For many years I have dreamed about getting a house of my own. And not just any house. My idea of this house is it should combine beauty and eco-friendliness.
To be eco-friendly, or gentle on the environment, means a couple of things. The first thing in my view is to create a good environment inside the house by using sound construction materials. You don’t want to introduce some toxic stuff in your home. For example: formaldehyde – a very dangerous compound – is found in certain types of particle board. Formaldehyde fumes make you really sick, even in low concentrations.
Another thing to look at is the heating system. In the area where I live, there was a time when the cost of electric power was very low. Guess what – everyone figured they should use electric heating in their dwellings. As far as I understand it, this solution isn’t used much these days, as the electricity cost has increased a lot.
Same thing with oil. Fifty years ago, the price of oil was very low and therefore everyone used oil for heating their house. Today, this is getting very costly due to rising oil prices.
If you insulate your house better, you can beat the mounting costs of energy. During the happy days of cheap energy, houses tended to be built with poor insulation. Back when oil was so inexpensive, spending cash on insulation was seen as useless.
Things have changed nowadays. Insulating your house better can cut your energy bill in half in some cases. Believe it or not, there are super.insulated houses that hardly need any extra heating. Conclusion: investing a bit in extra insulation is likely to save you money over time.
Ideally, you’d want a solar powered house. Suppose you could turn all the sunlight which falls on your house to useful energy – then you wouldn’t need any other source. It would be enough to run your (electric) car also.
In practise, this isn’t possible today. However, some experimental solar cell designs have reached an efficiency above 40 per cent. Nearly half the sunlight converted to electric power, in other words.
Of course, these cutting-edge solar cells are still very expensive. But solar panels with more modest efficiency are mass-produced, and getting fairly inexpensive. Nowadays a number of manufacturers are producing photovoltaic cells with up to 20 per cent efficiency, using streamlined methods like continous printing.
If you want home solar panels you can also save money by assembling them yourself. Just like with most home improvement projects, doing it yourself cuts costs.
And apart from the cash savings, you also have the satisfaction of being able to do your own thing.
Once installed, solar panels for homes typically are expected to last for over 20 years. So even if they cost some money upfront, you save on the utility bill in the long run.
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