The concept of green homes has been widely embraced as a way to reduce detrimental effects on the environment and decrease a household’s utility bills. With just a few simple steps and little investment, you can make your home more energy efficient and build up a nest egg from energy savings. What’s even better is the fact that embracing some of the eco-friendly activities won’t cost you at all, yet they will contribute to the environment preservation.
Evaluate Your Energy Situation
Prior to incorporating environmentally friendly ideas into your home, you should perform an audit to see what your current status is when it comes to energy consumption. You can do this by obtaining an energy monitor and doing it yourself or contacting energy auditors who can recommend some low-cost measures that you can take. Once you’ve finished the evaluation, you can start with areas that require your immediate attention.
Insulate Your House
Insulation is one of the first steps towards having a more energy efficient home. Usually more than 40% of energy is used for heating and approximately 30% of that energy is wasted due to poor insulation. Therefore, properly insulating your house will help you prevent energy loss, and, consequently result in a decrease in your energy bills. In addition, you won’t have to hire an expert to do this for you, since many insulation tricks are quite simple. For example, you can fill in the window and door gaps to prevent heat from escaping, obtain or make your own blackout curtains and place foil sheets behind radiators to reflect heat back into the room. It goes without saying that these affordable energy efficient measures will pay off in the long run.
Another simple step that will reduce energy consumption in your home is switching from incandescent light bulbs to light-emitting diodes (LEDs) or fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). Apart from using more energy, incandescent light bulbs have a short lifespan and a negative impact on the environment, since they emit carbon dioxide and waste energy. On the other hand, LEDs and CFLs last longer and use less energy, which can save up to 66% of energy and drastically lower your electricity bills. Finally, an environmentally friendly measure that won’t cost you a penny is switching your lights off when you don’t need them.
Install a Programmable Thermostat
You can reduce your energy consumption by simply installing a programmable thermostat. This cost-efficient device will help you maintain a steady temperature in your home, regardless of whether you’re there or not. You should find the lowest temperature you feel comfortable with, and set the thermostat to maintain that temperature. Additionally, you should consider putting on a sweater when you’re cold instead of increasing temperature in your home.
Opt for Energy Efficient Appliances
While purchasing new appliances might require a sizeable amount of money, it will pay off in the long run, since you’ll reduce energy consumption and, therefore, energy bills. Thus, you should look for certified appliances that use less energy, especially if yours are outdated and aren’t efficient. The appliances that use the most energy are refrigerator, washing machine, stove and oven, television, dishwasher, computer, microwave, and clothes dryer, so you might consider replacing one or two for starters. To determine which appliances are going to be replaced, conducting thorough inspections of each one could help to make the decision easier. If at the end of it you decide that your clothes dryer, amongst some of the others, are just too valuable to replace, then hiring somewhere like this dryer vent cleaning service in Sandy Spring, GA can help to make sure that the appliances that you kept can work for years and years into the future. But replacing a few of these items should definitely be done. In addition, you shouldn’t overuse your appliances, even if they’re energy-efficient and you should unplug them when you’re not using them since they can use energy even if they’re turned off.
If you’re willing to make your home more energy efficient, but you’re constrained by your tight budget, you shouldn’t give up. There are some options for financing green projects, so if you need some help, you can read about it on this link. Here, you can find out more about getting a loan for green improvements that can help you make your home greener.
Creating an energy efficient home doesn’t require much effort or investment, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t make the first step. This will enable you to save money on your energy bills and help the environment.