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When you are reading this, you probably need to be convinced that saving energy makes sense. You are trying to find the secret to having an energy-smart home. In a word, its conversation. That means a smaller, well-insulated house that takes advantage of passive strategies, does not demand much energy to heat or cool, uses the most-efficient means to meet its energy requirements. Whether you are building or remodeling, a lot of material and product decisions go into a house like this picture, so we help you learn from the best. These investments in your home will save your money and reduce greenhouse-cas emissions every day over the rest of its life.

Is Your Heating System an Energy Beast?

Here is how to spot the signs and boost the efficiency of your furnace,boiler or heat pump

The economy is down,fuel costs are up, and chance are your heating budget is already busted. You need to do something- but what? Only a few of us are ready to invest in geothermal or solar. The rest of us need to find the answer in heating systems we already have.

Heat-pump basics

Heat pumps use pressurized Freon gas to absorb heat from the air outside and transfer it to your home. When the thermostat calls for heating, the Freon is pressurized, it condenses, and then it turns to hot liquid. A blower forces air across warm Freon- filled coils and through a system of ducts; the air enters your home through registers in the floor, walls and ceiling. At the same time, a fan in the condenser sends cold air outside. You can reverse the cycle to cool your home in the summer.(Ground-source heat pumps use a water/ glycol mixture to exchange heat energy with the earth.)

Read the LEED-H certification program LEED is a system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council(USGBC; www.usgbc.org) to encourage the construction of energy- and resource-efficient buildings that are healthy to live in. (LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.)