Try These Home Improvements

Feeling the Financial Drain of Utility Costs? Try These Home Improvements

Oftentimes, homebuyers will receive electric, water, and gas bills without even considering how to cut back on costs. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the average yearly cost per household for electricity, oil, and gas is over $1,500 dollars. In addition, according to the Herald Sun Australians are currently paying more than ever before for less water. With that, the best solution for any homeowner is to realize that through incorporating a few easy home improvements, one can save a great deal of money. To make things easier, below are the top home improvement suggestions that yield the best results.

Make the Switch

With bigger homes and with more gadgets and appliances that are being used, energy bills tend to skyrocket. One of the biggest culprits of wasted electricity is outdated light bulbs. Switching from incandescent lights to more energy efficient options can save you as much as 50% a year on your electricity costs. The best home improvement options for lighting falls under ideas such as incorporating more natural lighting into your home, use LED light bulbs, and even switching your regular outdoor lighting for halogen solar powered light. Furthermore, another home improvement tip to cut costs is to paint your home in lighter colors. Light paints reflect light much better and reduce your need of using electricity.

Appliances

While keeping your outdated appliances can save you money in removing the cost of buying a new product, you might want to reconsider. Home improvements come in varying degrees, and one simple improvement that will save you money is to purchase energy efficient appliances which can be a television, kitchen appliance, or even laundry machines. When looking for energy efficient appliances, the Australian government uses an energy rating system. For the best and most efficient products, choose products that have received a high star rating. The rating system also applies to gas products.

Hot Water System Upgrade

Most homes’ currently use electricity to heat the water in their home. A more pocket-savvy option is to switch from an electric water heater system to a gas water heater system. Gas instantaneous hot water heaters have gained a great deal of popularity in the past few years. Their compact style and their ability to provide a reliable and continuous stream of hot water are some of the major benefits that cannot be found with a traditional electric water heater. Therefore, due to the reliability and continuity, you can be sure that you’ll have enough hot water for multiple uses such as filling up your bath tub or washing clothing using hot water. In addition, unlike an electric water heater that you need to monitor and remember to turn off, the gas water heater is fully automatic and shuts down when a certain hot water threshold is met.

Garden Improvement

While most garden irrigation systems run on a timer to save water, these systems do not have an automatic shut off option when it rains. Therefore, if your water system is on when it is raining, you are immediately wasting both money and water. To prevent this from happening, consider upgrading your garden with a system that has a rain sensor. In addition, it is also a good option to use a drip water system and to time your system for the evening hours when water is cheaper.

Efficient Windows and Doors

You probably run your air conditioning during the sweltering hot summer months. However, before you do, you should consider whether or not the system is running optimally. This means checking that the device is not working harder than it needs to. This usually occurs when you have air leaving your home through poorly built windows and doors. Therefore, a great home improvement that you can make is to check and reseal your windows and doors. This also applies during the winter when you heat your home. Most of the energy will escape through cracks and crevices, making your system run more than it needs to.

Overall, home improvements come in many forms. When looking at the above options, you are probably considering which of the above can save you the most money. For starters, the most energy inefficient product on this list is an electric water heater. Thus, the most savvy move that you can make is to get a professional to install a new gas water heater to upgrade your home’s water system. The next best options are switching your lighting, sealing windows and doors, and changing your appliances. You’ll not only love the new efficiency of your home, but you’ll also appreciate that you won’t suffer from the massive financial drain that inefficient home’s produce.

 

Try These Home Improvements

Quick Facts About Hydro-Fracking

Fracking’s caught a lot of flak, but give it some slack – do you have the facts behind the fracks?
Now that we’ve got your attention, it’s time to set the record straight about fracking, one of the more contentious environmental issues around these days...
http://realworldenergy.com/quick-facts-hydro-fracking/

Energy Modeling – The Future of Real Estate Construction

Historically, so much of building a building, whether it has been a house, hospital, or commercial office, has been about the building being structurally sound with proper plumbing at minimal cost. All other factors, like the building being energy efficient were an afterthought, and a problem that would be dealt with after construction was completed. What’s happened over time is that architects have found that designing buildings to be energy efficient right from the start has huge long term benefits on keeping energy and operational costs down, and saving the owners of the building sometimes millions of dollars on an annual basis.

Because every factor of a construction project is different, including the building materials used, the infrastructure, the weather of the geographic area, and the people that will occupy the building, there has to be a fast and effective way to create a blueprint in order to design the most cost effective and energy efficient building possible.

What is Energy Modeling?

Energy modeling allows architects and building engineers to make educated decisions of every aspect of a building to improve energy efficiency without compromising design or stability of the building. Whether they want to know the material to use on the roof, the best lighting system to maximize workplace moral and minimize energy bills, or how electricity costs will be impacted by having X number of people in the building at a time, they can make accurate cost and maintenance predictions with various levels of confidence based on average temperature and weather conditions of the area, and based on average human interactions with their environment. As you constantly tweak different variables, you can eventually design a building that meets the owners needs best. Because businesses hate unpredictability, energy modeling is also appealing in that it can give building owners an accurate forecast of cost many years down the road before any construction begins.

What Buildings Use Energy Modeling?

All buildings can use energy modeling simulations to become more sustainable and use less energy over an extended period of time. Whether it’s a home, hospital, church, or office building, all structures can benefit from energy modeling. Most new homes are constructed using information gathered from energy modeling based on their geographic location, and even older homes can use materials like windows and roof shingles designed with the help of energy modeling.

Because there are hundreds of variables that can influence the design of a building, a little bit of help is necessary when huge sums of money are at stake. Nearly all companies that wish to build a new office space or manufacturing facility turn to professional environmental engineers that provide energy modeling and simulation to help them design energy efficient buildings that are tailored to their specific needs.

What Role in the Future Will Energy Modeling Play?

Because millions of existing structures in the United States were built with little to no concern for energy sustainability, many related professional services are tailored towards making existing buildings more energy efficient. However, as governments around the world have providing more tax benefits to buildings that have green building certifications, such as LEED in the United States, and building owners realize the long term cost benefits of using buildings with energy efficient designs, environmental engineering and energy modeling could play an essential role in upcoming real estate developments.

Mike Hall works with PM Environmental, which provides energy modeling services as well as other environmental engineering services.

 

Energy Modeling – The Future of Real Estate Construction

6 Reasons Why Green Energy Is Important

 

Imagine a planet that has clean air and lustrous greens. It is soothing and captivating, right? It helps ease the mind away from the stress and anxiety of the world. But, with the way humans abuse this planet—that would turn into just a pipe dream for our children and our grand-children’s children. We need to act now and leave a healthy planet not just for ourselves but for others. Green energy, also known as renewable energy, is important because our whole existence depends on it. Whether you’re just an ordinary Joe or a guy with a Ph.D you know that keeping the environment healthy is important. But, that’s not the only thing that we can get if we switch to cleaner and greener energy. Here is a bucket list of reasons why we should act now towards getting our energy as green as possible.

 

Economy

Most of the green energy initiatives are spend on materials and appliances that are now certified to be more energy efficient. Factories have shut down their production of incandescent bulbs following a ban. Homes are slowly switching their lamps to more eco-friendly ones. This means that factories would need to produce more LED lamps or solar-powered lamps to replace the less efficient incandescent bulbs. In the long run this would have an impact to the economy. More people buying newer lamps mean that the sales of lamp makers would increase. The demand would be high as supply tried to catch up. Factories need more workers to reach the demand. In turn, this would mean a decrease in the unemployment rate. More people would have purchasing power as a result and help form a more robust economy as a result. Not to mention more taxes for the government too.

 

Savings

Benefits are not greatly appreciated if they are not personal. You can get personal with the benefits of green energy in the form of savings around the home. Green energy helps you save on your electric bill. LED lights and compact fluorescent lamps help by giving off more light with less power consumption. This means you will have lower electricity bills around the house. These savings will then be channeled to other needs of the family.

 

Defense

The military will love green energy. This is the reason why the US Department of Defense has spent about 300 percent more on developing battlefield technology to become less dependent on fuel. Gas stations are scarce but the sun is everywhere. Better batteries and being able to tap the power of the sun for defense can spell the difference between freedom and tyranny—victory or defeat.

 

Transportation

Green energy will change the way we get our rides. Mass transports will be less dependent on energy based on coal and oil and will tap other sources of energy like the sun or even batteries. Electric cars will eventually become cheaper.

 

Health

Health is perhaps the most underrated benefit of green energy. Green energy spends less and as a result helps bring down the use of coal and oil. This means that pollutants would less likely to impact the air. Toxins are in the air that we breathe and it is not a pretty sight. If you have been avoiding tobacco so as not to get sick or suffer from too much stress and anxiety, might as well kiss that thought goodbye.

 

Food

Green energy reduces the need to use coal and oil. This means that there would be less chances of acid rain. The byproduct of the use of non-green energy is a sulfur oxide that gets suspended in the air and eventually returns back to the ground via rain. This contaminates the rivers and lakes. Eventually, acidic water will find its way to the water table that may damage our crops and other edible vegetation which can cause harm to the body and impact the quality of food supply.

 

Pollution has become severe in most places that it is a normal sight for people to sport face mask. And that’s not all, green energy helps bring down CO₂ emissions that would lead to global warming. We are seeing plenty of cases of skin cancer because the sun rays have been too harsh today compared to say 50 or 60 years ago. Now it is no longer fun to stay outdoors for too long. That is why we need to get green energy going.

 

 

 

About the Author:

 

As a health advocate, Ryan Rivera also loves to tackle issues that concern the environment.  He believes that green energy can greatly spare us from the many adverse effects of pollution that surround us which may lead not only to anxiety but to other health problems as well. You can check out his Calm Clinic Google+ account for more interesting information that concern your overall health.

 

 

 

6 Reasons Why Green Energy Is Important