Picking up from my blog last week about going green, I thought I’d share about my own future projects for my home to make it more energy-efficient & save some green bucks in the process!
My husband handles all the bills and schedules payments. He’s way better than me in that arena but I was astonished to find out recently that we’re paying over $200 for our electric bills this hot summer months and we’re just a one-storey house! So I shared with him (I should’ve long time ago!) about the tax credit for making your house more energy-efficient. If decided on correctly, these projects’ costs may be easily recouped by the savings in dollars and in energy in the long run, a very obvious win-win situation. I was suggesting an energy audit but then he got so excited that he had contacted a windows’ vendor before I could even scout and compare energy auditors and fees.
Voila! This guy from the window company came and whoa! He was already shoving his wares to my nose as he entered our house. It wasn’t a very good first impression I can tell you that! Obviously, he just wants to make the sale and move on to another customer. Well, I pointed out to my husband that this is the disadvantage of just calling a vendor. Evidently, their main objective is to make a sale more than helping make our home more energy-efficient. He thought he could save the fee for an audit. We could, sure, but it clearly will be a one-sided advice.
I like bright and light so our house has lots of windows and so that’s where our attention was first drawn to. The heat is noticeably coming through the windows weakening the air-conditioning cooling down the whole house. We have a 5 year old house so I’ve yet to consult my house’s specs to find out what kind of windows we have. At least I’m thinking its double-pane. We need to detect if there’s any leak, if they’re not sealed good enough to keep the cool air in, and if there would be a cost-effective upgrade that would make for more energy-efficient windows.
If you’re in the Going Green hype, would like to save some money on your utility bills and be a new friend of the environment, my recommendation: don’t begin by contacting a vendor, in my case, a company who sells windows for of course, they have their own agenda; unless you’re absolutely sure that it is what you need to do to make your house more eco-friendly. As I said, I would go for an energy audit. I’m not specifically endorsing energy auditors, in fact, you can do this yourself. What I’m saying is first determine what your house really needs to make it more energy-efficient and then decide what projects would be worth undergoing that would give you pay-off. Energy audit is a thorough inspection of your house (doors, windows, insulation materials, appliances, etc) giving you idea where you are spending more energy (and dollars!) on and how, if you could, minimize them.
Remember, the real benefit of this audit is information for you so you can make a decision whether a project will indeed reap benefits or not. Some may cost more than what you can actually save so think of this as information in order to arrive at the best decision.
For do it yourself energy audit or more information about this topic, click here. I just love this site! Aside from being local, it has loads of information about anything green you can do in Houston, there are Citizen’s Guide, Calculators, Projects, etc.
And for everything real-estate and all the trimmings in Houston, TX, please visit my website, www.har.com/lermaisyourrealtor.
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