Eco-Remodelers

Last month, I bought some very inexpensive pipe insulation from the local hardware store. It’s specifically designed to wrap up your hot water pipes. I installed the insulation in about 20 minutes so it’s a very easy project for any DIYer.

Coming out of our hot water heater are metal pipes that send heated water to our sinks, bathtub, and shower throughout the house. Down in our basement, these pipes are exposed (not surrounded by drywall or any type of insulation.) This means that they are losing, or transferring, some of the heat from the water to the pipe and out into the room. This means that it’s not as efficient.

The pipe insulators come in the correct size for your pipes and usually have a cut down the middle to allow for easy installation around your pipe. Usually you have to cut it to length to make sure it fits around connectors and junctions. I also bought metallic tape, specific to insulation, to seal up the split down the middle of the insulation and to make sure it stays in place.

Total spend was about $25 to cover all the exposed piping in my basement. And I’ve already seen a change in our electric bill. But it’s hard to determine exactly how much because we’re using less heat now that it’s no longer winter and the heater is not coming on as much. But year-over-year, there was a 5% dip in our electric bill.

It’s probably not worth it if the water pipes are already behind drywall and not accessible to be wrapped. But if they are exposed, it’s a great idea.

Also, look for pipes that are not sending hot water out but may be the water source pipe sending water to your heater. You don’t need to wrap these because they contain no heated water. You can feel the pipe to see if it’s warm or cold.

It’s cheap, easy to install, and it saves you money. And it’s permanent - once the wraps are up there, they’ll be there forever. They’re made of a thick foam that should last a lifetime. When added to a water heater blanket, you’ll make your hot water much more efficient!

The people over at Best Buy have let me know that it’s National Vampire Awareness Day. Oddly enough, it is not in honor of the Halloween holiday.

No, this day is being set aside to make you aware of the energy vampires found in your home. And they’re not sucking your blood… they’re sucking your checking account dry.

Energy Vampires are the electronic devices - your computer, DVD/VCR, stereo, cellphone, etc. - that continue to use energy even when switched off or in standby mode.

This excess energy consumption is costing you money and it’s causing power plants to send more carbon dioxide into the air - for no reason!

Head over to the Vampire Awareness Day website for more details, a fun video, and a Fact Sheet.

What Can You Do?

• Easy. Attach power strips to all your major (and minor) electronic toys and switch off the strip when they’re not in use.

• Unplug your battery and devices chargers when not being used to charge your stuff. That’s right - even your cellphone charger is using power when the phone is not attached to it.

• Don’t rely on the “sleep” mode for your computer - shut it off. Otherwise, you’re blowing $70 a year to keep it powered up (in case you need it at 4 in the morning.)

• Buy only Energy Star electronics and appliances the next time you go shopping for more toys.

Why Should You Do it?

Individually, these appliances and electronics don’t use up much. But every house is full of devices that rob you of money. Add them all up and you could potentially be spending an extra $1,000 a year. Think about how many more electronic goodness you could buy with that kind of money…

For more information on how to save money and energy, check out the Department of Energy Energy Savers page.

I’m still working on the house and getting it ready for the new carpet. I picked up my bamboo flooring yesterday and dropped it off. Hopefully, I can get it installed on Sunday.

In the meantime, I wanted to write a post on something that I’ve been thinking about for a while. Most people hesitate to even think about “going green” because they’re convinced it will cost them a lot of money.

So, I wanted to throw out a few ideas of how you can do your part… even if you don’t have much money to spend on being more green and lowering your carbon footprint on our planet.

Recycle - this is important to cutting down on trash in our landfills, lowering our need for foreign oil, decreasing our use of limited resources, and most areas now have recycling operations. About the only expense you would have would be the purchase of a trash can to hold your recyclables.

Pre-Cycle - Precycling is the act of lowering the amount of resources you use up. It could be a matter of avoiding unnecessary purchases all together. There are other examples, such as buying items in one large package instead of a dozen smaller ones. By precycling, you’re choosing ahead of time to buy less and use less to prevent the need for things to ever be recycled.

Turn Off the Water - drinkable water is a valuable commodity and it’s getting harder to find every year.  Many of us waste a lot of it every day. If you want to cut down on your water bill and help preserve drinkable water, you only have to make slight changes:

• Many people leave the faucet running while they brush their teeth. Gallons of water can run down the drain while you spend the needed two minutes minimum while brushing teeth.
• Turn the water off to shave (or shave at the sink.) Just fill a cup of water and use that to rinse your shaver off.
• Don’t flush your toilet after every single use. There’s an old saying, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.” Words to live by.
• Take a bath instead of a shower every once in a while.
• Turn that 45 minute shower into a 20 minute shower. You’ll save gallons upon gallons of drinkable water.
• Fix those leaky faucets. Even a small drip can add up to gallons of good, clean water being wasted over time. You might need to spend a little for a repair kit at the hardware store, but you’ll save a lot of money.

Turn off the Lights - Every time you leave a room, shut off the lights. Even if you might be coming right back. Leaving most of the lights on in your house can burn electricity and keep your electric bill high. And, you’re not doing much for the planet by wasting electricity. The more power you need the more that coal-burning plant need to send harmful CO2 into the atmosphere.

Shut the Door - Ever stand in front of the refrigerator and wonder what you want to eat? While you’re deciding, all that cool air is falling right out the door. And then your fridge need to kick back on to replace the lost cool air and that kicks up your electric bill. Also, if you’re running your air conditioning or heater and you or your kids leave the back door open? Same thing. All that conditioned air zips right outside costing you money and the planet some valuable time.

Shut off Electronics - Even though your stereo or computer is on “stand-by”, it’s still using power. If you put all your major electronics on a power strip and shut them off completely after each use, you’ll cut down on electricity usage. And it doesn’t cost a dime…

That’s all I can think of for now. I’ll continue to add to this post as ideas come to me. Do you have any ideas on how to go green without spending any money? Let me know.

I’ve been shopping for a lot of eco-friendly products to check availability and pricing. I’ve noticed that it’s not very easy to find a green alternative to regular products. When I ask salespeople about it, I’ve been getting a lot of the same reactions…  that look (or even the comment) that says, “Oh, you’re one of those hippie liberals.” As noted, it happened when I was carpet shopping and it happened again at Sears, Home Depot, Lowes, and a few others this past week.

The thing I’m not sure how it ever happened, but wanting to protect your family and wanting to save money became a political issue.

When we lived in our house back in Los Angeles, it was a sixty year old home that had been built very well. Plaster on the walls, a good sturdy foundation, and great wood floors. Sure it had drafty single-pane windows and very little insulation, but it was made by people who cared.

In the past twenty or thirty years, homes were made on the cheap. Cheap counters, cheap cabinets, construction grade products throughout. And whatever was the code at the time, the houses usually just met those minimum requirements (which are never enough.) People stopped caring and started worrying about their quarterly profits.

Now that I want to conserve (energy, money, time) that makes me a liberal. A conservative liberal? Hmm. I wish we could get people away from the belief that only a hippy wants a greener home. That only a hippy wants to save money on electricity. Or prevent toxic gases from poisoning their children from cabinets, paint, adhesives, etc. that are all through homes today.

Perhaps there’s another word we can use in place of “green”? Like smart. I want to remodel my home to make it a smart home. Or safe. Or thrifty. But I think we’re stuck with green and we’re going to have a lot of ignorant, close-minded people who will refuse to help themselves and their families because it doesn’t seem to align with their political beliefs…

It’s a real shame.

Well, we’re almost ready to start work on our new smart/green/thrifty/safe home. We close today. Soon, I’ll be able to post on how to do a lot of these green projects in your own home.

Our house purchase is moving forward. We had a few issues with water leakage in the basement and around the chimney which were discovered at the home inspection. Those issues are being remedied by the seller before closing, so… hopefully we’re on track to begin moving in by the end of the month.

Now, our green remodeling plans can begin.

There are a few immediate concerns that we’ll have to take care of before we even start to move things into the house. We’ll need to take care of some flooring installations. We’ll need to paint. And we’ll need to purchase a few appliances.

Once those are taken care of, we can begin adding new systems to the house that will help us save energy, conserve water, recycle, and improve our air quality. I’m not going to try to do everything at once. It will be a slow process that, over time, will move the house in the direction of more sustainability and a smaller carbon footprint.

I need to make out a complete list that covers everything I want to do. I have a good idea of a lot of things I’d like to do, but no real plan to implement everything. And I want to do it as efficiently as possible - for example, I’m going to install Solatubes in the roof, would it make sense to also replace the roof with a more eco-friendly material? And while I’m up there, maybe install a roof garden? And then insulate the entire roof and attic area?

Or would it make more sense to update the roof, replace the windows, and install bamboo flooring in the kitchen? I’ll have to work out a plan to make sure I don’t spend or waste more than I have to.

For our immediate concerns, I do have some ideas. We’ll be painting the interior rooms (which are all white) as our first project. My goal is to use 100% zero VOC paints. VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compounds. Paints, glues, stains and other similar products can contain these compounds which emit a breathable gas while they are appied and after they are applied.

Today, there are high quality products on the market that do not release these potentially dangerous toxins into the air. There are a variety of low-VOC and no-VOC paints out there. We plan to use them in all the rooms we paint.

As far as appliances go — we’ll be looking for highly energy-efficient products. We will need a dishwasher and an electric stove. I’ve got a list, from the Energy Star website, for high efficiency dishwashers and stoves that I’ll use as a guide to make my purchases.

One thing I’ve been considering is the induction cooking systems. The use less energy, heat up faster, are easier to clean, and save more time than gas and conventional electric cooktops. It’s also safer - the surface of the stove does not get as hot. There are some drawbacks but I’ll have to continue my research. I do know they are more expensive, so that could be a dealbreaker.

I’ve just bought a house. Well, we’ve agreed upon a price and signed the contract. I’ve still got to get the home inspection, finish filling out the loan paperwork, and close on the house. But… I’ve taken the first steps in turning a regular house into a green, eco-friendly, and sustainable home.

It would have been possible to talk with an architect to design and help me build a home from scratch. By building a brand new house, I could have had all the green products installed with all the green materials used in all the right places.

What a lot of people don’t know, however, is that even building a new house in a completely sustainable way comes at a price.

Building a new house, versus remodeling an existing house, generates three times as much carbon.

The house I’ve just purchased was built in 1978. It’s going to be harder to install a lot of the systems I want to put in. Retrofitting it always harder than installing something during construction. But the money I’ll be saving in buying an older home will allow me to do a lot of these green transformations. And I will be reducing our carbon footprint in the process.

What is a CFL? It stands for Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs.

I wanted to let you know that this is a great way to save money. Change out the incandescent bulbs in your house with a CFL bulb and you could save $30 to $50 over the life of the bulb in energy costs.

It’s real simple to do. I’m not quite sure why more people aren’t doing it. You simply pick out the correct wattage of bulb at any store and swap out the old bulbs in your lighting fixture. These bulbs cost a bit more but… when you change out all the ones in your house, you will notice a difference on your electric bill. Trust me.

So, to find out why more people aren’t using these little gems, I asked a few of my neighbors.

Turns out there are a LOT of myths and misconceptions about CFL bulbs. And I’m here to bust a few of them for you:

• The Light Looks Funny/Flickers/Buzzes: Not any more. There are a ton of varieties of bulbs now. They don’t flicker or buzz. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The light looks very close to incandescent bulbs and you’ll get used to whatever slight change you perceive in a few days.

• They Contain Mercury and Are Dangerous: Each CFL bulb has 1/5 less mercury than a watch battery and 1/100 of your tooth filling. If one breaks, it’s important to recycle it and treat it as hazardous waste. Go to Earth 911 to find a recycling place in your area — and the good news is that all Home Depot stores will now recycle for you.

• The Mercury Makes CFLs Worse Than Incandescent Bulbs: Mmm. No. Most of the mercury released into our atmosphere comes from power plants that burn fossil fuels. By using a product, like an incandescent bulb (which requires 75% more energy to use!) you are putting 75% more mercury into the air.

• CFLs are Made in China - The Shipping Pollutes the Earth: The majority of all light bulbs are made in China. Buying local is great, if it’s an option. But the choice between two bulbs made in China where one saves you money and saves the planet, well… the choice is easy. Besides, the CFL bulbs last much longer, so you’ll have to buy fewer of them.

Suggested Reading:

Snopes Busts CLF Myth

Energy Star CLF Page

Let me know if you have any questions about CFL bulbs or if you need help with the installation.

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

Green building. Sustainability. Water conservation. Solar energy.

Those words have been floating around for many years now. And they’re starting to make it into everyday conversations. People have decided to help protect the planet, help protect their families and homes, and to save money.

I’ve decided to do my part as well. My plan is to buy a home, here in Columbus Ohio, and turn it into a “green” home. This blog, EcoRemodelers, will cover the journey to make the house a safe home for family and to reduce my carbon footprint on our environment.

My goal is create a How-To guide as I learn how to do all these green renovations myself. I want to cover all aspects of the home - energy efficiency, indoor air quality, recycling, alternative power sources, and green home products to name a few. And I want to try out a few remodeling projects that are expensive as well as many that are absolutely free.

Whether you’re a professional renovation contractor or you’ve never picked up a hammer in your life, my hope is that you’ll get something out of my trials and (many) errors. Maybe you’ll try a few things in your own home. Maybe together we can make a difference and help our planet and our wallets at the same time!

Stick around. Come back often. Laugh at me. Laugh with me. Watch as I slide on these green-colored glasses and do my little part in my little corner of our big blue planet.

Email me at tim (at) ladaddy (dot) com if you have questions, comments, ideas or whatever.

Photo courtesy the Sierra Club