With the increasing awareness regarding the need to live an eco-friendly lifestyle, more and more people are installing eco-friendly equipments and using eco-friendly mechanisms in their house.
Here are a few tips to help you turn your house into an eco-friendly house:
- Green building materials
While building your house, you can use recycled lumbers for studs, recycled jean materials for walls and also recycled plastic wood products. Moreover, incorporating long lasting materials like cement board siding, seam metal roofing, stones and bricks will help in reducing the amount of landfill waste that generally results from replacing the easily destructible building materials of a house
- Energy-efficient design
Designing your house to enhance energy efficiency is a very important feature in an eco-friendly house. So, it is important for you to include high-efficiency appliances, water heaters and heating or cooling equipments. Energy efficient design also suggests placing the windows and doors in such a manner that it allows natural air to keep the room hot or cold as per the climate. Another way of reducing electricity use during daytime is by placing skylights in your interior rooms.
- Using alternative energy sources
During the past few years, alternative energy sources have become less expensive and so the number of people installing these energy sources in their houses has increased considerably. These alternative energy equipments mainly include photovoltaic or solar electric system and wind energy power systems. You can use geothermal and solar heating system for hot waters as these equipments can be mounted on the roof of your house and the wind energy system for electricity on the ground areas. Moreover, installing alternative energy equipments will not only stop affecting our environment but will also help you save a lot of money in the name of energy bills in the future.
- Efficient water management systems
Saving water is an utmost important step in building an eco-friendly house as well as in saving our planet. An eco-friendly house implements effective mechanisms in reducing the rainwater runoff that carries almost all the earthly nutrients to your nearby watersheds. So, it is important for you to minimize the existence of impervious surfaces around your house and also installing rain barrels for catching the rains water that runs off the roof. This water can later be used in watering your lawns and gardens. On the other hand, implementing gray water system effectively cleans and recycles the waters used in sink and showers and makes it good enough for watering your plants. Another way of conserving water and reducing waste is to install low-flow toilets in all the bathrooms. Moreover, you can also use the rain water harvesting techniques around your house to boost the level of ground water in your locality.
