The Ultimate Home Improvement Project ... - Recycling Markets

Creating a green home is a home improvement project like no other.? It offers a win-win situation for all the parties involved such that:

1. It is good for the universe as having an energy efficient home drastically reduces your carbon print.
2. It is good for your power supply company because if all their consumers were to use energy more efficiently, consumers would save them the trouble of having to create larger plants and struggling to deal with the ever-increasing up-surge of energy demands.
3. Most importantly for the budget-conscious individual, it is beneficial to you, since it can reduce your power bill by up to 50%.
4. It increases the value of your home if ever you were to sell it.

Therefore, now that you know how important it is, you need to know how exactly to do it. The first thing that you would need to do even before you start anything is to discover the main culprits behind your ridiculously high power bills. Creating a green home will be quite easy for you once you discover your greatest energy consumers.

Most power providing companies will provide you energy-auditing services free, most consumers are not aware of that. A simple call to your power provider and you could schedule an appointment with an expert who would come over to your house and give you valuable insight on your energy consumption patterns and how you can reduce them. Even where they do not offer these services, doing an energy audit yourself is a simple process.

You will most likely discover from your audit that your biggest energy consumer is heating and cooling your home. This is not at all surprising; up to 70% of the energy requirements in most homes is linked to that. So there you have your answer. Reduce your heating and cooling requirements and you are well on your way to creating a green home.

Winters can get excruciatingly cold and no one can blame you for craning up your furnace to get a little warmth in the house. Have you considered that your house might just happen to be so cold because all the warm air within your house is being lost to the cooler outside environment? It is simple physics, the warm particles will move from where they are more concentrated to where they are less concentrated. In addition, what takes the place of that lost warm air? Well, cold air of course!

To effectively heat up your home, you have to device a way to keep the warm air in first. This can be done by insulating your home in a number of ways.

1. First, seal the cracks around your doors and windows. It would surprise you what a great difference such a little thing would do. If you live in your own home, some permanent measures would be advisable but if it is a rented apartment, a good old rug at the door would do the trick. Place insulating material in your home in the places where it is needed most for massive energy savings. Insulation actually works both ways, keeps the warm air in during winter, and keeps the cool air in during summer.

2. Another very simple thing you could do is to get a programmable thermostat. With this, you can set it in such a way that your furnace or air conditioner starts heating or cooling your house just a short while before you get home instead of running the whole day.

3. For major energy savings, maintain your heating and cooling appliances. A poorly maintained furnace or air conditioner would need much more energy to simply heat or cool your house to the desired level. If they are too old, replace them. It will save you money in the end. Clean them out regularly and replace the parts that can be replaced as often as need be. These simple things will greatly increase your energy efficiency.

4. Beyond heating and cooling, install energy saving bulbs. They will provide you with the same amount of lighting at up to 70% less power. Consider installing solar panels in your roof too. The initial cost may be dear but the energy savings that will be made after that will more than compensate you.

There you have it. Next time you are thinking home improvement, think of a project that will benefit you in every way ? that means going green!

The author of this post, Michael Ben, is a home improvement blogger and works with www.talksolarpanels.co.uk. Michael has written numerous articles and posts on green home improvement projects.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2012 at 9:49 am and is filed under Home and Garden. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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