I miss my house now that I am spending long hours at the new office, and as life at Crestview Doors hits a new groove I find myself ready to focus some energy on the house once again. We have a lot of little projects left to do, and a few big ones. We still haven’t finished the concrete block wall under the deck, for example, and I really want to re-paint and decorate the kids’ bathroom.
But my main goal at Erwin House this year is to go green. We tried to incorporate many green intentions during the remodel. We recycled our old windows (good for landfills, bad for energy efficiency). We chose bamboo floors for the kitchen and dining (good for the earth, bad for an area that is wet a lot and sees a great deal of traffic). We went from having no insulation to full insulation (great for energy efficiency; even though we more than doubled our square footage, our energy bill hasn’t budged a penny… except that first month when the doors were open all the time, ha ha!). We angled the roof for solar panels and made room for a 500-gallon rainwater tank (and now we just have to install them!).
It is time to go the extra mile. My eldest’s school has gone green this year, and it seems like we should be walking the walk at home too. We’re starting with something really quite simple: a shower timer. I admit it, we are hot water hogs. We designed the house such that all of the water facilities are centrally located. The bathroom and kitchen share a wall downstairs, and the two upstairs bathrooms and laundry are all directly above the water heater. This has reduced the amount of time it takes to get hot water, and the fancy shower temperature gauges make it easy to get the temp and pressure just right. Unfortunately, it means we spend a lot of time basking in the flow.
It seems fitting to start the new year with a daily reminder of our commitment to using less of the earth’s precious resources. Won’t hurt our pocketbooks a bit either I plan to put those saved pennies straight towards the solar panel fund!
I haven’t yet picked our next step, but I’m contemplating buying a composter since our “pile” isn’t exactly composting much of anything. What are you doing to go green this year?