my house was built 30 years ago and currently already has new double pane windows with weather stripping, new doors new floors, new carpet we are gonna put in more insulation some time soon but i still believe that there is more that can be done in increase how much heat the house holds in and dose not release.
Efficiency news
There is not much more we could do to our home because we built it efficient to begin with, It has a strong R factor in isolation, lots of south facing windows, the capacity to be heated by wood or gas, it has sky lights for better natural light, there are cross ventilation windows, gas lights as well as dryer and stove, double paned windows, wooden floors that can be swept without electricity, and a centrally placed flue. The chimney bricks get warm and radiate heat all around the center of the house. The only thing I would have liked to have installed that we did not were solar panels.
I work at a museum and we have an exhibit that’s all about living ‘green’. It talks about everything from various types of insulation that’s available (denim is popular!) to rain barrels to collect rain water to use for watering plants and such. Adding in skylights will help pull in natural lighting. Replacing older windows and doors that aren’t sealed well will definately help.
Here’s a link to our page with links to the contractors that designed our exhibit. Some have information that might be useful to you.
http://www.thevlm.org/living-green.aspx
i cud paint my white howse black woud that help u?
Have the windows replaced. Seal all doors/windows. Install ceiling fans. Thats all I can think of at the moment.
Beside moving to a new power efficient house not much more that as been done and that would be worth the investment.
Live like Europeans live!
Just kidding… but I am Italian and I can assure you that our power usage are way smaller than average American ones, even if nothing is missing in our houses!
For example, almost everybody in Italy uses high efficiency, natural gas heaters for heating and hot water. You can find very few places with oil heating, and none with electric heating.
Fridge: if you buy a fridge in Italy, you can bet that it’s going to use one tenth of the power that an average US fridge uses. No kidding.
Dryer. Why Southern California people have dryers, when the sun shines every day of the year??? Do you know that in Italy almost nobody has a dryer, because it would be insanely expensive? We just didn’t forget how to use the sun to dry out clothes!
You can buy one of those small meters on http://www.smartgridelectronics.com/2009/12/smart-meters.html and try to find out what are the most expensive devices in your house.