Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
The journey toward using less energy in homes doesn't have to be as long or costly as it might appear.
That's the word from Susan Meredith of Austin, who has written a book called Beyond Light Bulbs: Lighting the Way to Smarter Energy Management.
She says making changes to use less energy is a matter of changing habits and changing households.
"It's reducing unwanted or wasteful energy consumption," she says. "Spending money on electricity and water, etc., that you don't have to spend is wasteful."
She says changes come in three basic categories: things that can be changed quickly and relatively inexpensively by the homeowner, things that take a little more time and effort, and finally, things such as a new roof or HVAC system that take both financial and logistical planning to achieve.
Austin homeowners Thomas and Laura Brand are among the large group of homeowners looking to make their home more energy efficient. They hired a "green team" through Meredith's company to evaluate their 5,500-square foot home and give them specific recommendations for increasing its energy efficiency.
"I've been talking about doing my house for the last 4 1/2 years, and there's very few things that have gotten done in the last 4 1/2 years," Thomas Brand says.
He says he's been stuck because he knew changes needed to be made, but was unsure exactly what to change or how to correct things like insuffient insulation. Now, after working with a "green team," he is getting a game plan ready to reduce energy use.
"We're now waiting for the final energy audit to determine what those next steps are to make our home more energy efficient," Brand says. "It's something that certainly has come to the forefront now, because we would like to do our part for the environment, we would like to conserve energy and certainly we would like to conserve money."
The Brands now are replacing insulation, turning their water heater to the lowest possible setting, and turning out lights where people leave rooms. They're considering adding solar tubes to help bring light into the home from a two-story high skylight.
The Brands are also in the process of changing out the dozens of light bulbs in their home for more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.
Meredith and her husband, Robert, say replacing traditional bulbs with CFL's, even if the traditional bulbs are new, will offer significant cost savings.
They also recommend making sure insulation is the right kind and amount, and that every gap on the exterior of a home be properly sealed.
"If you need a new roof, we'll talk about the metal roof, or if you need a new HVAC sytem that's fine, but there's so much before that," Susan Meredith says.
For more information, go to her web site at beyondlightbulbs.com.
