If you are looking for ideas for an eco friendly house, you came to the right place. I am sure that you have already heard about recycling, composting and reducing water at home. But here, we are going to approach ideas to build or adapt your actual house in a sustainable way. Learn all about it by clicking on the link: How to Design a Sustainable Home? 50 Easy Sustainable Home Tips! Bear in mind that their benefits are endless, the ideas for an eco friendly house will bring you tons of benefits. A greener lifestyle is always possible! Let´s discover the ideas below :)
Whether you are building your house or you are remodeling, solar panels are a great choice to save energy and to have a greener lifestyle. The sun is the best energy source you could ask for: it is clean and infinite energy. Location of solar panels is key when analyzing how much power you will be able to use, so analyze it before doing anything. Solar power replaces your energy consumption and reduces the amount of your bill. Although panels are expensive, it is a long-term investment that truly benefits your sustainable living and your pocket :)
If you have the opportunity to choose where to build your house, keep reading these ideas for an eco-friendly house. First thing to do is checking the proximity you have with the places you visit daily. Walking to them instead of using cars or buses will reduce the gas emission. Second, verify that the field isn´t within a flood zone. You will save lots of money! Thirdly, check the availability of materials that you can re-use to build or remodel your house. Sustainable living involves giving another use to things that are abandoned, a greener lifestyle is always possible.
The orientation of your house determines the entrance of sunlight and heat into your house, the following are great ideas for an eco-friendly house. Do you live in a cold area? Sun is your best natural sustainable friend! To make the most of it, experts recommend having tall glass windows facing the south. Another advice is to have a design of the house that reduces the exit of heat and maintains cold outside the house: tall designs are perfect, avoid wide designs.
Small houses are a synonym of sustainable living. Those environments help to maintain heat inside the house, without having the need to constantly heat up the rooms. Applying eco-friendly devices to your house will bring you economic benefits and you will protect the environment. Containers are a great choice within the ideas for an eco-friendly house! The smaller the environment, the easier to maintain it. Heat during winter and cold during summer will not be a problem at all with small house designs. Proper insulation is another best friend of small houses, continue reading to adopt a greener lifestyle.
Do you know that heating and cooling represent more than 50% of your power use? Yes! The number is huge! To fully reduce that number the key is avoiding the escape of heat through windows, doors and splits on the wall. If you are remodeling your house, check every meter in search for leaks and amend it. Also, I recommend adopting all the ideas for an eco-friendly house found in this article. For a sustainable living you can choose old materials such as newspapers and bottles to properly insulate your house. Proper insulation reduces your bill amount and helps the environment at the same time!
This is one of the craziest ideas for an eco-friendly house: you can reduce the energy costs by having a living roof! Living roofs are very IN within the market nowadays. The best thing about living roofs is that it maintains less heat than regular roofs since it cools fast during night. By doing so, it reduces power costs. The other good thing about them is that the plants living on it filter rainwater and avoid the entrance of that water into the house. Insolation is improved by these kinds of roofs! Material is important too: white tiles, terra cotta and slate are some of the materials that allow a greener lifestyle.
Want to reduce the waste of energy inside the house when you are outside? Do you leave your place and forget to turn off the heater? Here is your solution! Programmable thermostat, one of the amazing ideas for an eco-friendly house. With this device your power bill will be greatly reduced! Your heating or cooling system will function until it reaches the ideal temperature you set, so energy won't be wasted at all. Also, you can buy a smart thermostat. You can program the time that you want to start working at and when it should stop.
Sustainable living involves many things as you can see, windows are another big part of the path to achieve a sustainable living. Something that you can do at your actual home when remodeling is adding curtains to your windows. They will avoid the entrance of cool air and help to keep hot air inside the house. Another advice in case you are building your house, is to buy thick glasses of three layers. Best thing about them: maintaining heat apart from reducing noise contamination.
Discover how to clean glass and more in this article: 7 Sustainable Cleaning Tips to Try On Your Home And Go Greener
Using recycled water can add an incredible and positive benefit to your sustainable living. The rainwater systems are installed on roofs and their function is to collect and contain rainwater. What is the goal of this system? Storing the rainwater collected within a tank. Families or the persons living inside the house can use that water for baths, kitchen, toilets and so on. It is a win-win, you help the environment by reducing the massive consumption of water and it also benefits your economy. One of the most common methods are rain barrels.
Lightening is a must inside the list of ideas for an eco-friendly house. Either building your house or adapting it to have a greener lifestyle, you can take advantage of this tip. Change all your bulbs into LED bulbs. They consume less energy than the regular ones and also last longer. Are they expensive? Maybe they are, but like solar panels, LED bulbs are a long-term investment. You go greener by consuming less bulbs and producing less garbage.
The impact on the environment when choosing sustainable materials over regular ones is huuuuge. They completely reduce the cost of your investment on materials. You can find construction methods that will match your sustainable living, or you can find construction materials that are as good as regular ones. The market is big: find bricks made of recycled plastic, floors built with recycled wood such as bamboo or prefabricated homes.
This tip is perfect for people who are buying their first electrical appliances or families who want to achieve a sustainable living. Pay all your attention to labels when buying a toaster or a refrigerator. They indicate the level of energy that they will consume, so they are key when choosing the one you consider best. Having a greener lifestyle also involves paying attention to food. Find out more about sustainable kitchen practices here: 5 Sustainable Kitchen Practices to have a Green Kitchen When buying at the supermarket check if the ingredients are organic and remember to bring your own bag to reduce plastic amount.
This tip could be left out of the ideas for an eco-friendly house article. PLASTIC! As you may know, plastic is everywhere. Sadly, it is one of the most contaminating materials in the world. It contaminates the oceans, kills sea animals and contributes to the depletion of the ozone layer. Reducing your plastic at home will definitely help the environment. How can you do it? Reuse plastic bottles instead of buying and throwing them all the time. Recycle plastic, use reusable bugs, buy less packaged products, use glass containers instead of plastic ones.
We arrive at the last item of the ideas for an eco-friendly house: Wood! It is a great material to build your new house or to build your furniture. It is a material that can be easily transformed and can adopt new forms all the time. Experts suggest using wood in construction since it increases the energy efficiency of the house and also reduces the amount of power used within your household. How does it help the environment? By keeping carbon out.
I hope that you take as many notes as you can after finishing reading all the ideas for an eco-friendly house! You have a lot of ideas to enjoy and apply in your life. Having a greener lifestyle will bring you tons of joy. Although it may seem to be a lot of information, I assure you that once you start understanding it and searching for more you will become a sustainable expert. Leave in the comments your favorite idea!
