In The Bathroom

Source: Creative Commons image on Flickr by betsyjean79

First things first: You need a bathroom fan. Moisture is the enemy of houses, and bathrooms produce a lot of it. While you are getting a bathroom fan, you should step up and buy a two speed one that can be used at low RPM full time and high RPM when you are showering. The need for the two speeds will become more important as you improve the rest of your house and it's good to get it out of the way now.

Bathrooms use a lot of water. If you were building new I would tell you to save some of that water by plumbing for gray water reuse from your shower and sink, but it can certainly be a difficult even for new construction just to make it legal, on old construction you also have to get under the floorboards and replace old pipes as well as installing new ones. This is not for the faint of heart.

But you can still reduce your total water use by installing recent low flow toilets and shower heads. Low flow toilets have improved a lot in the past fifteen years, and now they work just as good or better than the old water hog ones. I don't know about low flow shower heads. I don't get a chance to try many and you only really notice if it's low flow if you don't like it. I wish that there were somewhere You could test them all out, like the Home Depot. I would like to try some of these shower heads from Bricor out, when I move I think I will get one but I have no idea which one.

Green Renovation, Repair and Remodeling: 3 More "R's"

One thing that you can count on is change. What really defines modernity is that change is constant and unpredictable. Change drives the economy of all durable goods. If something works and is desirable forever then there won't be many of it that need to be made. In American homes, that is why we renovate, repair, and remodel. It is also why we build new homes when there are many old homes for sale, but green renovation, repair, and remodeling, are what it is of consequence to this blog about how you should spend your money, and they are what interest me.

during the next week or so, I will detail some of the ways that you can do the 3 more green "r's" throughout your home. Because Flip That House always focuses on how you should do redo the kitchen to improve the saleability of a home I will start there.

Source: Creative Commons Image on Flickr by betsyjean79

On TV they are always talking about updating cabinets, and often pulling out quality custom cabinetry and replacing it with particleboard or plywood trash. Seriously. All they are doing is bringing VOCs and solvents into the home where there were none before. If your kitchen cabinets are more than fifty years old, I recommend that you keep them. You can paint or replace the doors, and if they are really in bad shape you can replace them, but remember that you are decreasing indoor air quality if you buy cheap cabinets.

Granite countertops are all the rage right now. They're pretty, but you can also get countertops that look like stone and are made from recycled materials instead of open quarries. There are ones made from recycled glass like EnviroSlab and Trinity Glass and even paper from Squak Mountain Stone which I mentioned a few weeks ago.

One place that it almost always make sense to invest is in more efficient appliances. The Energy Star label is a good place to get started. It's a designation created by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy to show products that have met certain efficiency standards. Energystar.gov keeps up-to-date lists of the appliances that have received the Energy Star rating, as well as their actual energy consumption. Some Energy Star labeled products are much more efficient than others, so it is a good idea to read the numbers on the models you are considering. If you want to know more about how more efficient appliances can save you money as well as helping the environment, I recommend the book The Home Energy Diet by Paul Scheckel.