ENERGY EFFICIENT HOMES
A Behind-The-Walls Look at Your New Home
Great Design Starts From The Inside Out
At Miller & Smith, great design is in the details, starting with the details you never even see. Behind every wall and beneath every floor are quality building materials designed to maximize structural integrity, energy efficiency, and of course, your family’s comfort. The following are just a few of the features and benefits built into every Miller & Smith home.
Miller & Smith’s exterior doors are fiberglass with a solid foam core that provides substantially more insulation value than a wood door. So, in addition to making a beautiful first impression, you’ll enjoy the opportunity to lower monthly heating and cooling bills.
Our home designs feature large windows with Low-E Glass. This filters unwanted UV rays and reduces heat transfer that may burden your HVAC system, as well as minimizes fading of furniture and flooring. In a Miller & Smith home, great light, beauty, and potential savings are standard features, too.
Miller & Smith’s wall, floor and roof sheathing uses oriented strand board (OSB), which has greater shear strength than plywood and no gaps or soft spots. Made from mall fast growing trees, it also reduces the demand for mature timber. Depending on your home’s location, we use one of two outstanding weatherization systems, Zip Wall or Tyvek, to prevent moisture and air infiltration. These systems eliminate leaks and drafts as well as help your insulation do its job better and keep you more comfortable.
If you’re currently living in an older home with ductwork in your attic, you’ll really appreciate the energy efficiency of our HVAC systems. In addition to being right-sized for your home by a mechanical engineer, all supply lines are sealed and run through the interior of your home. Heated or cooled air reaches living spaces more efficiently, thereby maintaining comfort while reducing your energy bills.
A well-insulated attic is one of the best ways to increase your home’s energy efficiency. We use R-38 attic insulation, delivering a 25% increase over homes built just 5 years ago. The roof itself is professionally designed for proper ventilation, allowing hot air to move up and away from your home.
Our comprehensive Energy Seal Package includes insulating all lower level conditioned space to seal out excess moisture and keep the temperature warmer in the winter.
Ours are engineered in a climate-controlled environment to ensure superior strength and durability, then cut to exact size to reduce waste on job sites. All are manufactured with sustainable forestry practices
to reduce the impact on the environment.
All Miller & Smith homes feature Flowguard Gold CPVC pipes and fittings, resulting in cleaner water compared to copper. All of our showerheads, faucets and toilets are low flow to meet stricter water conservation standards.
We engineer your home to eliminate unnecessary energy use, and include ENERGY STAR ® programmable thermostats so you can set and control your energy use per your needs. ENERGY STAR ® rated refrigerators and dishwashers are also standard in all of our homes.
Miller & Smith incorporates products that are environmentally friendly whenever possible. Like Certainteed vinyl siding that contains 80% recyclable materials; low VOC paint for better interior air quality; sheathing and lumber that uses the entire log for efficient use of resources,to name a few. Then we take construction waste to a local plant where it’s recycled for the most efficient use of resources.
At Miller & Smith, we’ve helped over 10,000 Washingtonians love where they live in 148 neighborhoods throughout Maryland and Virginia. The proof of our performance can be seen in every home and community we have built since 1964.