Keeping your Home Cool
Lowering your heating and air-conditioning bill is a goal just about all U.S. citizens have in common. Now, there are several websites offering landscaping advice that may require some physical labor, but you’ll see the results in your utility bills decreasing by “growing green.”
The U.S. Department of Energy website, EnergySavers.gov, now includes web pages dedicated to landscaping your home, with project ideas that help reduce cooling and heating costs specific to your region of the country.
For instance, not looking forward to air-conditioning bills this year in Central Texas? The website suggests planting trees that provide the house with shade throughout the day, and can also help block heavy winds during colder months, according to the EnergySavers.gov website.
“Using shade effectively requires you to know the size, shape, and location of the moving shadow that your shading device casts,” the website suggests. “Trees can be selected with appropriate sizes, densities, and shapes for almost any shading application. To block solar heat in the summer but let much of it in during the winter, use deciduous trees. To provide continuous shade or to block heavy winds, use dense evergreen trees or shrubs,” the website says.
Other websites include one for Austin and Central Texas residents provided by the City of Austin (see below for URL)—some of the designs ambitious, but it’s not so hard to complete small areas at a time as your personal finances allow.
Greenlivingideas.com is another great online resource to learn about green landscaping, and smarter home energy in general. The site, owned by Simple Earth Media, an environmental new and social media company, says that today, at least half of a typical U.S. household’s summer energy bill is devoted to air conditioning. It recommends insulating your roof, installing fans and vents in your attic so that rising heat leaves your home, and as well as checking doors, windows and other areas of your home for cracks that may have appeared, in order to seal them and increase home energy efficiency, the website says.
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