Cut Costs by Making Your House Greener

Posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 5:23 pm in Financial Planning

It’s all the rage to be environment-conscious these days. But did you know that it can often be cheaper to be green too? All good things begin at home, as they say, so why not spend a bit of money now to make a few environmentally-friendly improvements to your house. You’ll be reaping the benefits of your one-time outlays for many years to come.

We bought a charming old house nine years ago. Unfortunately it had a lot of features that were not so charming, like old appliances, poor insulation and drafty doors and windows. We were shocked to find that our first power bill was more than twice what we had been paying in our old home, which was around the same size. So we decided to start plugging the money leak by making our new home more energy-efficient. Since we didn’t have a lot of cash to spend, we made these green improvements slowly, and did all the work ourselves.

Weather stripping: It was really quick and simple to put insulation strips around the windows and doors to keep the warm or cool air inside the house, depending on the season. It only cost us around $30.

Compact fluorescent lights: We changed all our light bulbs to CFLs, which use a quarter of the power of traditional lights. As we managed to get several light bulbs free from our power provider, and from Earth Day promotions, we only had to spend $60.

Power strips: We spent around $100 on power strips – the surge protection kind for our computers, and regular ones for all our other electronics. Now we can shut everything down completely and don’t have to pay for the 24/7 power drain.

Blinds: The cheap plastic blinds that came with the house did nothing to block the hot sunlight in the summer and keep the heat from escaping in the colder months. So we replaced them with thick room darkening blinds with wide slats, which cost us around $450 for the whole house.

Window film: Our living room faces west and has huge windows that were letting in too much heat and light. We spent $40 to cover them with film, and can now enjoy the room without feeling overheated or using the AC.

Water heater: By installing a wall switch in the hallway, we can now turn the water heater on and off as required. We switch it on in the mornings before showering, then off again before we leave for work. In the evenings, we turn it on again to shower and do dishes and laundry. It only set us back $55 as my brother-in-law very kindly did the work for free.

New appliances: As each of our appliances has come to the end of its useful life, we’ve replaced it with the most energy-efficient model we could find. This has cost us more than $3,000 over several years, but it’s money we would have spent anyway.