Eco-Friendly Home(Part 2/2)

eco-friendly home

Eco Friendly Home Technology

 

=> Green Gadgets You Won’t Want to Do Without to be eco-friendly

There are numerous Eco Friendly Home Technology gadgets that you can use around your home and outside your home to save money and energy. If you want to reduce your carbon footprint, look at some of these eco-friendly home gadgets you won’t want to do without.

The Instant Pot – pressure cooker.

This is a wonderful electric pressure cooker. It’s designed to be safer than stovetop pressure cookers but works just as well. It also uses a lot less energy than your stove. It won’t heat up the room, and it does its job super-fast, which means it uses much less energy. Using these pots in the summertime is very popular due to how little heat comes out of them while cooking.

Eco-friendly sonic Toothbrush

Seems strange that a toothbrush needs to be energy efficient, like Soladey and others do have one. This one powers up with light. Since it uses ions to clean, you don’t even need to buy toothpaste anymore. That’s a money saver and a time saver too.


 

 

Low Water Flow Toilet to be eco-friendly

One way to save money is to install a water-saving toilet. You’ll save money on water because you use less. Toilets are a big water user and in most households, it’s the highest water usage you have. Therefore, a water-saving toilet will really make a huge impact on your water usage and water bill.

Get an eco-friendly Compost Bin

Everyone needs a compost bin. What kind you buy depends on where you live and your situation. Even if you donít personally need the soil that you create, you can give it away, or you can donate it to someone to use. You can also pour it into planters anywhere, and people will be happy you did.

Install a Solar Hot Water Heater

Even if you cannot afford everything to be solar, you can afford to install a solar hot water heater. It works a lot like most water heaters, but it can save you 50 to 80 percent on water heating bills, and today they work great.

Get a Back-Yard Wind Turbine if you can afford it and it’s allowed.

Assuming you live in an area where you can do it, installing a backyard wind turbine is a great way to make your home greener. You can use the wind to power most of if not all of your home. You only need wind speeds of at least 5 mph to generate enough electricity.

Eco-friendly Dual Flush Toilet

You’ve heard the saying, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down.” With the dual flush toilet, you don’t have to do that. It uses less water for the yellow stuff than the brown stuff, making it much more economical and eco-friendly. Plus, you can also get a low water dual flush toilet.

Smart Power Strips

Did you know that when you keep everything plugged into the wall all the time, it uses more energy? Even if you turn the appliance off, it’s still using some energy when plugged in. If you use a smart power strip, though, it has a standby mode which it will go into automatically when the appliance is in the off position. The only other way to save this much power is to unplug your appliances after use, every time.

A Programmable Thermostat

One problem with heating and cooling is having to turn the heat or air up or down manually to control the atmosphere. With a programmable thermostat, you can avoid these problems by setting it up to make the temperature constant throughout the day depending on the time of day. This will save a lot of money and make you all more comfortable at home.

Small Solar Trees Can Go with You to the Beach

What could possibly be eco-friendly than something called a solar tree? Solar trees encompass a wide variety of arrangements of solar panels used to power a few things. One small solar tree is designed to be portable with its “trunk” capable of being jabbed into the soft ground like at the beach. The tree is then used to power or charge devices like your cell phone.

Large Solar Trees Save Space

The concept behind larger solar trees is that the solar panels are at different levels above and below each other, allowing more panels to exist in a confined area. Claims are made that a solar tree that occupies four square meters of space can produce the same energy that otherwise would have required four hundred square meters.

Eliminate Plastic Waste and Bring Your Own eco-friendly Shopping Bag

Some stores are now charging for bags for your groceries. All Grocery, for example, expects you to bring your own bags. They also sell cloth bags that are very rugged and can be reused many times. These are washable; just throw them in the clothes washer if you wish. Using the cloth bags will cut down tremendously on plastic waste, so much of which winds up in our oceans. Itís best to store these bags in your car, so theyíre always available.

Conserve Water and Electricity with an Efficient Shower Head to be eco-friendly

Conserving water starts by using shower heads designed for high efficiency. One brand called Smart Shower claims not only to save water but also energy, since hot water is conserved while still producing a powerful spray with less water pressure. They offer a small variety of shower heads in a range of prices, starting from just under eight Pounds.

Use Nature to Control Garden Pests to be eco-friendly

Garden pest control can be done in a “fight fire with fire” type of approach. At a this website RSPB , you can see  bugs to get rid of the other bugs you don’t want. Some don’t come cheap, but you’re not putting pesticides in the nearby environment of your yard. They offer flower bugs for thrips control.

There is a spider mite control using predators . The cheapest is nematodes that control soil pests. Using these eco-friendly methods may help the bee population too, since it’s speculated that pesticide use is the culprit causing their diminished numbers.

How About a Light?

How many times have you been caught empty-handed because your flashlight batteries were dead? Well, hybrid solar flashlights and lanterns are very reasonably priced and can be useful for camping and around the house during power outages – or all the time if you wish.

Their batteries are charged with solar cells, so you must have them exposed to bright sunlight for hours to ensure they will be ready for use. The lantern displayed on Greenhome.com claims to run for eight hours on a full charge, and the lantern is similar in style to the original Coleman lantern. Coleman does sell a hybrid solar lantern of their own, and that also has good reviews.

When you find green products that you want to try, take the time to look at the reviews. Usually, you can find reviews by verified buyers on many platforms, such as Walmart and Amazon. This is the best way to ensure that something really works. Also, check return policies so that you can try it and take it back if it doesnít work as promised.

=> Eco-friendly Lighting for Your Home

There is no excuse not to have green lighting in your home. Although incandescent lighting products are initially cheaper to purchase, they will cost you more to use and will have to be replaced at a much higher rate than their LED equivalents.

LED Lights and Others eco-friendly bulbs

LED bulbs are becoming the norm since their prices are coming down and they are among the most energy efficient. They will require on average one-tenth the power to run than an incandescent bulb.

Eco-friendly Florescent tubes and bulbs can be even more efficient than LED, although only initially while they are still new. They will degrade faster and suffer from energy loss over time. Also, fluorescent lights will need replacing more often.

Since fluorescent lighting may contain harmful materials such as mercury while the LED type only has minute amounts of “doped silicon” in the actual part of the light that emits photons, handling and installing LED lighting is a safer proposition.

When you consider that the mercury in fluorescent bulbs and tubes is encased in glass that can and often will shatter when dropped, it has to make them less desirable than the durable solid construction of the LED variety.

Another advantage besides their reliability is the considerably less heat put out by LED lights. During summer months you won’t have to have your AC system fighting against the heat generated inside by hot lights.

This is especially apparent if you’ve ever tried to remove or touch an incandescent light that had been on for an hour. In contrast, LED lights will still feel cool to the touch. Todayís LED lights are available in several colors and levels of temperature, with 2700K warm, 3000K clean white and 4000K natural white being typical.

At their inception, some products manufactured in China had issues with their LED lights longevity. LED bulbs were touted to last for years or even decades, but many people were finding that was not the case. This was especially frustrating when the prices were much higher than the incandescent bulbs.

Some of these problems were in part due to the bulb’s fixture circuitry components (used in directing the required voltage and current) being needed by the LED bulbís diode. Any failure in the voltage regulating control can cause a light to flash repetitively or go out, even if the actual component that produces light may still be good.

Over time, those early failing bulbs seem to have run their course and have not been seen for a while. LED lights usually come with a 5-year warranty, but you may have to be willing to save receipts or boxes to be able to use it.

Finding eco-friendly lighting today is not a problem, though. The LED bulbs prices have dropped, and they do last a good long time. Not to mention that you can find any type of brightness that you want and need. Whether you need something that works with photography or just regular home lighting, it is there.

Finding eco-friendly technologies for your home is not just good for the environment and your wallet, itís also fun. Who doesnít like the idea of installing solar panels? Who doesnít love having a better running oven, dishwasher or clothes washer that is quiet and saves energy? Most people will jump at the chance if you can show that it also saves money.

=> Getting Started Being Greener at Home with the New Eco-Friendly home Technology

Now that you’ve read about several new technologies that you can incorporate into your home, let’s finish off by looking at some simple things you can do right now to save energy and be greener.

Set Your Thermostat Lower in Winter to be eco-friendly

Have you ever gone to someone’s house that is hot as heck in the winter but freezing in the summer? That’s a wasteful use of energy right there. To avoid this problem if you cannot afford to buy a new thermostat right now, consider setting your temps higher in summer and lower in winter to save money and energy.

Unplug Appliances When Not Using Them to be eco-friendly

As mentioned earlier, your appliances when plugged in will use power. You can save a lot of money by unplugging them. If you cannot afford to buy one of the smart power strips that put your appliances in standby mode, this is a good choice to save money and energy right now.

 

Hang Your Clothes to Dry Them to be eco-friendly

Depending on where you live, you can dry most of your clothes outside to save money. Not only will it save on drying, but it will also save your clothing. Drying them outside disinfects them more than you may think due to the sunshine on them. Plus, your sheets will smell wonderful.

Wash Clothing in Cold Only to be eco-friendly

Believe it or not, your clothing and even your towels will come clean in cold water. Using cold water most of the time will save a lot of money. Your water heater uses 85 percent of the power used when doing laundry, so itís quite a big difference.

Walk More to be Eco-friendly

You can save tons of energy by walking more. Walk or ride your bike to work when you can, and youíll reduce your energy usage plus get healthier in the process. What could be better than that?

When you think about it, using less energy is about more than the environment or saving money. Itís about using the best practices available to do the job that needs to be done. Often, that’s using the energy-efficient way to do it. Todayís technologies work very well, and you wonít even notice that youíre saving energy until you get the bills.

What is the first thing you’re going to incorporate into your life now that you know about the new eco-friendly technologies that you can consider for your home?

 

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What’s on in East London Team