Achieving your dream home is not impossible as long as you know where you should start. With the plethora of new products and technologies marketed as eco-friendly, you can get caught up with the entire buzz. To help you achieve a home that is friendly to the environment, I have here a few suggestions on how you can start your journey. Start from small and move on to something bigger.
My first suggestion would be to start with yourself. If you want to go green, you need to start making the correct choices connected to your change for a greener home. Start with the things you use for yourself such as the soaps, shampoos, and even the other personal hygiene materials you use on a daily basis. Changing these little things in your life can actually affect the environment plus you’re reducing all the chemicals you use.
You can also try riding a bike to work (if possible) or encouraging others to do the same in your family. In addition to that, bicycles can cut your fuel costs, reduce carbon emissions, and even improve your health. It is the cheaper alternative to travelling on wheels.
My last suggestion for changes you should do starting with yourself is a change of eating preferences. Have you tried eating organic food? Organic foods are produced through organic farming which does not use any form of modern inputs including chemical fertilizers and synthetic pesticides. If you think taking organic foods is too much, then you can try buying products that were made through environment-friendly manufacturing. That way, you are only patronizing products that do no harm to nature. And if you think you have space at your backyard, go ahead and try growing your own herbs, fruits, and vegetables.
After doing some minor changes to your lifestyle, you may now try upgrading your home. I’m sure many people would like to have a green home for themselves but they are often challenged by the idea of a green change due to financial reasons. But thanks to the widespread green revolution, there are now a lot of available home improvement products and appliances on the market that care for the environment.
Upgrade your home improvement energy-efficiency measures such as solar panels and double glazed windows. If you want to have solar panels for your home, you can choose between solar panels that produce electricity (PV panels) or solar thermal panels that produce heat. This will lessen your monthly electricity and heating bills since you won’t have to rely on the grid to have a warmer home.
Another way to increase your home’s energy efficiency is through installing double glazed windows. Through these windows, you can make sure that heat stays inside your home while the cold drafts out. Thanks to this, you won’t have to let your air conditioning or boiler systems work hard.
Other home upgrades you can try are improving wall cavity insulation, roof insulation, energy efficient combination boilers, and installation of LED lights in replace of your old CFL bulbs.
Although these are only small changes you can try in your current home, these changes are bound to help you achieve a greener home. Now don’t try comparing your home’s efficiency to other homes that were built with energy efficiency measures in mind because the important thing is that you are trying to make an effort for a better home that is friendly to the environment.
