You are in My World Now

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Archive
  • Links
  • About
  • Guest blogger
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Archives for Home and Lifestyle / Living Green

10 Easy Ways To Become More Energy Efficient

September 22, 2012 by Trish

If you’ve somehow managed not to notice the amazing worldwide downturn in the past 4 or 5 years, then it’s probably best you keep on doing what you were. However, if you haven’t been living in a cave without a TV or radio, you’ll know that times are tough for many. Economies have been faltering, and growth in many countries has all but stopped, so now is the time to make your household more efficient and asve some money. Here are some easy tips to help you out:

1 – Install an Energy Monitor
As the world slowly becomes more aware of the need for energy saving, energy monitors are getting cheaper and cheaper. Some companies now give them away at reduced rates or even as freebees, so see if you can get one on the cheap. They are quite easy to install usually, and allows you to easily monitor your home usage.


2 – Reuse Your Water
Showering or using the bath takes a lot of water, and a lot of energy to heat all that water. If you leave the water in the bath when you’ve finished it will stay warm for most of the night, helping to heat the house. Once it’s cooled you can use it to water the garden, or invest in a grey water recycling systems, and use it to flush your toilet.

3 – Be Frugal
As boring as it sounds, being frugal is the best way to save money and become more energy efficient. Put on another jumper, turn the heat down, turn lights and appliances off and bask in the savings you’re getting

4 – Heating Controls
Heating controls work most efficiently when they can be controlled in individual rooms. This can be simply turning radiators off in rooms that you don’t use, or more complicated heating systems that will allow you to program a schedule. Make sure also that you’re not using the timer to keep the heating on for longer than you need.

5 – Turn Things Off
It seems silly, but not enough people do it. Manufacturers have built standby systems into many different electrical items because of our innate laziness, but they use a lot of power over time. Simply getting up and switching things off can save you a whole load of power over the course of a year.

6 – Check The Levels
Read through the manufacturer’s instructions and make sure you’re not using electrical items such as fridges and freezers, heaters, boilers and thermostats on a higher setting that you need. Many people unwittingly run appliances at higher levels than needed, constantly costing them money.

7 – Insulate
If your home is well insulated, more heat will stay in, therefore meaning you need to spend less on heating. It’s simple but it works. Try and target roofs and walls first (especially if you live in older houses), as they tend to be the places that lose the most.

8 – Rechargeable Batteries
As a country, we discard over 600 million batteries per year. They’re costly to purchase in the first place and tricky to recycle. Why not replace all the batteries in the house with rechargeable ones, the electricity costs from recharging them will be far less than the cost of new ones.

9 – Energy Efficient Lighting
Compact fluorescent lighting has become more and more popular in the past 5 years, especially since government directives to phase out filament bulbs has begun. The technology has improved vastly, and now there is little noticeable difference between them and the old style products.

10 – Draught Proofing
Along the same lines as insulation, there are often many places in a house where air can escape. This acts as a heat drain, and hinders the good work you’ve been doing in the rest of the house. Make sure that doors and windows don’t have gaps, and if you can afford to fit new ones look into draught excluders and secondary removable glazing panels.

Image courtesy of: www.flickr.com/photos/jwthompson2
Rob is home energy specialist working for a electricity price comparison site www.electricityprices.org.uk. He is passionate about ecological matters, and loves finding easy ways to save money.





Filed Under: Finance, Home and Lifestyle, Living Green Tagged With: compact fluorescent lighting, draught proof, energy efficient, energy monitor, frugal, insulate, rechargable batteries, reuse water, save money

Need to find better ways to cool our home

June 11, 2008 by Tricia

Now that it’s finally get warm outside here in Toronto I’ve come to realize that we need to find a better way to keep the house cool in the summer.

We have window air conditioners, but they seem to only cool half the house. If I go upstairs into the non- air conditioned spare bedroom on the south side of the house it’s almost as hot as if we didn’t have any air conditioning at all. Same for our kitchen which also faces south.

I have curtains in the kitchen and a roman blind in the spare bedroom, but I’m thinking about getting some wood blinds so that I can use them to block some of the strong sunlight that comes into both of those rooms in the morning and early afternoon.

I figure if I can keep those two rooms a little cooler the rest of the house will be cooler too and perhaps we might even be able to turn the air conditioning down a notch or two.

Filed Under: Decor, Home and Lifestyle, Interior Design, Items to Try, Living Green, Toronto Tagged With: air, air conditioning, block sunlight, cool, cool house, curtains, early afternoon, home, House, kitchen, morning, notch, roman blind, shut blinds, shut curtains, south, spare bedroom, summer, sunlight, Toronto, upstairs, window, window air conditioners, wood blinds

Use a Natural Oxygen pool treatment and save money as well as the environment

May 9, 2008 by Tricia

I hope that everyone is enjoying the lovely spring weather. It’s been cool here so far this May, much cooler than April was if you can believe that, but I know that there are warm days on the way. Perhaps you live in an area where it’s already warm enough that you’ve started planning what you’ll do on those hot summer days?

I wish we had a pool, but our yard is far too small. A wading pool would have to suffice for us if we were hot enough to want to soak! Some of our friends do have pools and we’re lucky enough to be invited over for pool parties often enough each summer.

Our friends that have pools have been starting to to talk about getting their pools ready for the upcoming season. I’m sure those of you with pools have been thinking about getting them ready too.

If you have a pool or if you’ve been thinking about putting a pool in this year have you spent any time thinking about what kind of water treatment you’ll use? It’s one of the most important parts of pool maintenance from my understanding.

I’m all for environmentally friendly pool treatment systems. We garden organically and try to live as green as possible so it only makes sense that if we did have a pool we’d want the safest type of water treatment.

If you feel the same way or if you’re interested in learning more about eco friendly pool treatments you should take a moment to visit Ecosmartepool.com. They specialize in chlorine free pool filters and spas.

By now I think that just about everyone knows that chlorine treated water or pool systems aren’t very good for the environment.

I always thought that salt chlorinators were a safe alternative, but after reading some of the information and articles over at Ecosmartepool.com I know better!

Did you know that salt water pools actually use chlorine generators to keep the water clean. Chlorine generators require quite a bit of maintenance, some produce messy byproducts that isn’t easily disposed of, and as I said before Chlorine treatments really aren’t considered green.

Why not use a system that’s 100% chemical free? That’s were EcoSmarte comes in … They specialize in salt water, chlorine and hazardous chemical free pool systems. They also have a line of spa and pond systems as well that are equally chemical free.

EcoSmarte’s pool systems use natural oxygen to maintain the quality of the water in your pool. Natural oxygen systems are more effective than ones that use bacquacil or bromine, plus they are easier to use than chlorine based systems. Not only that they are also safer than ozone treatments too.

One of the other products that EcoSmarte sells is called EcoSmart filter glass media. This can be used for pool treatment systems.

One of the things that I like about EcoSmarte is that they are dedicated to protecting the environment. They actually donate 5% of their profits to environmental charities. They have a strong belief in their water treatment systems and are in fact, against Chlorine and Salt water based pool treatments.

There’s lots of good reason to consider switching to a natural oxygen based pool treatment system. One of them is the fact that you won’t be purchasing dangerous hazardous chemicals to maintain your pool system. That will not only make your pool maintenance storage area safer if you have kids or pets, but by not having to buy all those chemicals you’ll save a ton of money! Think about it!

Oh and you’ll save on your energy bill too. The EcoSmarte pool system is so energy efficient that it costs less than $1 a month to operate. Cool! You can reduce your carbon footprint with your energy savings!

If you’re thinking about visiting the EcoSmarte website to read some of their articles or perhaps thinking of contacting them to get one of their product brochures or a free quote you’ll be pleased to know that they also offer a 60 day satisfaction guarantee and a 5 year warranty on all purchases.

EcoSmarte definitely seems to be a company that believes in and stands by their product. Do visit the site if you have a pool or if you’re thinking of installing a pool in the near future.

Filed Under: Health Fitness + Beauty, Home and Lifestyle, Living Green, Recreation, Services, Shopping, Sports and Games Tagged With: 1 dollar per month, alternative, April, articles, bacquacil, bromine, buy, byproducts, chemicals, chlorine, chlorine generators, clean, dangerous, donate, eco, Ecosmarte, Ecosmartepool, energy, energy efficient, friends, garden, Green, guarantee, important, information, live green, messy, money, Natural oxygen treatment, no chemicals, no hazardous chemicals, oxygen, planning, pond, pool filters, pool maintenance, pool parties, pool systems, product, products, quality, reduce, reduce carbon footprint, safer, salt water pools, save environment, save money, Saving, spa, spas, Spring, spring weather, storage, summer, system, type of water, warm, warranty, water, water generators, water systems, water treatment

Worth a visit

Categories

Recent Posts

  • The Benefits Of Having Pets In Home
  • Why Has Red Hair Become So Popular?
  • Creative Ideas For A Better Bedroom
  • Stylish Manicures: A Fashion Addiction
  • Top 10 Interesting Nutrition Trivial Facts About Certain Fruits And Vegetables

Recent Comments

  • My Bell Pepper weight loss experiment — Home and Garden Diva on I’m losing weight again
  • Thank you! — You are in My World Now on Turn a photo into a canvas wall hanging
  • My friend and her weight loss plans — You are in My World Now on Helping a friend lose weight
  • Looking forward to the Beach Rib Fest — You are in My World Now on Bringing our dog to Woofstock this weekend
  • Bad news on the health front this week — You are in My World Now on My knees don’t like this cold weather

Subscribe

  • Full Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS

FREE -Subscribe in a reader

Subscribe to You are in My World Now by Email it's FREE!


Follow me on Twitter!
Eavestrough Cleaning Toronto

pool leak detection - colin irons is the leader in pool repair and replacement

Shopping


  • Gifts, Clothing,
    Bath and Beauty and More!
    At our Amazon store.

Tag Cloud

beautiful bed blog bloom Canada Chris Cold Crohns dog evening Family flower flowers friends funny garden Green Thumb Sunday grow GTS health home House Humor husband money neighbors photo photos plants puppy Shopping sick snow Spring summer tired Toronto TV visit walk weather weekend winter Wordless Wednesday WW

Site Stats


Visitors

a0f4f19c33833bfad79089431ed222bd-332

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Pages

  • About
  • Archive
  • Become a guest blogger for You are In My World Now
  • Blog
  • Blogrolls
    • Canadian Bloggers
    • Do Follow Bloggers
    • Green Thumb Sunday
    • Toronto Bloggers
  • Contact
  • Disclosure Policy
  • Privacy Policy

Connect with Us

  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2025 · eleven40 Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in