There are several benefits of owning an energy-efficient home. Not only are you saving money on electricity bills at the end of every month, but you are also taking steps to protect and conserve the environment.
Energy-efficient homes reduce wastage of electricity, greenhouse gas emissions, and your home’s demand for non-renewable resources.
Rest assured, your energy-efficient home will provide healthier living conditions and offer significant savings over conventional homes.
You can rely on electricity providers like Inspire Energy that provide renewable and clean energy via wind power, thereby ensuring that your home is energy-efficient.
Why Choose Energy-Efficiency?
Modern energy-saving ideas can be seamlessly integrated into the house, which has been made possible by recent technological improvements. This can be made possible by building elements and construction techniques.
This will improve your health and comfort and provide aesthetic designs, too.
Although energy-efficient products are more expensive than conventional models, they make up for it by having lower operating costs, thus making it more affordable in the end.
The other benefit you can feel good about is the overall positive impact you will be making on the environment. Creating green properties helps create beautiful, healthier, and sustainable neighbourhoods.
Because electricity has become essential for our everyday lives, we have accumulated too many electrical gadgets and appliances.
While we may pay attention to the benefits of having so many labour-saving devices, we often forget to consider the wiring systems that serve them.
Is The Wiring In Your Home Energy-Efficient?
Electricity is a convenient energy source for heat, light, and power in your homes if it is distributed through adequately protected conductors.
Sound wiring systems in your home are energy-efficient as well. However, older homes and services are not built to sustain today’s energy needs.
The house’s safety depends upon the maintenance of the safety valves, the electrical fuses, and the circuit breakers.
It also depends on the care taken by the home builder or the electrician in the placement of electric cables. You must ensure that your home wiring system should equal or exceed the National Electrical Code requirements.
If you’re planning to build a sustainable home, remember: every electrical system should be designed for economical installation, operation, expandability, and upkeep.
Bear in mind some key pointers when checking the wiring in your home for energy efficiency:
Detection Of Faulty Wiring
The electrical system in your house should avoid excessive voltage drop, wasted energy, and overheated wires. It is vital for your home and family’s safety that you install good quality wiring that obeys safety regulations.
Poor wiring can increase your chances of setting your home on fire, power surges, and other serious consequences. Please ensure that you employ professional electricians to carry out proper electrical wiring in your house.
Ensure periodic checking of the wiring in your house and upgrade your old and faulty wires when necessary.
Be on the lookout for some crucial symptoms of poor electrical wiring, such as:
- Overheated wires or cords
- Fewer switches, outlets, and lights in a home
- Faulty or inappropriate connections
- The light dims when you use other electrical equipment
Fuses or circuit breakers of greater amperage might not correct smaller wiring or low voltage problems, but nevertheless, you must ensure proper circuit protection to safely use what you have.
Electricity providers like Calpine Energy inform you about safer wiring systems that are cost-effective and energy-efficient.
Selecting The Right Fuse
Fuses prevent fires and electrical damage in your house by melting and opening a circuit to stop the unrestrained current from flowing into wires. When you over-fuse, the heavily loaded wires will overheat.
As a result, the heated wires might generate enough heat to burn dust, wood, paint, etc., causing a house fire in the end. Proper fusing will protect you against such home hazards.
Circuit Identification
The service panel inside your house will have a reference for which circuits are controlled by breakers or fuses. It might be helpful to find the right circuit breakers when the need arises or when fuses shut off or reset.
Consult an electrician to determine the exact size of circuit wiring and that all the circuits are properly protected against overloads.
Upsize Your Wires
The National Electrical Code suggests installing wires only one size larger than required if you want to increase energy efficiency with dramatic paybacks.
Even though you will pay a little more than usual, you can significantly reduce your home’s power losses and consequently save on energy costs by simply increasing the wire size.
The advantages include lower generated heat and increased flexibility of the installation. Also, a lower level of heat generation will result in reduced energy requirements for fans and air conditioning systems.
Proper Electrical Sockets To Ensure Energy Efficiency
Another colossal waste of energy is when electrical appliances go into standby mode.
Your electronics do not turn off completely, even during standby or sleep mode. They perform updates while sucking up energy as they do. This is called a phantom load.
Standby energy consumption contributes to a massive amount of energy waste and safety issues in the environment.
The most obvious way of reducing wastage of energy is to unplug every appliance and electronic device at home after you stop using it. But this can be a cumbersome process.
Make your life easier by using smart power strips. Whenever you are not using your devices, just flip the switch on the power strip to cut off your devices’ power.
Smart power strips have it easy and accessible by designing outlets for different types of devices. Some devices that are required to stay on can be used on outlets that are designed for them.
Other outlets are designated for products that go into standby mode, for example, the television.
By shutting off a device or by disconnecting a device from its charger, the power strip will sense it and then shut off all power to the device.
In Conclusion
As mentioned earlier, electricity is one of the safest energy sources, but only if your wiring system and electrical sockets are correctly designed and installed with suitable control valves.
Adequate wiring is a must before you invest in the proper selection and maintenance of protective equipment.
