zoning right off the top of the unit.
You can get up to four different zones off of one fan coil.
You could have two fan coils with up to eight zones in your house all being fed by the forced air and then be complemented with your in floor heating.
So, you can use that to just move the air.
You can circulate the air in the home and move it around.
We combine HRV systems, so you’re getting that constant fresh air as well.
And not just fresh air in, but you’re also exhausting stale air in the home.
So, you constantly have fresh, comfortable air in the home.
Heat Pumps and High Efficiency Heating
We’ve talked about it on multiple episodes, but it’s so much more efficient because it’s not just blowing hot air around.
It actually heats the concrete, which stores heat for a long time.
So, you’re not always having to heat and cool and heat and cool.
It just kind of stays at that constant temperature rather efficiently.
Let’s talk about heat pumps in custom homes.
What do you do for a custom home builder when it comes to heat pumps? When does that come into play?
Well, heat pumps are becoming kind of the norm when it comes to people that want air conditioning.
They can find them in variable capacity.
So, you’re not just using the traditional air conditioner that has one speed on and off.
Particularly when you’re working with zoning, you’d be best to have at least a two stage system or better yet a variable.
So, that means it’ll actually cool at really low fan speeds and it’ll heat even.
So, if you want to use your heat pumps in the mild seasons, you could heat the home with your heat pump.
Usually, we set them around five or 10 degrees because they don’t have the same heating capacity your boiler or gas furnace would.
But they’re really good at cooling as well.
So, you talk about a heat pump, it’s basically an air conditioner that can heat.
It’s got a lower heating capacity than it does typically that’s needed in the home in our climate.
And then it’s got an adequate cooling capacity with it.
But in my own experience, I’ve got a two stage heat pump myself.
Not a full variable, but that option is available.
Just having that second speed makes a huge difference in your comfort.
So, I don’t have my wife saying, “Hey, I’m frozen,” and I’m still a little hot.
The register’s blowing on her leg, freezing her from her leg up.
The second speed or having the low speed option, it’s more of a gentle air.
So, you can get a more consistent temperature throughout the home without blasting you, blowing your hair back, freezing your eyeballs.
And it just adds so much to the comfort.
The higher end you go with the variable speed equipment, it can run 200 CFM and still give you nice cool air.
Just a gentle breeze.
You don’t even notice it.
It just runs longer, highly efficient, but constantly moving air in the home.
Luxury Plumbing Features for Custom Homes
Let’s jump into plumbing.
What are some creature comforts that we can have in our custom home regarding plumbing?
Steam showers.
It’s nice to have a custom shower.
You’ve got a bench, you’ve got the multiple rain heads, shower bar with a wand.
Steam is a nice addition to that.
So, we work with you on the design of your bathroom, size a proper steam generator for you and that’s just like a nice retreat in your own home.
Not having to go to the gym or something.
And bidets.
Typically even if people don’t want them right away I say it’s good to be prepared for future if you want at least a bidet seat or a smart toilet or something like that.
They’re becoming really common nowadays.
So, it’s good to have your GFI outlet ready to go.
You can have your heated seat, your bidet option and those are really good things.
We can set you up with our suppliers.
They’ll walk you through all the different fixtures and custom order your fixtures.
Hot water is another big thing.
We want to make sure we’re sizing the hot water to meet the needs of the home.
So, if you’ve got a lot of people in the home or you’ve got crazy showers with body jets and this type of thing, they’ll have a high need for hot water at any given time.
So, you want to be able to handle that capacity as it comes up.
At the same time, highly efficient.
So, tankless water heaters, combination of tankless water heaters and storage tanks.
You can incorporate indirect water heaters with your boiler system.
So, as it’s heating the home, it’s heating your hot water as well.
In the summertime, it’ll just heat the tank.
But they have a lot of output.
So, a small tank can put out a lot of hot water.
Recirculating pumps for hot water are another big upgrade.
We pretty much always put in a recirculation pump and line for people.
Especially with the big bungalows and that.
Your utility room is on one corner of the house and it’s got to run 60 ft over to that fixture over there.
So, we run a hot supply line, insulate it, insulate the return, so it’s still efficient, but we’ll circulate hot water so that it’s really close to each fixture when they turn on.
So, you’re not standing there at the kitchen sink waiting for 30 seconds for hot water.
You get it in a couple seconds.
Luxury Kitchens and Outdoor Comfort Features
Let’s talk about kitchens because that is a big deal.
Kitchens are the heart of the home and in a custom home you want some really neat fixtures and elements in your kitchen that are going to set it apart and make your home even more comfortable to use.
Old school ventilation was not usually very adequate.
You see in an older home you’ve got a 4 inch pipe for your range hood.
Why isn’t it sucking up the steam or anything like that?
So, we’re putting in bigger and bigger ventilation hoods and with that, you’re allowed so much CFM to be removed from the home.
When you’re using the range hood, we have to do a calculation on what’s acceptable and what’s not.
Typically, we’ll put in a type of makeup air.
Some people want a 1200 CFM commercial style range hood.
Those require a lot of air coming in.
We can use a boiler system to heat the fresh air that’s coming into the home.
So, separate the little fan coil heated hydronically and it works with a duct sensor.
So, it measures the air being output.
It’s taking straight air from outside and heating it and bringing it into the home, introducing it back into your duct work.
So that you’ve got fresh air to remove from the home.
You’re making up that air that you’re removing.
We pay close attention to what type of appliances you want, what type of cooking you do, and work with you on that for the best option.
Other neat things in kitchens are point of use hot water so you always have hot water right next to the sink.
You could filter it.
Reverse osmosis drinking water.
Pot fillers are a big thing nowadays.
You don’t want to have to carry the great big pot of water.
You’ve got a faucet right behind the range.
You can just flip it over and fill up the pot.
There’s a workstation sink if you don’t have a ton of space to work in.
They’ve got cutting boards right in the sink, garburators, you name it.
Pretty much anything you see in the magazine, if that’s your wish, we try to make that happen.
You just tell us what your picture of a perfect home is, and we try to make that work for you.
Equipment is another big thing.
A lot of people want to have some kind of heating on their deck or they want gas barbecues.
We can put in patio heaters like you’d see at a restaurant.
Garage heaters, barbecues, pizza ovens, outdoor kitchens, fire tables.
Having that natural gas to help light your fire pit is helpful too.
So, that’s it for us today, guys.
If you are a person who is either a custom home builder or someone who is dreaming about building their custom home and wanting to pull out all the stops and get something that fits magazine ready and fulfills all of your dreams, talk to Adrian at Hinse Brothers Mechanical.
You can go to Hinse Brothers Mechanical and fill out the form or click the button to call him and he’ll set up an appointment and come out and give you guys a proper estimate so you guys can start planning the home of your dreams or he can work directly with your builder.