In honor of earth day, I thought I'd post a few tips on greener living, to help you reduce both your carbon footprint and your energy bills.
A lot of people hear the words "green building"and "sustainable living" and think that it's something that either goes with a certain lifestlye, or is not affordable or practical for them. While living in a solar-powered straw bale house with an organic garden is certainly one type of green living, the biggest part of it is just being mindful of the resources that we consume, and looking for ways to use less and to re-use or recycle those that we do need. With today's rising energy costs and water shortages, that's something that everyone should be able to gt behind.
The most important, and often easiest and least expensive, thing that we can do is to reduce waste. This can be as simple as repairing or replacing leaky doors and windows, fixing leaky faucets and pipes, taking shorter showers, and not leaving the water running while we shave or brush our teeth. Taking it a bit further, we can replace old light bulbs with CFLs [compact fluorescent lights], install low-flow faucets and toilets to conserve water, and look for Energy Star rated appliances when buying new ones.
We can eliminate a lot of hidden energy drains with only minor inconvenience. A lot of electronics and appliances drain several watts of power even when switched off, so we can eliminate this drain by plugging TVs, DVD players, and similar electronics into a power strip, and turning it off when they are not in use. Turning off computers, monitors, and printers when not in use does the same thing. Teach children and other family members to turn off lights when leaving a room, and to use natural lighting when possible, or install automatic sensors which turn lights on only when there is movement in the room [good for bathrooms & closets]. Setting the hot water heater to 120 degrees [Fahrenheit] and keeping the heat pump set comfortably warm in summer and cool in winter will cut both your energy consumption and your power bill, with only a minimal effect on your comfort.
By finding smarter ways to do household chores, you can save both time and energy. Only do dishes or laundry when there is enough for a full load, and scrape the food off plates, rather than pre-rinsing them before putting them in the dishwasher [a dishwaser uses 1/6 the water of handwashing, and saves about 230 hours of your time per year, so take advantage of that rather than wasting time and water doing its job yourself]. To really save energy, air dry your dishes rather than using the drying cycle on your dishwasher, and hang clothes out to dry on a clothesline or drying rack. If that's not feasible, just skipping the permanent press cycle will save 5 gallons of water per load.
There are many upgrades you can make or feature you can include on a new home to make it even more efficient, but that will be the subject of another post. Just following some of the suggestions above should help you use less energy and save money, so that you will be able to get the best use of energy saving technology should you decide to invest in it in the future.
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