Natural and Sustainable

Your home, one of your biggest expenses. The average American household spends about $1,800 each year on utilities such as heating, cooling, and water usage. But with a few easy improvements, you can reduce your power and water consumption. Here are nine ways to start saving now to make you home more attractive and comfortable, and trim your utility bills at the same time.

• Dig in with drip irrigation: When you water plants with a sprinkler, half the water may be wasted-lost to evaporation or run off. A drip system, on the other hand, provides measured doses of water to the roots, just where it is needed. Assembling a drip system is as easy as screwing a flexible plastic hose onto a spigot and then snaking the hose (to which you’ve attached small spouts, or emitters) through the beds. You can bury the hose under a few inches of soil or leave it on the surface. The emitters deliver a steady trickle of water instead of a spray. And drip systems offer an added bonus: You can control watering with a battery-powered timer that you install between the spigot and hose; your plants will be hydrated even if you don’t have time to do it form day to day. COST: About $53 for a system that waters up to 50 plants. SAVINGS: Cuts water use by 30 to 50 precent compared with overhead watering. INSTALLATION: Do it yourself. *Click here for more*

• Grow a rain garden: Instead of letting rain vanish down the drain, use it to make a gorgrous meditative garden. Create a rain garden by excavating a shallow depression, planting it with species adapted to flooding and drying, and then steering runoff from your rooftop onto the pit (you do this by running a pipe under the ground from the downspout to the garden). In the Midwest, a rain garden might include columbines, monkey flower, and brown-eyed Susans. In the Southwest, you might plant mesquite, acacia, or willow trees. You local agricultural extension office can suggest appropriate pants. Rain gardens are good in all kinds of ways. Catching the runoff reduces storm-sewer overflow, which pollutes waterways with motor oil, pet waste, lawn chemicals, and other contaminants. What’s more, rain gardens allow water to percolate into the ground, where is recharges wells and creeks. Mosquitoes? No worries. A rain gardens drains long before eggs would hatch. COST: A typical 10-by-15-foot garden, which would accommodate runoff from about 600 square feet of rooftop, would cost about $600 to $900 to build yourself and about $1,500 to $1,800 if installed by a landscape professional. SAVINGS: You may be able to earn a discount on your storm-water bill by reducing the area o your property that directs runoff into storm sewers. Check with your water district or public works department (look on your water bill for the customen service number). INSTALLATION: Do it yourself or hire a landscape professional. *Click here for more*

• Let the sun shine in: Skylights are great-except that they admit heat and UV radiation, which can quickly fade carpets and upholstery. A tubular skylight is a good alternative. A clear dome is mounted on the roof to let light in; it’s connected to a light-reflecting, flexible tube, which snakes down through the attic and delivers the light through a frosted-glass panel installed in the ceiling below. These simple devices bring natural light into places where it would be difficult or expensive to install a standard skylight., Because light pours in from only a small opening (generally about nine to 20 inches), tubular skylights limit both heat gain and UV radiation. COST: Prices start at about $450, including installation. SAVINGS: You could cut $5 to $30 a year from your electricity bill for each tubular skylight you put in. INSTALLATION: A dealer-recommended installer or roofing contractor should put in a tubular skylight, because the process requires cutting into the roof. *Click here to read more*

• Plant trees with a purpose: Trees can make your home more beautiful outside and more comfortable inside. Evergreens planted along a northern exposure block winter winds and reduce drafts. Deciduous trees planted close to the east and west sides of the house shield it from the summer sum. You can also train deciduous vines, such as grapes, kiwis, or hops, along a trellis on a west facing patio to provide shade. But don’t overdo it: Even though deciduous tress shed their leaves in winter, allowing the sun’s rays to warm the house, their branches still block about 20 percent of the light. COST: If you don’t mind waiting a few years for saplings to mature enough to offer significant shade, three-to-six-foot trees are good buys at $20 to $50 each. Then-foot trees run approximately $200; 20-footers cost about $700 apiece. SAVINGS: Shade trees cut cooling needs by 30 percent, which would save the average American household $600 per year. INSTALLATION: Plant the small trees yourself; large ones need to be put in by a landscape professional; which cost about half the price of the tree itself. *Click here to read more* *Or here*

• Light your path with solar power: Outdoor lighting can be hard to install and maintain, with wires strung underground, where they’re vulnerable to shovels, and curious rodents. But a new energy-saving solar technology makes it more practical to enjoy its safety and beauty. A light emitting diode (LED) is a pea-sized electronic device that gives off light when a current runs through it. Orignially used as colored indicator lights on electronic equipment, LEDs are now available in white and they’re so energy-efficient that they can be easily powered by solar cells, which are generally located on top of fixtures. The wire-free installation is as easy as driving each light (mounted on a stake) into the ground. COST: As low as $15 per light fixture for path lights; $25 and up for accent lighting. SAVINGS: Because they aren’t pulling any electricity off the grid, solar LED fixtures can pay for themselves in three to four years at average electricty prices. INSTALLATION: Do it yourself. *Click here to read more* *Or here*

•Cut costs with color: You don’t need an interior decorator to tell you that rooms with light-colored walls feel cheerful an airy. But the surprising bonus is that their brightness can mean energy savings. Because light bounces off pale-colored walls instead of being absorbed, these rooms need less artifical illumination than darker ones. And you don’t have to have white walls. Some paints manufacturers offer color chips marked with a light reflectance value (LRV), which rates a color’s reflectivity on a scale of 0 to 100 (the higher the number, the more reflective the paint). Not ready to give up the cozy color on your walls? Consider adding some brightness to teh weiling instead. COST: On average, high-quality interior latex paint costs $20 to $30 per gallon. SAVINGS: Cut your need for electric lighting by up to half in each room painted a color with a high LRV. INSTALLATION: Paint it yourself.

• Cool it down with a ceiling fan: Ceiling fans, called one of the seven sustainable wonders of the world, don’t actually lower the temperature, but the do make it seem less hot. Thanks to the wind chill they kick up, ceiling fans can make rooms feel about nine degrees cooler than rooms wihtout them. All for a single lightbulb’s worth of electricity. The bonus: Come winter, you can flip the switch on the side of most fans to reverse the rotational direction, which pushes warm air that rises to the ceiling back down into the room. COST: Prices for fans range from $30 to the mid three figures; allow a couple of hunderd dollars for installation. SAVINGS: Ceiling fans cool a room for one-tenth the cost of operating a room for one-tenth the cost of operationg an air-conditioner. INSTALLATION: Call an electrician, unless you are handy or your spouse, friend or relative is. *Click here for more information*

• Paint if you can’t insulate: Sit next to a single-pane window or uninsulated wall on a winter’s night and you will feel as though the heat is being sucked right out of your bones. You are cold because your body is radiating heat into the walls, and the wall isn’t returning the favor. Insulation helps, but it can be expensive and impractical to install, especially in basements. Low-E (which stand for low-emissivity) paint is a good compromise. It’s impregnated with invisible ceramic spheres that bounce back where it came from. You need to special-order this paint, which is available in a limited range of colors. You can also order it in white and then have your local paint store tint it the color you want. COST: Just slightly more than the price of standard latex paint-$33 per gallon. SAVINGS: You can lower the thermostat and still be comfortable, trimming a few percent off your heating bills. INSTALLATION: Paint it yourself.

• Give hot air the heave-ho: When it’s 95 degrees outside, the termperature in your attic can reach 150 degrees, and that can make you air conditioner work harder and consume more power. The usual solution is to exhaust hot attic air with an electric fan. But that uses as much energy as it saves. A solar-powered attic fan, however, doens’t draw any power and it’s easier to install than a standard fan because there are no wires to worry about. Solar fans can be placed in the roof or in a gable, just like standard ones. For best results, mount them so they face west or south; the solar collector on the top of the fan will receive maximum sunlight when it’s needed most. COST: About $500 installed. SAVINGS: A house with two attic fans (one fan will ventilate about 1,200 square feet) can have a six percent drop in cooling costs. INSTALLATION: Call a carpenter or roofing contractor, since installation may require you to cut into the roof. Fan manufacturers may also be about to suggest installers in your ZIP code. *Click here to read more*

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Install Energy Star®-qualified double-pane windows for better insulation in in the winter and the summer.