A home that is sustainable is one that is not reliant on external providers or sources for anything. If your home is like many others, you may rely on external providers for energy that is used for cooking, lighting, heating your water, running your electronics and more. You may desire a home that is more energy sustainable because you want to live in a green home or because you want to lower your utility bills. There are a few steps that you can take to make your home more energy-sustainable or even fully sustainable.
Install Solar Panels
One of the most critical steps that you can take to improve the sustainability of your home is to generate energy in the home. Installing solar panels will help you to generate energy through the power of the sun. Solar panels may be able to provide you with all of the energy your home uses.
Seal Your Home
While you want to produce the energy that your home needs on-site, you can decrease your energy needs when you seal your home. Your HVAC system may be one of the largest energy drains in the home. When a home is not properly sealed and insulated, air can escape. This will require your HVAC system to work harder to maintain the home at a desirable temperature. You can seal your doors and windows, and you can also add insulation to your walls and attic. These steps will promote improved energy efficiency so that your solar panels will not have to produce so much energy for you.
Decrease Energy Consumption
The HVAC system may be the largest energy drain on your home, but there are also other sources that use energy. You can focus on different ways to reduce the amount of energy these other items need. For example, your home appliances like the fridge, washer, dryer and others may use a lot of energy. You can replace outdated appliances with energy efficient options to save energy. You can also unplug appliances, like the toaster and coffee pot, when they are not in use to save energy. Replacing incandescent light bulbs with energy efficient options is also a great idea.
To make your home energy sustainable, you need to produce as much energy as you use. By reducing your energy consumption and by producing energy in the home, you can move forward to having a truly energy sustainable home.
2 Comments
My wife and I spent a lot of money this last winter on our energy bill and we aren’t sure why. One thing that you pointed out though and it makes perfect sense is that the insulation in our home could be very old. We will take the advice given here and do better at closing our doors and look into replacing our windows to a double glazed frame.
It seems hvac systems leak all the time. Sealing is a easy way to lose efficiency. Checking for leaks is a hard thing to do. We tried sealing the system our self, it was to hard. We did all the easy stuff like window and doors. that seemed to help a lot.