If you’re looking to live a greener life, then it’s vital to recognize how much of a role your home plays in precisely that. To that end, we’re going to take a look at some of the updates, upgrades, and replacements you can make to reduce the impact your home has on the environment while helping you live more sustainability and with less waste.
Install Solar Panels
One of the best things you can immediately do is change your reliance on fossil fuels to keep your home going. Solar panels have been becoming increasingly affordable as the years go on, with grants helping to make them even more accessible to homeowners. Depending on where you are, you might be able to make your home 100% solar-powered for at least some parts of the year.
Up Your Insulation
How you generate your energy and the heating for your home is important. Your home’s ability to retain that heating can be just as vital. Ensuring that you have insulation where you’re able to install it, be it in the walls, roof, or floor, can help greatly. However, finding a roofing contractor near me can improve your home’s energy efficiency all the more. There are improvements in roofing tile materials that can see you losing a lot less warmth through the top of your home next winter.
Check In On Your Windows
Aside from the roof, your windows tend to be the most likely culprit when it comes to sources of heat loss in the home. To that end, you can replace older windows with more energy-efficient models, reducing energy consumption as a result. Double- or triple-glazed windows with low-emissivity coatings improve insulation, keeping your home cooler in summer and warmer in winter. They also block harmful UV rays, protecting your furniture and flooring from fading. Even if you don’t have the budget to replace your windows, sealing up air gaps with caulk can make a major difference.
Use Low-VOC Paints
When you’re repainting the home, either on the interior or the exterior, you should look for the presence of VOCs, or volatile organic compounds. These compounds tend to leech out of materials that contain them, where they can have a bad impact on the air quality, impacting not just the surrounding wildlife but also your own health. Thankfully, there are many options for low-VOC or even zero-VOC paints on the market now.
Harvest The Rain
Water consumption is going to become a bigger and bigger issue as time goes on. You can prepare to be as frugal with that valuable aqua now by installing a rainwater harvesting system. These systems allow you to collect and store rainwater which can be used for cleaning, watering your garden, or even for indoor plumbing with the right filtration.
The examples above are far from all you can do to make your home a greener place, but they are some of those steps that will have the biggest impact. Conducting an audit of your home and how you use is bound to uncover some additional steps you can take, too.
*contributed post*
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