Green Options » furnaces

Greening Up Your Existing Furnace

Dawn Killough — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:30:02 +0000

A recent article by Vincent Standley, posted on the National Geographic Green Guide web site, provides a step-by-step description of how to replace your furnace filter with a better, more permanent filter. The cost is under $100 for the filter, homeowners can do the change out themselves, and it will greatly improve the quality of the air inside the house, reducing allergies and other annoyances. Not to mention the fact that a permanent filter reduces the amount of disposable filters that end up in landfills.

New Equipment Provides Heat AND Electricity

Dawn Killough — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:03:24 +0000

American Honda Motor Company presented its new Micro-sized Combined Heat and Power (MCHP) Deluxe co-generation unit at Greenbuild 2008 in Boston, Massachusets. The unit has been around for a while (in Japan since 2003, and here in the US since 2007). The system provides home heating or water heating along with power generation in one package. It also includes a generator to provide power during an outage.

When installed in combination with a furnace system such as ECR International’s “freewatt,” homeowners can expect to save between $500 and $1,000 per year on their power bills. This is achieved through the power-generating capabilities of the MCHP, plus the fact that the “freewatt” system provides additional electricity as a by-product of its heating process.

The Unexpected and Questionable Green Products at PCBC

Keith Rockmael — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:10:52 +0000

As we walked into the mammoth PCBC (Pacific Coast Builder Conference) at the Moscone Center in San Francisco we couldn’t help but notice the hanging banners with the words - Power. Forward. Sustain. Of course we could see Power and Forward, as we wouldn’t expect Weakness and Backward but then - Sustain. That omnipresent word like Green that has seeped into the mindset of builders and developers. Or has it? Is it part of the green spin or are things starting to move forward in a powerfully sustainable direction? We decided that “both” loomed as the right answer. For this installment, we decided to cover some of the unexpected and the questionable lower profile “green” products. Sorry about the ” ” around the green but you’ll see where we go with this idea.

We totally got buzzed about something so innocuous that we almost walked passed it because it didn’t have a bunch of Green banners proclaiming its greenness. This Verve living system offers what they called a living control system which in simple terms operates like a whole house lighting system. We’ve seen these before but this one operates on battery free, self sustaining technology or what they call energy harvesting radio frequency technology. Pretty scientific for us but the little gizmo works in a panel that reduces the power so that certain switches can come on at certain levels and times. The systems extends bulb life and new homes don’t need copper wiring installed if they use this system. We even like the parent control which operates like the driver’s control when it comes to locking and unlocking car doors. We’re locked for this system.