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Home technology to save you money

You may already know about solar heaters and rain barrels, but what about programmable thermostats and backyard wind turbines? Find out what's the latest in home green technology.

Not only does saving on power and water conserve natural resources, but as a homeowner you'll see a return on your investment in lower monthly energy bills. You don't have to go to extreme measures to make your home more eco-friendly either. Whether you're looking to build a new space or thinking about upgrading your existing one, we've got lots of green technologies that you might want to consider. Some of these innovations require a big budget, and others are more of a weekend project. Let's begin with one that can save a whole lot of money.

Although we're at the point in the year when our showers seem to be automatically hot in the mornings thanks to the searing sun, conventional water heaters still use electricity or natural gas power to heat the water in your home for everything from showers to washing clothes and dishes. Every time you use hot water, that's energy and money down the drain. A solar hot water heater uses the sun's heat and energy to heat your home's water either by actually using the sun's heat or by collecting energy with solar panels to heat your water. The heated water stays in an insulated tank - much like with a conventional water heater - until you're ready to use it. While they cost more to install than traditional water heaters, you could save 50 to 80 per cent on your water heating bills.

Depending on where you live, a backyard wind turbine might be a good green home technology. A backyard turbine looks similar to the ones at big wind farms, just scaled down. It uses the wind's energy to generate some of the electricity you need to power your home. As with solar power, residential wind energy typically doesn't provide all of the electricity that you need to power your home, but it can supplement your power use and help reduce those energy bills.

Did you know that your humble toilet uses more water than any other fixture in your house? Depending on how old your toilet is, it can use as much as 27 per cent of the water in your home. Upgrading from an older toilet to a newer one can drastically reduce your home water use, but even better is a dual flush toilet. Readily available in the UAE and in most bathrooms you visit, dual flush toilets also use a different mechanism to flush waste away which means they're even more efficient in handling solid waste than a conventional toilet.

Have you heard of vampire power? All of those devises that plug into the wall, like your TV, DVD player, and video game systems actually keep using energy even when they are in the off position, because they don't actually turn off. Instead, they go into "standby mode," which constantly uses energy, even in the "off" position. TV vampires suck blood. Energy vampires suck power. Before smart power strips caught on, the only way to stake these vampires was to unplug appliances when you weren't using them. Not so convenient. Smart power strips work by using a control device to cut all power to these energy vampires. You're probably already using a power strip for your home entertainment center. All you need to do is replace that strip with a smart power strip, and you're ready to save. When you turn off your "control" device, your smart strip cuts power flow to all of the other devices on the strip, so they're fully turned off rather than still using electricity in standby mode.

One of the best ways to conserve energy at home is to figure out where you're using the most power, and a home energy monitor puts that knowledge at your fingertips. Whether you opt to monitor your power use outlet by outlet or go for a home energy management system with all the bells and whistles, knowing how much power you're using and where can help you cut your energy use to save money. Like most green technology, home energy monitors run the gamut from simple to complex. You can buy simple monitors to track the energy use in a single outlet or install a full-on home energy monitoring system. You plug the monitor into a standard outlet and it communicates with your smart power meter to tell you how much energy you're using at home, in which room, and at what times of day. Some can even track it down to the individual outlet. The device sends all of that data to your computer, so that you can see where you're wasting the most energy. Some home energy monitoring systems can even send energy data straight to your smart phone and allow you to wirelessly control devices to reduce your home's energy consumption on the fly.

Do you remember to turn the heat down at bedtime or bump the thermostat up before you leave for work, so you're not cooling an empty house? A programmable thermostat remembers to control your system, so that you don't have to. It can also help you save on heating and cooling without sacrificing comfort. There are a few different sorts of programmable thermostat, but they all work in basically the same way. You tell the system when to adjust the temperature, and it does all of the work.

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