Cascade Built Blog
November 4, 2008
Winter Energy Saving tips around the home
Posted by admin, 6:07 AM
A friend of mine was asking for some home energy saving tips, how to make his house a little bit greener and whether he should install CFLs (compact fluorescent lights) and or motion sensors, so I responded to him but thought it would be good to share with others as well. This is for a temperate climate (Seattle), so your climate may differ.
Green your house tips:
Lighting is generally about 10% of your home energy consumption. CFLs can trim that by up to 75% (for a total household energy savings of 7%). If you want to save more than 7%, consider air sealing, as heating is roughly 50% of your energy consumption, and around 40% of that can be lost to poor air sealing. Weather stripping is super cheap and can be used for windows & doors. Also on the list of cheap fixes: install those foam gaskets behind your outlets to seal that gap as well (10-pack at Home Depot is only a couple dollars). It really depends on your particular house, what the best strategies are going to be. I just got done replacing all the doors and windows on my house and sealing up all the gaps, and it seems to make a huge difference so far. On the other hand, if your house doesn’t have any insulation in the walls or attic, that would be your biggest bang for your buck.
Next after space heating (in terms of energy consumption) is water heating and the refrigerator. If you have an old refer, replace it with an energy star one (side by side are the worst, bottom freezer the next best and top freezer the best, but there are energy efficient ones in all categories). Water heaters can insulated or replaced (go tankless for replacement).
Other ideas: Buy several packages of CFLs that say Instant-On, and get warm or cool “color temperature” depending on your needs. CFLs have come a long way the last 5 years. If you use motion sensors, don’t put in CFLs, they tend to respond poorly to continuous on-off operation. Vacuum under and around your refrigerator, those dust bunnies prevent the condenser from efficiently transferring heat.
Energy Star website has good information on energy savings. http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=home_improvement.hm_improvement_index
