@Home - Reduce Reuse Recycle

Let's look at some really easy ways to REDUCE resource use around the house.  As an aside, I have had a lot of fun with these easy measures by involving my children as well.  I find once I take the time to explain what we are doing and why it is good, they end up corrective my behaviot.  For me it will be changing behavior, but for them it will be instilled in how they live.  Ideally making small improvements which are then multiplied overhundreds of thousands of families and multiple generations  will have dramatic impacts.

You don't have to do all of these at once, or think that if you don't do all of these then you shouldn't bother with any.  Even small change is a step in the right direction.  Remember the key is to pick what you can change easily and build upon it.

ENERGY:
1. Shut off the lights or other electronics when you are not in the room.  The kids love busting me on this one but I must say after a few months of consciously doing this it has become more second nature.

2. Plug your TV, cable box, DVD, and receiver into a power strip.  At night before bed flip the power switch so all power to your electronic devices is off.  There is very small current constantly flowing to these devices when plugged in to power on the little red lights or the clocks.  Even if it is powered back on all day, just think for 8 hours or a third of every day its now off.

3. Use a programmable thermostat, see a separate blog posting for the details.

4. Use CFL's to replace incandescent lamps.  I must admit the light quality is different and it takes some getting used to.  I haven't made a wholesale conversion yet, but I have swapped out lamps in basement, garage, hallways, some of the more utility spaces in the house.

5. Lower your water heater setpoint to the lowest temperature that is comfortable for you. Try setting it to 120°F. Each 10°F reduction in water temperature will generally save 3–5% on your water heating costs.

 

WATER:
Water is a very low cost item and readily available in the U.S., so because of the economics its easy to waste water.  However it is not so available or affordable in many parts of the world.  I feel if we are not careful, this resource could become much more limited and expensive over the next 100 years.  Lets not let water become a crisis before we take action.

1.  Shower - use of low flow shower head and not letting the shower run for an extended time while waiting for the temperature to warm up are two easy steps. The EPAct 1992 required all showerheads to have a flow rate of 2.5 gpm @80 psi.  This is a good minimum.  You can take it to the next level by changing to a low flow head which would be 2.2 gpm.  This would save an estimated 2,200 gallons per year.  You could also consider a shower head that automatically shuts off when the water is preheated to 95 degrees.  That way if you turned the water on, then walked away to pick out your clothes in the closet, the water would stop when it was warmed up and wouldn't be running the entire time waiting for you to come back.  Here is a demonstration.

2. This one is real easy.  Shut the water off when you are brishing your teeth.  Again the kids love busting me on this one!

 

3. So this one may be really hard for some people...lawn irrigation.  The numbers are staggering.  30% of residential water use, 7 billion gallons a year.  I made a conscious decision to not put in an irrigation system, to not water my lawn, but rather plant the yard with native trees, plants, flowering trees and shrubs etc.  While my lawn burns out every August and is the brownest in the neighborhood, It gives me pride to know I am not dumping this precious resource out on my weeds.

ENERGY STAR

This is good for both power and water.  When it comes time to replace your appliances, shop for Energy Star appliances.  I would encourage you to do a little homework on the model you are shopping for to make sure the Energy Star claim is accurate as there have been some challenges to the Energy Star rating system.  Doing a little research online is very quick and easy to do before you make your purchase to make sure your new appliance uses less power and/or water.

@Home: t-stats

According to the Energy Star, the average household spends more than $2,200 a year on energy bills - nearly half of which goes to heating and cooling. Homeowners can save about $180 a year by properly setting their programmable thermostats (t-stats) and maintaining those settings.

A programmable t-stat helps make it easy for you to save by offering four pre-programmed settings to regulate your home's temperature in both summer and winter - when you are home, asleep, or away.

The pre-programmed settings that come with programmable t-stats are intended to deliver savings without sacrificing comfort. Depending on your family's schedule, you can see significant savings by sticking with those settings or adjust them as appropriate for your family. 

The key is to establish a program that automatically reduces heating and cooling in your home when you don't need as much. Use the programmable thermostat calculator to see what you can save with set-back temperatures that work for your family. The pre-programmed settings for a programmable thermostat are:

So lets see how I am doing...

So on the cooling side I left it as-is out of the box.  On the heating side I was a little more aggressive staying just under the higher set-points.  My family is home all day with these temperatures and typically are very comfortable.  

There are certainly days when we use the override feature to take the edge off.  What is great about the override is at the next scheduled time it returns to the program.  So if you bump up heating at 8pm by a couple degrees, it will not run all night at the higher temperature, it drops back down to the Sleep setting at 10pm.  The t-stat I have also allows you to program weekends different than weekdays.  Quite often we are out during the day on weekends so our set-points are more aggressive assuming we are out.  If   we are home, again the override allows you to make a temporary adjustment for comfort.

I have two zones, one upstairs and one downstairs.  So I get even more aggressive with these set-points upstairs for afternoons and evenings when upstairs is seldom used.

@Home Series

Every now and then it's good to look back at where you have been before deciding where to go next.  I looked at my initial expectations for this blog and I would like to take a look at this statement from my first post:

"I hope to inspire others to act more sustainable in their every day life, to help make good decisions today that preserve what we have now for our future generations."  

With this in mind, I am starting this @Home series that will provide tips for sustainable living.  @Home will look at the three R's; Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, as well as improvements to your home environment.  See my previous post about using Zero VOC paint at home,  and stay tuned for the next post in this series regarding programable thermostats.

Some of the ideas from this series may resonate with you and some may feel out of reach based on your lifestyle.  I would encourage you to start by making the changes that are easiest for you.  You don't have to take extreme measures to realize significant results.

@Home: Low VOC Paint

Everyone has heard the saying, "You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?"
It's real easy to read about building "green" and get excited about it at work and talk it up with clients, especially over the past few years where it has been such a buzz in the industry.  But when it comes to making changes in your own home, you have to ask yourself how willing are you to go ahead and try new things?  And if you aren't willing to try it yourself, then should you really be advising others to do so?
At home I've been picking off the low hanging fruit like adjusting thermostat set-points,  recycling at the local recycle center, changing incandescent lamps to compact fluorescents, using cold water and light load on the washer machine, and reducing length of showers to name a few.
This past weekend my wife and I decided to change the paint color in our daughters' bedroom.  We picked out colors from a Pottery Barn catalog and then went on-line to confirm products.  I was happily surprised to see that Pottery Barn recommends a Benjamin Moore product called Natura Zero-VOC Interior Paint.

I priced out some options and found Natura to be around $52 / gallon.  Another Zero-VOC option that Benjamin Moore offers is called Eco Spec and this was closer to $30 / gallon.  When I asked the paint dealer the difference he explained that the Natura provides better coverage as it is a higher quality paint.  This price range between a high quality product and a mid to low range product was typical for Zero-VOC, low-VOC, and standard paints alike.  And it is commonly stated that a more expensive paint is a higher quality paint which provides better coverage and can equal less coatings and therefore less labor.
So after weighing out a few options, I decided to go with the Natura and see if I noticed any real difference.  I picked up a gallon of primer and a gallon of eggshell and got to work.  It went on very smooth and even.  It dried fairly quick so I had to make sure to apply it evenly and finish an entire surface at once to avoid flashing or patches.  I did notice one significant difference - the lack of odor.  I was really amazed by this.  Quite often you may be in a room painting then you leave the room to get lunch or take a break and you come back in and you are hit with the odor that you didn't notice before because you were in the room.  Well there was almost no odor and this was really amazing.
I remember working on a project at the MFA in Boston and the museum curators required a period in our construction schedule for "off-gassing" which occurred after construction was complete and prior to the return of the artifacts.  This was my first museum project and I was unfamiliar with the term so the curator explained to me that the materials in the newly renovated space give off gases that are harmful to the artifacts and they needed a period of time for the highest concentrations to dissipate before they could safely bring the artifacts in.  I remember wondering if the fumes were so harmful to these artifacts, why wouldn't they also be harmful to people?  This was a few years before LEED became prevalent in construction projects.  But when LEED did come out I was happy to see an emphasis on flushing out the building prior to occupancy to protect the new occupants from odors and fumes from the new materials.
All in all, I was very happy with Natura and I felt good about the decision to use a Zero-VOC paint in my home, especially in my daughters' bedroom, and I would continue using this paint and recommend it to others.