What Makes a Green Home?
Kermit the Frog said, "It's Not Easy Being Green!" but I'm going to share 5 easy projects that cost under $50 that you can do to easily help make your home more green.
A green home incorporates smart design, technology, construction and maintenance elements to significantly lessen the negative impact of the home on the environment and improve the health of the people who live inside. No matter your location or living situation, the opportunities for living a greener life at home are limited only by your imagination.
Making your home a greener place is a commitment - to yourself, your family, your community and the world. But more than that, it is a learning process. As exciting new technologies, products and scientific breakthroughs constantly emerge, staying educated on the hows - as well as the whys - of maintaining a green home is the best way to ensure your efforts are as effective and beneficial as possible.
Here are 5 Projects Under $50 You can do to Make Your Home more Green
These improvements are so easy, you have no excuse not to make them.
1. Reduce light pollution.
Put a motion sensor on your all-night garage floodlight. Not only will you save electricity; you and your kids will get to enjoy one of early fall's greatest pleasures: a clear view of the night sky.
2. Install a programmable thermostat
With an estimated annual savings of $100 and an initial outlay of only about $50, few upgrades pay for themselves as quickly as this one can. With a programmable thermostat, you can automatically adjust your heating and air-conditioning systems to match your family's seven-day-a-week schedule. During the winter, for example, you can set it to turn off the heat after everyone's snug in bed, switch it back on in time for a warm wake-up, then putter along at a lower temp until the kids get home from school. The most advanced models let you program up to four settings for each day of the week. For every degree you lower your thermostat for an 8-hour period, you cut energy use by about 1 percent. Set it back 10 degrees overnight, and that's a 10 percent savings right there. And we bet you won't even feel the difference - except when you're paying the bills.
3. Install a smart ceiling fan sensor switch
In theory, a ceiling fan saves energy because the breeze evaporates moisture on your hot, sticky skin, cooling you down without the benefit of air-conditioning. In practice, though, it doesn't always work that way. People keep fans running with the AC going full blast, or leave them on when no one is in the room, which wastes their cooling power. Here's what to do instead.
First, make sure any fan you buy is ENERGY STAR-rated. Lighted ones use fluorescent bulbs instead of hot-burning incandescents or halogens and are up to 50 percent more efficient than standard models.
And finally, install an occupancy sensor switch that shuts the fan off if no one's in the room.
4. Replace old can lights
From a design perspective, recessed fixtures are great, because they brighten a room without cluttering the ceiling. But from an energy efficiency perspective, they're duds. Because these fixtures usually aren't sealed and can't have insulation above them, they allow heated air to escape into the attic. You can replace them with newer, airtight models, but that can get expensive. There's a far easier fix: Buy a retrofit kit that screws into the existing fixture. The best kind seals around the rim and behind the bulb, converting your old fixture to one that is airtight and insulation-rated. You'll need a special fluorescent bulb (4 pins, 20 watts), but given the average expected life of 10,000 hours, you won't have to buy a replacement anytime soon.
5. Build a clothesline
Next to your refrigerator, your dryer is likely the biggest energy-guzzling appliance in your house. And while we wouldn't ask you to store your food in a vintage icebox, an old-fashioned clothesline is actually a pretty good idea. (If that sounds too retro, think of it as a "solar dryer" instead.)
You can buy a pulley kit like the one pictured here at the hardware store. Or you can order the components online.
But it's easy to make a traditional clothesline yourself, using 4x4 or 6x6 pressure-treated posts for the uprights and 2x8s for the cross arms (which don't need to be pressure-treated). Simply notch the posts to receive the cross arms, set them in concrete, and run the lines on eye hooks between them. A 4- or 5-foot cross arm should give you enough room for five lengths of line, nicely spaced.
Incentives
Beyond the health and environmental benefits of living in a green home, many local and state governments, utility companies across the country offer rebates, tax breaks and other incentives for adding eco-friendly elements to your life.
In SUMMARY
By making these small changes in your home, you will save money, and be good to the earth.
Kermit would be proud of you!
