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BY HARVEY SACHS

GreenHomeGuide.com

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8 Ways to Make Your Home
More Energy Efficient

THE MOST EFFECTIVE strategy for improving household energy efficiency is first to target your home’s envelope—walls, attic, windows, and doors. Then reduce the energy consumption of systems, such as heating, cooling, lighting, and appliances. Finally, consider clean energy generation (solar, geothermal, and so on).

 

1. Make sure your walls and attic are well insulated. Effective insulation slows the rate that heat flows out of the house in winter or into the house in summer, so less energy is required to heat or cool the house. > Read more

2. Upgrade or replace windows. If your windows are old and leaky, it may be time to replace them with energy-efficient models or boost their efficiency with weatherstrip-ping and storm windows.

> Read more

3. Replace an older furnace with a high-efficiency system. If your furnace was built before 1992 and has a standing pilot, it probably wastes 35 percent of the fuel it

uses, and it may be near the end of
its service life. > Read more

4. Improve the efficiency of your hot water system. First, turn down the temperature of your water heater to the warm setting (120°F), particularly for fossil-fuel water heaters with their high standby losses.

> Read more
5. Replace incandescent lights with
compact fluorescent lamps ( CFLs).
CFLs can save three-quarters of the
electricity used by incandescents.
> Read more

6. If you are thinking of buying a new refrigerator, don’t leave the old one plugged in, in the basement, as a backup for party supplies and liquid refreshment. > Read more