Guest Column by Beth and Todd Harrison: A Greener Rockville Starts at Home — Eight Steps to a More Environmentally Responsible Home in 2008 (Pt.3)

>Final in a three-part series by Rockville Central friends Beth and Todd Harrison. (Part One is here and Part Two is here.)This week is our final installment of the series with the last three steps for creating a more environmentally responsible home. This week’s steps are all one-time changes you can make in your home with not much more effort than a trip to Home Depot.Each year, our electric rates from Pepco keep going up. In some places, electric companies are experimenting with pricing that would charge more during peak times, in order to encourage people to decrease power usage. One easy thing we can do is to replace incandescent lights with compact florescent bulbs. A compact florescent bulb uses about 70% less power than an equivalent incandescent bulb, and they last about ten times as long. The Environmental Defense Fund has said that if every U.S household replaced three 60-watt incandescent blubs with compact florescent blubs, the reduction in energy usage and related green house emissions would be the equivalent of taking 3.5 million cars off the road.d quite a bit in the past couple of years. You now can get bulbs in just about any size and shape, and you can chose shades of light ranging from warm to bright white.A typical shower head uses 2.5 gallons of water per minute, which means a 10 minute shower each day will consume 9,125 gallons of water per year per person. It’s not just water that’s being used but also the power required to heat the water before it goes down the drain. One simple thing you can do to reduce your water and energy consumption is to install a low flow shower head that uses 1.8 gallons per minute or less.The last step in our series is probably the one thing that will save the most power in your home—installing a programmable thermostat. If you work outside the home, a programmable thermostat allows you automatically to change the temperature setting each day when you leave and then return it to normal before you return home. Of course, it won’t save you anything if you don’t keep the temperature at a moderate setting. I’ll go ahead and fess up to where we keep our thermostat to give you a point of reference: in the winter 65 degrees at night, 67 in the mornings when we shower, and 63 degrees when we are gone during the day, and in the summer 76 when we are at home and 81 when are gone.

Step #6: Install Compact Florescent Light Bulbs

If you tried compact florescent several years ago and were disappointed with their performance, take another look. The technology has improve

Step #7: Install Low Flow Shower Heads

When I mention “low flow,” you may be thinking of that Seinfeld episode when Jerry’s landlord installed low flow shower heads in the building and Jerry and Kramer ended up with “flat hair.” You don’t need to worry about “flat hair” with today’s low flow shower heads. We bought an H2O Kinetic shower head by Delta and liked it so much we bought another one to install in our second bathroom. The water droplets from the showerhead are much larger and come out with more pressure, making you feel like you are getting more water. Installation is really easy and does not require a plumber or any special tools. All you need is a wrench, some Teflon tape, and about five minutes of your time (here are instructions on replacing a showerhead).

Step #8: Use a Programmable Thermostat

Installing a programmable thermostat is a bit more involved than the low flow showerhead but still easier than you may think. It requires no special tools and you don’t need to call an HVAC specialist (here are installation instructions). You can find a variety of programmable thermostats at Home Depot, Lowe’s, or any major hardware store, and it will pay for itself in just a few months.

Conclusion

We hope you have found this series useful and informative, and that you will consider making these 8 steps something you commit to implementing in 2008. If each of us will work a little harder and be willing to make some minor changes in how we live, then together we can do so much to protect our environment. And the great thing is, the steps we have outlined are easy to stick to and will actually save you money in the long run. If you have additional suggestions of things we can all do to help protect our environment or if you have experiences implementing the steps we have presented, please share them in the comments section.

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