How can I make my home a Green and Sustainable home?

Question

How can I make my home a Green and Sustainable home?

Answer 1

yea

Answer 2

if u want a lot of info, watch HGTV- living with Ed, and he basically explains what you should consider to have/ get rid of when wanting to go green.

Answer 3

Use more efficient light bulbs

Buy a clock thermostat.

Insulate attic.

Insulate hot water heater.

Use cold water when you wash clothes.

Instead of using a clothes drier , put a clothes line in your yard. Gary Dominicus

Answer 4

You may use my: My Best Recycling Idea

Besides recycling the plastic containers, you can improve your work or home environments by bringing live potted plants indoors.

Major items needed:

One empty plastic gallon container.   Tree Top Apple Juice is preferred, or equal in shape.

One empty plastic ½ gallon container.  Langers All Pomergranate Juice is preferred or equal.

Directions:  Lay the plastic gallon container on its side so the front label is facing up.  Place the empty plastic half gallon container on the label and with a sharpie pen outline the bottom on the Tree Top label and with a sharp knife carefully cut the outline.  Insert the half gallon into the hole until it rest on the back label of the gallon container.  Then mark and cut approximately one inch above the cut on the ½ gallon  to complete your planter container.  Remove and drill several ¼ inch holes on the bottom of the ½ gallon cut container for drainage.

Fill the cut ½ gallon planter with one inch of gravel before putting in good potting mix soil and live growing plant.  If you make two or more you can pour the water back and forth and not waste the water with the nutrients.

Go to NASA’s Clean Air Plant Study for the top ten plants that cleans the indoor air better than the rest.   http://www.zone10.com/tech/NASA/Fyh.htm

If you get larger potted plants then, get the mother-in-law's tongue because it requires very little care.

If you get a solar hot water system make sure you get the thermosiphon system because it requires no electricity or moving parts.

Answer 5

Well you can start by taking measures to make your home more energy efficient. Efficiency is the key and it will also end up saving you a lot of money over time.

To start you need to make sure your home controls heat properly. What I mean by this is you need to use techniques so that you keep out radiant heat in the summer and retain that heat in the winter. A Radiant Barrier (I recommend Ra-flect **source link below**) will do this very effectively. You simply staple the aluminum RB to the bottom of your roof rafters in your attic and you can see dramatic decreases in heat gain (up to 40%). This material can also be used in walls, but this is much harder on an existing home.

Another area where you will loose heat is through windows, so changing to a good energy star double pane argon filled window would be ideal, but expensive. However, there is a cheaper and just as effective way using a similar product called Energy Film(link below) which basically blocks UV light and acts as a radiant barrier (although not as effective as aluminum) but just as good as an argon filled window.

You can also go around your home and seal up any places where you have air infiltration. You can do a quick do-it-yourself energy audit by following the directions here:

http://www.neutralexistence.com/begreen/...

This way you can locate where all of your leaks are and seal them.

Next replace your lighting with better more energy efficient lighting like CFL's or LED's. Although these are more expensive, they will save you money on your monthly electricity cost and eventually pay themselves off.

There really are so many things you can do to green your home, but I just cant list them all here. Just check out the links below, there is a load of good content detailing how to green your home and alot of good products.

Peace.

Answer 6

Amendoim,

Let me start off by saying we (my family and I) live completely, 100% “off of the grid and are completely self sufficient” using alternative fuels / energy. I was in the exact same situation as you few years ago.

www agua-lun com

We do not leave our ranch except about once or twice a year, mainly for travel and vacations.

We raise meat and milk goats, chickens for meat and eggs, ducks for meat and eggs, trap havilina (wild boar pig), rabbit, quail. brew our own beer from home grown products, preserve our fruits, vegetables, etc. smoke and jerky the meat, make our own soap, cheese.

There are no utility lines, no water lines, no roads, tv, cell service, etc. on our ranch. EVERYTHING needed is produced here. All electricity comes from 27 solar panels, 2 main wind gens and a back hydrogen generator if needed (typically we can last 9 days with all luxuries of sunless windless weather, hasn't happened yet). Water is caught and storaged from the rain. Hot water is made with solar batch water heaters with an on-demand hydrogen hot water heater as backup. Even our vehicles use alternative energy (2 hydrogen trucks, 1 EV electric vehicle converted).

We’ve lived self sufficiently off the grid for over 5 years now. In 2003 I left an Engineering position with Boeing, sold 2 houses and most of our positions, purchased a small ranch in West Texas near the Mexican border, built a completely green home using 100% recycled and local (rocks, lumber, sand from the ranch) materials, built a wind generator and some solar panels, built a hydrogen generator and converted the vehicles to run on alternative energy, purchased some goats, chickens, ducks, lamas, etc, a composting toilet, water storage tanks, planted crops and fruit trees and settled down for the long run. We typically don’t leave the ranch for 6-8 months at a time, and only then to visit family.

The house is built utilizing natures natural materials, Woodburning stoves, solar chimney, solar AC, solar heating, solar water heating (pool and home), solar stove, solar power, wind power, hydrogen powered back up generator, hydrogen back up water heater, hydrogen stove, 2 hydrogen powered trucks, 1 EV (electric vehicle) and satellite internet.

To see some pics of the ranch you can check out my photobucket below, navigate with the tabs on the left (hacienda, misc, guest house, etc), we’re adding every day so be patient and don’t laugh at my scraggly winter beard..

www agua-lun com

We also built many small cabins on the ranch that we offer to family, friends and our on-site off-grid workshop guests, including one straw bale, one papercrete, earth bag and adobe, one cob and cordwood, one underground and rammed earth, one log and post and beam and one rock.

I later wrote a several guides on how to build with alternative materials, alternative energy / fuels using alternative methods for next to nothing. Anyone interested can check it out at..

www agua-lun com

As we have no bills, no mortgage and do not pay taxes (buahaha don't tell anyone) we have little use for money (any extra money saved up usually goes towards vacations as we enjoy traveling to mexico).

If you'd like more info on how you can make the transition easily, let me know.

Hope this helped, feel free to contact me personally if you have any questions if you’d like assistance in making your first self sufficient steps, I’m willing to walk you step by step threw the process. I’ve written several how-to DIY guides available at  www agua-luna com on the subject. I also offer online and on-site workshops, seminars and internships to help others help the environment.

Dan Martin

Alterative Energy / Sustainable Consultant, Living 100% on Alternative & Author of How One Simple Yet Incredibly Powerful Resource Is Transforming The Lives of Regular People From All Over The World... Instantly Elevating Their Income & Lowering Their Debt, While Saving The Environment by Using FREE ENERGY... All With Just One Click of A Mouse...For more info Visit:  

www AGUA-LUNA com

Stop Global Warming!!!

Answer 7

Read this article from HGTV Green Home. It has lots of things you can do to make your home green and save money on energy and water bills.

http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/green_home_2008...

Answer 8

basically reduce, recycle and re-use

try to minimise waste by recycling and trying not to buy packaged materials, if you can not do this, then try to re-use them so your not creating more waste than necessary

Answer 9

Hi Amendoim

I'm a residential builder that only builds very energy efficient new homes. Not as much experience with retro-fitting, but I'll give it a shot. Of course these all depend on your local climate. You didn't say if you lived in a hot/temperate/cold area, so I'll assume temperate.

This is in order of bang for buck.

#1 : Seal drafts. No-More-Gaps is very cheap, and is by far the cheapest way to dramatically improve your house's ability to stay warm, so less heating required. But a very serious disclaimer is this : If you live in a rocky area (especially granite), and you have a concrete basement of slab, you might have Radon present, a dangerous gas. Get tested for it if you're unsure. If you do, you can still seal up cracks, but need to give the house a good air out once a day or so.

#2 Water saving taps/toilets/devices. These save lots of water, and if it's hot water being saved, you'll also save a LOT of energy from not needing to heat that water.

#2 Light bulbs. Get rid of the incandescents and halogen downlights. Replace the incans with CLFs, and the halogens with CREE LEDs.

#3 Insulate insulate insluate. Roof first, as it's easy and gets best results. Walls are next but can be hard to install as wall cladding needs to come down. If you do do walls, a good tip is to start with insulating the top half of the outside walls of the living rooms. Top half because heat rises so that's were the insulation is most needed... Do floors last. If they're timber, use perforated concertina foil (reflective insulation). If you have a slab put foam sandwich board around the outside edge (you don't need to insulate right under the slab, as most heat transfer is from the edge.

#4 Shade selected windows. Use trees and/or shade screens to help shade summer sun from westerly windows. Make them deciduous if you want sun to get through and warm in winter, and evergreen to shade all year round.

#5 Solar hot water. Bigger investment but that's what it is. An investment that WILL pay for itself given time (7 years or so if you're replacing electric). But more than money, these save a LOT of energy so are an essential part of any sustainable house.

#6 Better appliances. This doesn't have to cost a lot, but you need patience. Basically, if you need something, buy the best available that you can afford. Not just the best efficiency, but also the overall quality, as an appliance that lasts for 30 years is MUCH more green than one that blows up in five years... And the most important one of all is your fridge, as this is the only appliance that is turned on ALL the time, so gives you the best annual saving. Make sure you have a good fridge.

#6 Renewable energy. Solar PV panels don't cost as much as they used to, mainly because most people have access to grants/rebates/etc. For example in my State I can get a grid-connected 1kw system for about $5,000 installed. 1kw is not big, but a very efficient house will be able to to get virtually ALL it's (annualised) power needs from it. Wind/micro-hydro are a bit more specialised and not really suited to most people (yet).  

By the way they're expected to drop about 50% within the next 2 years as more factories come online and end the panel shortage that's keeping prices up. So it might be worth spending money on other things right now until the drop is in effect. Then you'll get them VERY cheap as any rebates will hopefully remain.

#7 Double/triple glazing. Another investment, especially for a retro-fit. It's important to know there's c**p double glazing and VERY good double glazing. c**p is aluminium frames with 3mm glass/6mm air gap/3mm glass glazing. For very good you'd get timber (plantation of course!) with 4/10/4 or more, with a low-E coating and argon gas in the air gap. Also, keep in mind different windows are needed for different aspects and climates. It's worth going through your entire house plans with someone who knows their stuff (energy consultant) as a lot of salespeople know less that you'd expect.

#8 Water harvesting/recycling. Water tanks are easy to fit to downpipes and can at least be used for gardening and toilets. People also use the water for washing and drinking, but that depends on you air/rain quality, and if you have lead products on your roof (DON'T drink water from a roof with lead on it!!!).

Water recycling is cleaning grey water (laundry & bathrooms) and black water (toilets and kitchen) for another use. The simplest and cheapest is to just run greywater out to non food producing plants like lawn. The best is to get a recycling unit that turns ALL waste (grey and black) into A+ quality water! These are very good if you're in a very dry area.

#9 Get rid of all the toxic materials. Can be pretty hard, as virtually every product we use has chemicals of some kind. Some are pretty safe, some are VERY unsafe. Get rid of asbestos (use a professional company to do this) and lead-based paints. There's much better paints coming out now that are toxin/VOC free.

#10 Rebuild. If the house is an inefficient crappy design, the ultimate is to totally demolish your home, and then rebuild it using as many original materials as possible (except the c**p and toxic ones!). The house design can then be vastly improved, and done with a small overall impact for a huge gain. Of course this is probably not going to happen, but it's nice to throw out there...

I haven't included stuff like recycle/compost/grow food/etc, as these are more lifestyle than actual house, but hey do them too!

Hope that helps, and all the best.

Answer 10

Live in a teepee!

Answer 11

You don't have to live in a teepee or a yurt or any other "green home" to make your home green and while the HGTV green home will offer some suggestions it's new construction and may not all be applicable to greening an existing home. Besides that the "green" home isn't necessarily all that green.

Some simple ways to green your home is switch to CFL bulbs, unplug unused appliances, turn off lights when you aren't in the room. Turn off lights that you aren't really using.

Take shorter showers, turn the water off while brushing your teeth or washing your hands. Only run the washer and dishwasher when they are full.

If you are looking to replace your appliances look into energy star.

Use smartstrip power strips.

Buy a small solar charger for small electronics like Ipods and cell phones.

Collecting rain water to water your lawn and garden.

Use natural non toxic cleaning products that you make yourself.

Buy local, organic, hormone free, free range and bulk to reduce the amount of packaging and chemicals in your food.

Recycle.

Compost.

Clear out the clutter in your house and donate to Goodwill, sell, or give away on Freecycle.

Bike or walk instead of driving.

Go for a hike instead of going to the movies.

Use a drying line instead of a dryer.

Grow some vegetables or at least some houseplants to improve indoor air quality.

N.

http://badhuman.wordpress.com

Answer 12

you can start with saving gas by farting in a jar,the heck with all that, if its good enough for gore,go buy your self some carbon credits.