Living Green is Cool: Greening your home: part 3 of 5

Greening your home: part 3 of 5

Posted on May 18th, 2010 by Nick

Coming up is Memorial Day! Before you start the holiday, you can make sure your home is comfortable for everyone by following a few more green tips on heating and cooling as part of our Greening Your Home series.

Heating/Cooling…

1. Install a programmable thermostat to keep your house comfortably warm in the winter and comfortably cool in the summer.

2. Lower the thermostat on your hot water heater to 120°F. Take short showers instead of baths.

3. During the heating season, keep the draperies and shades on your south-facing windows open during the day to allow the sunlight to enter your home and closed at night to reduce the chill you may feel from cold windows.

4. Clean or replace filters on furnaces once a month or as needed. Clean baseboard heaters, and radiators as needed; make sure they’re not blocked by furniture, carpeting, or drapes.

5. Winterize windows with weather stripping (for all moveable joints) and caulk (for non-moving parts). Also, install a window kit to the inside of your windows to help keep cold air out and warm air in.

If you would like to learn more about what you can do to go green, a nice energy audit will send you in the right direction. The insight you gain from it will give you plenty of ideas for a little green remodeling, so you can become part of the solution. Sign up for an energy audit through Sobuka by typing in your zipcode and selecting contractors in your area.

Tags: energy efficiency tips

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Do it Yourself. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.