When you are at home resting, it is important that the air you breathe is safe and healthy. There are many elements in the air such as vapor and gases from chemicals used in the home that contaminate the air and make it unhealthy. It is therefore important to have a Prefab House ventilation system that allows your home to bring in fresh air and expel contaminated air. If your home is insulated, ventilation will ensure that pollutants in the air that are harmful to the health and that can damage the house are not trapped inside.
Why Should You Ventilate The Home?
There is a lot of warm air in the home and once it comes into contact with a cold surface, the air condenses into a liquid. This warm air therefore condenses on the ceilings and walls, which encourages the growth of mold. The home can also get damaged due to wood rot and insulation gets spoilt.
When the home is very humid, the equipment used to cool the home have to work much more, which means your energy bills will increase. There are also a combination of gases in the air that come from fireplaces, stoves and cleaning agents which are harmful to the health.
Types Of Home Ventilation
There are various methods used for home ventilation. The natural ventilation method is where there is free movement of air in and out of the house from doors, windows and cracks. There is also mechanical ventilation that uses fans and vents to bring in fresh air and get rid of stale air from the home. There are two types of mechanical ventilation – the spot ventilation and the whole house ventilation systems.
What Is Spot Ventilation?
A spot ventilation system is one that controls the flow of air by the use of exhaust fans that are placed in specific areas in the home. These fans get rid of moisture and contaminants from the surrounding area. Exhaust fans are normally found in bathrooms and kitchens. For homes that use the natural ventilation method, spot ventilation can be used to increase the effectiveness of air movement in the home.
Whole House Ventilation
A whole house ventilation system provides ventilation to the entire home. The ventilation is the same throughout the house and is also controlled. There are different types of whole house ventilation systems. An exhaust ventilation system is one that reduces air pressure in the home by getting rid of stale air. Clean fresh air then comes into the home through vents and cracks. The system has a single fan that is connected to ducts from different rooms in the home and that gets rid of the stale air through an exhaust point.
A supply ventilation system makes use of a fan that creates pressure in the home. This causes outside air to come into the building through vents and holes in the home. There is also the balanced ventilation system that brings in fresh air from outside and expels stale air. The system normally has two systems, each with a fan and a duct. Normally, fresh air is supplied to living rooms and bedrooms, and air expelled from the kitchen and bathrooms.
You have a beautiful log home. It may be your dream home. Perhaps it was a labor of love when you built it, and if you didn’t, you were no doubt excited when you bought it. You’ve likely enjoyed it throughout the seasons, maybe for many years.
Perhaps you raised your family there, or enjoyed it as a second home, and hosted friends and relatives for any number of occasions or events. It’s also possible that you never envisioned selling it. Your plan may have been that it would stay in the family indefinitely, passed on to future generations, for all of them to enjoy, as a true legacy of memories.
But as it always does, life takes twists and turns, and sometimes our best laid plans get sent back to the drawing board. As it relates to your log home, the day came when it was time to sell.
And so you hired a local real estate broker, quite possibly someone you knew, or maybe the one you worked with when you bought it. You went through the steps of preparing your home for sale, pricing it, and signing a listing agreement. You didn’t think it would take long to sell, because it’s a beautiful place, well-built, and ready for another family to enjoy it as you and yours did.
But unexpectedly, weeks on the market turned to months, with little – maybe no – activity. How could that be?
At first, you may have been puzzled, and later maybe a bit bewildered. Suddenly, one of the issues you were facing was the length of time your property had been on the market. Your agent ran out of answers, said the ‘listing had gone stale’ and it seemed that every conversation was about reducing the price.
Then it became frustrating, especially after you’d gone through the emotional process of letting the place go, and it got worse when it came time to pay the next property tax bill. Ugh. Why is there so little interest in your property? This isn’t what you expected.
The One Thing
What happened? There may be multiple reasons, as there are always a number of variables at play, but the single biggest mistake made by sellers of log homes, log cabins and timber frame homes is that they didn’t do their research when hiring a real estate broker to represent their property for sale. In simple terms, their situation called for hiring a specialist, and they hired a generalist.
Questions to Ask
When it comes time to sell your log home, the single most important decision to make is that of which real estate broker to hire to represent your property. This is not as simple as calling the local broker, or hiring a friend or relative who’s a licensed real estate agent. Instead, these are the key questions to ask:
1. What’s the profile of the likely buyer of your log home, and where is that buyer most likely going to come from?
More times than not, these buyers are going to come from out-of-town, and not be local buyers. Sure, it’s possibly a local buyer, but most likely not. They’re probably buyers like you were when you bought or built the home, meaning they’re most likely looking for their own dream home, and they know more about what it will look and feel like, than where it is.
2. How will your broker reach out-of-town buyers for your log home?
This is a critical question, and it’s very important to know the best answer to the question ahead of time, so you know it when you hear it. Here’s what that means: most agents and brokers will say that your property will be listed for sale on national websites like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com, and that therefore, a buyer from anywhere can find it. Hmm, that sounds pretty good, but what does it really mean? That leads to the next question:
3. How will prospective buyers find your log home when they’re searching online?
In today’s world, it’s a given that buyers will be searching online. Over 90% of buyers search on the internet when they look for real estate. But unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of real estate websites (including Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com and most national franchises) require buyers to begin their search by providing the city, town or zip code where they’re looking to buy. And the majority of buyers of log homes, log cabins and timber frame homes don’t know the city, town or zip code of where to search. Oops. That’s a problem.
4. So, how will your broker target buyers of log homes?
Given the answers to questions 2 and 3 above, this is the ‘$64,000 question’. If the majority of log home buyers know what they’re looking for, but not where to find it, and if most websites require those buyers to start their search by entering the city, town or zip code of their search, then the real estate brokers you’re interviewing better have a good answer to this question.
5. How will your broker present your log home to prospective buyers who find it online?
There’s no question that you want to hire a real estate broker who ‘gets it’, meaning that they know the target market for your log home, log cabin or timber frame home, and that the best way to reach that target market is with a strategy that makes it easy for prospective buyers to find your property when those buyers don’t the city, town or zip code of where to search. But you also want to know how your property will be presented to those buyers when they find it online.