From Guest Blogger Ronald Wolf: The House of the Future–How Tech Will Help Us Get Green

While a lot of people name awareness as the major issue preventing people from living green, this is not always the case. You see, sometimes people simply forget to turn their lights off, lower the temperature on their thermostat or switch to the power-saving mode. Sure, one may argue that this is irresponsibility, but it is far more likely to attribute these flaws to a lapse in memory or even a simple human nature. However, what if you lived in a home that helped you out in this effort. We are of course talking about the house of the future or the ways in which tech and new trends could help us go green.

Rethinking your lighting system

The easiest way for your household to go green is for it to do something about its lighting system. First of all, you need to start thinking about the utilization of the natural light. For this, you might want to invest in things like rolling automatic shutters, seeing as how they will help provide privacy as well as protect your home from overheating during the summer (thus reducing the power spent by your AC).

Apart from this, you can replace your incandescent bulbs with LED ones and in this way use four times less power in order to provide the same amount of light. For those who are even more serious about teching-up their household in order to save power, might even want to think about automating their home’s lighting system. In this way, you can automate your lights to switch off when no one is in the room or even choose the level of light in the room. Over the course of the year, the differences one faces here are huge.

Think about zero energy home

Finally, the end goal of all your efforts is to make your home truly zero energy. What we mean by that is that it should produce almost as much energy as it consumes. To achieve this, you might need to install solar panels. The greatest problem with this idea is that it is quite expensive and that it might take 9 to 12 years for it to pay off. Instead, you could at least install a solar-powered water heater, which makes a huge difference on your utility bill on its own and can repay itself in under 2 years. On the other hand, if you are living in a region where selling excess power back to the grid is possible, you might still want to consider going with full solar-powered home as soon as possible.

Improving your waste management

Another important issue is the one revolving around your household’s waste management. You see, not everything goes in the garbage bin. Sometimes, an item you no longer have the use to can be sold or donated and in this way bring some actual value. Furthermore, some people try to repurpose these items in hope of using them again. Still, if an item is no longer in use but is an important family heirloom or a treasured memento. Well, your best bet is to look for a local Super Easy Storage facility and depose it there for a time being. Needless to say, this is both practical and eco-friendly solution for those who are still on the fence.

The Power Vampire

Those mythical beings that would feast on your blood and leave you to die are luckily still only living in movies and books. But today we have a different kind of a vampire, it’s not out for blood but money.

The thing is many household appliances if still plugged in are on standby and in reality not off. They slowly waste electricity and end up costing you a lot of money. So if you do not want to go around the house and unplug everything you can use gadgets like smart power strips and save yourself a lot of money but even more important save mother nature just a bit more.

In conclusion

The best thing about these above-listed innovations is that they require minimum investment on your side in their day-to-day eco-friendly operations. What this means is that the hazard of wasting more energy than you have to due to your own negligence will be drastically reduced. Sure, nurturing your planet-saving habits is still important but in this way, you at least have an ally in your own household, capable of sharing this burden.