Making Your Place An Earth-Friendly House

It has never been more effortless to make the decision to change your place to an eco-friendly house, and in the process, save some cash. All people share the responsibility to clean up our environment by eliminating waste and pollution. We can all make a start by just doing some of the many things that are possible around our houses. Virtually all houses are not really efficient, which means expenses are higher than they need to be.

Insulation Issues

Only recently have housing standards for insulation been increased, so majority of houses are very poor when it concerns insulation. Hence, the place to start is by improving the insulation in your house, beginning with the attic, but the side walls also when possible, and then replace any inefficient windows. The resultant savings on energy prices will cover the cost of the upgrades over time, and even more quickly so if energy costs keep going up.

Water Consumption

Even though most people do not drink enough water, in other ways we do nothing but waste water. Merely changing our commodes to the water-saver type will stop a considerable amount of water being flushed down the sewer. The new, more efficient commodes use only one and a quarter gallons of water for each flush, while the older ones found in just about everyone’s home use a considerable three and a half gallons. Just this one easy step towards making your home greener will save you a great deal of money you would have spent on water. Standard light bulbs are so inefficient and are responsible for a lot of energy wastage in majority of homes.

Energy Efficiency

Merely using 5% of the energy used by old bulbs, compact flourescent light bulbs last ten times longer. The additional upfront cost of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs is dwarfed by the long term savings, so don’t hesitate to make your home green in this fashion. Since their efficiency is even higher, you could think about perhaps using LED lights. If your house’s insulation is sub-standard, it will leak heat in wintertime and let the heat in during the summer months, which means you will gain throughout the year by improving this aspect of your house. A complete green house will not only have more insulation put in, but better doors and windows, too.

Another area where energy may be saved is the heating up of water for the laundry and dishes. The effectiveness of modern-day powder detergents now allows cold water to be used for washing the laundry. Most of the energy used by your washing machine originates from heating the water, so in order to save the most energy, use cold water for washing clothes and doing the laundry. This is another quick way to make your home eco-friendly. You may think that using a dishwasher is a terrible thing, but you in reality use less water with a dishwasher than washing the dishes by hand. It should be clear to you now that each one of us can go green.