Reinvigorating your home to keep in line with the market demands and expectations is a key selling point and ensures longer term happier tenants. This can benefit both the tenant and environment, through reduction of energy costs and decreasing carbon footprint. One way you can both improve the value of your home, and the overall impact you have on the environment is through simple, cost-effective changes that don’t even require knocking down walls or high-tech appliances. Here are a few ideas to get you started down a greener path.
Insulation
You can have the best AC and central heating in the world, but if you don’t have good insulation, you could be losing half of all your energy costs right through your walls, floors, and roof. Since you probably don’t know exactly how much you’re losing from poor insulation, you’ll want to hire an expert who can come out to your home and measure with an infrared device to see where your weaknesses are, and assess how much it will cost you to upgrade your insulation. This will also ensure happier tenants with less electricity costs and less noise from potential neighbours.
Windows- consider double glazing- the traditional solution
Both from a energy conservation/insulation and noise reduction, your windows could be responsible for a quarter of all heat loss and absorption alone. Generally older model windows or typical “budget” windows come with only a single pane of glass, thereby providing essentially zero protection from the cold, heat and noise. Replacing these with double-pane glass, triple-pane glass, filled with argon gas, and you’re really going to see that electric bill plummet. New windows are a cheap and easy way to upgrade the look and efficiency of a room, not to mention the added long term green benefits and or happier tenants (especially if your property is on a busy main road).
Digital Thermostats
Avoid human error of having to constantly adjust your thermostat with temperature changes outside, if your thermostat is inefficient at regulating your AC and central heating for the entire house this could be costing a lot of money and increasing unnecessary CO2. Upgrading a thermostat to one that is capable of micromanaging each room’s temperature, you’ll see the savings within the first month of use. A big way to conserve energy is to have a thermostat that can turn on your heating or cooling an hour before you get home, so that it’s not wasting energy by regulating the temperature in an empty home.
Solar Panels
Solar panels are arguably the most worthwhile investment you can make for your home, future-proofing it for either your family or the housing market if you’re looking for ways to increase value. Furthermore you can also obtain a government subsidy and earn income from providing power to the community. Yes there is a little more planning needed to tackle a solar panel upgrade, but all the work and planning will pay off, knowing that your personal carbon footprint will have shrunk significantly and so will your electric bill, possibly reducing it to nothing.
Being eco-friendly doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with your home renovation, it just means being informed with your decision-making for your materials, appliances, and having your end-goal in mind. speak to the team at Think Property & Co we can help to advise you of the best approaches for your property with our team of qualified trades people and interior design experts.
If you’re keen to discuss your property needs, sick of bad property management do give us a call!
Martine, Randal & The team at Think Property & Co
18 Little Oxford Street, Collingwood, Australia, 3066
+61 3 8320 6399 / hello@thinkpropertyco.com