The garage is perhaps the most underappreciated part of anyone’s house. If your garage is of the attached type, both heat and cold can easily transfer from there to your house. Fumes coming from the paint you’ve been using while you’re doing your weekend car repainting job in your garage can also leak into your living room. You might be using your garage as a storage area for most of your cleaning equipment containing toxic chemicals that may put you and your family’s health in danger. Your garage might even be a breeding ground for pests and can be considered a junkyard too.
If all of that sounds terrible, you may want to start reorganizing your garage and turning it into a green and eco-friendly one as soon as you can, maybe even right after you’ve finished reading this.
Make Your Garage Green and Eco-Friendly
Keeping a garage green and eco-friendly, or even turning it into one, might sound like a lot of hard work, but you can make it a lot easier for you by following these tips.
- Rid your garage of everything you don’t need anymore.
The very first thing you should be doing if your garage has lots of stuff that makes it look like an oversized garbage bin is to declutter.
- Holding a garage sale or sending some of your old junk to the nearest pawnshop can earn you money you could use for your ongoing renovation.
- You can also sort out what junk in your garage can undergo recycling.
- For everything else that is beyond recycling or repair, you have to dispose of them properly.
- Change your lighting to LED lamps.
Your garage may have windows that you use mostly during daytime, but you would still have to turn on your lights at night or in specific areas of your garage that don’t get enough bright light from the sun.
- If your garage lighting consists of CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps), you would have to change them all with LED bulbs that are brighter.
- LED bulbs are twice as energy efficient and typically last four times longer than CFLs.
- LED bulbs also do not contain any mercury, which makes for a safer disposal.
- Install an insulated garage door.
An uninsulated garage door usually lets extreme heat and cold quickly transfer from your garage to your entire house, so you would have to replace that with an insulated garage door instead. If you need your garage door repaired contact BH Garage Door.
- You can go for either a double- or triple-layer insulated garage door, but the latter makes for the best option.
- You have to make sure as well that the insulated garage door you’ll be installing doesn’t have a lot of gaps for air to flow through.
- Make your garage roof green too.
You can avoid letting too much heat get in your garage by overhauling its roof.
- Installing solar panels on your garage roof for power can considerably cut your electric bill costs.
- Another option you can use for your garage roof is to turn it into a rooftop garden where you could grow plants.
- Replace toxic with organic.
You should consider replacing all your paints and cleaning products stored in your garage that contain harmful chemicals with less toxic alternatives.
- Some cleaning products don’t contain any toxic ingredients but are just as useful in making your garage clean.
- Most home improvement stores also carry low-VOC (volatile organic compound) paints that release less toxic fumes into the air after painting either your garage or your house.
- Conserve water.
Too much freshwater gets wasted while you wash your car and water your lawn with your garden hose. You can conserve a lot of water when do both with rainwater instead.
- You can set up a simple funneling system on your garage roof with a large barrel below it to catch rainwater.
- The rainwater you’ve collected can be used during droughts too.
- Certain areas have restrictions when it comes to collecting rainwater; be sure to check local laws and regulations before installing a new rainwater collection system.
- Consider permeable paving options for your driveway.
The driveway leading to your garage can also become environment-friendly with permeable pavement.
- A permeable surface cuts the amount of rainwater that runs down a hard driveway and, as a result, prevents contaminated water from polluting local waterways.
- Some permeable paving options you can use for your driveway are plastic grid systems, open cell concrete blocks, and cobblestones.
Most of these tips to keep your garage green and eco-friendly won’t cost you a lot and are very easy to do even in your own spare time. Garage door repair experts can help you with the installation of a new insulated garage door. You could also plan your entire weekend around a DIY project making sure that your garage is a sustainable and environment-friendly part of your house. All the time and effort you’ll be putting up in keeping your garage green and eco-friendly would ultimately be worthwhile as it would not only significantly reduce your energy bills, but it can also turn into a safer area for you and your family.
Mike Andrews
Mike is a building expert who has specialized in garage construction for the past 30 years. He currently writes for My Door Pro and is dedicated to building and constructing garages for garage door repair Huntersville area clients to the best possible standard. In his spare time, he enjoys have a coffee at the local cafe.
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