12 Green Tips For Your Home.

12 Green Tips For Your Home.

Easy. Easy. Easy. Beautifies your electric bill (and our world).

1. Remove your cell phone charger from the socket. This alone could save the planet - or at least Delaware (the nation's friendliest state for business). The charger keeps charging and charging -- even while the phone is chasing all over town with you, buzzing away with text messages. If you knew how much of your electricity bill was this one silly waste, you'd unplug immediately - as soon as it was charged!

2. Go Naked! In the winter, turn the thermostat down a few degrees and wear a sweater inside. Throw an extra blanket on the bed. In the summer, go naked (just kidding, wear a bikini at least). Be sensitive that a few extra degrees saved in every household amount to a massive reduction in energy statewide. In fact, according to Cynthia Bryant, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Deputy Chief of Staff and Director, in 2004 alone, California saved over 1.3 trillion kilowatt hours, for a cost reduction of $98.7 billion, after a statewide campaign to conserve energy.

3. Conserve Water: Turn the faucet off when you brush. Take shorter showers (or partner up). Be conscious that water is a precious resource and piping it in uses up valuable energy. Proactive homeowners could look into brown water systems to reuse their shower and sink water for watering plants.

4. CFLs Compact Fluorescent Lamps: Replace your old light bulb with this energy-efficient, long-lasting bulb. More energy, with less waste and less cost because you replace them once in a blue moon.

5. Electrochromic Windows. Darken and lighten electronically. In summer, darker windows reduce solar heat gain and still allow visible light to pass through. In wintertime, the windows can be left clear to brighten and warm the house.

6. Insulation. Keeping out unwanted heat and cold means that you don't have to be an energy hog to be comfortable. A rudimentary way of doing this is with curtains and shading in the summer and keeping windows and doors closed in the winter.

7. Low-Emissivity Windows. (low-e) coatings are thin, transparent coatings of silver or tin oxide that permit visible light to pass through but also reflect infrared heat radiation back into the room.

8. Passive solar energy and day lighting. Considerable amounts of solar energy can be captured for desired heating (while avoiding unwanted heating) without active mechanical systems, simply by properly designing a home, with respect to the sun. South-facing windows can let in a lot of heat from winter sun, while large overhangs keep out that solar heat in summer.

9. Phase-change materials. If you are remodeling, consider that it takes energy to change a solid to a liquid or a liquid to a gas (for example, melting ice or boiling water), which can be yet another way to heat and cool without juice from the grid. Conversely, there is energy embodied in the liquid or gas that can be released as heat energy when it liquefies or solidifies. Excess hot water or exhaust air is routed through the phase-change material, cooling the water or air and melting the material. When heat is needed, cool water or intake air is run through the phase-change material, absorbing heat from the solidifying material. (This application is being used in One Bryant Park's ice farms as well as the Universitat Darmstadt's 2007 Solar Decathlon winning home, with its microcapsules of paraffin.)

10. PV or solar electricity. Traditional building components can now be replaced with PV materials. BIPV materials are used for vertical facades, roofing systems, and awnings for parking and shading structures. Cost is thereby offset by not having to purchase the overhang materials.

11. Solar thermal collectors. Solar energy is used to heat water. Apricus was the solar water heater of choice at the Solar Decathlon.

12. SIPs Structural Insulated Panels. Pre-fab foam insulated panels make superior insulation easier to install.

For more information and links to green products, be sure to read the article, "Reduce Your Carbon Footprint!" from volume 4, issue 10.