March 27, 2010

Make Your Home More Energy Efficient

Earth Day is coming up soon, and we should all really be more eco-friendly year-round anyways. So, when I heard about a new Energy saving website from Microst-Hohm, I had to check it out.

I signed up for a FREE account and got started analyzing how energy efficient my home really is. After filling out the basic information (like how old my home is, how old the heater and A/C is), I then had to enter the electric provider we have to estimate energy costs. Well, the one we use wasn’t listed or partnered with them, so I had to enter it manually. Rather annoying, but after getting the last statement it wasn’t that hard to do myself.

After that was finished, I looked at the recommendations listed for our home to save money with our home energy. I was a bit disappointed to see that we’re already doing most of those recommendations. The only ones that I really haven’t done is seal up our windows and doors (which we will be doing soon hopefully) and replace our windows (which we also want to look into doing soon). For the beginner at energy savings though, they do offer very good ideas like replacing your lightbulbs to the CFL or LED ones.

One of the biggest energy wasters is home appliances. I try to get one with the Energy Star seal on it or ones I know won’t be wasting a ton of electricity in use or even when turned off (yes, they still use electricity when off too). The only problem with this is that big appliances are expensive and people really can’t afford to just go out and buy a new one to save energy until their old one breaks. If you do get a new one and your old one works, don’t just toss it in a landfill though – donate it or even sell it. You aren’t helping the environment if you just put perfectly good items into landfills.

Overall I found this website to be quite user-friendly and helpful to those wishing to be more Green and Eco-Friendly. For more info with them and tutorials, check out their YouTube Channel.



* This is a paid post to help make your home more energy efficient by using Microsoft-hohm.com. All opinions expressed are my own and I wasn’t paid to write about it positively.

3 comments:

Wendyburd1 said...

You KNOW how old your a/c and stuff is?!! Wow...I am indeed a slacker!

Sheri, RN said...

lol yes, it went out last year so one of our a/c units was replaced and then our water heater.... very bad time and expensive... :(

Anonymous said...

We tried to switch to the more energy efficient light bulbs but I didn't like them so we switched back. Our house is only 3 years old and has all the new energy star rated appliances. Our washer & dryer are about 10 years old. I'd like to have the front loads but we don't fix what isn't broken. Someday I'll upgrade.