Making sure your kitchen is working best for you

While everyone appreciates the kitchen is the ‘heart of the home’, we want to add another energy efficiency dimension to it. We’re not talking appliances and gadgets. With all your new home’s energy efficiency basics in place — correct orientation and the personally-designed functionality tailored to meet the needs of the home’s family — we now want to look at matching the best energy efficient materials that go into making this central room really love you, more than just you loving it. The importance of this goes well beyond what you see, because it has the power to affect your wellbeing.therefore it deserves the same focus you’ve applied to all the major house structural components. Did you know your kitchen can make you sick without even realising it? Many paints, adhesives and other man-made materials commonly used in cabinetry and finishings emit harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCS) and formaldehyde. While typically not acutely toxic,vocs can have compounding long term negative health effects, and formaldehyde irritates the mucous membranes. We are constantly researching companies and their products in line with our own environmental ethics to always be reaching for higher levels of sustainability, adaptability and energy efficiency. The great products we find are incorporated into our new homes. We use Dulux paints because they’ve developed aqueous solvents.their acrylic paints are water based and emit mainly water vapours as they dry. Geoff Gibson Homes also uses Laminex products — another company doing its part to lower emissions from their products. Recognising the low emission and sustainable building benefits, they have chosen to transition their medium density fibreboard (MDF is the basis of most cabinetry) from a formaldehyde E1 rating to the even lower E0 rating. There is also the option of some Super E0 products using no added formaldehyde, along with a range of low VOC products. This superior range of low emission products has the obviously great effect of improving indoor air quality. As an environmentally-focussed building company, we constantly strive to reduce a new home’s footprint as much as possible by utilising products and technologies that also cut carbon emissions, are making every effort to minimise water use and building construction wastage going into landfill. Our range of tapware all have four and five water ratings and our kitchen appliances all have high energy saving star ratings. This is just a small preview of the many environmental and energy saving initiatives you can employ to ensure your home is safe and energy efficient for generations. For further information or to discuss your individual building requirements, please don’t hesitate to contact us.