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.

DIY Energy 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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