Retrofitting Your Home into an Energy-Efficient Hub
Today, people are more than ever looking at ways to make their homes more energy efficient. Retrofitting your home to make it more energy efficient brings a number of benefits. Apart from saving energy, it also helps you to save money by cutting down energy bills and makes your home greener by reducing its negative impact on the environment. To find out how you can make your home more energy efficient, here is a simple guide to retrofitting your home.
Conduct an Energy Efficiency Audit
The first step in retrofitting your home starts with an energy efficiency audit. The results of the audit will allow you to understand the state of your home and determine how much energy it currently consumes. To evaluate your home’s energy efficiency, you can either contact a professional, or you can perform the audit yourself using the correct tools and procedures. If you choose to do the audit yourself, don’t rush the process and make a thorough examination of everything. After the audit is complete, you can make a plan of what aspect of your home you will need to fix and improve.
Upgrade Your Lighting
Albeit lighting might seem as insignificant, it can account for a major amount of energy consumption in your home. Consider replacing your cheap incandescent bulbs with more energy efficient alternatives. There are two major types: light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). Although they are more expensive upfront, in the long-run both LEDs and CFLs will help you reduce your electricity bill. In addition, they have a much longer lifespan and don’t emit carbon dioxide harmful to the environment.
Insulate Your Home
The biggest energy consumer in any home is our heating and cooling system. This is why quality insulation is such a good energy conserver. Insulation also helps you regulate the temperature inside your home both in summer and winter. In most cases, you will focus on insulating the interior of your home, since this is the least insulated part of your wall. However, if you have walls made of bricks or wood, you will also need to dedicate resources to exterior insulation. The cost of wall insulation depends on its size and type, but still, this type of long-term investment remains the most cost-effective and energy-efficient home improvement.
Seal All Air Leaks
Air leaks around your exterior doors are an additional concern when it comes to saving energy. During your audit, make sure that there are no gaps between the doors and the surrounding walls and floor. Air leaks occur when the door isn’t installed properly or it’s just too old to make an airtight seal. In case you have a relatively new door, you can fix air leaks by simply applying some filler to fill the gaps or adding weather strips. On the other hand, if your door is old and continues to leak air even after fixing it, consider replacing it.
Improve Your Windows
Similar to doors, windows can also waste energy in your home. A simple solution might involve putting up heavy blackout curtains that can insulate your rooms. However, the best insulation is achieved by installing quality double glazed windows, such as those offered by Magnetite. These windows have two panes of glass with an inert type of gas trapped between. Although a bit more expensive at first, in the long-run, this type of window will cut down the amount of energy needed to heat up a room by half.
Start retrofitting your home by moving from easy fixes to more substantial investments. Allow these simple steps to become your guide on how to save energy, cut costs, protect the environment, and ultimately create a home you will enjoy living in.
