Can you have a comfortable office or even a complete home inside a steel-frame building? Absolutely you can, and as decades of steel houses have shown, those buildings can be as comfortable, feature-filled and unique as a home made from any other material.
This is not a new question, nor a new answer; the BISF house was made in 1946 specifically as a way to help rebuild Britain after the devastation of the Second World War.
Despite being well over half a century old, many of these buildings still exist today and the ones that do not were disassembled either as part of redevelopment initiatives or because they were confused for other, temporary buildings.
The story of the BISF proves that a comfortable domestic steel frame building can be made, but it also poses the question of what building managers can do to make a typically industrial building more comfortable for office workers or even residents.
With that in mind, here are some top tips for making a steel frame building a better office or home.
Insulation Changes Everything
The difference between a delightfully comfortable place to exist and a building that struggles with hot and cold weather alike is insulation, and whilst choosing the right insulation materials is essential irrespective of your building materials, it matters even more with metal buildings.
Metal is an especially efficient conductor of heat, which is fantastic in nearly every circumstance except when it is used as a building material, as when the weather heats up, it creates an uncomfortable warmth throughout the metal building.
Thankfully, an insulation option tailored for metal structures helps keep the heat out in summer and stops the building from feeling freezing cold in winter.
Roof Colour Matters
On a similar note, metal can be painted in practically any colour, but metal roofs benefit from being painted white or quite a light shade.
The reason for this is that it saves you money in summer; white paint reflects a lot of sunlight, and so-called “cool roofs” can be an exceptionally useful energy-saving tool, especially in combination with efficient roof insulation.
Do Not Forget Doors And Windows
With an industrial metal building, you can generally stick with large metal shutters, a tarpaulin or even no cover at all in the case of certain larger temporary storage structures or garages, but if you want to live and work in a metal building, it needs to look and feel like a building made from any other materials.
This means adding windows, doors and potentially even louvred shutters as opposed to metal security ones.
It’s a relatively small touch but you will be astonished at how much of an effect it has on how the building looks to onlookers and how it feels to people working inside.
Prioritising natural light is essential to making the metal building feel as comfortable, inviting and friendly as possible, which all matters if you intend to spend a large portion of your days living or working inside.
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