Top 10 Tips To Build An Eco-friendly Green Home For Your Family In 2022

There is a level of futurism to getting an eco-friendly home that is easy to overlook. By "futurism" we are not just talking about the ideology of trying to build with the future in mind. We are also talking about the pure pragmatism of trying to build a home that conforms to future sensibilities.

This is an odd way of thinking of a home but think of it in terms of electricity: If you had been buying, building, or upgrading your home around the time electricity spread to every home in the country, you would have been wise to get in on those upgrades early before they were required.

Technology develops in stages. First it is unthinkably niche, and perhaps looked down upon for how strange it is. Then people realize the utility, and it is implemented in a select few places. And only after it has obsoleted the old ways of doing things is it considered for personal use.

But after that is a stage where people work together to make that development a requirement in order for anyone to function in society. Homes cannot go without electricity. People cannot go without smart phones. And eventually, nothing can go without being eco-friendly.

So, here are ten ways to make your home more eco-friendly.

1. Motion Sensing Lights

This is one of the more obvious ways to help your home conserve electricity. The innovation here is that the lights only turn on when someone is in the room, and then they always turn off when no one is in the room. This ensures that they do not spend energy lighting up emptiness.

How much energy does this really save? More than you would think. Especially if you get lights that are programmable, so when it is early in the morning or late at night they are not as bright. This is good for waking up without being blinded.

2. Self-Fogging Windows

People are not as familiar with these as the motion-sensing lights, but they are another way of conserving electricity. Most heat in a space is generated by sunlight coming into it. Self-fogging windows will detect how much heat is coming through them and fog in response.

That means that they regulate the temperature in your space without using the air conditioner.

3. Smart Air Conditioner

And while we are on the topic, self-fogging windows are aided by a smart air conditioner that they can "talk" to so that it does not turn on when it does not need to.

Air conditioning units are one of the biggest users of electricity in an entire house. That means they produce carbon themselves, as well as carbon from the power plants that provide that electricity. One of the big themes of being eco-friendly is using less electricity.

4. Solar Panels

Or rather, making your use of electricity more efficient and less costly to the environment. There are lots of ways to generate electricity. Most homes rely on a power grid built around incredibly damaging coal fire power plants, some of which have not seen upgrades in decades.

But solar panels on your roof can mean your house's power grid is supplemented massively. 

5. Wind Turbines

This is another way of supplementing your power grid. People usually imagine wind turbines as huge, noisy, and hard to maintain. But those are the wind turbines that are contributing to a community's whole power grid. One built for your home can be smaller and easier to deal with.

6. A Recycling Station and Service

Stepping away from electricity, recycling is an industry that is very much in its infancy at the moment. We have known about the importance of recycling for a while, but we are just barely getting started with converting our waste-management systems into waste-reuse systems.

It is not that hard to separate out your waste by recyclables, and then not that expensive to hire a recycling service to come by and pick up your different recyclables every week like the trash.

7. Composting Station

The same is true for your food waste, which can be easily composted into mulch that can help plants grow. This will really only have a productive output if you have a garden, but you can also spread this mulch on wild grass. It does not need to necessarily go to certain plants.

8. Switch to LED Lightbulbs

There was a time when every home used incandescent light bulbs. People knew that fluorescent bulbs were more efficient to use, and light bulb companies knew fluorescent bulbs were more efficient to make. But the light they shined looked bad, so there was no selling them.

Once fluorescent lightbulbs could be made to shine just like incandescent bulbs, much of the lighting industry was quick to switch over. Now the same thing is happening to LED lights, which are even more efficient.

9. Low-Flow Shower Heads

This is another case of innovation saving a product that was considered an unusable alternative before. Low-flow shower heads save water, partly by reducing water pressure. This means showers that have less "kick" to them. But now you can have the same efficiency with the kick.

10. Smart Appliances

Similar to the "smart" features of the windows and lights, you can actually make any appliance you have "smart" in its own way. This usually means making sure that it does not draw power at all times. Even when an appliance is not in use, it is technically drawing power in "standby" mode. Smart appliances make sure to stop doing this after you have gone without using them.

Conclusion

Clearly there are a lot of ways to reduce the amount of electricity you use. But this does not just benefit the environment. Information from Teifker Real Estate suggests that it also saves you a ton on electricity, water, and gas bills. This is the great thing about these innovations: They do not just help reduce carbon in the atmosphere, but also make these tools and appliances better.