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Greening Your Home
At Green Delaware we have a program
called “Your Green & Healthy Home", where we help you
reduce your energy costs and create healthy indoor living and
working environments. We can also help you make informed decisions
regarding alternative energy systems, such as solar or wind power.
Energy
Savings
I think most of you will agree that
rising energy costs are major concern. Here's a breakdown of how we
use energy. In the average American household about 45% of the total
energy used goes to heating and cooling, 33% goes to lighting,
cooking and other appliances, 14% goes to water heating and the
remaining 9% goes to refrigeration and other uses. So the question
on everyone’s mind is “How do I reduce the amount of energy I
use, meaning the amount you pay to the utility companies, (and
here’s the big part) WITHOUT sacrificing creature
comforts?”
That’s were an energy
audit comes into play. We will come to your home or
business and assess your current energy use, perform tests using
tools and techniques such as thermal imaging to measure heat loss,
and offer recommendations where you could make improvements. This is
a more thorough evaluation than a self-audit.
A self-audit it just that. An
examination you perform yourself. Some of the key places you’ll
want to look are around windows and doors for air leaks, make sure
your attic has the proper amount of insulation, insulate heating and
a/c ducts, fix leaking duct work, change out old standard
incandescent light bulbs for compact florescent, cold cathode or LED
lights.
First, take a
look at your windows and doors. You can perform a simple door test
with a dollar bill. Open the door and lay a dollar bill across the
doorjamb. Now close the door and try to pull the dollar bill out. If
it comes out easily, you need to add or install weather striping.
You can also do this test on your refrigerator & freezer doors
to see if it’s time to replace the seal there. Here’s another
test for windows and doors and requires two people, a hair dryer and
a candle. One person goes outside with the hair dryer and the other
is inside the window with the candle. With the hair dryer on high,
slowly move it around the outside of the window. The person inside
follows the movement of the hair dryer with the lit candle. You can
judge amount of air loss by the movement of the flame. Caulking
around leaky windows will reduce the amount of heating or cooling
you will loose.
Another place to look for air leaks
that a lot of people don’t even think about is light switches and
outlets located on exterior walls. If you hold your hand close to
the receptacle or switch and feel a draft, install a specially made
insulating pad behind the cover. They are readily available at
hardware stores. They are inexpensive and can make a considerable
difference.
Next,
take a look at your insulation. Only 20% of homes built before 1980
are well insulated. Most US homes should have between R-22 and R-49
in the attic. What this boils down to is, if you have less that 7”
of fiberglass or 6” of cellulous insulation you could benefit from
more. The ZIP Code Insulation Calculator is a very useful web-based
tool. It can be found at EnergySavers.gov and as the name suggests,
you enter your ZIP code and it will tell you the amount of
insulation recommended for your area. One of the most cost effective
ways to make your home more comfortable year round is to add
insulation to your attic, since it minimizes both heat loss in the
winter and heat gain in the summer.
Crawl spaces are often overlooked
when it comes to insulation. To address moisture concerns, the best
type of insulation to use in crawl spaces or similar areas is a
bubble wrap type. This type of insulation looks very much like
bubble wrap you use when shipping packages, but it has a foil
coating on one side. It gets stapled to the underside of the floor
joists with the foil side facing up. Not only does it keep cold air
from coming up through the floor, it also will reflect any heat that
is lost through the floor back up into your living space.
Ductwork that
is not insulated and runs through an unheated space, such as an
attic, basement or crawl space, and leaky ductwork can be other
major sources of heat loss. You
can loose up to 60% of heated air before it reaches the register if
your ductwork is not insulated and it runs through an unheated
space. Sections of duct work that are not properly joined together,
I’m talking about both supply and return, will leak heat or air
conditioning into unconditioned spaces and pulls unconditioned air
into the return duct work. In both cases your HVAC system has to
work nearly twice as hard, meaning it uses twice as much energy, to
maintain the temperature set at the thermostat. One tip here:
Don’t use cloth backed adhesive duct tape to repair leaky
ductwork. It deteriorates very quickly. Instead use a foil or other
heat approved tape.
Other
energy savings measures include programmable thermostats, thermal
window coverings, compact florescent light bulbs and power strips to
eliminate phantom loads.
A programmable thermostat can save
10% per year in heating and cooling cost. Why run your heater or air
conditioner all day if you’re not home? Lowering your water heater
to 120°F can save a considerable amount of energy. Insulated
curtains or blinds will minimize heat loss in the winter and block
the sun in the summer.
There’s been a
lot of talk recently about compact florescent light bulbs, or CFLs.
They are more expensive than traditional incandescent bulbs, but
last much longer and use considerably less electricity. Count the
total number of light bulbs that are in the most used areas of your
home. Now divide that number by 4. The answer you come up with is
the number of bulbs you need to replace with compact florescent
bulbs to cut the amount of electricity used for lighting in half.
(Remember, lighting makes up almost 1/3 of your electric bill).
It’s one of the fastest ways to reduce your electric bill. Just
imagine the savings if you replaced all your light bulbs with CFLs.
If every household in the U.S. replaced just ONE incandescent
light bulb with an energy efficient compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL),
it would eliminate the equivalent of the emissions created by one
million cars.
A couple things to know about CFLs
are they don’t dim well (even though some are labeled dimmable,
it’s not as wide of a range as traditional light bulbs). LEDs and
Cold cathode bulbs are better energy saving choices if you are using
a dimmer switch. CFLs take 15-20 seconds to come to their full
brightness level. Also, CFLs also contain small amounts of Mercury,
so read the packaging for proper ways to dispose of them. Need help
choosing the right CFL? Click
here.
Another topic
you may have heard recently is “Phantom Loads”. This is
electricity that is being consumed even though an appliance is not
in use. Almost anything with a digital display (microwave, toaster
oven, DVD player, video game system) and some things that don’t (TVs, laptops and cell phone charges) all generate phantom
loads. Seventy-five percent of the electricity used to power home
electronics is consumed while the product is “turned off”.
Putting this type of equipment on a power strip, and turning the
power strip off when not in use, allows you to easily eliminate
phantom loads.
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Water
Savings
Those
of you on metered water, you know this is just one more bill that can
add up quickly. Older toilets are one of the worst water wasters in
American homes today. Many use a whopping 3.5 gallons per flush.
What if you have an older
toilet that’s working fine and you don’t want to go to the expense
of replacing right now. A very low cost solution is to put a brick, or
two, in your toilet’s water holding tank. The brick reduces the
amount of water needed to fill the tank. Be sure to position the brick
so it does not interfere with the flapper valve or float.
When you do go to upgrade
your bathroom fixtures, chose low flush toilets, and water saving
showerheads and faucets and be sure to look for the Water
Sense label. It’s the EPAs new water use rating system
and is similar to the Energy
Star rating given to electric appliances. Many people have
the misconception that by using a water saving showerhead, they’ll
have reduced water pressure. This simply isn’t true. By introducing
air into the water stream the pressure is actually increased. If you
haven’t looked at the wide variety of water saving showerheads
available today, you should take another look. They are not the
no-frills, utilitarian ones of the 1980s.
One 10-minute shower per day with a water saving showerhead can
mean saving 10,000 gallons of water a year.
Using a rainwater capture
system can greatly reduce the amount of water needed from your home
water source for watering your lawn, garden or landscaping. Simple
rainwater capture systems consist of a barrel at the bottom of your
homes down spout. Some have spigots near the bottom of the barrel to
attach a regular garden hose or drip irrigation hose. More complex
rainwater capture systems can be connected to automatic sprinkler
systems or even piped into the house for flushing toilets. Using
plants that are native to the area is also a good way to decrease
water use. Since they are accustomed to regional climate changes, they
require little or no watering between rainfalls.
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Recycling
/ Trash
If you haven't
seen the 20-minute video called “The
Story of Stuff” by Annie Leonard, you should take the
time to watch it. The Story of Stuff tells how “We” here in the US
have become a society of over-consumers. And have not only have we
used up our own natural resources and are going overseas to use up
other nations resources. It also shows how we are polluting our
environment and drinking water sources with industrial by-products and
running out of landfill space with the massive amounts of trash we
produce.
Did you know the average
American produces 4.5-5 pounds of garbage a day? That’s twice as
much as 30 years ago. Let me ask you a question. When you throw
something away, were is “away”. Think about the time it will take
for that garbage to breakdown. What if your trash company charged you
by the pound? I bet you’d come up with ways to reduce the amount of
garbage you produce pretty quickly.
Use
the principal of the three Rs when it comes to their garbage.
Reduce/Recycle/Re-purpose.
Reduce the amount raw
materials you consume by purchasing products that have recycled
content. There is a difference between recycled and post-consumer
recycled products. Recycled paper typically is paper that is made from
the left-overs from the paper manufacturing process. It is usually
virgin paper and it diverts waste from the landfills. Post-consumer
recycled paper is paper that is made from another paper product (ie:
office paper, newspapers). The higher the recycled content, the
better. Also choose products that have less packaging. For example, if
you are going to purchase a new mouse for your computer, choose the
one that has the least amount of packaging (meaning their will be less
to throw away or recycle once you get it home).
Composting is another good
way to reduce household trash and it’s a free source of nutrient
rich materials to add to vegetable gardens, lawns and
landscaping.
You can participate in
local recycling programs designed for paper, metal cans and plastics. Green
Delaware Recycling and the 2020Vision
Foundation are two local businesses that work to reduce
landfill use by accepting traditional recycling materials like paper
and plastic, but they can also help with non-traditional items like
computers and sofas. 2020Vision
Foundation will pickup your
charitable donations at no charge.
Re-purposing something can
be as simple as donating it to charity or using old kitchen cabinets
as garage storage. Habitat
for Humanity has a great retail centers in Wilmington
and Dover (as well as other
locations across the county) called ReStore, where they
sell overstock or donated building materials, paint and furnishings.
They also accept donations of these items.
Our
personal efforts to reduce the amount of trash our household produces
includes a compost pile, paper/plastic/can recycling and I take my own
re-usable shopping bags to the grocery store and drugstore. I don’t
know if you house is like mine, but in my house, I swear those
annoying, little plastic grocery bags seem to multiply on their own
every time I close the pantry door.
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Green
Building
Green Building as
another hot topic these days. Building green simply means using energy
efficient building techniques and mechanical systems as well as
environmentally friendly products and finishes.
Proper site
orientation, which is simply the direction your house faces, can have
a major affect the size of the mechanical heating and cooling system
you'll need.
South facing
buildings with the proper roof overhang use passive solar gain to take
advantage of the lower angle of the sun in the winter for heat and
blocks the intense rays of the sun, which is higher in the sky during
the summer, reducing the amount of cooling needed. During the winter
keep curtains and blinds on south and east facing windows open during
the day to capture the sun’s heat and close them at dusk to keep
that heat in longer. Reverse this in summer months, close the curtains
to block the sun during the day and open them at night to let the cool
air in.
Minimizing the
number of windows and doors on the north and west sides when building
a new house will reduce the amount of heat loss, since these
areas get less sunlight. If your exisiting house has quite a few north
or west facing windows, thermal lined curtains or shades will minimize
heat loss in these areas.
Did you know
properly positioned tree can reduce the amount of energy a typical
house uses for cooling by 25%, by providing shade during the hottest
hours of the day? It can also act as a wind barrier in the harsh
winter months. Consult a qualified landscape architect to achieve the
maximum benefit.
There are so many
new and exciting environmentally friendly home building products
available today. Things like: countertops made from recycled paper or
glass and concrete that offer almost endless design options. Those
plastic soda and water bottles we just talked about recycling become
plastic and composite deck boards. Bamboo has gained popularity
quickly and is being used in everything from kitchen utensils to
flooring. and you can now get insulation made from the scrap thread
left over from the denim industry. Not only does it reduce the amount
of waste going into the landfill, demim insulation is naturally fire
retardant, doesn’t emit toxic chemicals or produce respiratory or
skin irritants. Anyone who has handled fiberglass insulation knows
that itchy/scratchy feeling I’m referring to. Denim insulation comes
in bats and installs like traditional fiberglass insulation.
When researching
any product that claims to be “green”, beware of something called
greenwashing. Greenwashing is a lot hype a company puts out about how
environmentally friendly or non-toxic their product is. When in
reality, the product itself might be natural and non-toxic, but the
company that makes the product doesn’t practice environmentally
friendly standards of operation. To give you an example, let’s say
you are interested in putting in a bamboo floor. Bamboo is an
environmentally friendly product right? It grows fast. Reduces the
amount of trees cut down, but if the company that processes the raw
bamboo into the flooring dumps toxic by-products into a near by river,
produces massive amounts of air borne pollutants and glues the bamboo
products together with adhesives that will off-gas toxic fumes into
your house, it’s not such a green product any more is it?
My suggestion is
do your research. Not only about the products themselves, but also the
company that produces them. If your still unsure, contact
us, we’ll research them for you.
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Indoor
Air Quality
There are a lot
of he doom and gloom statistics as it relates to how we got were we
are today. But don’t worry; there is good news at the end.
The fact that we
are getting so good at being energy efficient has a flip side. When we
“tighten up” your home by sealing leaks and adding insulation, we
are no longer allowing the bad stuff out. The EPA recently stated that
the air inside your home or office is likely to be 3x worse than the
air outside, and we all know how bad that can be. Almost everything we
bring into our homes emits some type of fumes. New carpet or new
particleboard furniture off-gas formaldehyde. The odor new paint gives
off are actually volatile organic compounds or VOCs. VOCs are also
found in many adhesives and can be highly toxic. Regular indoor latex
paint can off gas for up to 2 years, not just the day or 2 that you
can smell it. Why do you think the label says, “use in a well
ventilated area?”
However, you do
have options when buying new products for your home. Take carpet for
example. Look for natural fibers like wool or jute in the carpet and
backing. Also look for a green certification label. Most of the major
carpet manufacturers now offer healthier, non-toxic product lines. It
used to be that buying environmentally friendly paint was very
expensive and color choices were limited. Now you can go into any home
improvement store and purchase low or no-VOC paint in a wide spectrum
of colors for the same price as regular latex paint.
Poor indoor air
quality has been shown to be a contributing factor in the dramatic
increase in respiratory ailments in this country. Diseases like Asthma
and allergies. If you were born in the 50s, 60s or 70s, think back to
when you were in school. How many kids did you know that had asthma or
carried an allergy relieving prescription drug or inhaler to ward off
“an attack”? Now think how many people you know today that take
medication for allergies, asthma, bronchitis or other breathing
problem? We’ve been bombarded with these toxins for so long that our
bodies are no longer able to fight them off on our own. Studies show
that children are especially susceptible to these problems.
Household
cleaning products are another source of toxins polluting the air
inside our homes. Did you know that using aerosol air fresheners can
increase your risk of cancer of the lymph nodes by 60%”!
Ok, I promised
you good news. So here it is. You can take control of your own indoor
environment. First, a couple low costs solutions:
houseplants (spider plants in particular), HVAC “tacky
filters” and natural, non-toxic cleaning products.
Spider plants are
shown to have three times the “air scrubbing” capabilities of
other houseplants and they are very inexpensive and easy to
grow.
Replace the
filter in your HVAC system or whole house fan with one that has a
stick film that will capture the “big stuff” like dust and pet
dander. Most of these filters run in the $10-20 price range.
And how about
that virtual chemistry lab you have stored under your kitchen sink.
There is wide variety of environmentally friendly cleaners available
in retail stores today. Or better yet, make your own from the
non-toxic, safe ingredients you probably already have in your pantry.
Our Green Delaware website has a whole list of low cost, effective
cleaners you can make at home. If you are short on time or just
don’t want to make your own green cleaners, hire a “green
cleaning” service. Living
Green is a cleaning service with a healthy twist.
They use nothing but environmentally friendly, non-toxic cleaners and
help you detoxify the air inside your home or office.
But what if
just put in new carpet, or your furniture is relatively new and you're
not ready to get rid of it just yet, or you just bought a new house
and you're pretty sure they used regular latex paint? You can still
take steps to greatly improve your indoor air quality. In this
situation one of the best things you can do for yourself is invest a
couple hundred dollars in a good quality air filtration system. I’m
not talking about the kind you can buy at the big box or local
hardware store. These units do little more that filter out the big
particles like a tacky filter and most of them produce ozone, a known
carcinogen.
You may have
heard that Sharper Image
recently filed bankruptcy. According to Consumer Affairs it’s
because of the class action lawsuit filed against them pertaining to
their Ionic Breeze air system, which is probably one of the most
widely recognized brand names on the market today. If you read the
fine print, the Ionic Breeze carries a warning that says not to use
the unit in enclosed spaces if your have a respiratory ailment. Who do
they think are buying these products? Why does it issue that warning?
Because it emits unhealthy levels of ozone.
California
recently passed a bill banning any air filtration system
that produces ozone and I think you’ll see other states instituting
a ban as well.
As with the
building materials mentioned earlier, do your research and know what
you are buying. If you need help wading through the mountains of
information about air filtration systems on the market today, contact
us, we can make recommendations and help you choose the
system that is right for your situation and conditions.
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Water
Quality
Now you know how
to clean up the air in your home. What about the water. Hereare some
more doom and gloom statistics, but just like before, there’s a
healthy solution.
So my question to
you is - Do you really know what’s coming out of your faucet? I can
tell you, you’d be surprised to find what’s still lurking in your
tap water.
Municipal water
treatment plants only do a superficial job at treating the water that
is pumped into your home. They add chemicals such as chlorine to
eliminate microbes, but they don’t address other problems like
sediment and organic matter. So in simpler terms, they get rid of the
pests, but not the pollutants.
You might one of
the 50% of Americans who doesn’t want to drink tap water so you
drink bottled water. The truth is most bottle water is no better, and
sometimes slightly worse, than tap water. For the most part, bottled
water is water that is filtered to remove the “big chunks” (like
sand and sediment) but not the pollutants. So to get rid of the
pollutants, they zap it with ozone (we already know that’s not
good), stick in a plastic bottle, pop a lid on it and ship it off to
sit in a warehouse or stock room until it’s sold. And it’s
expensive. More expensive per gallon than today’s gas prices. Buying
2-3 bottles of prepackaged water per week adds up to somewhere in the
neighborhood of $225 per year! And there’s also the concern about
the bottles themselves leaching some pretty nasty contaminates back
into the water.
You might have a
reverse osmosis or some other type of whole house filtering system. Well
at least that's better than nothing and it's fine for showering and
laundry. But most home filtering systems filter out everything – the
bad and the good. It might be contaminate free, but it’s what I
would consider “dead water” that’s been striped of the
beneficial trace minerals our bodies need.
After drinking a
big glass or a bottle of water, do you ever get that sloshy feeling?
You know, where you can feel or hear the water splashing around inside
your stomach? The reason you’re feeling that is because the
processes your water goes through before it reaches you make the water
molecules clump together and they are not as easily absorbed by the
body. Health professionals tell us we should be drinking more water,
right? So what are you supposed to do?
By filtering your own drinking water at home and using a non-toxic,
refillable water bottle, you control not only the cost but also the
quality of the water you drink. In order to do this you need is a
water filtration system that reduces 90% or more of the contaminates
listed in the ANSI 42 and 53 standards for water testing. I know
that’s a mouthful, but what it basically means is that you need a
home water filtration system that gets rid of all the bad stuff like
chlorine, odor, lead and VOCs and replenishes the good minerals and
nutrients our bodies crave. Taking that "dead water" and
turning it into living, healthy water.
Just like with
the air filtration systems, contact
us, we can help you choose the water filtration system that
is right for you.
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Alternative
Energy Options
Since these
systems require a site analysis and more detailed data, I won’t get
into specifics here. If you want more information about alternative
energy systems, please contact
us by phone or email.
Earlier I
mentioned passive solar for indoor heating. Another form of using
passive solar energy is solar water heating. This is typically a
system of tubes installed on a roof or south-facing wall that absorbs
the sun’s direct rays in order to heat your domestic hot water. Keep
in mind, most solar water heaters are not designed to provide 100% of
the hot water you need. It’s meant to pre-heat the water before it
reaches your traditional water heater, reducing the amount of energy
needed to bring it up to the temperature you desire.
Photovoltaic, or
PV, solar systems are what most people think of when solar systems are
mentioned. These systems harvest the sun’s rays to produce DC
current that is passed through an inverter to change it to AC current,
which is the type of electricity our homes use. There is a wide range
of system sizes from large scale, professionally installed ones to
do-it-yourself kits, some can provide power for your entire household
electric needs.
GE Solar just
announced a new technology that allows them to produce PV cells at a
much quicker rate, at a lower cost and that are more efficient. Look
for prices of PV systems to fall in the next 3-5 months as these new
cells reach the consumer market.
Wind power has
been a hot topic here in Delaware recently. It has yet to be decided
whether or not Delaware will be home to an offshore wind farm, but
individual, smaller-sized wind turbines are becoming more affordable.
More and more
homeowner’s are opting for geothermal heating and cooling systems,
which are extremely efficient. The principal behind a geothermal
system is that is the earth maintains a constant temperature of about
65 degrees once you get below the frost line (about 5 or so feet in
Delaware). A series of tubes are placed below the frost line and a
non-toxic antifreeze type of solution is circulated through these
lines and a heat exchanger pre-heats or pre-cools the solution as
needed.
So in the winter,
instead of taking 20 degree outside air and having to raise it 48
degrees to reach the 68 degrees your thermostat calls for, a
geothermal system takes pre-heated 65 degree air and raises it 3
degrees. How much energy do you think you save by not having to heat
the air that additional 45 degrees? It’s pretty much the same
principal for the cooling side of a geothermal system. Instead of
drawing in 90 degree outside air and having to chill it down to 75
degrees, it takes 65-degree air and mixes it with a small amount of
outside air to raise it 10 degrees. Again saving a great deal of
energy. This is a very simplified explanation, but you get the general
idea.
It used to be
that geothermal systems required a great deal of land because the
pipes were laid parallel to the earth’s surface. Today, many
geothermal systems use deep well technology, where the tubes run
perpendicular to the earth’s surface in a hole similar to when you
have a well dug. Again, this is an over simplified explanation.
Alternative
Energy Incentives
Now that you are
armed with all this great information about energy efficiency,
improving your air and water quality and clean, renewable energy
systems, you’re all excited, right? So you’re thinking, wow I
could save a lot on my electric or gas bill by replacing my old, leaky
single pane windows with new, Energy Star rated ones. Or instead of
you sending the electric company a check, how great it would be if
they owed you every month? But these greater savings require a bigger
investment and it can add up pretty quickly.
You’ll be glad
to know plenty of financial incentives exist. From state funded rebate
programs for replacing out dated, energy hog appliances to
state and federal tax credits for bigger ticket items like small scale
solar and wind systems. You can find an easy to navigate list of
Federal, State and local rebates and incentives at DSIREUSA.org.
DSIRE stands for the Database of State Incentives for Renewable
Energy.
The banking world
is also stepping up to the plate to help homeowners and business take
another look at the long term benefits vs. the cost of installing an
alternative energy system. I know that WSFS
for example has a green lending program that offers loan packages at a
better rate and longer pay back term than traditional home equity
loans, which makes payments more manageable for many people.
And who
wouldn’t like to have a nice credit balance on their electric bill
each month through a program called Net Metering. Basically, Net
Metering says if you can generate more electricity than you use, the
utility company is required to buy it from you. Obviously, that’s
the condensed version and there is special equipment that is required,
but that equipment can be covered by the rebates and incentives listed
above.
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Remember, you
don’t have to jump in with both feet and feel overwhelmed in your
quest to go green. Even a small step is a step in the right direction.
When you tally up all the little steps each of us as individual makes,
they add up to a big difference.
Thank you for
taking the time to learning more about what you can do save money and
create a healthier personal environment.
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