For many years I have dreamed about getting a house of my own. And not just any house. My idea of this house is it should combine beauty and eco-friendliness.
To be eco-friendly, or gentle on the environment, means a couple of things. First of all, you want to use sound and healthy building materials. You don't want to introduce some toxic stuff in your home. For instance, some types of particle board contain formaldehyde - a very toxic substance. Formaldehyde is a gas which makes you sick, even in minute amounts.
Another thing to look at is the heating system. Where I live, electricity used to be very cheap some years ago. Guess what - everyone figured they should use electric heating in their dwellings. This was many years ago; I don't think it is very popular nowadays when electricity is much more expensive.
And if you look at oil, you find much the same story. Fifty years ago, the price of oil was very low and therefore everyone used oil for heating their house. The rising cost of oil is making this an expensive solution.
By spending a bit of money on better insulation, you can offset the rising energy bill. Houses built during the merry days of cheap energy tend to have very flimsy insulation. People didn't care to put money into better insulation when oil was so cheap anyway.
It is different now. There are even cases where better insulation has reduced the energy cost by 50%. Actually, some super-insulated houses hardly need any heating at all most of the year. Conclusion: investing a bit in extra insulation is likely to save you money over time.
The best thing would be a house powered by solar energy. Suppose you could turn all the sunlight which falls on your house to useful energy - then you wouldn't need any other source. It could power your car, too.
In practise, this isn't possible today. But in laboratories, scientists have reached a more than 40% efficiency with solar cells. In other words: these cells can transform nearly one half of the sun's light into useful electric power.
Of course, these cutting-edge solar cells are still very expensive. But solar panels with more modest efficiency are mass-produced, and getting fairly inexpensive. There are companies that make photovoltaic cells with a 15-20% efficiency using a continous printing process - very fast and simple.
In case you would like to get home solar panels, there is money to be saved if you set them up yourself. Being able to put in a bit of your own work usually saves money when doing some type of home improvement.
And there is more: you also get the good feeling of being self-reliant.
Once you have them up and running, you can expect more than twenty years of service from solar panels for homes. Which means that even though they cost you a chunk of cash, you can save money down the line.
Mail this post
