Thank you so much for joining us today, Rebekah and Steven Hren, authors of Carbon Free Home. The Hren's are on a book tour promoting their innovative collection of remodeling projects, aimed at reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. The thirty-six projects are written for a variety of skill levels, and can be integrated into newer building designs as well as renovations.
The Hren's shared a couple renter-friendly projects:
1. Turn down your hot water heaters! Typically they are set around 140 degrees, but will function effectively at 120 degrees.
2. Stevens favorite project is to build a solar oven, which takes further advantage of the California sunshine (if you're local.) Cooking your food with the sun is a beautiful thing!
3. Rebekah enjoys the refrigerator installation project. Insulating your fridge on the outside, with cork, carpet, or a variety of used materials, reduced the fridge's energy use by 20% to 30%. Wow!
For fellow composters: One favorite project for the home owner is to install a bio-digester system which creates and captures methane energy as it's produced, throughout the decomposing process. Check out Carbon Free Home for more info.
The Hren's believe that it is always best to use what you have before investing in something new. This is the "greenest" approach you can take. It is important to get the most out of what we have first and foremost. Tearing down an old home to build a "green" home maybe isn't that "green" after all, eh? What do you think?
One suggestion that we found exciting at Tomorrow Matters is the energy diary. The Hren's suggest keeping a diary as a way to track your home's energy use, to see where it is really going. They have discovered that a lot of energy is used for "phantom loads," or items plugged in while not in use, yet still sucking power.
Carbon Free Home is written in a do-it-yourself style, which cuts the costs of hiring help. Encouraged throughout the book is dumpster diving for materials, or finding used ones through trading or on your street corner We are lucky to have the Last Chance Mercantile at our local waste management center. Rebekah and Steven recommend trying to see the value in what is being thrown away.
In the future the Hren's hope to explore alternative transportation further, through electric biking, and other fossil fuel alternatives. To catch them on their book tour see the Carbon Free website.
Thank you for listening! Feel free to comment with any home improvements that you plan to try, or would like to suggest... to reduce our carbon footprint.
Olana and Deborah
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