Ride Out the Housing Slump with Simple Home Improvements

Since a sagging market brings both housing woes and financial uncertainty, it might be wise to change the priorities of your planned home improvements and renovations.  More likely than not, you’ll want to stay in your home a little longer while still taking steps to increase its value.

As suggested by Dan Fritschen, author of Remodel of Move? Make the Right Decision, many people feeling the strain of the market should reorder their home improvement plans by expense and required skill.  Following your budget, there are a number of things that can be done, relatively inexpensively, to increase both the value and livability of your home.  For instance, painting or refinishing kitchen and bathroom cabinets and floors, installing new interior doors, replacing windows, new crown molding and baseboard, replacing old model toilets and sinks with new water efficient designs, layering new carpet and refinishing hardwood floors, and fixing and upgrading appliances are all things that can be done on a relatively fixed budget, in a short amount of time, with little or no professional labor necessary.

For more extensive projects, Fritschen reccomends that you take your time, research possibilities, and calculate the costs and benefits of the improvement.  Some of the smarter, more in-depth projects people choose to do include: remodeling a kitchen, remodeling bathrooms, finishing basements or attics, adding on rooms, enlarging family rooms, and adding stories.

As always, regardless of the extent to which one decides to make home improvements, the current market strongly supports green improvements that both save you energy and increase the value of your house.

Replace Old Appliances: Save the Earth… and Some Money

If you are looking to trim some money off of your utility bills and help out Mother Earth at the same time, your first green steps could start in the kitchen and laundry rooms.

According to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM), since 2000, the energy consumed by new home appliances has rapidly decreased, with refrigerators, dishwashers, and clothes washers accounting for nearly 50% of the drop.  For instance, replacing an eight year-old clothes washer with a newer average-efficiency one will not only trim more than $60 off of your electricity bill every year, it will also save nearly 5,000 gallons of water per year – a statistic that carries significantly more weight in drought-ridden areas of the South.

Not ready to take quite that leap of replacing your perfectly well working appliances?  Here are a few tips to save some energy and trim down those bills with what you already have:

• Allow hot foods to cool before placing them in the refrigerator.  Also, cover any foods that may release moisture.
• Limit the number of times you open the refrigerator and freezer doors.
• Scrape, but do not pre-rinse dishes before loading them into the dishwasher.
• Use that “no-heat air dry” feature on your dishwasher when you are not in a rush.
• Make sure to appropriately set the load size on your clothes washer and use the cold water settings whenever possible.
• Leave the door open on the washer when you are finished washing to allow air to circulate.
• Clean the lint filter in your dryer after every load (you might even want to do the same to the dryer’s outside exhaust on a regular basis).

Simply by taking these steps, you will be well on your way to a greener lifestyle (environmentally and financially).

Drink to Your Health

Water quality has become an important issue for many homeowners, given recent reports about the quality of tap and bottled water. According to the National Tap Water Quality Database (www.ewg.org/tapwater), 260 contaminants have been found across the nation in residential tap water, and for more than half (141) of these contaminants, there are no enforceable safety standards. Nearly 200 million people are drinking these contaminants in their water.

A number of companies produce home filtration systems that can improve water quality. Pureez, for instance, recently introduced a countertop water purifier that uses an 11-watt ultraviolet (UV) lamp, as well as a double-active carbon filter and a 0.6 micron filter, to kill microbes in tap water. (UV technology is a cost-effective way to disinfect drinking water, according to the company.) The system reduces particulates in water by 99.9 percent, reduces chloroform by 95 percent and reduces chlorine by 75 percent.

The Pureez water filter can produce water at a variety of temperatures, from chilled to boiling, and it has a programmable volume control, so it can expend varying amounts of water, from a small cup to a large cup. It comes with a self-installation kit for easy set-up next to a sink or refrigerator, or it can be professionally installed. The Pureez water filter retails for $999, with a number of payment plans available, and comes in six colors. For more information: www.pureez.com or 866-939-7873.

Energy Star Appliances and Lighting

Generally, Energy Star-rated appliances use 10 to 50 percent less energy and water than standard units. Among the 50 categories of Energy Star products are energy-efficient air conditioners, clothes washers, dishwashers, refrigerators and dehumidifiers.

Swapping a 10-year-old room air conditioner for an Energy Star-qualified unit can easily save $25 annually in energy costs. Every Energy Star air conditioner comes with an Energy Guide label that lists the unit’s EER (energy efficiency ratio) and compares the energy use of that unit with all similar models within the same BTU range. The greater the EER, the greater are the savings.

Energy Star clothes washers use fast spin speeds to extract more water from clothes than non-Energy Star models, reducing clothes dryer time and therefore energy use. Energy Star dishwashers consume at least 41 percent less energy than the federal minimum standard requires. They also use less water, including hot water, therefore saving on heating of the water as well.

Today’s Energy Star refrigerators use about half the energy of models predating 1993. Featuring high-efficiency compressors, better insulation and more precise temperature and defrost mechanisms, they use, at minimum, 15 percent less energy than required by current federal standards and 40 percent less energy than conventional models sold in 2001.

The more efficient refrigeration coil, compressor and fan of an Energy Star dehumidifier enable removal of moisture from interior air with less energy than a conventional unit, potentially saving up to $20 annually.
Energy Star-qualified light bulbs or light fixtures use up to 75 percent less energy than standard lighting, produce 75 percent less heat (reducing the air cooling load for a space) and last up to 10 times longer.

LEDs, still an emerging technology, consume the least amount of energy of any lighting source (except daylight, of course). Because they are highly directional and put together in an array, they require special fixtures to maximize light distribution, which some manufacturers already offer. In addition, LED strips are increasingly popular choices above cabinets, under counters and inside kickspaces. For more information: www.energystar.gov.

Smart Wine Storage

It’s becoming more and more common these days to install a small, built-in or freestanding wine cellar in the kitchen. Not only is a kitchen-based wine cellar considered a convenience by many homeowners, but it’s also a great way to show off your wine collection. These stylish cellars can hold anywhere from a few to as many as 40 or 50 bottles or more, and will keep your wine in a cool, low-light, humidity-controlled place until you’re ready for it.

Generally, two types of kitchen wine cellars are available – those cooled by compressors, similar to your refrigerator, and those cooled by a thermoelectric system, which uses an electrical current flow through two dissimilar conductors to create a cooling effect. The benefits of thermoelectric cooling is that is uses less electricity than a compressor, is very quiet, gives off no vibrations (which can sometimes affect the sediments in a bottle of wine), and releases no CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), as compressors do.

On the downside, thermoelectric cellars can take longer to cool a bottle of wine, and can cool only to a certain temperature, usually about 18 to 20 degrees below the ambient temperature of a room. So if your kitchen is 70 degrees, you can cool your wine bottles to about 50 degrees – fine for reds but not ideal for whites.

Thermoelectric wine cellars are widely available. Haier, for instance, sells a number of thermoelectric wine cellars with capacity from six to 48 bottles. Some have dual storage compartments (for whites and reds) and electronic control LED displays. Franklin Chef, Avanti, Urbina Design and SubZero also make thermoelectric wine cellars. Prices range from a few hundred dollars and up.

Which type of wine cellar is right for you? That depends on your home, your tastes in wine and your interest in energy efficiency and air quality. Talk to your local wine dealer or retailer, but just be aware than you have options before you buy. For more information: www.haieramerica.com.