Don’t leave the fate of the environment up to chance, says Brian Krause. As owner of Woodstar Energy, a provider of construction services for home remodeling and renewable energy serving the Northwest Chicago suburbs, he gives here his best energy-saving tips to help save the planet.
At Woodstar Energy, we know how important it is to be as energy efficient as possible. That’s why we have compiled some tips to help save as much of the world’s energy resources as possible.
The biggest reason to follow these suggestions is they are either cheap or easy to do, but they nonetheless have a huge benefit in the long run. It is always cheaper and easier to reduce energy use than to produce new energy.
Our planet-saving tips include:
- Replace incandescent light bulbs with CFL light bulbs. This is one of the cheapest and easiest tips of all.
- Change the thermostat in your home. If it is a manual thermostat, change it to a programmable thermostat.
- Using Energy Star-rated appliances. Over the long run, those tend to result in huge cost savings.
- If you have an old refrigerator in your basement, or an old freezer, you may want to consider replacing that with a newer Energy Star one. It will easily pay for itself in a couple of years, just in electrical fees. People put an old, worn-out fridge in their basement, but it just wastes tons of electricity. It is probably the biggest energy waster in the home.
- Make sure everyone in the house turns light off that are not being used.
- Shut down all computers that are not being used.
- Turn off your television when not watching it, and do not leave it on standby.
- When putting leftovers away in the fridge, allow them to cool on the counter first. It will cause the fridge to not work as hard and will save lots of electricity.
- Look at the seals around entry doors in the home and replace those if needed, or install weather stripping.
- Change your furnace filter once a month. That will cause the furnace to not work so hard and will save a decent amount of money.
- If you have an older hot water heater, put a hot water heater insulation blanket around it.
- During the summer, use ceiling fans effectively and think about whether you really need to run the air conditioner.
We have the responsibility to protect the environment for generations to come. At Woodstar Energy, we are doing our best to help you do just that.
