Think of confidence in acquiring land, a house or an apartment, and you think of meqasa as the right destination. But have you ever thought of how a house or an apartment would fair through the tests of time, especially where weather factors come into play? Meqasa as a platform renders top-notch marketplace for agents, home owners, and developers with improved construction at the core of their mindsets, hence the arguable factor of “anti-severe weather” qualities into properties listed on the website.

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Concrete jungles in big metropolitan cities are impacting the urban landscape of Ghana. This is driving property buyers and investors to explore relaxing and aesthetically pleasing homes and properties for purchase which render high yields as well. However, buying a property or renting an apartment which leaks, has unstable room temperature, floods  or loses its roof can be terribly unappealing.  

We all imagine our dream homes or apartments to be places of comfort and relaxation. No one expects dishing out hard-earned money to end up with unpleasant sights due to foul building construction.

People in Ghana (tropics) live differently than those in colder regions, and differently than they did decades ago. Older traditional buildings don’t always render the comfort, luxury, and relaxation expected from modern homes. Standards of living as well as human expectations have changed. People do not expect to suffer the discomforts that they did many years ago. New buildings are therefore expected to meet certain comfort requirements and expectations. Thankfully, developers listed on meqasa, due to their wide-array of technical skills and experiences, undertake due diligence with their building construction.

Here are some guidelines from palmexindia and nycparksplanning that can help plan you build smarter against weather:

• Site selection to maximize ventilation and take advantage of natural air circulation is an important component of good ventilation building. Developers can also experiment with high vaulted ceilings and domed structures to keep the heat and humidity out.
• As far as possible, buildings ought to be designed without cutting natural vegetation. A tree cover on the periphery also helps improve the micro-climate around the house.
• Tropical green building, also emphasizes maximizing natural lighting. This can be achieved by creating skylights, and large windows with overhangs to keep out the sun. Windows help natural air flow, promote passive cooling, and do away with the need for multiple light fixtures.
• The choice of building construction material, be it fly ash bricks or rammed earth, doing away with plaster and chemical laden coating for interior walls, using reclaimed, repurposed wood, and fittings from demolished homes are all ways to bring down the carbon footprint of a structure.
• The roof is another structure where using the right design and materials can yield enormous benefits. Developers can experiment with a variety of materials, like bamboo fiber reinforced concrete slab, reflective ceramic tiles as surfacing for waterproofing and heat reflection, terracotta tiles on a wooden framework and more.
• Build a functional ecosystems approach into projects: Functional ecosystems — whether designing shoreline treatments or determining how to address constant inland flooding of low-lying areas, a functional ecosystem-based approach can be a highly beneficial practice. For example, along the city’s flood prone areas, which are subject to erosion, a dune or vegetated shoreline may be a more resilient approach than installing a seawall edge, as dunes and vegetation have the added benefit of creating and/or restoring habitats and supporting ecological functions while also attenuating wave action and buffering against storm surge.

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Building with these guidelines as your pathway could be expensive, hence more expensive properties developed, making them more difficult to sell. However, when a compromise is reached, to one way or the other feed into the idea of the consumer’s comfort against weather factors, there must be some sort of fulfillment and a reasonable ROI.