Long before green building and green renovations were popular in large cities like Toronto, Ontario homeowners enjoying the outdoors have been organizing financial programs and preservation projects of property and wetlands all to help conserve our outdoors and have possibly overlooked their own cottage or hunt camp. Is the peace and quiet that nature offers over powered by a big diesel engine or propane tanks using fuel all day? Maybe the green building solutions available for your cottage haven't been fully explored yet.
Solar Panels - Save energy at your cottage or hunting camp
Renovating your cottage with energy solar panels is a sure solution for eliminating the noise from a diesel engine. Solar panels can store the solar energy into 24 volt batteries and during the night hours, your cottages' energy will come from the series of 24 volt batteries to run air conditioners, ceiling fans, lights and water pumps.
Solar Tubes - Moonlight lighting for your cottageThe second green renovation that will not make any noise is solar tubes running through the cottage for night lights and bathroom lights for nighttime hours. Solar panels may be higher than your cottage's building budget, but you can consider using solar tubes which use the moons' light to transmit a functional source of light in your cottage to make it around after the sun goes down. Solar tubes range in price depending on the make and length of tube starting at around $500. Solar panels started out only providing 60 or 80 watts of solar power, only lighting one incandescent light bulb. Due to new technology, four 13 watt fluorescent light bulbs can be powered on a 60 watt system. A company called EfstonScience sells an 80 watt solar panel with mount, charge controller and battery bank for less than $2 000.
Wind Generators
Another option for your cottage could be the use of wind generators. If your cottage is on the wind blown side of a lake and typically has a steady breeze each day, a wind generator could save you money and increase the value of your time spent in the cottage country. A 400 watt Air - X wind generator costs only around $800 at Canadian Tire stores plus the cost of your batteries and invertors. The investment of batteries and an inverter could be paid for after a year without diesel fuel burning with no noisy engine running while you're enjoying the outdoors. This Green Building project can become very elaborate from $800 to a full home building solution for approximately $5 000, so depending on how much time you spend at the cottage this summer you have lots of price range to determine your green renovating budget and how extensive you would like to get with wind generators.
Water Conservation at the cottage
If water is a high commodity at your cottage, maybe you would like to reduce your cottages' water consumptions from the fresh lakes by approximately 30%. Every bit of water your cottage uses is either consumed by you drinking with it or cycled back into our environment as Grey Water which contains soap products and waste water. Grey-Water recycling systems recycle water from the shower and kitchen to use for flushing toilets. Waterless, low-water, electric and non-powered units are available for approximately $1700 and up.
The homeowners that have completed green building projects in Toronto, Ontario and own summer cottages or fall hunt camps in the far Northern Ontario area now have some ideas to solve their energy shortage problems or eliminate that noisy diesel generator and enjoy the beautiful country areas like Sudbury, Ontario with new and affordable green building solutions.
Article by Greg Escott from Contractor Quotes
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