Do it yourself projects and home improvement articles

I watched a bit of Eco-Home on public television. Eco-Home is a house in Los Angeles, Ca that takes advantage of green practices in order to have little or no impact on the environment. Among the green practices employed are using native and other drought resistant plants in place of a lawn (a Xeriscape); collecting and re-using grey water to irrigate fruit trees in the back yard; employing solar panels to generate electricity; heating water with a solar water heater; using a sunpipe to light the kitchen during the day; using low flush toilets to conserve water; composting kitchen scraps and other materials to enrich the soil; as well as many other environmentally sound practices.


The other advantage to going green is that some of these green items/practices are very affordable and end up saving you money in the long run. I really liked the sunpipe which is an item you install on your roof and pipe down to the room you want to illuminate. The sunpipe collects sunlight and reflects down to the room you want to light. I’ve seen something like this at home and garden shows. Here’s a nice little factoid on sunpipes - If your SunPipe® allows you to turn off just 300 watts of light bulbs for 5hrs/day, 5 days/wk, you’ll keep 650 Lbs of CO2 out of our air every year. I wish I had integrated one into my garage/home office. Looks like they start around $400 or so. They would probably take several years to pay for the initial cost in electricity savings.

I’ve also been slowly eliminating my lawn from year to year. I’ll keep thinking of ways to do so. A landscaper strongly recommended Pachysandra terminalis. I may give that a try.