Our Environment

In this time of depressed real estate values it is important to find ways to increase home value and decrease your own energy costs. Remember that many prospective home buyers will look closely at your utility bills during the past year before making an offer.

Here are a few ways that you can increase your home’s energy efficiency and add value.

Decrease Your House’s Thermal Envelope
The thermal envelope includes the wall, floor, roof, windows, insulation, and weather stripping. In other words, anything that creates a barrier between you and the outside. Each of these elements affects the amount of energy used for heating and cooling. Improvements can include storm windows and doors, upgraded weather stripping, and proper insulation.

Decrease Energy Used by Appliances
This means using modern appliances whenever possible. Heating and cooling systems made over 10 years ago are over 40% less efficient than those made today. The same is true of washing and drying machines, dishwashers, and conventional ovens.

Utilize Natural and Fluorescent Lighting
Just replacing 25% of your incandescent lights with fluorescents can decrease your light bill by 50%. Look for areas in your house where a change in shutters or curtains will allow light in during day light hours. This will cut energy use considerably during the day and give your house a natural feel.

Eco living, saving money, and helping the environment go hand and hand.

The newest way to make your message stand out above all of the other noise on the Internet is through the use of social networking sites. These sites tend to focus on a specific niche and users suggest, promote, and discuss their topics with the rest of the community. Whether you are interested in literature, video games, seo news, or environmentalism, there is a social site to cater to your interest.

Here are a few of the most popular social hubs that have an environmental focus:

•Care2 – environmental sustainability and green living
•Greenvoice – A Digg like site with environmental news
•Hugg – Another Digg like site where users vote on their favorite articles
•Playgreen – A wiki that focuses on sustainability
•Worldchanging – A group blog where users post and comment on articles
•Yahoo! Green – A Yahoo answers for the environment

If you still have trouble getting your site noticed, consider consulting a SEO company (Search Engine Optimization). A SEO expert can make sure that your content is presented in a fashion that will get noticed by the search engines.

The number of green mortgages, otherwise known as Energy Efficiency Mortgages, has increased in recent years. This is due in part to the increased public awareness of energy consumption as well as the financial advantages associated with owning an energy efficient home.

Traditional mortgages are based on a person’s debt to income ratio only, while a green mortgage applies the money saved each month in energy cost as income. This allows home buyers to qualify for a larger loan. This also presents an opportunity for those wishing to remortgage, since energy saving home improvements can be applied once an existing home is certified by a home energy rater.

Purchasing an energy efficient home also increases the resale value by as much as 5%. A $200,000 home that is certified as meeting efficiency requirements, on average, will realize an increase of $11,000 over a comparable home that is not certified. In addition, US home owners can take advantage of the Energy Policy Act which gives tax benefits to those who conserve energy.

More and more frequently when potential home buyers compare mortgages, they find that going green not only helps the environment, but their wallets as well.

Water conservation is a hot topic and rightly so; many places in the western world are struggling to provide water for growing metropolitan areas. As a result many water systems are pushed to their limits making it difficult for people to conserve water by practicing such energy saving practices such as substituting showers for baths.

Typically, more water is used taking a bath than when taking a shower. Unfortunately, in many areas, water pressure is not sufficient to make taking a shower a practical alternative. This is especially true where public utilities are exceeding their maximum output or for persons living in multi-floor dwellings. A solution to this problem is to install a shower pump which will add pressure to the existing water supply and enable a steady stream of water to flow from your shower head.

In addition to shower pumps, electric shower heads also conserve energy expended through the heating of water. Instead of using a massive boiler or water heater to keep a large reservoir of water heated constantly, electric shower heads heat water as needed thereby reducing the consumption cost of hot water. By installing an electric shower head, such as those manufactured by Mira Showers, you can save a considerable amount of electricity every day.

Both of the technologies mentioned place more control of energy expenditure with the individual and create the opportunity for conservation. It is still up to us, however, to take make use of these devices for the good of the planet.

If you have not made the switch to HDTV, then you probably know someone who has or you have at least made a trip to your local bar or pub to watch the Monday night game in high definition. Remarkably, even though HDTV’s average a larger screen size than the previous generation of televisions, they require less materials to build and have a smaller foot print on the environment when they have reached the end of their life-cycle.

The European Union has already developed a program to “Eco-label” HDTV’s and it has been successful in setting the standard for eco-friendly manufacturers around the world.

Requirements for the EU Eco-label for television sets include:
* Consumption on standby below 1 watt
* Low electricity consumption when in use
* Recommendations for correct environmentally-conscious usage
* Designed for higher durability and materials with better recycling ability
* Availability of electronic replacement parts for at least seven years after the end of production

HDTV can be broadcast through a special subscription with your local cable provider. Many, however, do not realize that you can receive HD signals free of charge using a traditional tv antenna. Unlike the antennas used by our parents, new antennas are made from lighter, more resilient and more environmentally friendly materials.

For more information on receiving free HDTV, check out the Boston Globe free hdtv article.