Private Residence, Albuquerque, NM

Building a Sunlight Home

When you begin with a Sunlight Homes Component Package you get a lot more than just a custom design and a load of materials! You also get a proven, thought-out system for building your home— one that includes support and guidance. Our plans include detailed specifications and drawings of details that clarify how the home is to be built. We provide contracts and checklists for our clients to use with their builders. In our client web site, the Inner Sanctum, we provide tips to make the process more organized and successful. When you build a Sunlight home, you have us on your side throughout the process to answer questions and help with anything that may arise.

Building Timeframe

Construction of a Sunlight home usually takes from three to six months, depending on the time of year and weather, the size of the builder's crew and the size and complexity of the home. Often, SIPs are advertised as being faster to erect, but in our experience the overall time savings for a SIP project is negligible, especially with builders new to the system. To us, it's more important that the home be completed correctly than quickly.

TQM Systems in Construction

The quality of your completed custom home will directly correspond with the quality of your design and materials used and the skillfulness of the workmanship.

Back in the 1980s we studied the work of Dr. W. Edwards Deming and began to apply total quality management principals to our systems. We learned that decisions made in the first 15% of any project strongly impact its success. In other words, bad choices made early can't easily be remedied later.

For example, when you are planting a garden, the first 15% will be deciding on what to plant and where to plant it (the design phase). If the plants are not suited to your climate and soil, no amount of water or sunshine will make them grow strong and healthy.

In building a home, choosing the right designer occurs in the first 15% of the project. In construction, choosing the builder and the finish materials occur in the first 15% and these decisions strongly impact the overall success of the project.

We always recommend that prospective clients do their homework and put effort into these early decisions. More effort at the beginning will net you rewards later.