Switching to solar power is only half the battle when it comes to lowering your energy costs and doing your part to help save the environment. The other half consists of selecting energy-efficient products for your home. It’s crucial to do everything that you can in order to save on energy, even if that means adding a few upgrades to your current electronics, appliances, and related systems, such as lighting and your hot water heater, which will pay off in the long run.
Wondering which energy-efficient products will work best in your home? Here are some useful tips and tricks to get you started on your green energy journey.
Add Some Additional Daytime Lighting
When it comes to making sure that you have enough daytime lighting to get things done, you have several options. The first is standard light fixtures and lamps that use a lot of electricity. Sure, they’ll add light to your home, but at the expense of your bank account. Skylights are a second option. These “windows to the sky” can bring in a ton of natural sunlight and with today’s modern skylights, they offer many energy-efficient options and capabilities.
Finally, there’s a third option. This one is energy-efficient and can beautifully illuminate your home, the Solatube® Daylighting System. This innovative solar lighting system brings in daylight through a series of tubes to illuminate your home. The Daylighting system uses advanced optics to harness sunlight in a way that significantly improves how daylight is controlled and used. Not only do you get all of the brightness of sunlight, as well as the safe effects of Vitamin D and mood-leveling benefits of that light from the sun, but you’re also making your home more energy efficient and cutting back on your electrical bills at the same time. It’s a win-win situation.
Install a Solar Star® Solar Attic Fan
A solar attic fan is exactly what it sounds like. Since hot air rises, it tends to build up in attics. In order to keep your entire house cool in the summer, your air conditioning unit has vents in the attic as well. Unfortunately, that trapped hot air often makes the air conditioner work overtime, making your electrical costs higher than they need to be.
With a Solar Star® Attic Fan and its advanced solar technologies with progressive designs, it will efficiently vent heat and moisture from your attic. The process cools off your attic, thus putting less pressure on your air conditioner. As a result, you end up saving energy and money on your utility bills.
Garage Cooling & Comfort Packages
Along with attics, garages are notorious for being hot & humid. Grage temperatures can reach more than 25° hotter than outside temperatures, and attics can reach a blistering 150°. Garage fans work by bringing cooler air into the garage from the outside using vents. When this air is brought into the garage, there is no need to use additional fans or air conditioning systems that utilize an abundance of energy.
At the same time, a garage fan eliminates heat-build up that can be extremely difficult to dissipate and often overworks cooling systems causing them to perform inefficiently. Garage Cooling & Comfort Packages that include garage ventilation fans, garage door insulation, and water heater blanket insulation will help reduce damaging heat and increase overall garage comfort.
Not to mention that with all of these energy-efficient products, you will see instant savings on energy bills and costs throughout the hot months.
Upgrade Your Insulation
Your home’s insulation plays a significant role in making your home energy efficient. In the summer, you want to keep the cold air in, while in the winter, it’s the opposite – you need to stay warm, preventing that warm air from leaving. Either way, your HVAC system could be working overtime if your attic insulation isn’t strong enough. You need to make sure that you have the most energy-efficient insulation possible in order to save money on your cooling and heating bills.
Consider a Solatube® Whole House Fan System
Another option, similar to the attic fan, but with a larger impact, is the Solatube® Whole House Fan system. These systems are designed to cool off your entire home, piping the hot air back outside via a tube installed in the attic. Not only can one cool your house off considerably, saving you from having to keep the air conditioner running constantly, but it circulates fresh air, not the recycled air that an AC unit pushes around. As a result, your home will be constantly filled with cool, fresh air, and you’ll save money on electricity since your AC won’t be running all of the time.
Select Electric Nightlights
Tired of wandering around in the dark, potentially stubbing your toe on the corner of a wall in the process? Rather than choosing standard nightlights, which use quite a bit of electricity in spite of their small size, go with solar-powered Solatube® ISn Electric Night Lights instead. These lights are mounted in the ceiling and collect power via the sun during the day. Once night falls, they will illuminate your space with a lovely, soft light of around eight to ten lumens, which is similar to a standard nightlight.
Make Sure All of Your Appliances Are Energy-Efficient
On top of tankless hot water heaters and lights that harness the power of the sun, you also need to upgrade your older appliances to energy-efficient ones. These appliances do the job just as well as those earlier models, but they use less electricity and gas in the process, helping you shrink down your utility bills and live a more environmentally friendly life.
Setting Up an Energy-Efficient Home
As you can see, there are plenty of options when it comes to finding ways to make your home more energy efficient. Whether you want to install special lights that illuminate various rooms and hallways without using a lot of electricity or choose an attic fan or whole house fan, or simply prefer to switch out your traditional hot water tank for a tankless one, you have endless energy efficient options. And the best part? You can ambitiously embrace all of these options and turn your house into the most energy-efficient one on the block.
Ready to jump on the green energy bandwagon? Call The Solar Guys today to find out the latest and greatest energy-efficient options for your home.
