Trying to make my home as ecofriendly as possible...and trying to save money...?

Question

Can you list literally everything (in order of importance) of what I need to do to make my home as good and green for the environment, thanks.

I will be choosing best answer at 9 am tomorrow.

Answer 1

hi nick

just try some of these sites obtained from google.com

Eco Friendly House Plan

Eco Friendly House Plan This architect-created house plan that was designed ... This includes five construction plan sets (blueprints), with floor plans, ...

www.cleanairgardening.com/houseplan.ht... - 30k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Home Building Blog - Eco-Friendly and Green, Calgary, Canada

The project is an environmentally friendly, modern small house that blends into ... Tagged as: home, house, construction, renovation, green, eco-friendly, ...

www.ramsayhome.com/ - 46k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

2007 September 11 · Home Building Blog - Eco-Friendly and Green ...

11 Sep 2007 ... When outfitting your dorm room, IKEA is not your only option, though the company does offer plenty of eco-friendly items. ...

www.ramsayhome.com/2007/09/11/ - 42k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Real Estate: Is going eco-friendly worth the cost? - January 1, 2007

1 Jan 2007 ... The eco-friendly house (and renovation) has gone mainstream. .... reason you might choose this type of construction is less practical and ...

money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/money... - 48k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Construction: Environmentally-friendly, Sustainable Building ...

Whole House Fans, Bathroom Exhaust Fans, Compact Folding Ladders, Energy Efficient Fixtures RESERVEMYSOLAR. ... Wool Carpet and Other Eco-Friendly Products. ...

www.ecomall.com/biz/construc.htm - 25k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Green Home Building: Natural Building Techniques

The Natural House is a tour of the construction, costs, ..... doesn't just talk about eco-friendly building techniques, but actually shows every step! ...

www.greenhomebuilding.com/natural_buil... - 91k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Eco friendly home improvement remodeling and home decor. Home ...

Little Green House, llc, - Healthy, green, environmentally friendly products ..... pss group sl, - ECO friendly property construction, green build systems. ...

www.greenpeople.org/HomeRemodeling.htm... - 113k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Green Building - Eco Houses And Housing Alternatives

Encouraging the design and construction of Earth Sheltered Buildings in the UK. ... Eco-friendly buildings from a shed to a new house. ...

www.greenphase.com/building.html - 18k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

should be helpful

Answer 2

If you are trying to make your home more eco friendly why not make your main means of transportation also eco friendly.Ride a bike every day instead of a internal combustion vehicle.It will give you a workout,save you a lot of money,and will significantly reduce the amount of polution you release into the environment.

Answer 3

Try a building material recycling warehouse. This uses existing materials and keeps them out of the landfills. Plus most of them support a local cause and are not for profit.

Answer 4

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 potentially dramatically improve your house's ability to stay warm, so less heating required. But a very serious disclaimer on that. If you live in a rocky area (especially granite), and you have a concrete basement of slab, you might have Radon, a dangerous gas. Get tested for it if you're unsure. If you do, you can still seal up, 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. A trick is to only insulate 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 next, especially if they're timber. Use perforated concertina foil. If you have a slab put foam sandwich board around the outside edge.

#4 Shade selected windows. Use trees and/or shade screens to help shade summer sun from westerly windows.

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

#6 Better appliances. This doesn't have to costalot, 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 eco 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. Get a good fridge.

#6 Renewable energy. Very fashionable of course, 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).

#7 Double/triple glazing. Another big 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.

#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.