Making Your Home Energy Efficient

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After you get past the shell of a residential unit, the next biggest energy waste is heating and cooling of the structure. North America’s demand for heating homes requires an enormous amount of energy. This energy consumed with by the use of fossil fuels can be broken down into four categories. The first category is natural gas. The use of natural gas equates to about 53% of fossil fuel usage in a home and is considered the most environmentally friendly of the fossil fuels. Oil was once a highly used product in the heating of homes long ago, but due to innovation of more efficient and environmentally friendly ways to heat homes, it has declined in use in modern times. The high efficiency furnaces and boilers of today are tremendously more efficient than in the past. Older systems would only have an efficiency range between 56% and 70%, whereas today these have as high as 98% efficiency rating with means that they convert almost all fuel consume to heat the home into useful heat for you home. Upgrading your furnace from 56% to 90% efficiency can save up to 1.5 tons of CO2 emissions per year if the house heated with gas and up to 2.5 tons per year if you heat the house with oil (Chiras, 2008).

The second most used source of energy in a home is electricity. Although electricity is 100% energy efficient once harvested, the methods of harvesting electricity are environmentally damaging. Electricity has a huge impact on a home’s energy consumption. Often times, we use more lighting in our homes than required. You can see this when you walk through your home and notice that a hallway light left on even though no one is walking down it or the TV in the basement left on while everyone was upstairs eating dinner. Consumers must monitor their energy products are on or off to reduce wasted energy consumption. Lighting accounts for 20% of the average home’s electricity bill. Using high efficiency light bulbs such as LED bulbs will reduce energy costs for the consumer. LEDs can use up to 90% less energy than incandescent bulbs and last up to 25 times longer (Energy & Cost Savings, n.d.).

Cooling the home is the third largest demand on energy for the home. There two basic means to cool a home are passive and active methods. Passive methods are those methods that do not require any mechanical operation at all and result in zero energy consumption. A major passive mean to cool your home is the use of landscaping. The use of shade trees is the most cost effective method of passive means. When choosing shade trees, you must ensure you choose deciduous types so they allow the sun to warm the structure in the winter. Using open windows in the home to make cross circulation is another passive means to cool the home. The only energy used in this method is one’s own personal energy used to open the windows. Active means to cool the home require some type of mechanical operation and consume large amounts of energy. Air conditioners, ceiling fans and central air units are types of active means to cool the home. The amount of energy consumed using active methods depends on the type of system used. Window air conditioners are going to give you the highest rate of energy consumption. They do not tend to run very efficiently and usually cool only one room in the home, whereas central air units are ones that use a system of ducts that run through the house and cool multiple rooms at a time. The use of fans throughout the home help circulate the cool to help cool is the most energy efficient way to cool a building. Often times you will find people using a combination of passive and active methods in homes to help reduce energy consumption. An example would be the placement of ceiling fans in conjunction with opening windows to create airflow to help cool the home (Heating and Cooling Improvments, n.d.).

The use of EnergyStar qualified Appliances can also help reduce your homes energy costs as well as CO2 emissions for your home. If you replaced the top six most common used appliances in a home the air purifier, clothes washer, clothes dryer, dishwasher and refrigerator-freezer with EnergyStar appliances you would save approximately $141 each year according to the EnergyStar appliance calculator. You would also reduce your homes CO2 emissions by approximately 1440 pounds, which is the equivalency of the same emissions as driving your car for 50 days. “If every appliance purchased in the United States this year earned the Energy Star, we would save $360 million in annual energy costs, prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to the emissions from 215,000 cars, and save more than 20 billion gallons of water per year” (EnergyStar Calculator, n.d.).

Renewable energy sources are another great way to reduce energy costs and CO2 emissions. The top two forms of renewable energy used in homes today are geothermal heat pumps and solar energy. Geothermal systems use the earth’s temperature to produce cost effective energy sources for heating, cooling, and water heating. Even in cold climates, the temperature of the earth remains constant just a few feet below the ground’s surface. Geothermal systems exchange this constant below ground heat with fluctuating indoor temperatures. Combining this with a large loop field or well, results in significantly greater efficiency than traditional heating systems. Solar energy systems use sunlight to generate electricity. They use solar panels, or modules, strategically placed on roofs or the ground to maximize exposure to the sun. These systems operate silently, are very reliable, and require little ongoing maintenance. Even in the winter months, these panels do get enough sun to produce energy and reduce electric bills for your home (Energy & Cost Savings, n.d.).

In conclusion, even with the unquenchable thirst for energy, the consumer has more power than they realize to reduce the energy consumption of the buildings they reside in. When designing the structure shell one must remember that basic is better; irregularities tend to make thermal weak spots where air leakage occurs. Air leakage can happen anywhere the building shell is penetrated. Windows and doors create weak points in a buildings shell and must be sealed and properly installed to promote energy efficiency. Stopping this unregulated airflow through a buildings shell will result in increased energy savings. One must understand that proper insulation is the key to providing comfort and energy efficiency. Heating and cooling systems account for the biggest amount of energy consumption in a home. These systems are produced by a wide variety of manufactures, it is crucial that the consumer is well informed with the potential energy consumption of the system before purchasing and having it installed. Cooling accomplished through passive and active means together and often the