Where a person lives will sometimes have an effect on the type of home addition they endeavor to make to their home. Certain additions simply make more sense in specific geographical locations, but not so much sense in others. Determining which area specific home additions are best suited for your particular home will depend heavily on the types of geographical features and conditions that exist in your home’s surroundings. The following are a few examples of home additions that are geared for specific geographic locations.
Heated Floors
In colder regions, such as New York or Maine, the winter months will sometimes prove to be brutal. If you own a home in these states, one way to take the edge off of the colder weather is to install boilers in your home and specialized tubing for circulating heated water under your floors. With this addition, you have pretty much everything you need to heat your floors. Generally, the water tubing will either be run through open air under the floor, or encased in a cement layer. The cement layer takes longer to heat up, but has a much longer heat storage capacity. Heated floors will help to keep more heat down lower to the ground, which will make it easier to keep your home warm.
A Fishing Deck
It is the dream of many to live on a bluff overlooking a lake. If you want to be able to walk out your home’s rear sliding glass doors and stand over the water, then adding a fishing deck on to the rear of your house that extends out over the lake will make for many relaxing summer days. Not only is a fishing deck ideal for the avid fisherman, but it will also be a nice place to enjoy barbecues with the whole family.
Hurricane Windows and Shutters
If your home is in need of hurricane windows and shutters, then chances are that you are located in a tropical climate. In a state such as Florida, a hurricane can strike from multiple directions and at various times throughout the year. Providing your home with hurricane windows and shutters in Orlando adds a bit of extra security for the internal contents and inhabitants of your home.
Digging a Basement
If you live in a high enough elevation where a basement makes sense, it is certainly possible to add a basement on to your already existing home. Digging a Basement might be fairly easy, if you are digging into the side of a steep hill to get under your home. It may be trickier if your home is positioned on flat ground. Depending on where you live, you may even need to consider treating the ground for termites before you give this type of addition further thought. Depending on how humid of a climate you live in, how you plan to address construction measures that prevent mold in your new basement will be important to consider also.
Adding a Sun Room
Traditionally, houses in warmer climates are designed with sun-rooms. In certain cases, you will buy a home in a warmer climate that was not designed with a sun-room in mind, and this home will possess less than adequate square footage in its interior. However, if you have the property, it is generally fairly easy to introduce this addition. One thing to consider though is that in a warmer climate a sun room will allow a lot of light and heat into your home. This will potentially make it more costly to keep your home cool. But, despite the additional natural heat concerns, many home owners who reside in warmer climates feel that a home without a sun-room is rather incomplete.
As you seek to make your home more fit for the region of the country in which you live, you will want to consider how the addition you are making addresses some feature of your geographic region or climate. Often necessity has given rise to particular home additions in your region of the country.
