Green Home Trends & Tips

Making green choices for your home benefits your family, community, state, nation and planet. While “going green” spans a wide range of actions from installing solar panels to simply taking shorter showers, even easy-to-implement changes make a difference to Mother Nature. HomeYet.com offers some green facts, as well as action items that homeowners can put in play today.

1. The era of the “McMansion” is over, and practicality is the new rule in home design, according to The American Institute of Architects. What features make a home more practical? Open space layouts, informal spaces, finished basements or attics, and single-level floor plans, according to residential architects.. While annual survey results from AIA have shown a steady decrease in home and lot sizes every year since 2005, demand for outdoor living space continues to reshape household lifestyles. However, upscale outdoor enhancements—formal landscaping, decorative water features, tennis courts and gazebos—are on the decline.

2. According to the National Association of Home Builders’ recent consumer preferences study, homeowners said they would spend an average of $9,000 more on their next home, if the new home would save them $1,000 annually in utility bills. The average amount consumers said they were willing to spend drops to $6,700 among buyers age 55 and older.

3. The average household spends more than $2,200 a year on energy bills, nearly half of which goes to heating and cooling, according to Energy Star. What can you do to reduce your utility bills??

* Install a programmable thermostat and maintain the pre-programmed settings, and you’ll save about $180 a year.

* Save about $70 annually by replacing your five most frequently used light fixtures (or the bulbs in them) with Energy Star-endorsed models.

* Use the cold-water setting on your washing machine. Each year, you’ll save about $40 with an electric water heater or $30 with a gas water heater.

* Use the right-sized pot on stove burners and save about $35 annually with an electric range or $18 with a gas range. (A 6-inch pot placed on an 8-inch burner will waste 40 percent of the burner’s heat.)

4. Wondering where to recycle all the items that your waste service company won’t accept? Visit Earth911.com and find a nearby recycling center or service for everything from aerosol cans and compact fluorescent bulbs to oil-based paint and household cleaners.

 5. Glass takes up to 4,000 years to decompose in a landfill, yet it can be recycled indefinitely. Still, estimates show Americans send as much as 11 million tons of glass to landfills a year. A number of home furnishings companies are finding design inspiration in these alarming facts. Today, gift and home merchants’ assortments are dotted with glass accessories, including lighting fixtures, vases and other vessels, that are made from recycled glass. An example is the vase and stand from Couronne & Company. The container is 99 percent recycled glass.