It’s been said that the eyes are a window to the soul. But when you’re considering building a custom home, your home’s windows are your eyes to the outside world.

You may be one of those individuals considering a new home in the Poconos  who walks in the door of a model home and makes a beeline for the basement stairs so you can check out the HVAC system. We’ve heard they exist, but we’ve never actually met anyone like that.

It seems that everytime you turn around, there’s another “must have” technology available for your home. If you’re thinking about building a new home in the Poconos, you’re probably also thinking about which technological advanatages you’ll want to incorporate.

There are a lot of details to think about when you’re building a new home. And when that home is a custom home, you have even more choices.

There was a time when building a “green” home meant a lot of added expense that was usually accompanied by less comfort and convenience. If you wanted to build something that was easier on the environment, it meant making some sacrifices.

If you’ve lived in the Poconos region for a while you know that winters here can get a little cold. If you lived here as a kid, maybe you even complained to your mom that it was too cold inside. And your mom probably told you to put on a sweater!  But what if you could put a sweater on your house instead—to keep it warm all winter long?

There was a time when people building homes in the Poconos didn’t pay too much attention to the energy control aspect of building. After all, energy was relatively cheap. If you were cold, you either cranked up the thermostat or threw another log on the fire. 

Most homeowners have no problem identifying the single biggest home expense they have: It’s their mortgage. According to The Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET®) the second highest cost of home ownership today is energy. That’s why people building homes in the Poconos (or anywhere else for that matter) are paying much more attention to building energy efficient homes. 

In the summertime, a lot of people “head for the hills” (or in this area, they head for the Poconos Mountains). And while the Poconos do provide some relief from the heat that hits parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, there are still plenty of days when it can get a little warmer than is comfortable. The average high temperatures in the summer are around 80 degrees—but those “non-average” days can be a sticky mess. 

Just a few weeks ago, Tesla’s Elon Musk made headlines again, but not with his electric car or one of his SpaceX rockets. The attention was on a new home battery, the Powerwall Home Battery that can power your entire home. Not long ago, that would have been viewed as an “interesting” idea that was kind of on the fringe. But what’s really interesting is that mere days after the announcement, Musk shared that his company had 38,000 reservations for the Powerwall. According to curbed.com that means the game-changing home battery is sold out until 2016. And while the batteries won’t ship until later this summer, Tesla may be looking at $800 million in revenue!