Greening up your home is actually a lot simpler than spending thousands on solar panels for your roof, and does not have to involve composting or growing all of your own food if you do not want it to. You do not have to be a hippy tree-hugger to want to green up your home a bit. Here are some easy ways to green your home, making things a little bit more eco-friendly.
1 - Choose Energy Star appliances.
Engery Star Appliances are easier on the energy bill and more eco friendly over all.
2 - Unplug electrics and appliances when they are not being used.
Chargers keep using energy even when your electronics are not plugged into them. Unplug the coffee maker, the toaster and even your computer when not in use to save on energy and green your home at the same time.
3 - You can save heating and cooling energy by monitoring your thermostat from season to season.
For each degree below 68 during the cold weather, or above 78 during the warm weather, you can save between 3 and 5 percent of your heating and cooling energy, so use a programmable thermostat to make this even easier.
4 - Replace your light bulbs with CFLs as they burn out.
Compact Fluorescent Bulbs use 75 percent less energy than standard incandescent light bulbs, and they can also last as much as ten times longer. For every CFL bulb you use, you can save as much as $30 over the span of its lifetime.
5 - Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
Begin by reducing your consumption by purchasing less, and then you have less to worry about recycling. Once you reduce your consumption, the next step is to reuse what you do have. Reuse plastic containers, shopping bags and other trash items before you throw them away. Then take whatever is left and recycle as much as you can. Recycling goes beyond plastic bottles and aluminum cans. Call your local recycling center and find out what they can and cannot take before you consider throwing something away.
6 - Choose eco-friendly or green commercial cleaning supplies, or make your own.
Vinegar, for example, is a powerful cleaning agent, no ammonia or bleach needed! Consider making your own cleaning concoctions from kitchen-safe ingredients for the greenest household.
7 - Insulate your hot water heater and save some energy.
By placing an insulation jacket around your hot water heater, you can spend $10 or $20 dollars and save a significant amount of money over the lifetime of your water heater.
8 - Replace single pane windows with double pane windows.
This reduces heat loss in the winter months, and heat gain in the summer months. As an added bonus, you will also reduce noise pollution with windows like these as well.
9 - Purchase and use sustainable materials whenever possible.
You can easily use flooring materials that are sustainable like cork or bamboo, environmentally friendly wood for decking, and even green furniture in your home to have a greener home.
Photo Credit: 1
Originally posted 2008-12-22 05:41:19. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Related Posts -
How to Install a Window Air Conditioner the Right Way As summer approaches, those of us without central air are getting ready to go through the annual ritual of installing our window air conditioners. However, were you aware that a bad installation can actually raise your electricity costs and make it harder to say cool? Here are some tips to...... -
Top Five Ways To Increase the Value of Your Home If you are looking for new ways to increase the overall value of your home, there are numerous projects that you can tackle on your own. Whether you are an experienced DIY’er, or just starting out, these projects are fun and add more than just monetary value to your home....... -
Upgrade to a Spa Bathtub A spa bathtub can add some value to your home as well as make bath time a luxurious retreat from the cares of the day. Spas use tubs with jets because the benefits of this type of treatment are well known. Just a hot bath can relax you and make...... -
How to Save Power in Summer Summer is usually synonymous with high electricity costs and as our cities become more overloaded, there has never been a better time to start saving power during these months. It's actually quite easy to start cutting your power costs, and it only takes a few minutes to implement some changes...... -
Using Home Improvement Centers Effectively Home improvement centers are all over the place these days. Even if you don’t contract them to do any work at your house, chances are very good that you are going to end up purchasing at least some of your raw materials from them. Depending on where in the country......
Related Websites -
Quick and Easy Steps to Green Remodeling For a lot of home remodelers, the idea of going green can be absolutely overwhelming. Luckily, there is a wealth of information out there, and just because you are not already implementing these ideas, that does not mean you're too far behind to make some leeway. According to leading remodelers...... -
Our Experience Staying In A Rental Earthship Home In Taos. The home is in a subdivision of earthships west of town, where every home is off the grid and catches their own rainwater. There are no utilities out here - no power lines, no wells, no gas lines - the homes have propane tanks for cooking with, they use solar... -
Sensible and Cost Effective Green Building Green construction has to be neither cost prohibitive or complicated, according to experts at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference. According to these experts, building homes that are green and energy efficient does not have to be rocket science at all, but rather you can build a very efficient home at...... -
Save Energy And Money With A Home Energy Audit Ever hear of death by a thousand cuts? That's what's probably happening to your wallet without you realizing it. Day after day, you are being silently slashed from many different places in your house, wasting energy that oozes out of your house from little cracks and holes. Some of...... -
How Much Money Can You Save With A Home Energy Audit? After my last article on having a successful professional home energy audit, a reader sent me an e-mail wanting more details about what kind of money he could expect to save if he paid for an audit. Would it really be worth spending a few hundred dollars for it? It's......
- Programmable Thermostats Heating, Cooling Air Home Improvement
- Parts Accessories Water Heaters Heating, Cooling Air Home Improvement
- Standard Water Heaters Heating, Cooling Air Home Improvement
- Portable Fireplaces Stoves Portable Space Heaters Heating, Cooling Air Home Improvement
- Heating, Cooling Air Home Improvement
Categories:
Green, Handy Man
Tags:
0 comments ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
Leave a Comment