A house is a large investment. From time to time, you should reinvest in your house by completing different home improvement projects.
Such projects can allow you and your family to get much more out of your home.
However, when performing these upgrades, you should keep in mind that they can also give you the opportunity to lower your home’s impact on the environment.
There are some great ways to go green while upgrading your home. Below are just a few possibilities.
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Upgrade Your Lighting
One of the best ways to make your home greener is also one of the easiest.
You should swap out every incandescent light bulb in your home for more energy-efficient choices like compact fluorescent light bulbs. CFL bulbs have certain great advantages over traditional light bulbs.
According to the government’s Energy Star website, CFL bulbs use a whopping 70 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs. They also tend to last a lot longer as well.
This means having to spend less on light bulbs each year and having to put fewer bulbs into the trash.
Since CFL bulbs are designed to work in regular light sockets, swapping out all the lights in your house shouldn’t take that long at all.
Invest in Energy Efficient Vacuum Pumps
The vacuum pumps you use in your home for different applications can also be upgraded to increase both their energy efficiency and effectiveness.
Consider investing in rotary vane vacuum pumps. Such a device is composed of multiple vanes that have been mounted onto a rotor.
The rotor spins within a cavity to produce the positive-displacement pumping action to pump out fluids.
There are many energy-efficient designs to choose from, and you can have one custom built to conform to your home’s own needs as well.
Upgrade Your Windows
If your home has older windows, you may want to consider getting replacement windows Greenville (or wherever it is you are) and upgrading to more energy-efficient designs. Windows, like anything, age over time.
They become cracked and damaged and loser their attractive luster. However, older windows have other problems you may not be aware of.
For one, they tend to leak a lot of air around the edges. This can mean allowing heat to escape to the outdoors during the winter.
It also means heat being able to seep inside during the summer. Newer more energy-efficient designs for windows are built to stop this air leakage from happening.
As such, your furnace and air conditioner will have to work for less to keep your home at the appropriate temperature.
Install Low Flow Appliances
It’s not just electricity usage that homeowners must be mindful of. How much water a household uses can also make a big impact.
This is especially the case for regions in the country that routinely experience severe droughts such as certain parts of California.
How much water homes use can actually make a huge difference in regards to the amount of water available for other uses like farming.
One way to lower your home’s water usage is by upgrading to low flow appliances. A low flow toilet, for example, will use half the amount of water that a regular toilet does.
You can also invest in low flow designs for showerheads, washing machines, faucets, and more. Doing so can greatly lower the amount of water your home uses on monthly basis.
Switch to a Smart Thermostat
One reason why many homes end up wasting a lot of energy is due to how a family uses their thermostat. Let’s be honest. The traditional thermostat is not easy to program.
As a result, many families don’t program their thermostats at all and only make manual adjustments to the temperature inside their home. This is not an efficient system.
However, a new smart thermostat will be extremely easy to program. All you have to do is navigate an app on your phone.
Beyond programming your thermostat, you’ll also be able to remotely monitor your home’s temperature and make adjustments as needed.
Ensuring your home isn’t wasting energy by running the heating or air conditioning when it isn’t needed will be much easier.
Home improvement projects are needed to help protect the investment you have made into your home.
However, choose the projects you take on wisely. For one, certain projects can help to increase your home’s energy efficiency and lower their negative effect on the environment.
The list above is only a starting point for all the choices for green home improvement projects you could take on.
