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Saving the environment; every little steps count

Saving energy and the overall environment is a topic that has gained public attention more recently. People are realizing that at the rate we are using earth's valuable resources, we will face serious shortage in a near future.

Water is the first resource we have been wasting in the past. We have to be aware that everyday, people worldwide are dying from lack of drinkable water. Yet, in our "civilized" countries, we let purified water go to waste in many ways daily.


Small steps a person can take to limit her consumption of water is: only wash the dishes or do the laundry when there is a full load to be done, do not let tap water run for long periods while brushing one's teeth. Other obvious drinkable water savings would be not to use sprinklers on rainy days or using a broom to sweep one's carport instead of the garden hose.


Another valuable earth's resource we have been wasting is electricity. Again, in many developing countries, electricity could save hundreds of lives. Yet, we are openly wasting this valuable resource in western countries. Small steps that can be taken to limit the quantity of electricity consumed daily are: close all lights that are not being used, do not put the air conditioning on (or a heating system) if windows are opened, wash clothes that do not require special care with cold water instead of hot water.


Forests and trees have also been overused by man and wasted in more ways than can be counted. Recycling paper is the very first step in limiting paper (and trees) waste. I have personally contacted all the magazines with which I am not subscribed and asked them to send me these hundreds of paper I did not read and wasted. It took time and patience but eventually, I evaluate I must have saved an entire small forest by that little step alone.


Writing on both sides of paper is also a very good way to diminish one's consumption of paper and thus limiting deforestation.


Quality air is also a resource we have wasted to the worst degree. By overusing cars and toxic emissions which affected the ozone layers, we have wasted our most valuable resource: the air we breathe. Small steps that can be taken are exactly this: taking small steps instead of using the car for any small trip to the corner store. In taking such action as walking to get to near places, a person will also gain physical benefits and enjoy a better health condition.


Saving oxygen and the quality of the air that we breathe also means taking a strong stand and pressuring governments in place to adopt and apply strict rules and regulations to limit pollution and toxic gas emissions.


Another valuable resource that we have been shamefully wasting is the wildlife. Many animals are now on the endangered species list or, worst, have disappeared because of man's careless actions. Reading and keeping up to date on the most recent developments and again taking action to limit the damages caused to animals are small steps a person can take to start making a difference.

Steps to Follow for an Energy Saving Home

More and more people have started to understand, during the last decades, how important it is to save energy and to apply any possible energy saving techniques when it comes to their household. Part of them are trying to implement all these techniques to first of all reduce the amount of money that they have to pay for their utilities, but there is a constantly growing percentage of people who are more and more aware of the fact that we need to also protect the environment and not only our pockets.

However, there are many ways and modalities for people to easily and efficiently save energy, some of which include: changing the traditional light bulbs with new incandescent lights that can save, according to the studies, up to three quarters of the electricity used by the common light bulbs; setting all the appliances in the house, starting with the refrigerator, dishwasher, washing machine, clothes driers etc, on the energy-saving setting; cleaning and replacing furnace, air-conditioner and heat-pump filters.


Furthermore, next steps for saving energy include roping caulk the leaky windows; assessing the heating and cooling systems in order to determine whether any replacements need to be performed or a simple retrofit might actually be efficient enough to make them work as good as new; inspecting the areas of your house such as the attic, for example, to make sure the insulation is at a normal level; insulating hot water pipes and ducts, especially if they run through unheated areas; scheduling an energy audit, which you should be able to do with the help of your utility company, as this kind of a meeting will provide you with expert advice on your home; replacing old appliances in the house, with new and energy-efficient ones.


Some of these methods might require important funding and time, but you have to keep in mind that the whole process of improving the level of energy consumption in your home is an ongoing one.

Why You Need A Home Energy Audit

For many people the utility bill is expensive. There are several factors contributing to this bill. One factor is all the appliances we use in our homes and the second is the increasing prizes of fossil fuels. These increasing prizes also increase the price for electricity because many power plants work on these fossil fuels. To start saving money we need to focus on these two important factors. Here we will focus on the first.

One smart way of cutting the utility bills is to go about a home energy audit. Many people forget that they can save a lot of money by studying their energy consumption. One very important issue to realize is that many appliances still use electricity even though they are switch of. This known as phantom loads. Examples of these appliances are the VCRs, stereo components, microwave oven, toasters, and the stoves.


Phantom loads are a very abstract issue for many people and it is a difficult concept that is hard to grasp. How much phantom loads you appliances consume can be estimated by a home audit. Another contributing factor is the stand-by mode that many appliances have. Not leaving the device in the stand-by mode will save a lot of electricity. Other less obvious parts of the home can also contribute to the increasing home energy consumption. These are the attics, fireplaces, and the rest of the less obvious parts of the house.


Why should you have a home energy audit? The reason is to cut your utility bill. If you have a large bill and you don't know where and how to save energy then the audit will be wise investment. The audit result will give a better understanding how your home energy can be maximized and securely utilized. With the results you will be able to reduce your bill today and for years to come.


The audit will concentrate on the less obvious parts of your home. The windows and doors are also covered, but these are usually not a big problem anymore. The parts you need to think about are the attic, the fireplace and the ceilings.


Let's think about the ceiling. It must have enough insulation so that the home energy will be kept from escaping from it and to go upwards to the attic. The easiest way for heat to transfer into the attic is through a hole in the ceiling.


When thinking of the attic we stuff these full with unused things and all kinds of junk stuff. What you need to realize is that by putting in the proper insulation you could save big bucks. The attic must be installed with open air vents so as to keep up a good air circulation. When there is no proper air circulation in the attic you can destroy all our stuff and even damage the roof and the attic itself.


To stop the process of heat propulsion you will need to keep it closed when not being used. But if you intend to have it open, simply turn off the heater inside your home since it will come out of the vents then cross the room, and then right into the fireplace the heat will be blown out. For some logical reasons, such situation will just cause you a nightmare in terms of the electrical bills that will confront you.


Next is to stop using the stand-by mode in your appliances and turn the appliances of. Another benefit is that by doing so you're also preventing fire. One important cause of fire inside the house is the television. In standby mode it can cause a short circuit and will create sparks that can result in a fire.


These are just a few tips that you can use to start saving money on your utility bill. If you are really serious about saving money you should consider a home energy audit.

How to Save Money on Your Energy Bill

Is it just me, or have energy prices just been going up and up lately? Unfortunately, this results in significant increases in our home energy bills.

Fortunately, there are a lot of relatively inexpensive (sometimes free) changes you can make around the home that will save you money. I've put together a list of twelve tips that cover heating and cooling, lighting, appliances, and home electronics. These areas all tend to be notorious energy hogs. Let's get started.


Heating and Cooling Tips:


1. If you haven't already, switch to a natural gas water heater (electric water heaters use twice as much energy).


2. Whenever possible, cool your home naturally. For example, you can plant shade trees around your house (especially on the east and west sides). Their protection keeps the sun from beating on your roof and siding during the summer, which can naturally keep your home 4 degrees cooler. (Trees also help insulate your house against cold winds in the winter.)


3. Seal your house to protect against heat loss in cold weather. Seal the ductwork, close the fireplace damper when it's not in use, and install a timer on the bathroom exhaust fan.


Money-saving Lighting Tips:


1. Use dimmers on all your bulbs, and only keep lights as bright as needed for your work. Instead of turning on big watt-sucking overhead lights, use task lighting when appropriate.


2. Use timers and motion- or heat-sensing lights outdoors.


3. Make the most of the natural light from outside. Consider skylights and well-placed mirrors, which can reflect more light into a room, thus reducing energy costs.


Home Electronics Energy-saving Tips:


1. Unless you really need ten clocks glowing greenly at you day and night, unplug TVs, DVD players, stereos, etc. when not in use (you can plug them into a power strip with an on/off switch to make this easy). 60-80% of the electricity used by these devices is sucked down when they're idle.


2. Unplug chargers when you aren't actively charging your cell phone, iPod, battery charger, etc. Why? Because as long as the plugs are inserted into an outlet, they're drawing electricity.


3. Unplug or turn off your computer when it's not in use. And in case you forget, set the system to lapse into sleep mode after a certain amount of idle time (sleep mode draws 60-80% less energy than full-power mode).


Tips for Saving Energy with Appliances:


1. If your refrigerator was made before 1993, replace it. It could be sucking down $140 a year in electricity as opposed to newer models, which require significantly less. Today's Energy Star-rated refrigerators only use about $20 of energy a year.


2. Do all your laundry on the same day, and dry the loads back-to-back. This makes use of residual dryer heat.


3. If you have a top-loading washing machine, replace it with a front-loading model. These generally use 50% less energy and 1/3 less water.


That's all the advice for this article. Apply these simple energy-saving tips, and you'll soon be looking at smaller bills.

Tips on Being Energy Efficient

If you realize the monthly bills that you are paying for energy mainly are tremendously high, then you probably are seriously thinking about identifying the most efficient ways that might eventually lead to reducing your costs.

It is generally accepted that in order to try to identify solutions for any problems it is mandatory to conduct a correct and efficient assessment of the real situation. In this case, in order to correctly identify the issues that might be solved or corrected, you have to know that there are two options available. First of all, you have to know that you can conduct the house auditing by yourself answering a set of questions or secondly, you can turn to a specialist, who can come and carry out the assessment for you.


In case you elect the first option, here are some of the important things that you need to check on your list and which are going to be able to assist you in determining the existence of any problems:


• Verify the level of insulation in your exterior and basement walls, ceilings, crawl spaces, attic and floors. If you are not precisely sure how to do it correctly, contact your local contractor, in order to get professional advice.


• Make sure that there are no holes or cracks in your ceilings, windows, walls, doors, electrical outlets etc., because they can leak air into and out of your home, which makes your house less energy efficient than you actually would want it to be.


• It is also highly advisable to make sure that there are no open fireplace dampers.


• Furthermore, make sure that both your appliances and your cooling and heating systems are working properly and are properly maintained.


• Keep in mind that a lot of the energy that we consume is actually wasted on the lighting needs of the household members. As a consequence, it is strongly recommended to identify the areas in the house with the most increased energy consumption, such as the living room or the kitchen and to replace the traditional light bulbs with energy efficient ones, as for example with compact fluorescent lamps.

How to Save Money on Your Energy Bill

Is it just me, or have energy prices just been going up and up lately? Unfortunately, this results in significant increases in our home energy bills.

Fortunately, there are a lot of relatively inexpensive (sometimes free) changes you can make around the home that will save you money. I've put together a list of twelve tips that cover heating and cooling, lighting, appliances, and home electronics. These areas all tend to be notorious energy hogs. Let's get started.


Heating and Cooling Tips:


1. If you haven't already, switch to a natural gas water heater (electric water heaters use twice as much energy).


2. Whenever possible, cool your home naturally. For example, you can plant shade trees around your house (especially on the east and west sides). Their protection keeps the sun from beating on your roof and siding during the summer, which can naturally keep your home 4 degrees cooler. (Trees also help insulate your house against cold winds in the winter.)


3. Seal your house to protect against heat loss in cold weather. Seal the ductwork, close the fireplace damper when it's not in use, and install a timer on the bathroom exhaust fan.


Money-saving Lighting Tips:


1. Use dimmers on all your bulbs, and only keep lights as bright as needed for your work. Instead of turning on big watt-sucking overhead lights, use task lighting when appropriate.


2. Use timers and motion- or heat-sensing lights outdoors.


3. Make the most of the natural light from outside. Consider skylights and well-placed mirrors, which can reflect more light into a room, thus reducing energy costs.


Home Electronics Energy-saving Tips:


1. Unless you really need ten clocks glowing greenly at you day and night, unplug TVs, DVD players, stereos, etc. when not in use (you can plug them into a power strip with an on/off switch to make this easy). 60-80% of the electricity used by these devices is sucked down when they're idle.


2. Unplug chargers when you aren't actively charging your cell phone, iPod, battery charger, etc. Why? Because as long as the plugs are inserted into an outlet, they're drawing electricity.


3. Unplug or turn off your computer when it's not in use. And in case you forget, set the system to lapse into sleep mode after a certain amount of idle time (sleep mode draws 60-80% less energy than full-power mode).


Tips for Saving Energy with Appliances:


1. If your refrigerator was made before 1993, replace it. It could be sucking down $140 a year in electricity as opposed to newer models, which require significantly less. Today's Energy Star-rated refrigerators only use about $20 of energy a year.


2. Do all your laundry on the same day, and dry the loads back-to-back. This makes use of residual dryer heat.


3. If you have a top-loading washing machine, replace it with a front-loading model. These generally use 50% less energy and 1/3 less water.


That's all the advice for this article. Apply these simple energy-saving tips, and you'll soon be looking at smaller bills.

Talk About LED

Each one of us, at one time or another has either driven or been a passenger in an automobile and experienced our traffic control lighting system. Originally unique, but now part of a global system.

Situated at every fully functional traffic light intersection is at least one "Red" light which is timed to turn on and off regularly to "Stop" traffic. It employs a 100 Watt (varies between 90 and 120 Watts) incandescent light bulb. Several years ago, these light bulbs began being replaced with the latest LED(Light Emitting Diode) cluster assemblies, as were the other lamps at the same intersection. The newer Led lamps consumed only 10 Watts to accomplish the same light output (mostly greater). The clincher ! The original incandescent bulb only radiates approximately 10 % of the power consumed in visible light. The other 90 % is radiated as "heat". And with the red filter used on the original assembly to only let through the RED color needed for the "stop" function, another 30 % of the original visible portion of the light is lost, so that only about 7 % of the 100 Watts of power consumed to light the lamp is visible(to the human eye). The real clincher is that our local taxes

to pay the utilities have been calculated for the 100 Watt consumption for each bulb( when it is turned on ) and only getting 7 % of the light. We town citizens and tax payers have been paying for the 93 % wasted as invisible heat for several decades.

Leds, on the other hand, are a different breed of lighting technology and do not radiate light in the form of heat ( unless designed specifically for that purpose ) and the Red Led assembly cluster which replaces the original traffic light bulb needs no red filter because it radiates a "pure" Red light. Granted, the initial cost for this lamp cluster assembly is still higher, but when we consider the LED lamp "life" estimated to be 100,000 hours and therefore lower replacement along with labor cost, the pay-back is quick and fairly permanent. These benefits are not even considering the ongoing 90 % energy cost savings.

Lighting Now For Tomorrow

The LED, has come a long way since its inception and is advancing so fast that the latest advancements in the new technology are having a difficult time being incorporated into new products before more efficient lamps are being released. In the beginning, the LED lamp was run at a very low power, but now, with advancements in manufacture along with junction design efficiencies and larger packages, they are being beefed up and with this they are offering direct competition and replacing many of our past incandescent lamp applications.

The industry is finding so many more uses for this new light source that all of our present...contemporary lighting is unable to compete with...Namely the LEDs ability to change its color with a virtually infinite spectrum range and at the same time give off so little heat in the process. Admittedly, there is still the initial cost factor, but their benefits are an extremely quick and continuous payback lowering their effective cost. The biggest advantage of the LED however is their much lower operating impact on our energy consumption...to begin with and the most important of all. One of the toughest roads the LED will and is even now facing are retrofits into the well entrenched and long standing contemporary mainstream lighting. Given that the world is in a quagmire over the present use of the energy that we now have available and are looking for ways to cut down on the use of "fossil fuels" and the possible consequences of not doing so, I believe the LED is in an advantageous position for this market. It has been loosely estimated that if LED lighting were incorporated to their maximum into our present lighting industry that by the year 2025 we could save approximately $ 128 billion on electrical energy costs.


Some Uniqueness That Are For LEDs Only


Some of the more recent uses for LEDs have been where lighting is needed in remote areas where power utilities are not readily available and any of our contemporary lighting use in such areas would be cost prohibitive such as a simple flashing red light along some remote stretch of a highway, or a remotely located railroad crossing, where solar power is able to be used because of the much lower power consumption of the LEDs. Placement of traffic lighting in these crucial locations could possibly save some lives, thus justifying their costs. The advantage of such use of LEDs is their low maintenance costs. It is hoped that the trend in the recent technological advancements continue, giving us even greater uses for LEDs that could enhance our lives even further and in the process lower the use of our precious fuels, whether they be fossil or renewable.

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