• Have a windmill installed. These run about $4,500 installed for one of the smaller ones, but it will cut your energy costs significantly, easily paying for itself in just a few short years. You have a rare opportunity to be one of the first to have a windmill put up on your property. Make sure to take advantage of all of the tax credits available to you.

• Consider heating your home with geothermal energy. This technology has been around a few years, but it’s been steadily improving. Basically, with a geothermic system, you heat and cool your house with dirt.  Obviously, this reduces the heating bill dramatically.

• Have a rain collection barrel or water feature installed. Rain water can be used for just about anything city water can, except for drinking. And if you don’t want an unsightly barrel by the side of your house, you can have attractive water feature installed instead and still recycle the rain water for use in the garden and the yard.

• Consider adding a water feature to your yard, such as a small pond, a perpetual waterfall, or a water garden. Even a small water feature provides much needed habitat for birds and other animals. Best of all, if you’re quiet, you can sit and watch them splash in the water for hours.

• Install solar panels. Better yet, install the newer, considerably more efficient solar rods. This is just one more way you can both cut your energy costs and help protect the planet at the same time.

The costs of some of these suggestions might seem a bit prohibitive, but if you include the improvement and its cost in the home loans, it really doesn’t affect your mortgage payments all that much. And if you jump on these projects quickly, much of the cost can be defrayed through government programs designed to offer incentives to those who choose to use green technology for their home.

Photo via Jesse Wagstaff

The fact is, that’s not always true. If you’re not careful, your efforts to go green can actually wind up using more energy than not. If you’re really concerned about the environment, you won’t just buy “green” products to ease your conscience. You’ll watch out for these pitfalls:

1. Turning off the lights. Yes, turning off an incandescent light saves energy. However, the same is not true for CFL bulbs. When you turn them on and off, you shorten their life. In addition, it’s actually cheaper to leave the CFL light on if you’ll be out of the room for 15 minutes or less. Still, CFLs are the way to go. They use about a fourth of the electricity of regular bulbs, and release less mercury too.
2. Buy products that claim to be “green” or “eco friendly.” While the FTC is cracking down on products that claim to be green, and while manufacturers are improving their labels, make sure you know whether a product is really green or not. A label will placate your conscience, but it won’t save the planet.
3. Use solar power. For a single-family dwelling, it almost never makes sense to jump on the solar bandwagon. There are so many other things – from tightening up your ductwork to improving your insulation to upgrading appliances – that will make more of a difference. Even with state tax credits and federal discounts, solar power is still prohibitive in many places.
4. Build a new home. Building a new home isn’t necessarily greener than buying an older home. The fact is that new homes tend to be bigger and have more complex architecture, and they use about as much energy as homes built ten years ago.
5. Buy carbon offsets. The fact of the matter is that carbon offsets are just a way for you to alleviate your conscience. There’s no universal standard involved in verifying offsets, and it’s an area the FTC has yet to spend too much time investigating. There’s also not a way to guarantee you can become neutral. If you’ve done everything else you can to reduce your footprint, consider donating to consumer education causes rather than to carbon offsets. While not all carbon offsets are scams, the industry seems to be prone at the moment to those just seeking to make a fortune at the expense of your conscience.

Photo via 416style