Posts tagged "Homes"

Your Mall Gets An EV Charging Center

Retailers across the country may be able to capitalize on the "going green" movement in new exciting ways. With the booming Electric Vehicle market many malls and shopping centers have been exploring new techniques to bring customers into their facilities. With the booming of electric vehicle sales, the hopes of stores may have an income producing program which everybody benefits from. An idea sitaution is to build a solar power roof over the parking lots of many of these malls and produce the electricity to recharge the EV. Electric vehicles typically need about 20 - 30 minutes to recharge their batteries to about 70%. This is plenty of time for shoppers to walk inside and take a look or grab a cup of coffee. The federal government has allocated over $300 million dollars to install public recharging stations to help inspire retail business. The solar panels can provide electric for cars and advertisement space.

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A Great Deal Of Energy May Be Saved By Businesses Deciding to Go Green

It is one thing for folks to go green in their homes, but what if every business turned into a green business? With all of the waste in the workforce, an astounding amount of money and energy may be saved with only a little initiative. There seems to be so little concern for keeping things clean any more, or for preventing waste. There use to be a time when waste not, want not, was a precious saying that every person knew.

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Energy-Efficient Appliances and Lighting For Green Homes

Many people are considering a solar-power kit or solar-panel system for their home. This is a wonderful way to save money, produce clean energy, and “go green”. But before you do this you have to make sure your home is as energy-efficient as possible. The less energy you use, the greater impact your solar-power system will have on your wallet and the planet. This article will teach you about energy-efficient lighting and appliances.

Be an Energy Star

One of the best things you can do is to start putting energy efficiency high on your requirements when shopping for new appliances. Look for the ENERGY STAR logo. This is a government program intended to help consumers find the most energy efficient units. This program also puts the average consumption on each unit so that you can compare two appliances side by side.

Drying and Cooking

Generally creating heat with electricity is less efficient than creating heat by burning gas. Heating with electricity requires that the electrical current heat a coil, which then gives off heat. Gas appliances burn gas and discharge the heat directly to its intended use. This means that for cooking and drying, the best bang for your buck is with gas appliances. You’ll notice with gas appliances that your clothes tend to dry quicker and your food cooks faster.

Washing Machines

With the emphasis on energy efficiency in the last few years, high-efficiency (HE) washers have gained in popularity. Many HE washers use 70% less water in each load. They use a side load feature, instead of top load, which means less water is needed since the clothes spin through the water sitting at the bottom of the drum.

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Conventional top-load washer need to fill the drum up with water for the clothes to get wet. The HE units spend less time and energy filling the tub, draining the tub, and rinsing the clothes. It also means there is less weight for the drum to spin, saving energy. In arid areas, some water companies are offering rebates for water efficient appliances. Remember, saving water and saving energy go hand in hand.

Power Strips & Electronics

Most electronic devices draw a “phantom load” of up to one-third of their operating power. This means that even when your DVD player is technically off, it is drawing electricity. This electricity is often intended to allow remote controls to work (if your DVD player was completely off the remote would not work).

This may not sound like much, but if every electronic device is drawing a little power 24 hours a day this can add up. The best way to get rid of this waste is to get a power strip for each area of the house that has several of these devices (e.g. the home office, the entertainment center, the kitchen). At the end of each evening, and as you leave for work, just make a habit of going around and shutting off the all the power strips.

Lighting

By now you’ve probably heard of Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFL’s). These lights can use up to 80% less energy than conventional incandescent light bulbs. Remember how electricity uses a current through a coil to generate heat? Conventional light bulbs work much the same way. You can see the coil in an old incandescent light bulb. With CFLs, a gas is heated to generate light, using far less electricity and in most cases lasting much longer. These lights should be standard issue in every home these days. Just make sure to get the low-mercury bulbs. And don’t forget, solar garden and security lights can handle virtually any outdoor lighting needs you have.

Disposal

When getting rid of your old appliances, don’t forget about the environment. Many appliances, especially refrigerators, contain harmful chemicals and gases. Call your local waste management company for proper methods of disposal for older units. Even better than disposal is recycling your old fridges, stoves, and washers. Many companies will come and take them off your hands for a minimal charge, and they strip down the metal components for scrap and rebuild parts that can be reused. Another great way to recycle: Craiglist or your local classified ads. Many first time home buyers, landlords, and dormitories take old appliances and use them.

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Headline Are There Tax Incentives for Green Homes?

Disclaimer: Dream Town Real Estate provides this information for informative purposes only.  We highly encourage you to speak to a tax professional about the particulars of any incentive you feel you may qualify for.

Here at Dream Town we realize the value of all things Green and as such are always on the lookout for Green incentives and tips that we can pass along to help further the cause.  An excellent place to start is the Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency (DSIRE)’s website www.dsireusa.org. They have a complete database of all state incentives and policies for renewables and efficiency as well as provide links to Federal incentives.   These incentives come in the form of tax breaks/credits, grants, and loan guarantees and utility company rebates, depending on any number of variables.  This site is quite verbose and we recommend browsing it on your own, however here are a few highlights we found interesting:

Energy-Efficient Mortgages:

Homeowners can take advantage of energy efficient mortgages (EEM) to finance a variety of energy efficiency measures, including renewable energy technologies, in a new or existing home. The U.S. federal government supports these loans by insuring them through Federal Housing Authority (FHA) or Veterans Affairs (VA) programs. This allows borrowers who might otherwise be denied loans to pursue energy efficiency improvements, and it secures lenders against loan default.

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Residential Energy Conservation Subsidy Exclusion

“Utility rebates. If you are a customer of an electric utility company and you participate in the utility’s energy conservation program, you may receive on your monthly electric bill either: a reduction in the purchase price of electricity furnished to you (rate reduction), or a nonrefundable credit against the purchase price of the electricity. The amount of the rate reduction or nonrefundable credit is not included in your income.”

Residential Energy Efficiency Tax Credit

The credit applies to energy efficiency improvements in the building envelope of existing homes and for the purchase of high-efficiency heating, cooling and water-heating equipment. Efficiency improvements or equipment must serve a dwelling in the United States that is owned and used by the taxpayer as a primary residence. The maximum amount of homeowner credit for all improvements combined is ,500 for equipment purchased during the two-year period of 2009 and 2010.

ComEd Smart Ideas for Your Home Efficiency Program

Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) offers residential customers and building owners (or managers) incentives for certain energy efficiency upgrades and improvements. Incentives are available to residential homeowners for lighting and refrigerator/freezer recycling. Building owners and property managers are eligible to receive incentives for certain efficiency upgrades in residential buildings where electricity is used for both water heating and space heating.

Peoples Gas – Chicagoland Natural Gas Savings Program

Peoples Gas offers the Chicagoland Natural Gas Savings Program to help their customers to purchase energy efficient equipment. Homeowners, landlords and small business owners are eligible for rebates on energy efficient furnaces, boilers, water heaters, insulation, and clothes washers. To qualify, gas furnaces, boilers, and water heaters must be installed by professional contractors. Property owners may opt to self-install insulation or hire a professional contractor. A full list of eligible models and insulation and instructions on how to apply for the rebates can be found on the Chicagoland Natural Gas Savings Program website. Applications must be made no later than 60 days after the equipment purchase date.

There are quite a few more for those willing to outfit their home with renewable energy sources such as solar power, etc.

Futuristic Green Homes, An Old Inspiration?

A lot of people think that theory of the green homes are a contemporary idea when truthfully this is a really old designing concept. Designers and architects are now designing homes that may have made homes more comfortable two hundred years ago but using systems that are ironically old.

For example, a type of home that is becoming in favor again is the timber frame home. People with galvanized roofs find that the temperature in their homes are high while those that use the basic thatch have cooler homes.

The timber frames are taken from sustainable tree farms and the outside finished to appear like a Tudor if so wanted.

But there are still some methods that can make a green home greener and they had been revealed within the interiors .

One of the most basic observations is that homes of old had lower ceilings, only three meters for some. While these were the comfortable cottages of old that were, and still are, beloved by many. While drafty old manses needed huge fires to heat them up, these cottages only needed a small stove – or a small heater if you’re retrofitting one in.

When remodeling your house, you needn’t remove the double brick walls on the exterior and you need to be quite suspect of any contractor that suggests that you do so. The double walls in old homes insulate the inside come winter and should never be replaced by modern insulations which don’t work quite as well. As a rule, these walls were filled up with whatever materials they might use like sand and gravel but today insulation materials are used.    

In the Victorian times, things were thought to be stuffy, but they were definitely not so! This was the time when there was a resurgence in the use of public spas, and they advocated lots of sunlight and fresh air. The floors in old homes were left bare of carpets to reveal the satin finish of wooden floors and the windows were made bigger so the sun could come in .  

While renovating the home, you could want to have another room installed. The additional room could become another bedroom or  you could turn it into a sun room with wide open windows to let the sun in.  The sun room was one of the most favorite rooms in the old days and this can be a very functional room which should admit the cool breeze into a home without the necessity for fans or .

Heat from the sun goes through the glass panels to be quickly absorbed by the bricks that will collect the warmth only to release it at nighttime when the temperature drops. There is always a breeze that rises even on the hottest days and this will be admitted by simply opening the windows of the craft room.

The craft room can have some plants placed in it as there’s enough light and they’ll serve to filter the air and generate more oxygen. There is nothing better for purifying the air than a full collection of house plants!

I built my passive solar straw bale house with earthen plasters in 2000 for K (will most likely cost more today, depending on many factors). This is an overview of the house; it is extremely energy-efficient. My electric bills are about per month.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

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