- Made with generally non-toxic building material
- Energy efficient (energy efficient appliances and windows, HVAC and ventilation systems)
- Solar homes
- Recycled content materials
- Resource efficient materials
- Materials from renewable resources
- Use of locally manufactured building materials
Archive for the 'housing' Category
Hello dear readers!
Long time, no post... Paul has been doing quite a bit of business traveling and I have been crazy busy with work.  Gotta pay the bills, you know.Â
Anywhoo...
I have a confession. I love housing. Not as in, "ooh, I love my house!" But more as in, I am fascinated by residential housing; nothing pleases me more than visiting an open house and seeing what types of materials are used in a house. One of my dreams is to build my own house from ground up (unlikely in the Bay Area unless I somehow strike it rich at an internet startup) using only green materials.Â
So imagine my delight when I learned of this site, Green Homes for Sale.  What qualifies as a green home, you ask? According to their site...:
Several months ago, I spent about 4 hours trying to untangle the jungle of wires I had sitting behind my entertainment unit, which houses a number of things, such as a TV, Tivo, DVD player, stereo + speakers, Wii, router, etc. The purpose? To get everything organized. During that time, I put about 12 or so different plugs into several power strips. The electronics that I don't use frequently, I plugged into one power strip and powered off. The more frequently used electronics are powered through another power strip.
Well it turns out that my anal retentiveness is doing some good for the environment. Props to me! According to this site, in the average home, 75% of the electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while products are turned off. The solution: unplug the appliance or use a power strip and use the switch on the power strip to cut off all power.
So get your ass over to the hardware store and pick up a power strip or two. Your wallet will thank you in the long run.
PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric for you non-Californians) has this neat tool on their website which allows you to track you gas and electricity consumption.
I rediscovered this little tool while I was paying my bill online last week (for the ghastly sum of $114 - eek). To my UTTER DISMAY, my little 1150 sq foot home is on the "uses most energy" spectrum of annual gas energy use. In other words, I am (way) above average in gas use.
Digging into this more, I discovered that almost 75% of my costs comes from heating. Now remember, I live in sunny California. It's not like I'm freezing my arse off in the tundras of the midwest, where I used to live (Chicago, to be exact). And my place isn't some 5000 square foot mansion. During the day, I keep the temperature at 68 degrees and from 6-12pm, it's at 70 degrees. Clearly, this isn't cutting it. I guess I'm going to need to lower the thermostat and start wearing more sweaters.
Well, there's always a silver lining... even though I get an F in gas costs, I get an A for electricity costs. I am way below average compared to the average home. YEAH! My highest costs are from hot water. Yikes. But don't worry - the solution is to stop bathing. Kidding...!
Anyway, I'm clearly going to have to work on this. I'd love to hear from you and see what's worked - please feel free to leave a comment with some tips!
Digging into this more, I discovered that almost 75% of my costs comes from heating. Now remember, I live in sunny California. It's not like I'm freezing my arse off in the tundras of the midwest, where I used to live (Chicago, to be exact). And my place isn't some 5000 square foot mansion. During the day, I keep the temperature at 68 degrees and from 6-12pm, it's at 70 degrees. Clearly, this isn't cutting it. I guess I'm going to need to lower the thermostat and start wearing more sweaters.
Well, there's always a silver lining... even though I get an F in gas costs, I get an A for electricity costs. I am way below average compared to the average home. YEAH! My highest costs are from hot water. Yikes. But don't worry - the solution is to stop bathing. Kidding...!
Anyway, I'm clearly going to have to work on this. I'd love to hear from you and see what's worked - please feel free to leave a comment with some tips!
So I recently read that the State of California, where I live, wants to be the first state to ban incandescent lightbulbs by 2012. They propose moving towards the use of CFLs, or compact flourescent lightbulbs.
While I applaud energy-saving measures, I wonder about CFLs. On the one hand, they are supposed to offer energy savings of 75-80%, compared to the traditional incandescent light bulb, and last longer (6-10 years). However, I've never particularly cared for flourescent lighting, and I've heard that CFLs have mercury, which makes disposal somewhat problematic. What other options do we have?
LEDs, or Light Emitting Diodes, are a plausible choice. I admit that I'm no lighting expert, but from what I've read so far, they seem to have great potential. The things that I like about LEDs: greater efficiency (80% compared to 20% for incandescents); long life span (~100K hours!); low environmental impact (less energy is required to manufacture); durability (they aren't as breakable as incandescents); no noise (unlike flourescents, they don't "buzz"). The cons: in the short term, LEDs are more expensive than incandescents and flourescents; installation can be expensive; and LED technology is still evolving - therefore it maybe worth revisiting in a few years.
Here's a great chart I found which compares the various options that are out there today and the pros and cons of each.
In the meantime, have any of you experienced LED technology firsthand? What are your thoughts?