A Garland Mill Home
At Garland Mill, we consider the entire lifespan of our client’s buildings—how they look, feel, and function throughout the seasons and over the years. In a Garland Mill home, you’ll discover thoughtful features and technologies that embody our commitment to creating livable, enduring structures.
Healthy + Comfortable
Garland Mill homes are designed to promote both health and comfort. We focus on energy efficiency, harnessing the benefits of natural light, and maintaining excellent indoor air quality to create a healthy living environment that performs optimally in every season.
Mechanical Ventilation and Healthy Interiors
Good indoor air quality is a primary goal of all Garland Mill homes. To achieve this, we employ a number of strategies. First we use healthy finishes. We specify paints, plasters, and wood finishes that are zero or low-VOC (low in volatile organic compounds). We specify induction burner stoves and other electric appliances to eliminate the need for fossil fuel combustion in the home. Garages are usually separated by a covered open air breezeway to ensure that residual car exhaust doesn’t leak into the home. Garland Mill buildings include radon vents to ensure that we meet EPA recommendations on radon levels. We use mechanical ventilation with heat recovery to exhaust the stale moist air and preheat the incoming fresh air. This keeps interior air clean and healthy while retaining some of the heat and relative humidity that would otherwise be lost. These strategies keep the interiors of our homes healthy.
Solar Orientation
An important pattern of a Garland Mill home is that it takes advantage of the sun to provide both day lighting and passive solar heat gain to primary living spaces like the kitchen, dining room, and living room. Kitchens often enjoy south and east exposure for morning sun in the winter.
Efficient + Resilient
Well-insulated, all-electric, with charging stations and back-up batteries, Garland Mill homes are designed specifically adapt to our northern climate, every season, year after year.
All-Electric Homes with Super-insulation
Our homes employ super-insulated thermal envelopes which are tested for air tightness several times through construction. Homes that meet super-insulation standards require very little heat and are able to run entirely on electricity, which is often produced on site with solar panels. Super insulation also allows the building to coast through power outages without fear of pipes freezing.
Renewable Energy, Back-up Storage, and Charging
Garland Mill projects generally incorporate solar photovoltaic panels to generate as much energy as the home uses on an annual basis. Oftentimes these panels are coupled with battery storage so that homeowners can use the power they produce during the day for nighttime loads after the sun goes down. Batteries also allow folks to keep the lights on when the power goes out from a storm. We typically incorporate car charging units for electric vehicles in our garages. Many clients opt for a wood stove both for ambience but also and also for the ability to heat the home if the power goes out.
Craft + Simplicity
Garland Mill homes are built to be not only beautiful and well-crafted, but usable and accessible. Our homes are workhorses, with practical features that support day-to-day living.
Material Selection
Some of our buildings incorporate timber as a part of the structure. Often, the timber is harvested from the site clearing and provides strength, longevity, warmth, and beauty. Our cladding is generally sourced within 150 miles of our home. We also enjoy using salvage materials. Four panel doors are a particular example but we use salvage flooring where we can as well.
Universal Design
We design homes that are accessible to inhabitants of all abilities. From a practical standpoint this means that all GM homes have a stepless entryway, an accessible bedroom and bathroom with a stepless shower all on the first floor.
Covered Entries
Covered entries welcome people to Garland Mill homes. This provides shelter to greet or say goodbye, a spot for one to shake off an umbrella or kick the snow off your boots undercover and makes for a safe space for packages.
Mudrooms and Pantries
These are the areas that do the work in the home. They store food, clothes and gear. Oftentimes kitchens as primary living areas in the home get a lot of south facing glass. This means that there is less room for overhead cupboards and the pantry makes up for that space.
