Home Energy Checklist

If you're on the hunt for ways to improve your household energy use,  nothing beats a room-by-room inspection.

Spend a morning walking around your house or apertment, looking at every nook and cranny, and every power socket, in search of energy weak spots. Use the checklist here to note what you see, then draw up list of the energy-saving improvements you can make.

Building structure

• Is there insulation in the roof sape?
• Is there insulation in the walls?
• Is there insulation under the floor?

Bedroom

• Do the windows need curtains or shading devives?
• Can incandescent light bulbs be replaced with energy-efficient bulbs?
• Space heater:can you do without it?
• Air-conditioning: can you do whitout it? Are the setting on the thermostat the most efficient?
• Central heating: are the setting on the thermostat and timner the most efficient?
• Audiovisual equipment: cab it be turned off easily at the powerpoint to save stand-by energy?
• Mobile phone charger: do you unplug it after use?
• Any unnecessary gadgets in use?

The cost of Modern life

Since about hafway through the last century, the world has been burning through energy at an ever- increasing rate. Cars and houses have got an bigger, people tend to buy more, eat more and travel more.

As a diret result of this, not only have our energy bills skyrocket, but so too have overall cost to us, and the enviroiment, all of which will have lasting effects around the globe.

What exactly is happening?

Energy use is increasing :

The general trend towords people living in larger houses, buying more and larger cars, appliances and gadgets-generally over-consuming-requires ever-increasing amounts of energy.  with our more affluent lifestyles, we have rapidly increased our comsumtion, which has caused our energy bills to increase.

The cost of supplying energy is increasing:

As non-renewable energy souces such as oil that is processed into petrol and coal that is used to generate electricity to power our homes, offices and factories are diminishing, the cost of obtaining and processing these resources is rising.

We are changing our planet:

When non-renewable fuels such as coal and oil are burned, they produce pollution.  Some is air-bone perticle pollution (smog and soot) and some is greenhouse gas pollution, which we know causes global temperatures to rise. The enviroiment consequences of global warming have begun-drought, floods and violent storms-along with billions of dollars in property damage, infrstucture losses and crop wipeouts.