Your Options

So let’s say you want to save money over time while reducing your climate impact and exposure to the effects of disaster. What can you do with your own house?

*Save energy

The list is familiar: insulate wherever possible- older windows are often drafty around the edges, for instance. Replacing those old windows with new ones can do wonders as well. Reduce light wattage where you can. It used to be said ‘replace a 100 watt bulb with a 60 watt bulb, but now that we’re bidding farewell to incandescents, just follow the package’s equivalences to decide which to use. Another big power drain is all those appliances, including those you might not think about. You’ve seen the Energy Star labels? They’ll help guide your choice on energy efficiency basis. The Energy Grid is all about renewable energy and their site helps you figure out your power usage and find your energy weaknesses.   

*Generate your own energy

Seattle and solar don’t really equate in most people’s minds, but we have plenty of rays if you want to prewarm your water for heating or supplement your grid power. Germany makes 2% of its power and expects to make 25% by 2050, and they’re doing this with about 20% more cloudiness than we have! Wind can be captured several ways, fuel cells may work, too, and other possible options can be found at various sites, including Revolution Green Power and the Shoreline Solar Project. Shoreline Electric Inc. advertises its solar and wind capabilities.  

*Save water

You turn on the shower, then wait for the water to heat up before getting in, and wait, and a minute or more later you get in and get clean. You think ‘I’m green. I use a low-flow showerhead and I just saved 30 gallons of water by not taking a bath’, but while it warmed you just wasted 2-5 gallons running down the drain. Enter the tankless water heater! Instead of heating water and letting it sit and cool up to about fifty feet from its outlet the tankless water heater heats water in a flash only when you ask for it. Perhaps you could reduce or eliminate your grass lawn. It’s a real water, time, fuel (lawn mowing, power edging, or whatever), and toxics (fertilizer, pesticides) sink.

*Help native biodiversity

A homeowner can even influence biodiversity. Instead of a typical garden you can concentrate on local native plants and build a nature preserve in miniature! To accomplish this you’ll reduce plain grass lawns and reduce or eliminate chemical use, but that’s great, since they are burdensome on the rest of the environment and have come in for some regulation.

This sounds like a simple laundry list article, but these represent things my wife and I have considered. Ours is a rather new house, so the windows are good and tight. We specced Energy Star appliances. Our place is full of CFLs. We’ve tried halogens, but found though they’re brilliant they could blow up on you, so we don’t do those any more.

Our home forms a sort of ‘wind tunnel’ effect with the house next door, so I’ve been thinking it might be a good place to put a windmill. The upper part of the house has relatively generous sun exposure, so maybe we’ll put up those new solar shingles. We haven’t really explored fuel cells.

We’re hoping to install tankless water heater(s), budget permitting, because our standard water heater, highly efficient though it is, is as far as it can be from its big users. As to a lawn, we don’t have one, and most of our back patch is planted in natives.

Clearly, there’s more to do, and lack of money can get in the way, but we’ll be looking at potential grants, rebates, and other assistance as we figure things out.