Practical Eco

Homeowners Check Your Crawlspaces

Local home inspector Jamey Tippens puts out a newsletter that I subscribe to and recommend. Not only is Jamey thorough and easy to work with, but he's an ex-contractor who really knows homes.  His latest recommendation mentioned in his last two newsletters is to check your home's crawlspace for moisture at this time of year.

Both articles are an excellent read and good information for any home owner in this warm humid climate with a crawlspace foundation.

Part one - Check Your Crawlspace This Week
Part two - Check Your Crawlspace (Again!) This Week

The bottom line is to be sure your home isn't being compromised by its number one enemy - moisture.

Ways to save money on your air conditioning bills

Fellow blogger, Birney Summers, put up a post recently on no cost ways to save money on your air conditioning bills. As the weather gets warmer this is the time to recap ways to use your cooling equipment more efficiently and stop wasting hard earned dollars.

Read Birney's full post here ...

But the salient points are these:

Thermostat Use
-Set your thermostat at a higher temperature - try 78 F.
-Don't try setting it cooler to cool the house faster. Like an elevator, it will get there when it gets there no matter how many times you press the button.
-With heat pumps avoid changing the temp by more than 3 degrees.

Keeping the Heat Out
-Turn off unnecessary lights and use energy-efficient lights.
-Draw draperies, blinds, and shades indoors to keep out sunlight.

Natural Ventilation
-When possible, use fans to keep cool instead of an air conditioner.  Fans consume only a small fraction of the energy of an air conditioner. 
-Set the direction of ceiling fans so that they create a downdraft.
-If you plan to leave for a few minutes or more, turn the ceiling fans off.

“Do It Yourself” Maintenance
-Clean or replace filters regularly on air conditioners; keep outside units free from leaves or debris that may clog vents.
-Clean the outside condenser coils of your heat pump or central air conditioner. It is OK to hose off the outdoor part of your air conditioner or heat pump, even while it is running.

Operating Your Air Conditioner
-Set the fan speed of your air conditioner on high, except in very humid weather.  When it's humid, set the speed on low.
-Turn off your air conditioner when you leave home for an hour or longer. Leave your heat pump running unless you will be gone for more than a day.

I'd add to the last points that here in the South you ought not turn your air conditioner completely off when you're away. That could allow moisture to build up indoors and give mold a foot hold. Since the health hazards of mold outweigh the possible savings, I'd personally set my thermostat at around 82 when out of the house for a few days.

Toy helps home energy audits

So what's the "Wizard Stick", a child's toy, doing on a site about high performance building?

I have Bill Klotz of EcoAnthracite to thank for this, and I hope he won't mind me giving away this little secret. Anyone doing home energy audits needs to check the seals around doors and windows with a smoke making machine or a wisp of tissue. This helps you identify areas that need attention, weather stripping or sealing. Professional machines cost around $100 or more in most places. This Wizard Stick, on the other hand, costs a mere $16.95 on Amazon, and does the same job.

Even if you're not a professional energy auditor, like Bill , you can easily afford this little gizmo to keep a check on how well sealed your house is, or a neighbor's or a friend's house.

I've also added it to my A-Store for convenience.

Move your furniture to save energy

Energy Boomer, a site I like to keep an eye on, just ran an interesting post. "Save Energy by Moving Your Furniture". Click the link for the full story.  The basic points are:

• Use bookshelves to add insulation to exterior walls.
• Place seating away from drafts but near enough to windows to gain light.
• Keep air ducts and return vents clear of obstruction
• Use wall art, like quilts, to add insulation to walls

Household cleaning needs greening too

We've long been avoiding mainstream cleaning products at out home. Largely this is because my wife as a health therapist recognized the toxic effects of many of the common products. So we've gone out of our way to use baking soda and vinegar as mainstays of our cleaning routine. 

For many people who hire outside cleaners it's still a challenge to get them to use anything but name-brand chemical cleaners. The long onslaught of marketing messages designed to get us to buy cleaners that make life easier has taken its toll. Fortunately, some of the cleaning companies are starting to wake up to the real issues now.

Maid Brigade is one of the bigger ones that cleans green. They use only safe green cleaning agents and products that contain no harsh chemicals, toxins or carcinogens. Maid Brigade even use color coded microfiber cloths as part of their process and a four-stage filtration vacuum that removes harmful allergens from the air in your home as it cleans your floor.

Maid Brigade has also launched a useful and educational site www.greencleancertified.com with lots of great tips on cleaning your home without harsh chemicals. It features green living expert Annie Bond and even offers a way to ask Annie questions about green cleaning and green living.

Key behaviors to maintaining a green and healthy home

Most people don't give much thought to how their behavior can impact the sustainability, health or energy efficiency of their homes. I was speaking with someone last night who I know to be a pretty green minded person and he was a bit surprised by some of the ideas I'm going to highlight here.  Granted he's not a building scientist or a builder but it showed me that it's time to shine a light on this subject.

There are two inter-related issues, health and energy efficiency. And much of it has to do with water or moisture - which is the number one energy of your home.

Health-wise the key points are:
1. Use extractor fans in kitchens and bathrooms. Particularly here in the South, these fans are there to remove moisture from the home - not just smells. Taking a shower? Use the fan! Boiling water? Use the fan! Humidity, particularly in the warm months, can lead to mold and mildew which is a serious health hazard. And it will increase the load on your air conditioner, so this is also an energy issue.
2. Be sure to get rid of any moisture quickly. This includes practices like wiping up spills immediately, drying yourself in the bath or shower to keep the water where it can run down a drain and using a squeegee to get water droplets off of shower walls and into the tub where they can run down the drain.

3. Maintain your HVAC return filters. Clean or replace them regularly to ensure you are breathing clean air in the home.

4. Remove your shoes in the house. This simple practice can really reduce the amount of dirt and dust in your home. This will not only keep your home cleaner for longer but is altogether healthier.

Energy-wise the key points are:
1. Maintain your HVAC return filters. Clean or replace them regularly to ensure the unit gets free-flowing air and doesn't have to struggle to intake air which will increase the load on your unit.

2. Maintain the HVAC units twice yearly to ensure they are performing optimally. This also helps avert breakdowns during peak heating or cooling seasons which will be extra inconvenient.

3. Turn off lights and ceiling fans when not in the room. They use energy and output heat which can add to the cooling load in Summer. Studies have shown that the energy used by the fan plus the energy needed to get rid of its heat is greater than the energy saved through circulating air. Enjoy its cool breeze when in the room, but turn it off if you leave.

4. Unplug external power supplies (wall-warts) as much as possible. These have been estimated to add about 10% extra electricity load to the typical home.

5. If you have a heat pump take care to avoid sharp temperature increases in Winter. Stick to 3 degrees or less when you change the temperature. Greater increases will trigger an electric heating strip in most units that uses markedly more energy.

Good energy saving advice for heat pump users

The Energy Boomer has just written a great summary of tips for home owners with heat pumps. As there are a lot of heat pumps here in NC, I think this is a post that really needs to be shared here.

ROI Tables for Green Tuneups and Remodelling

I've just discovered GreenAndSave.com which offers ROI tables for various improvements you can make to your home. These show the expected costs versus savings and return on investment (ROI) you might expect from making such modifications.  This is a great resource for comparing the value of improvements.

There are a few points on which I might differ such as windows and skylights. Windows show a payback of 2.3 years which seems very short to me. When I've looked at changing windows I've worked out payback at nearer 10 years. Skylights are another point. In the South they're more likely to cost you money for extra cooling. Skylights a great at adding heat in Summer because they're oriented horizontally for peak Summer sun; and loosing it in Winter because heat rises. Another issue is insulating walls. The cost of tearing out sheet rock in older homes is much higher than the tables indicate. It looks to me as if the cost shown is only the insulation itself not the associated cost of remodeling. But hey, if you're ripping out the sheet rock anyway it has to be done. 

My final gripe is solar attic fans, which do nothing to reduce the cooling demand. 95% of the heat that enters the attic comes through radiation. Increased ventilation does very little to change that. See my Vented Attics post.

Apart from those few issues the resource at  GreenAndSave.com is fantastic. Quite probably much of our differences come from the fact that I'm concerned only with the mixed humid climate of the Southeast which has its own unique challenges.

For the complete ROI tables and topic page with details on over 50 ways to SAVE Money and the Environment visit: Home Remodeling ROI.

Low flow showerheads

I don't usually get excited about shower heads. In fact my excitement about this one is second hand, but the source is excellent.  I've been clued on to the Delta H2OKinetic shower head technology by a friend and builder.

Apparently this low flow shower head, delivering only 1.6 gallons per minute (gpm), also delivers an uncompromising shower experience.  It's all in the science. By controlling the water’s shape, velocity and thermal dynamics, Delta Faucet Company claims to have "reinvented the showering experience." They also say that their 1.6 gpm actually feels like 2.5 gpm. Aside from wondering how 2.5 gpm feels and wanting to rush to check my own shower's deliver I'm impressed. Now if I hadn't just replaced my shower head less than 6 months ago I'd be tempted.

On a related note, I was brushing my teeth and thinking it wasn't that long ago that I used to let the water run when brushing or shaving. Wondering how much water I'm saving I did a calculation. Based on a 1.5 gpm bathroom faucet and two 2-minute brushings per day that's over 2000 gallons per year. Looked at another way it's almost 4% of my total consumption. Hey, 4% for a minor behavioral change sounds like a pretty good return. Looked at yet another way 2000 gallons is about half of our average monthly use, which with bills around $45 per month, I figure I've also saved about $20 each year.

Seal up the attic door and save energy

I saw this nifty product at the Energy Star event today and immediately wanted one for myself.

I would have made my own hatch cover out of foam board like some builders I know have done. But my attic is so low, with barely 2 feet of clearance above , that I have no place to raise and reposition such a thing.

The Attic Tent gets right around my problem. Plus it's much more professional looking as well as being a proper air barrier. That's important because air can be drawn into the house through that hatch affecting your air quality, or it can leak from the house into the attic losing energy.

[Addendum 1/10/08] I finally got round to installing my Attic Tent! Once I got the bead of caulk in, while I was still on the stairs, someone came into the house and I could literally feel the "puff" as it tried to leak into the attic but simply bowed the tent in then out a bit. That showed me it was doing its job. It fit in very quickly and easily too. I'm very pleased with it so far and along with all of my other house sealing tactics I'm sure my energy consumption will be much lower this winter.

Vented Attics?

I've spoken to quite a few homeowners recently about insulating attics with spray foam insulation like Icynene.  Many worried about keeping the attics properly ventilated.  Here's another area where the building science has evolved. Particularly here in the South, ventilating attics is not necessarily the right thing to do, as with crawl spaces. And, attic fans are not helping either.

The better thing to do is seal the attic and insulate the roof deck with spray foam. With new construction a radiant barrier like TechShield should also be used.

The basic thinking has been to cool the attic with ventilation. But what we now realize is that almost all of the heat transfer into the attic space is through radiation directly through the roof deck. Vents will do nothing to stop this. And when it's hot and humid outside all vents do is draw humidity into the building envelope.

For a good article on this see "Joe's Top Ten List of Dumb Things to do in the South", on the Building Science website. A great general resource.  And take a look at Arnie Katz's article on this subject at the Advanced Energy site. Another great resource.

Off-Grid.net 20 ways to eco-pimp your home

Off-Grid.Net just ran and article titled "20 ways to eco-pimp your home" The title made me laugh, so I had to read it and pass it on. Though much of the article is very UK-centric and some of the points, I'd argue with, it's a nice piece with some good tips. 

Of course the bias was for heating rather than cooling climates, but the best tips I thought were:

1. low energy bulbs or CFL
2. turn your thermostat down (or up in Summer)
3. turn off monitors/pcs when not in use and unplug TVs etc.
4. get Solar Hot water
5. insulate your attic more/better

Pledge to Stop using Bottled Water

The Carbon Conscious Consumer (C3) group at the New American Dream are raising awareness of the rapidly increasing impact of plastic water bottles. I have to admit I was a bit numb to this issue until recently. After all, I can only focus on so many eco issues at one time.  But I'm now convinced it's real, relevant and takes very little effort to change.  My wife and I bought ourselves reusable water containers and have completely stopped buying bottled water.  Along side, we installed a Multi Pure water filter to ensure we've got the purest tastiest water straight from the tap.

Here are the key facts surrounding bottled water.  Americans consumed more than 31 billion liters of bottled water in 2006 – nearly 28 gallons for every man, woman, and child. Manufacturing all those bottles required 900,000 tons of plastic, which in turn required 20 million barrels of oil, and emitted as much greenhouse gas as 500,000 cars. Trucking a bottle of water 500 miles can double its climate impact – and some are shipped much, much farther. Water is a very heavy product to ship and trucks can not carry a full load of it.

We also know that both Coca Cola and Pepsi have owned up to selling tap water in their bottled waters at thousands of times the cost. Democracy Now did an interesting story on this recently, which is full of compelling facts.

So join me in rejecting bottled water and saving millions of barrels of oil and millions of tons of CO2 emissions. Take the C3 pledge.

Cleaning Your Home the Natural Way

The Scrap Exchange in Durham is holding a course on Wednesday October 10th from 7-8pm on how to make your own less-toxic cleaning products.
 

Learn how a few simple ingredients can be combined to form a wide range of products to meet all of your cleaning needs. Save money and reduce the toxic chemicals in your life.

Everyone who takes the class will receive a course pack with information and recipes.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007
7:00-8:00 pm
$15 per household (bring your housemate for no extra charge!)

Recycle Laser and Inkjet Cartridges

• It takes about a gallon of oil to make a new laser cartridge.

• 70 percent of used printer cartridges throughout the world are currently being thrown out.

• Almost 8 cartridges are thrown away per second in the United States alone. That's over 350 million cartridges per year straight into our landfills, and that number increases by 12 percent annually.

• A laser cartridge thrown into landfill can take up to 450 years to decompose. Some components made of industrial grade plastics will take over a thousand years to decompose.

It is important that the message gets out to the 70% of printer users who dispose of their printer cartridges.

Recycle and save!  Most printer cartridges can be remanufactured, refilled or reloaded. Take cartridges to Cartridge World, or Rapid Refill Inks  shops for collection and recycling. You can buy remanufactured or refilled cartridges for substantially less than the price of the name brand ones at these places too.

 

Save money on hot water

Your hot water heater accounts     for about 20% of all the energy used in your home. There are a few simple things you can     do to save energy and save money.

First, turn your water heater down to 130 degrees F, which is     hot enough to kill deadly bacteria, and still save energy. Also, insulate your heater with     a pre-fab 'blanket,' but be careful not to block off air vents on gas heaters. This can     save you 7-8% of your energy usage.

Another idea is to wash hand in cold water. Letting the tap run till it gets hot wastes water and energy. Unless you've been handling meats you will probably get your hands just as clean with soap and cold water anyhow.  And it's surprising how much water is wasted as we let the tap run while brushing our teeth.

But if you're in the market for a new water heater consider a tankless heater from Rheem. In most cases this will save considerable energy, plus you'll save space too. The water is heated instantly as you require it rather than keeping a tank hot all day and night. Contact me for more information.

The Alternative Energy Store

I'm very impressed with the Alternative Energy Store and sorry I didn't discover it sooner. For anyone in the US it's a great resource for the whole range of products related to renewable energy and eco lifestyles. Even for those of us residing in Europe and elsewhere out of the US, they can air freight smaller items and can still come out less expensive. They have excellent prices and a surprisingly wide range of products. I just wish I lived nearer so I could drop in a browse regularly!

Click here to visit the Alternative Energy Store for discount prices on solar panels, wind turbines and  renewable energy equipment for your home.

Sunday Times Greener Lifestyle story

The Sunday Times today had a piece in their Health section with numerous tips for a greener lifestyle and links to a variety of products and sources. Anna Shepard reminds us that packaging waste is bad and composting is good as are energy efficient appliances, organic cosmetics and clothes made from organic cottons.  For some there won't be a lot of surprise but there are certainly several excellent links for finding good products.

I was disappointed that while she mentioned solar panels, she didn't point out the easier solution for urbanites like me which is to go with a green energy supplier like Good Energy. Remember, if you sign up to their supply to mention my name and post code (E8 1DN) and you'll get a free bottle of organic wine - and so will I!

Full article in the Sunday Times

Grow your own and save

Why is it hardly anyone grows their own vegetables any more?  My grandmother used to grow loads of things and can them every year. Her pickles were legendary. And of course, the fresh picked corn on the cob was a delight.  No, she didn't live on a farm, it was a typical suburban house in Tulsa with less than half an acre plot.  And my friend Mag grows fantastic tomatoes, beans, peas, berries and more on a much smaller plot here in London.

Just about anyone can grow their own veg and delight in its freshness and knowing exactly what went into it.  It doesn't take much land, just a bit of time and attention.  The current issue of Back Home magazine includes an article about growing your own food on a small suburban plot. Read it here.

Easy ways to make a difference

These are some of the many easy ways you can make a difference:

1. Use Recycled products such as office supplies
   Buy 100% post-consumer recycled paper produced as close to home as possible.
   Try www.evolve-papers.com or www.greenstat.co.uk

2. Use both side of your office paper then get it collected for recycling
   Reuse or recycle everything you can - its sensible to save energy and other resources.

3. Refill your printer cartridges
   Around half of all toner cartridges end up in landfill and most are not biodegradable. Refilling cartridges takes 5 minutes and they can be refilled up to 5 times, saving money and reducing waste. Try www.cartridgeworld.com, www.rapidrefillink.com,  www.refilltoner.com or www.actionaidrecycling.org.uk

4. Look at your energy use
   Energy Efficiency Advice Centres (EEACs) around the UK give free impartial advice.  For information phone them on 0800-512012.
   Consider a renewable energy supplier such as www.good-energy.co.uk

5. Consider your office machinery purchases carefully. Do you need it?
   Consider buying second-hand equipment or upgrade your existing pc instead. Remember, there are many hazardous substances in electronic equipment so discard things carefully. You can also donate used equipment to local schools.

6. Talk to your suppliers
   Raise their awareness of environmental and ethical issues.  It's only by telling suppliers that it's important that they will begin to change. Investigate alternative ethical suppliers where possible.

Add more good tips by making comments to this posting.