Easy Greening: Affordable Ways to Green Your Home

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Every green-minded homeowner dreams of solar panels, high-efficiency windows and low-flush toilets. The reality check can be a discouraging one: These features, while great for the environment and money-saving over time, can come with a sobering price tag. There is good news for the determined, however. A green home can happen in small, inexpensive steps, and the homeowner won’t need a costly contractor for most of them. Water Control Reducing the home’s water consumption is an easy and important green step. Low-flow faucets, aerators and showerheads are very inexpensive, easily installed and make for effective water-savers. These devices can save you money on two fronts: by lowering the water bill and lowering energy costs by reducing the amount of water that needs to be heated. NEOPERL’s 1.0 gpm spray stream aerator reduces lavatory water consumption. The EPA’s WaterSense program certifies and labels bathroom faucets and faucet accessories as meeting the program’s strict water-saving standards. A growing list of faucets from Delta, Moen and Price Pfister are available for the homeowner looking to replace a water-hogging faucet with one that meets or exceeds WaterSense’s 1.5 gallon per minute (gpm) standard. Delta’s Lahara line of bathroom faucets boasts four models that carry the WaterSense label, with prices ranging from around $130 to $230 per faucet set. For a more affordable alternative, an aerator or spray flow device might be the way to go. WaterSense-certified aerators and flow regulators from NEOPERL are easily installed and can be purchased for as little as $4. Bill Davis, founder and president of Utility Savers, in St. Petersburg, Fla., insists that water-saving faucet accessories is one of the quickest devices to payback: “We have a hotel that is saving 20 million gallons of water a year just by using a water-saving aerator,” says Davis. With faucet accessories that reduce water flow to as little as 0.375 gpm, a household can experience payback in less than a month. Furthermore, the aerator is one of the easiest products to install. “It takes less than a minute,” adds Davis. Low-flow showerheads, although slightly more expensive, are another easy way to save water and money. These products reduce a typical 2.6 gpm shower experience to 1.0 or 1.5 gpm with little or no reduction in quality and can cost under $20. They require a little more DIY know-how, but the average homeowner should find it’s a project that can be completed without help from the plumber. (View BobVila.com’s How To Video, “Installing a High-Efficiency Showerhead,” for step by step instructions.) For an even less expensive water-reducing shower accessory, homeowners should consider a pressure-compensating shower control valve, which works with the existing showerhead to reduce water flow to anywhere from 2.0 to 1.5 gpm. These products can be found for as little as $9. Landscaping alterations can vastly reduce water usage, as well. “Hardy and native landscaping features can be low-maintenance and water-saving,” says Kathleen O’Brien, author of The Northwest Green Home Primer, a guide to building, remodeling and buying green. In her Northwest region, dry spells that stretch as long as five months are common. These regional climate considerations are important when selecting lawn and garden alternatives that can survive on very little rainfall over a long-term period. Indoor Air Quality Indoor air quality (IAQ) has become a widely acknowledged pillar of a green home. Unlike energy and water-saving improvements, however, IAQ investments do not see a “payback” by way of reduced utility bills. In fact, some homeowners may feel hard-pressed to see any reason at all to write checks for improvements to something that can’t be seen and probably won’t “wow” the neighbors. But with asthma cases on the rise and increased awareness of off-gassing products and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), more consumers are considering the health (and health-cost) implications of the home’s IAQ.

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