Save Green by Going Green

Greening your home goes hand-in-hand with energy efficiency, which means more money in your pocket. Or does it? Though much is written about money-saving green products, what's the true dollar amount you can expect to save when implementing earth-friendly ideas in your home?

Utility and water rates vary greatly across the country, but when you dig deeper, regardless of location, there are a few eye-opening discoveries about conserving the environment, and your paycheck.

End Water Guzzling

It's estimated that one person uses about 80 to 100 gallons of water per day, including toilet flushing, showers, baths and general usage, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, a government-based science organization. But, do you know how much you pay for a gallon of water?

Examine your water bill to identify the amount of water you are using on a regular basis. Some water companies bill some customers by the gallon used while continuing to bill others by the number of cubic feet of water used. Knowing how the latter translates into price per gallon may help you determine what you're saving—or letting go down the drain. For example, Connecticut-based Aquarion Water Company charges quarterly billed customers about $3.76 per 100 cubic feet of water for the first 440 cubic feet of water used. There are 7.48 gallons of water in 1 cubic foot, or 748 gallons in 100 cubic feet of water. The Aquarion per-cubic-foot price calculates to about 0.5 cent per gallon. It seems like an innocuous amount of money, right? But it adds up—quickly.

For a shower of 15 to 20 minutes, about 120 gallons of water are used. If you are an Aquarion customer in Connecticut, that would cost about 60 cents per shower. If four people take a shower each day, that's $2.40 a day, about $73 a month or nearly $900 per year. And, that's just for water. It does not include the cost of heating the water. Of course, other water companies or public utilities may charge more or less per gallon of water, but you can see how much a typical morning shower costs.

Water is an increasingly precious commodity and it does pay to green your faucets. One of the smallest and most affordable changes you may make to lower your water bills is a faucet or shower-head aerator. A simple sink faucet aerator, which costs about $5 at a home improvement store, restricts flow to about 1 to 2 gallons per minute, while older, non-aerated faucets have a typical flow of around 3 gallons a minute. Your savings in water usage with an aerator add up to 33 percent to 66 percent.

What's a LEED & Energy Star-Rated Home?

The home-building industry is being transformed with LEED-certified homes, which range from luxury custom homes to affordable housing units recognized for high-performance design and construction.

New construction Energy Star-rated homes can shave about $200 off utility bills, according to Nate Kredich, vice president of residential market development for U.S. Green Building Council (www.usgbc.org). The Washington, D.C.-based organization oversees the venerable Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building certification system and LEED for Homes program.

In the three years since USGBC was founded, it has certified over 10,000 LEED-built homes in the United States. These dwellings use less energy and water and fewer natural resources, create less waste and are healthier and more comfortable for the occupants. LEED-rated homes are built with better materials and thoughtfully sited on the property so the structure doesn't bake in the sun or freeze behind too much shade.

"We see homeowners save $100 a month in LEED-certified Habitat for Humanity homes and that amount of money means everything to those families," Kredich said.

It costs about 1 percent to 2 percent more to build a green home compared with a traditional home built to local code. A LEED home must be at least Energy Star-rated, which means it will be at minimum 15 percent more efficient than a code home.

"Our average home is actually 35 percent more efficient than a typical code home," Kredich said.

Lighten Your Bills

Many people experienced sticker shock when compact fluorescent lamp bulbs were introduced. The bulbs were expensive and the quality of light was dreary at best.

"I remember being upset about breaking a $12 CFL bulb about six years ago," said Maria Onesto Moran, founder and president of Oak Park, Illinois-based Green Home Experts, a retailer specializing in environmentally friendly building and home supplies.

The U.S. phase-out of most incandescent bulbs will begin in 2012 and be completed by the end of 2014, so it’s time to get comfortable and knowledgeable about how CFLs and light-emitting diodes work in your favor.

Much has been written about calculating costs of incandescent light bulbs and CFLs, and it can be confusing. Here are some sobering facts offered by Christopher Ehlert, manager of residential energy services for United Illuminating Co., based in New Haven, Connecticut.

"The national average cost of a kilowatt hour is 12 cents," Ehlert said. He calculated that a 50-cent, 60-watt incandescent bulb burning nearly three hours a day would cost $7.36 per year. Such a bulb has an expected life of about 1,000 hours.

The equivalent, but more expensive, 15-watt CFL would cost $1.84 to run for a year and has a life expectancy of five to seven years, or about 10,000 hours. So, it will cost roughly 75 percent less per year than a traditional bulb and it lasts 10 times as long.

An equivalent—even pricier—7-watt LED bulb would cost 92 cents a year and lasts longer than any bulb on the market.

The qualities of CFL and LED bulbs have vastly improved, and will continue to brighten with new technologies. Moran sells a 6-watt LED bulb for $45 that will last 25 years with moderate use, she said.

"Though I want to take the green home conversation to the next level beyond bulbs and turning off water,” Moran said, “I couldn't be happier that CFL bulbs are still the most popular item in our store. It's a quick fix that everyone is willing to do."

Installing CFLs is the best-value green move you can make in your home that will have an immediate impact on your electric bill.

Update Your Appliances

The argument against energy-saving green appliances—also known as Energy Star-rated appliances—is that since they are at least 25 percent more expensive to buy than traditional appliances, purchasing one of the appliances creates a wash. And now that the federal appliance rebate program has ended in some states, the financial incentive to buy such appliances has lessened for residents of those states. (To find out if there are rebates in your state, visit the U.S. Department of Energy's rebate finder website.)

"There's an Energy Star-rated appliance for every budget," said U.I.'s Ehlert. "Not everyone needs a front-loading washing machine with all the bells and whistles to get an energy-efficient appliance." He added that a number of Energy Star-rated top-loading washing machines cost from $400 to $600 while the fancier models with sensor technology cost about $1,200 and up.

Nevertheless, Ehlert said, no matter what model you buy, newer model washers reduce the amount of water used, which in turn will lower your dryer time from an hour down to 45 minutes, which saves a large chunk of money on your utility bills.

Ehlert said that most dishwashers on the market as of 2011 are Energy Star-rated, but from a cost-perspective, there's no real difference in pricing for an energy-hog or energy-conserving model. The simplest way to save money is to reduce the usage of your appliances.

It would be satisfying to see in black and white how much money you are actually saving by going green. It is possible to calculate your savings by using the increasingly popular Kill-A-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor, a small handheld meter available to borrow at many libraries across the country. Plug it into the wall, and plug in the appliance for a period of time, and you'll be able to calculate the operating costs of a household appliance.

If your library doesn't have a Kill-A-Watt to borrow, you pay purchase one for about $20 at a home improvement store. It's easy to use but tricky to calculate. You may find many tutorials about Kill-A-Watt on YouTube (youtube.com) to better explain the process.

Count the Degrees

The way you heat or cool your home is a large chunk of your energy bill. Every degree counts, but it would help to put a dollar amount on it so you can think twice next time you want to keep the furnace humming at a toasty 72 degrees when 68 degrees would keep you comfortable and keep your budget much healthier.

Numerous articles cite varying percentages of savings on your heating bill if you turn your thermostat down from 72 degrees to 68 degrees. But what does that mean in dollar amounts?

Keeping the temperature at 68 degrees versus 72 degrees will save you approximately 21 percent on your heating bill, according to the Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative. That means that if you have an electric bill of $100 a month when setting the thermostat at 72 degrees, you'll save about $21 per month if you lower the temperature to 68 degrees. That doesn't include the amount of gas or oil you are saving at a lower temperature.

The amount of savings also depends on other variables, such as where you live and how efficient your furnace system runs. The same applies to cooling your home.

Energy efficient central air units are where U.I.'s Ehlert sees dollar savings. He said that in Connecticut, where rates are quite high because of deregulation and high generation rates, running a three-ton central air unit for 500 full hours in the summer costs about $318. An energy-efficient model, by contrast, costs $285 to run for the same period of time, or a savings of about 11 percent. Of course there are variables on appliance ratings, but you can see where an energy-efficient unit pays off.

Insulate Your Money

Moran said that when someone comes into her store hoping to save money by greening their home, she insists that they insulate the attic first.

"It makes no sense to buy a new furnace, for example, when all the warm air will leak right out of the roof," Moran said. "Tighten up the house, first."

Brandon Ansley works for an insulation company, and he agrees with Moran that the attic comes first when it comes to closing up air leaks. Ansley, who is general counsel and director of business development for T.A.P. Insulation of Homer, Georgia, said there are 50 million under-insulated homes in the United States. That figure includes new homes that build to local codes, which require little in the way of adequate insulation, according to Ansley.

Installing low-cost fiberglass insulation may not save you much money in the long run, Ansley said. "The nature of fiberglass insulation is that it comes in rolls and when installed, leaves gaps and voids and doesn't fit well into irregularities in the walls," he said. T.A.P. (www.tapinsulation.com), a patented cellulose recycled paper-based insulation infused with a safe, borate-based pesticide, is loose and blown into an attic and serves as a blanket over existing insulation, but it fills cracks and voids.

Though specialty insulations may cost 20 percent more than fiberglass, it does make a difference in the monthly utility bill, said Ansley. It costs roughly $1,000 to install 1,000 square feet of T.A.P, for example, but federal tax credits for energy retrofits and local utility rebates may reduce the cost of specialty insulation when professional installation is required.

The beauty is in the bill. Ansley cited the significant savings of one homeowner who uses natural gas. Before installing T.A.P., the monthly bill was $246.94. A year later, the bill was $137.92, a savings of 56 percent.

"Though it takes any where between three to five years to see a payback on the initial purchase,” Ansley said, “it's satisfying to see a bill less a hundred dollars."

Save With Solar

Most people turn their heads the other way when solar panels are mentioned: It's overwhelming in scope, cost and installation.

According to an April 7, 2011, Connecticut Post article about solar panel plants, Fairfield, Connecticut-based General Electric (www.ge.com) plans to build the largest solar panel factory in the United States to satisfy demand. Putting thousands of dollars worth of solar panels on your roof, however, is not the only application for this type of clean, green energy, which promises slashed utility bills.

In California, according to California-based Solar Technologies (solartechnolgies.com), electric rates have climbed by 6.7 percent annually since 1970. The company asserts that a homeowner who relies solely on electricity could save 95 percent of energy costs over a period of 25 years with a professionally installed solar powered heating system.

The actual amount of money you may save depends on several factors, such as how much sun covers your plot of land or how much you currently pay in utility costs. Solar panel kits in home improvement stores range from $199 to $1,000—more proof that solar power is not yet an exact science.

You may make use of solar energy in a smaller, but meaningful way. Put a solar panel system in place of an expensive gas heater to warm up pool water, for example. Though there's no rebate for this application, a solar pool heat collector system costs between $100 and $150 to buy and install, but you'll save about $40 a month by switching from a traditional heater, according to Build It Solar (builditsolar.com), a comprehensive renewable energy site.

Substantial federal tax credits and potential rebates accompany installation of solar water heaters and solar panels (also called Photovoltaic Systems) through 2016, according to the Energy Star website (energystar.gov).