Home Audit Kit

Assu - Washington State Department Of Ecology

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English

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educe euse ecycleR 3 R's for the new century HOME AUDIT KIT A Guide to Help Make Your Residence an Environmentally Friendly Place Department of Ecology Publication # 00-07-030 Solid Waste & Financial Assistance Program Revised August 2000 P.O. Box 47600 Olympia, WA 98504-7600 1-800-RECYCLEHome Audit Contents Page 3 -- Saving Energy Page 7 -- Saving Water Inside and Outside Page 9 -- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Page 11 --Reducing Hazardous Waste in The Home Page 12 --An Environmentally Friendly Yard Page 13 --Your Automobile and the Environment Page 15 -- Green Consumerism 2Home Audit SAVING ENERGY The amount of energy we consume is one of the primary factors in determining the quality of our environment. Every step of the energy cycle – the extraction of energy resources such as coal and oil, the conversion of these resources into usable forms in oil refineries and electrical generating facilities, the transportation of the fuels, their use in automobiles and furnaces, and the disposal of the wastes produced, are major sources of air pollution, water contamination and land degradation. Home Heating and Cooling In this country, more energy is used for heating houses and apartments than for any other purpose. Of the six billion tons of carbon dioxide (a major contributor to global warming) that human activities put into the atmosphere each year, more than one billion tons come from burning fuel to heat homes. Each kilowatt hour of electricity that we use adds about 1.6 pounds of carbon dioxide to the air. Here are some things you can do to save energy on heating and cooling your home (they really can make a difference): ¦ Have an "energy audit" done on your house. Hire a professional (some utility companies provide energy audits free of charge) or do it yourself. If you do it yourself, choose a windy day so drafts will be easily detectable. Use a lighted candle to check for leaks around windows, doors, fireplace dampers, cracks or holes in walls and ceilings, anyplace where plumbing or wiring fixtures penetrate walls, floors, or ceilings. A flickering flame will indicate areas where caulking or weather-stripping is needed. Instead of a candle, you can use a lighted incense stick and observe which way the smoke goes. Adding caulking and weather-stripping where they're needed can cut down significantly on heat loss and keep as much as 1,000 pounds per year of carbon dioxide out of the air. ¦ Have your furnace "tuned up". Oil furnaces should be tested, cleaned, and adjusted every year; gas furnaces, every two years. This should be done by a heating technician. An inefficient heating system can waste 20% or more of the If every household inenergy that it uses. An efficiency test is part of the routine cleaning procedure the U.S. lowered itsfor oil and gas furnaces. Have the technician write the results on your receipt; keep track from year to year to detect any problems. average heating tem- peratures six degrees ¦ If your heating system is more than 18 years old (10 to 12 years for heat during a 24-hour pumps), it may have reached the end of its life expectancy. Consider period, nationwide wereplacing it with a new, energy-efficient system; this will help the environment, would save the equiva-increase the value of your house, and significantly decrease your utility bills, lent of more thansince some of the new systems use only half as much energy as old ones. 570,000 barrels of oil ¦ Lower the thermostat in winter. You will cut down on the energy your furnace per day uses by 2 to 3 percent for every degree that you lower it. Recommended settings are 65 - 68° during the day and 55° at night. If no one is home during the day, set it lower than 68. ¦ Install an automatic setback thermostat. Set it to automatically reduce the temperature at night and during times when no one is at home. 3Home Audit ¦ Find out if your home is sufficiently insulated. A properly insulated attic can reduce your fuel costs and harmful emissions by 20 to 50 percent. In the attic, check between the joists. In outside walls, turn off the power to an electrical outlet, remove the switchplate, and shine a flashlight into the opening to see whether insulation is present. In basements, check between floor joists and in walls. See if the insulation is spread evenly and is dry (insulation loses most of its insulating value when it is wet). Measure the thickness. As a rule of thumb, 9 to 13 inches of fiberglass insulation is sufficient for the attic; 3 to 6 inches in the floor and walls. ¦ Also, insulate hot water pipes, heating ducts, and crawl spaces. Ten percent of the energy you use could be escaping through these areas. ¦ Consider installing a ceiling fan. This can save energy (and money) on air conditioning by producing air currents that carry heat away from the skin, making the room feel cooler. Buy a fan with reversible motor, and you can save on heating as well by recirculating the hot air that rises to the ceiling. (The air at the ceiling can be as much as 15° warmer than the air at floor level.) ¦ Install storm windows. An inexpensive alternative to buying storm windows is to tack clear polyethylene plastic to the outside of your windows. ¦ When installing new windows, keep in mind that double-pane windows retain twice as much heat as single-pane windows. Double-pane units with a low-emissivity (low-E) coating often cost no more than units with regular glass and can double the R-value of the windows. A low-E coating is an extremely thin metallic layer that lets the sun's warming rays in but doesn't let them back out. ¦ When buying new windows, don't overlook the importance of the frames – good wooden frames will prevent a lot of the leakage that would occur with According to the U.S. aluminum frames. Department of Energy, if ¦ Make sure the damper on your fireplace is closed; otherwise, 5% of youreach person raised the heating expense could be going up the chimney.temperature of their air conditioner by six ¦ Air conditioning units work more efficiently if they are in the shade than degrees, we would save if they have the hot sun beating down on them. If you cannot locate your unit about 190,000 barrels of in a shady spot, build a wooden shelter around it to keep the sun off. oil each day. ¦ Plant trees near your house. Deciduous trees on the south side of the house let the sun warm the house in winter but provide shade in the summer. They will cut down on the need for air conditioning by providing shade and cooling the air through transpiration. They also remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Water Heater ¦ Set thermostat to 130°F (unless you have a dishwasher with no heater, in which case 140°F is necessary). Use a thermometer to measure the temperature; water heater dials are frequently inaccurate. 4Home Audit ¦ Put your hand on the side of the water heater. If it feels warm, it is not sufficiently insulated. Wrap an insulating blanket around it (available at hardware stores). You will often recover the cost of the blanket within a few months. This is especially important if the water heater is in an unheated area. ¦ Every couple of months, drain about two quarts from the valve faucet at the bottom of the water heater. This will prevent the accumulation of sediment and will keep the water heater operating efficiently. Refrigerator ¦ Clean the condenser coils at least once a year (wipe, vacuum, or brush). ¦ Make sure the door gasket is clean and tight: insert a piece of paper between the door and cabinet and close the door; it should take some effort to pull the paper out. Do this in several spots along the door. ¦ Check the temperature inside the refrigerator and freezer periodically. Ideally, the refrigerator portion should be at 38 - 42°F, while the freezer should be at 0 - 5°F. ¦ If your refrigerator is not a self-defrosting model, ice will tend to form on the cooling coils. This ice will act as an insulator and will effectively prevent the coils from doing their job. Defrost the refrigerator if you see a buildup of ice on the coils. ¦ Keep the refrigerator and freezer fairly full. Food retains cold better than air does. But be sure to leave enough room for the cold air to circulate. ¦ Plan ahead when you want to defrost food. When you remove it from the freezer, allow it to defrost slowly in the refrigerator. The coldness contained in the food will help keep the inside of the refrigerator cool with less work for the motor. The nation’s refrigera- Other Appliances tors consume the yearly output of about 25 large¦ When buying new appliances, look for the most energy efficient models you can find. Many of the major appliances are required to display a yellow label power plants, seven showing their energy efficiency rating (EER). This label will give estimated percent of the total yearly costs of operating the appliance. Take this cost into consideration when electric consumption in choosing a model; you may save money in the long run by buying a more the U.S. and more thanexpensive model that will use less energy during its lifetime than a cheaper 50 percent of the energymodel. produced by nuclear ¦ Microwave ovens can be twice as efficient as conventional ovens for power plants. relatively small portions, but are the least efficient cooking method for such items as turkeys, large roasts, etc. A toaster oven is also preferable to a large conventional oven for heating small amounts of food. 5Home Audit ¦ When preheating a conventional oven, don't preheat longer than necessary. Ten minutes is usually sufficient. Preheating is not necessary for broiling or roasting – only for baking. ¦ Don't use the microwave oven to defrost food. Allow food to thaw in the refrigerator if time allows, or on the counter. ¦ Run the dishwasher only when it is full. Use an energy saving cycle if you have it, and let the dishes air dry. ¦ Avoid using garbage disposals as much as possible. Give meat scraps to pets; add vegetable scraps to the compost pi