Green Ideas that Make A Real Difference

Green Ideas that Make A Real Difference

Green Ideas that Make A Real Difference

Going green is bigger than ever these days and homeowners across the country are looking for ways to add some green to their home's functionality. If you are not ready to install a wind turbine in your back yard just yet though, that's OK. There are simpler ways you can retool and remodel your home to make it a more eco friendly place to live.

Get an Energy Audit

The first step towards the greening of any home should be to commission a professional energy audit. The auditor will assess every appliance in your home, your HVAC system, your windows, doors, attics in fact in every nook and cranny to find where your home is wasting or losing energy and therefore using more than its fair share of the world's energy resources.

They will then make a report with recommendations to be followed to make the home more energy efficient. These recommendations may range from installing replacement windows and upgrading an HVAC system to smaller projects like re-insulating your attic or re-lagging your pipes.

Often an energy auditor will even make suggestions as to which local contractor to hire to perform these remodeling jobs but never take up those recommendations without doing a little homework and research on each contractor yourself.

Smaller Green Touches Around the Home

Even before the energy auditor's report comes in and bigger remodeling projects begin (like those new replacement windows) there are some easy small tweaks that homeowners can make around their houses to make it more efficient.

Lighting

If you haven't already, make sure that all the bulbs you use in your home are of the Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) type. Yes, they cost more initially than "regular bulbs", but they last a lot longer and use far less electricity on a daily basis so will pay for themselves rather quickly.

Water

An old shower head can be a water gobbling monster, using up to a massive 80 gallons of water a minute. The simple act of installing a new showerhead can cut that consumption right back to as low as 1.75 gallons per minute instead, literally saving thousands of gallons of water on an annual basis.

Toilets are another big water waster as well. In an ideal green world environmentalists say people would use composting toilets capable of turning human waste into natural fertilizer but this is still rather a big step for most people to take. Having a low flow toilet installed is a more conventional option and you can go even greener by using chlorine free, recycled toilet paper and organic cotton bath towels.

Green Friendly Landscaping

Instead of drowning your lawn month in and month out with a sea of toxic chemicals, fertilizers and other decidedly eco unfriendly products, seek the advice of a professional landscaper about greener alternatives that can do the same thing without polluting the environment. At the same time you could consider replacing some of the water greedy plants in your yard with attractive alternatives that require less water.

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