As you may have read on our For Homeowners page, before you really dive into making your house greener you need to calculate your current baseline – you need to perform a holistic home sustainability audit. From there you can identify your budget, understand costs, calculate ROI (Return on Investment), and create your personal plan of action.
For those DIY planners out there, skip the next paragraph and continue on with the rest of the steps below.
For those of you that might want some help in the planning phase, we offer a personalized, turnkey Home Sustainability Plan at a very lost cost. Please see our Home Sustainability Plan page if this is something that you are interested in.
For our DIY’ers, let’s get started!
Step 1: Understand Options / Calculating your Baseline
In order to create a plan that allows you to go from A to B, you need to know what these points are. ‘A’ represents your current household resource usage, comfort or value (baseline), and ‘B’ represents your end goal or desired household resource usage, comfort or value.
Calculating your baseline will differ slightly depending on your goal. If your primary goal is:
- to reduce your utility bills,you should start by logging your current utility usage (electricity, oil, gas, wood, water, garbage, recycling, etc.). You will want to log this in terms of usage versus dollars. Ideally, you would log a 12 month period. For most utilities, you can find a 12 month history of usage on your bill.
To identify the larger energy ‘hogs’ or contributors, there are various calculators that exist.
For electricity, I like the calculator from Energy.gov .
For water, I like the calculator from Watercalculator.org .
- to create a more comfortable home,you’ll want to make note of the current comfort according to the following attributes:
- Warmer Home
- Cooler Home
- Less Drafty Home
- Dryer Air
- More Humid Air
- Quieter Home
- Fresh Air
You will probably want to use a scale of 1-10 to measure how well your home adheres to these comfort attributes today.
- to add value to your house,you’ll want to get a current comp to understand your current home value – and research comps of other houses that are similar in size and location but include green features.
- to protect the environment or to reduce climate change,you’ll want to use carbon footprint calculators.
One of my favorite carbon footprint calculators is from Carbon Footprint.
Depending on the calculator that you use (and it’s functionality), you may need to supplement with additional calculations. For example, many calculators omit the reduced emissions from buying food and products locally (approximately a 90% reduction) or from food and product waste (garbage).
Step 2: Identify budget / Understand Costs / ROI on specific items
Once you’ve calculated your baseline, you are ready to identify your budget, your costs and the associated ROI (return on investment).
This step is typically a circular step – as opposed to a step that works sequentially. You may not be able to identify your budget until you know how much items cost and what the ROI is on specific items. Or, maybe you already have a rough budget, but need to know the ROI on specific items in order to refine.
Sometimes a budget is a very specific number and not flexible. For example, you can set aside $5,000 per year to support your Path to a Green Home. Or, maybe it’s more flexible and based on ROI. For example, you can afford up to a $100,000 project, but are only willing to invest in items that provide a certain ROI. Also, budget may be influenced by financial help or incentives.
In general, we like to look at items that give you the biggest ‘bang for your buck.’
Step 3: Pick 3-5 items to focus on
It’s time to create your plan!
Based on your investment strategy above, pick 3-5 items from your home resource list that you feel comfortable with. Ideally the 3-5 items that give you the biggest bang for your buck – the items with the best ROI.
Create a plan (includes financial budget, ‘who’ will do the work, timeline, etc.) on how to complete these items and measure progress against your baseline on a monthly or quarterly basis.
Feel free to contact me with any questions in this area.
Step 4: Repeat
Once you complete 2-3 items (or work them into your regular lifestyle), pick another item or two from the list to get started on.
Congrats, you are well on your Path To A Green Home!
Please check out my other blog topics for more information. Or, if there are any questions that you have, please add them to the comments below (or to my Contact page) and I will share my experiences and/or research.
Lastly, if you feel that the DIY approach is too time consuming, feel free to contact us about getting a personalized, turnkey Home Sustainability Plan done for you.