Many of us have watched our utility bills triple in the past few years, if you are a senior, or living on a fixed income, this can be a real problem. Here are three ways you can level off your utility bills and green your home at the same time.
“About 30-35 percent of your home’s utility bill goes to maintaining a standing tank of hot water that you use only a few times a day.” notes Patrick Gallagher of Warwick-based Gallagher Solar Thermal. “Solar hot water eliminates up to 70 percent of that part of your energy bill.”
- This solar hot water installation lowers the pool heating costs and extends the swimming season for several months in this upstate New York home. Courtesy of www.SolarThermalSolution.com
Recent incentives and tax credits eliminate about half the upfront costs of a solar hot water installation, putting it squarely within any homeowner’s reach. Unlike solar electric panels, you do not have to have an energy audit, and upgrade your appliances to take advantage of solar hot water. It is the simplest and least expensive green energy upgrade you can make.
Warwick, NY residents Jerry and Lucy Fischetti had Gallagher install a typical two-panel solar hot water system on their beautiful Victorian home. The system cost around $9,000 but more than half of the cost was defrayed by tax credits and incentives. The installed price was closer to $4,000. With interest rates so low right now, a solar hot water system will save you money while paying for itself.
A solar hot water installation could have you pocketing part of the money you are paying your utility company. “In reality you will give the cost of a solar hot water system to the utility or fuel company over the next 7 years anyway,” notes Gallagher, “why not do the planet and your bank account a favor and declare energy independence with a system that pays for itself and adds resale value to your home?”
Summer heat is upon us and the last thing you want to do is waste your money adding more heat to your home through inefficient lighting. If you have traditional incandescent light bulbs, 90 percent of the energy you are paying for is heat, warming your house rather than lighting it. Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL) are the brightest idea since Edison’s electric candle. These are the squiggly tubular bulbs that last up to ten times longer than their egg-shaped counterparts. If you replace every light bulb in your house that you turn on for an average of 5 hours a day or more with a CFL, you will save around $45 per bulb on your yearly electric bill, or about $50 per month for the average household.
If all the households in America replaced even just one highly used incandescent light bulb with a CFL, we would save 20% of our energy consumption, and be able to close down many of the coal-burning plants. “Lighting a whole room so you can see what you’re doing is similar to refrigerating a whole house to preserve perishable food,” notes energy efficiency guru Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Our food system is a highly-subsidized network of environmental disasters. The average bite of food we eat has traveled up to 1500 miles from the farm to our fork according to “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” author Barbara Kingsolver. Those “food miles” add up to about 18 percent of our carbon emissions as a nation, and about 20 percent of our family budget. Eating locally; especially if you convert your perfectly manicured lawn into an edible garden, can save you money on your food bill, doctor’s bills, and the costs of maintaining the perfect lawn.
If you are an apartment-dweller, eating locally means buying in season from the farmer’s market and preserving part of the harvest for the winter. Local food purchased in season is always less expensive and better quality than mass-produced counterparts trucked from commercial farms across the country.
Doing these three green things right now will help your family weather the recession and better the environment at the same time.