Here in the midwest, we are enjoying a wonderfully cool summer.  Sorry to all of you beach bums, it hasn’t been the best summer to lounge by the pool or go to the beach, but our air conditioners sure have gotten a break.  We compared our electric bill for this year with the one from last year and we discovered that there was a 25% drop.

One of the main stumbling blocks to the sustainability movement has been that many people just don’t want to change the way they do things or what they buy. Some don’t like the color of CFL’s, others are concerned about the mercury they contain.  LED’s are very efficient, but they are very expensive and it’s hard to find ones to replace 75 and 100-watt bulbs.  For those that have not made the switch to CFL’s or LED’s there may be some help.

Scientists at the University of Rochester have learned how to alter the filament using an ultra-brief pulse from an ultra-intense laser and make them much more efficient.  So far they have been able to produce a bulb that produces as much light as a 100-watt but uses less than 60 watts.  Furthermore, they have been able to effect the color of the light that the fillaments emit.  Hopefully this technology will soon be further developed and incoporated into mass production.  This way, more and more people will be encouraged to save energy and money.

In short: More efficient incandescent bulbs = a great step in the right direction.

Dan Bossenbroek

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The sun bathes the earth with energy every day, but only a fraction of this energy is ever harnessed to heat our houses.  Installing a solar air heater can dramatically reduce your heating costs by supplementing your current system regardless of the type and pay for itself in a little as three to six years.  This payback period can be significantly reduced if you take advantage of the Federal Tax Credits that are now available.  During the day the solar air heater will pull air from in your house, heat it up by as much as 30° and then return it back indoors.  This hot air in turn warms up the walls, ceiling, floor and other items in the room.  This sun warmed air will keep your conventional heating system from coming on as often during the day and even into the evening as the heat stored in the room slowly warms the air in the room. A single collector can heat up to 750 square feet and will last for many years.  Thus over the life of your solar air heater it will pay for itself multiple times.

I grew up in a house with a whole house fan, and no air-conditioning.  The fan was great when the temperature went down into the 60’s at night, it pulled cool air throughout the entire house and cooled it down quite nicely.  It even helped after those scorching hot days when the temperature only dropped to the mid 80’s at night, it kept a gentle breeze flowing throughout the house all night.  I’m sure it saved my parents hundreds of dollars even back then, and installing one in your house can save you up to 50% on your cooling bills every year or up to 90% if you eliminate conventional air conditioners all together. 

One of the great benefits of whole house fans is that they will cool your house to a lower temperature than an air conditioner will when the temperature outside at night drops lower than the temperature that your air conditioner is set to.  Thus, not only will it suck the hot air out of your house, but it will also suck some of the heat absorbed in the walls, floors and ceilings out of your house out too.  Then in the morning, when the temperature is the lowest, close all of the windows in order to keep the heat of the day out.  In this way you will start the day with a nice cool house that can absorb a fair amount of heat as the temperature climbs outside before the interior starts to become uncomfortable.  The more thermal mass such as masonry or plaster walls, concrete, hardwood and/or tile floors that a house has, the more heat it can absorb during the day and be exhausted by the fan at night.

The two possible downsides to a whole house fan are the noise of the fan and the introduction of allergens into the house.  The fan we had growing up provided a constant hum that just became a nice background noise and actually helped to put me to sleep.  Many of the fans available today are quieter than those made in the past, and many of them have a low speed setting so that they operate even more quietly.  With respect to allergens, if someone in the house has a problem with seasonal summertime allergies then you probably shouldn’t consider a whole house fan.

Two precautions that you should take are to and to seal all of the holes and cracks between the house and the attic and to make sure that you have adequate ventilation form your attic to the outside.  There should be about one square foot of clear vent space to the outside from the attic for every 750 cfm of fan volume.  If these precautions are not taken the fan will push hot dusty air right back in to your house.

Conserve energy and enjoy natural cool night breezes this summer.  Turn off your air conditioner, and save hundreds of dollars by cooling your house with a whole house fan.

Dan Bossenbroek

Home Energy Audits: There are hundreds if not thousands of products and strategies that you can purchase and employ to make your home more energy efficient and eco-friendly.  The problem is to decide where you should start first.  Furthermore, many products claim that they can save you hundreds of dollars a year, but how much will they really save you?   How long will it take for your investment in energy conservation products pay for themselves?  A Home Energy Audit is one of the best steps that you can take to plan your journey to a help to determine where and how you spend money on energy and how much each product or strategy will save you.  How much more comfortable will you be once those leaky windows are properly weatherized?  How much is it costing you to not have your attic properly insulated?  How much will you save by switching the bulbs in your porch lamps from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescents or even LED’s? Where should you turn for a Home Energy Audit?

Online and Do-It-Yourself Audits: There are numerous free do-it-yourself and online audits available, but they can only return the most basic analysis of your home’s energy consumption and only generic suggestions as to which actions you should take first.  Furthermore, any results indicating how much you will save are typically based on average conditions not on the specific conditions of your house.  Professional Energy Audits: There are also many professionals that you can hire to come to you house, some with specialized equipment in order to give a very detailed analysis of the energy usages of your house.  These detailed analyses come with a significant cost of $300 to $500. The Best of Both: A third option is a collaborative process between you and a professional.  For a much more reasonable cost of $100 you can receive a do-it-yourself Home Energy Audit Form for you to fill out in the privacy of your home on your own time.  Once you have filled out the form and returned it with your photographs to us, we will: Contact you, verifying receipt of information. Review all of your information and contact you if any clarification is needed.  Use proprietary tools to analyze the information and develop a plan to best meet your budget and energy saving goals. Send you a detailed plan listing the steps and products needed to meet your goals.  The plan will include a breakdown of your expected savings and estimated pay back period. We will also suggest several additional products and/or strategies will help you save even more energy and money. Assist you in implementing the plan that we have proposed.

Together: Through this process, we will assess the energy efficiency of your house and lifestyle, learn how and where you are spending money on energy, and develop a plan to implement the most cost effective energy saving strategies.  Once these strategies are implemented you will begin to save energy and significantly reduce your utility bills.  Furthermore, your house will be more comfortable to live in.  After the initial savings are realized, we can take that savings and invest it in further energy saving products, and eventually, ideally reduce your energy bills to nothing.

 Check it out at:  www.justgreenhomes.com/homeenergyaudit

 

 

Window Fan:

If you can’t afford a whole house fan or you are renting you may want to consider a Window Fan to cool your house during the night when the temperatures are lower than in the day.  Many times your house or appartment can be cooled off to such an extent that you can close your windows in the morning and the temperature in your house will stay quite comfortable for most if not all of the day.  Sleep in comfort and enjoy the savings from your window fans.

Many eco-friendly strategies involve changing our lifestyles to how our parents or grandparents used to do things. Over the years we have all come to depend more and more on machines to do things faster and more conveniently. Line drying your clothes is free, in fact it will save energy and wear and tear on your dryer, but it takes some time and a little planning around the weather. However, clothes hung on a line tend to have fewer wrinkles and hems don’t tend to roll either. In colder months, clothes can be hung indoors and this has the added benefit of humidifying the air.

Click Here to see our expanded seletion of clothes drying products.

Our dependence on electricity continues to grow, and with it the amount that we needlessly waste grows too.  Most people who are concerned about energy conservation know that replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, line drying clothes, and turning down the thermostat will lower electric bills, but there are several, less obvious ways that we can save electricity and money. Unplugged leaks can cost you hundreds every year.  The most insidious of these leaks are caused by the increasing number of appliances and electronic devices that continue use power when they are turned off.  This list includes: televisions, stereo equipment, laptops, wireless hubs, cell phone chargers, cable boxes, printers, computer speakers, microwaves, stoves, curling irons, hair dryers and anything with a transformer or a clock.  There are basically three options to plug these leaks.  The first is very simple, but could put some strain on sensitive electronics; unplug all devices when they are not in use.  This solution also may not be practical when outlets are located behind furniture.  A second solution is similar, but is a bit more convenient: plug groups of devices into power strips and turn the power strips on and off when necessary.  This energy conservation strategy also provides some degree of protection for your electrical equipment since power strips are typically surge protectors as well.  The final solution is to plug the power strips into timers.  This solution is especially effective when you are likely to forget to turn off the various power strips around the house.  Just be sure that the timer and power strip are rated to handle the loads that are plugged into them.  Remember unplugging electrical equipment during thunderstorms and while you are away on vacation is also a great way to protect your property and lower your electric bills.

Another big energy waster might live in your kitchen.  Next to heating and cooling, refrigerators are the greatest users of electricity in most residences.  There are several things that you can do to make sure that your refrigerator is running as efficiently as possible.  First, the condensing coils in the back should be cleaned, and then at least twice a year.  Second, it is best to keep the refrigerator set between 37 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and the freezer at or slightly above zero.  These temperatures are just cold enough to keep food fresh so you will use as little energy as possible.  Third, make sure that the doors seal properly, it should be difficult to pull a piece of paper out that has been shut in the door.  Finally, if your refrigerator runs constantly then it may be low on coolant.  The best way to repair this is to call a service technician, however some do-it-yourselfers might want to try to tackle replacing the condenser and evaporator coils themselves.

The final electrical leak that you can plug occurs outside of your house, starting just blocks from your door and extending up to hundreds of miles.  This is called transmission loss.  Electric energy transmission is the transfer of power from power plants to consumers.  Since power plants are tens of miles and often hundreds of miles away from their point of delivery some power is lost over these long distances.  Thirty years ago these losses averaged about 5% but due to heavier utilization and congestion of high voltage lines over the years these losses have doubled.  The solution to plugging this electrical leak is to install solar panels or more specifically, a photovoltaic panel array right outside your house, thus generating electricity only a few yards from where it will be used.  Photovoltaic panels are typically only about 70% efficient, meaning that a panel rated at 1,000 watts will only produce an average of 700 watts on a full sunny day.  However, this is twice as efficient as most fossil fuel burning and nuclear power plants.  An added benefit is that photovoltaic arrays don’t produce the pollution of our current system.

Power strips, refrigerator tune-ups and photovoltaic panels are three things that can help you stop wasting electricity inside and outside your house, and they represent a wide range of levels of commitment to energy conservation.  Whether it is your first step towards energy efficiency or your one hundredth, we challenge you to take one more. 

Dan Bossenbroek

A fluctuating stock market, depressed economy, and a myriad of investment options available make it difficult to determine the best financial investment strategy these days.  Even the tried and true investment strategy of purchasing a new house is not a guarantee anymore.  However, there is a way to invest in your current property that can ensure you a great return and help raise your position in the home resale market.

 

As energy prices continue to trend upwards, it makes more and more sense to do what you can to reduce your energy costs.  A typical family in the United States spends between $2,000 and $3,000 on utilities each and every year and this does not include phone, cable or internet service.  Energy costs in the United States have risen an average of about 5% per year over the past 8 years, and the rate was even higher until the recent sharp drop in prices.  Furthermore, this trend is only expected to get worse.  Thus, in ten years an average family can expect to pay somewhere in the range of $3,000 to $6,000 a year on utilities.

 

There is something that you can do to help minimize the impact of increasing energy costs, however, and that is to invest in energy conservation home improvement projects.  Remember that the least expensive energy is the energy that you never use.  For example, one strategy might be to take $2,000 and instead of investing it in mutual funds or the stock market, invest it in making your house more energy efficient.  Some of the most cost effective steps that you can take like switching to LED nightlights, LED and CFL light bulbs and using watering timers and low flow showerheads don’t seem like investments, but they very quickly pay for themselves and continue to save you money year after year. This energy conservation investment could easily reduce your energy costs 15% to 25% or approximately $400 a year.  You can even recapture your original investment by taking the money that you save each year and investing it just as you planned to invest the original $2000.  In just five to eight years this investment strategy will likely out perform a typical mutual fund, and in just nine to fourteen years it should be worth twice as much.

 

An added benefit of this strategy is the increase in value or increased salability of your home.  Some of the steps that you might take such as adding insulation, a whole house fan or even installing a solar air heater will add value to your home.  Most home improvement projects immediately add 70% to 90% of the cost of the improvement to the value of your home.  Furthermore, with these green home improvements your house will be much more attractive to a potential buyer, especially when you can show that your utility bills are significantly lower than those of other comparable houses.

 

Which ever way you look at it; increased investment value, reduced utility bills, increased comfort level, greater home value, or ease of resale, they all indicate that the wise investment is in energy conservation.  You probably knew that saving energy saves you money but you may not have imagined that to GO GREEN that you have so many ways to GROW GREEN.

Dan Bossenbroek

www.JustGreenHomes.com