Luxury Housing Trends & Home Improvement Ideas

Sunrooms can add value to your home, and they also link the rest of your house with the outdoors. However, it can be challenging to keep a comfortable temperature in a sunroom depending on which way it’s facing.

South- and west-facing sunrooms need more ventilation, because they receive the most direct sunlight. North- and east-facing sunrooms are often pleasant in the summer but chilly in the winter.

A simple solution to get more air ventilation in the summer is to install side-opening windows. Supreme Sunrooms & Windows Ltd. sells 28mm double glazed windows with the new Low-E glass standard. Opening the windows and turning on the ceiling fan can create more air circulation.

Another option is thermostat-controlled roof vents, which open or close throughout the day in order to maintain a controlled environment. Active Ventilation Products, Inc. has an Aura Skylight Ventilator that draws air out without any moving parts. This is a more eco-friendly roof vent.

Is it time to get a new fireplace? Thanks to a stove and fireplace tax credit coming down the pipe, the purchase could save you a few bucks this year, at least if you buy an efficient eco-friendly model.

Don’t worry–eco-friendly doesn’t mean boring or clunky looking. Just check out the EcoSmart Zeta fireplace.

Named for the Greek ‘origins,’ the elliptical-shaped Zeta fireplace is “A clever fusion of timber, leather and stainless steel, the fully portable Zeta sits on a brushed or polished stainless steel swivel base. The plywood body of the fire is shaped from a high frequency heated aluminum mold into the perfect elliptical shape. A thin stainless steel firebox insert is molded to the internal face of the plywood, and the outer surface is upholstered in leather. The toughened glass screens that sit either side of the fire enhance the stunning visual effect created by the flame.”

It’s available in different leather colors such as Ciocolatta, Nero, Ranch Hide and Latte. The fireplace is considered eco-friendly because it’s fueled with denatured ethanol, an renewable energy source.

EcoSmart

Flat screen televisions mounted on the wall are nothing new, but now you can have a flat wall-mounted fireplace too. If you don’t mind going electric that is.

The Bionaire Electric Fireplace is kind of a glorified space heater, but if you like the idea of dancing flames (and you live in an apartment or house that didn’t come with a real fireplace), this unit could provide some ambiance. Let’s face it: it’s more fun to curl up with a book in front of a fire (fake though it may be) than on top of a heat vent.

The wall-mounted electric fireplace comes with a few features you don’t get with your traditional wood-burning hearth. These include a remote control, a programmable digital display, a thermostat, and “tip over and over-heat protection.” There’s no need to worry about a spark flying out of this and setting the house on fire.

$299 at Amazon:

Bionaire Electric Fireplace Heater

A programmable thermostat can save you money on your energy bills by automating the heating and cooling of your home (no more worrying about forgetting to turn the heat off before you leave for work–the thermostat can do it for you). It can also make life a little more comfortable: in the winter, you might set it to turn the heat on 15 minutes before your alarm clock goes off, so you won’t have to slip out of a warm bed and into a freezing room when you get up.

The only problem is… a lot of people are a bit mystified by their programmable thermostats. It’s believed that as many as 80% of folks who own them don’t use the programmable features.

Hey, we can’t all be techno-stars, right?

Well, there is a computer program you can get that is supposed to make the whole process a lot easier.

The EcoConcierge is compatible with most Honeywell digital thermostats, and it lets you program the settings through the Internet with a simple question-and-answer format. What time do you get up? What do you want the temperature set at in the summer? In the winter? Etc.

In addition to using the software to save energy with your programmable thermostat, you can sign up for some of the company’s other home monitoring features such as automatic sprinkler systems, lighting, and home security systems.

The cost runs $400 to $600 installed.

Fans can save you money in both home heating and cooling scenarios.  In the summer, a fan can make the air feel cooler, so you don’t need to program the air conditioner to lower the temperature so much.  In the winter, fans can bring warm air (which rises) down from the ceiling area so you feel comfortable without climbing into the rafters (or cranking the heating system up so high).

A door fan is a simple device that can help improve air flow from room to room.

This time of year, it’s common for folks to fire up the wood stove or gas fireplace, which is good at heating the area directly around the unit but less useful for whole house heating. Interior door fans can help move that warm air to some of the other rooms in the house.

An example is this EntreeAir model.  The $45 door frame fan tucks unobtrusively into the top of the doorway and is supposed to be “a safe, efficient and effective way to circulate warm or cool air from room to room” that “operates for pennies a day.”

From Earth Tech Products

We’ve talked before about the best space heater for any given location in your home, shop, garage, etc., but we didn’t talk much about infrared heaters.  If you’d like to warm up your room without spending a lot of extra money on energy, this may be an option.

Infrared heat works similar to the radio waves the sun gives off to heat a person’s body when they are outside on a clear day.  Infrared heaters, such as the ones by SunHeat, use radio waves to heat an internal copper element, and then a fan blows air over the hot copper to redistribute the heat into the room.

An infrared zone heater is supposed to save up to 50% over electric forced air heating systems, and it can warm up to a 1,000 square foot space, from floor to ceiling.

Infrared zone heaters don’t dry out the air or release chemicals or pollutants.  They are safe to use even in rooms where you wouldn’t typically put a space heater (such as a bathroom).

If your old water heater is working fine, it may not make financial sense to replace it right now, but if it’s getting close to the end of its life, it’s definitely worth considering what comes next: a non-energy efficient clone or a solar hot water heater that can save you money in the long run?

Solar hot water heaters are common in many parts of the world but have been slow to catch on in the U.S. That’s likely to change in the future, however, as energy prices rise, so it makes sense to make the conversion when it’s possible.

Water heating accounts for 15% of a family’s energy bills, and every 3.5 gallons of water heated with a conventional electric heater creates more than two pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.

If you’ve got an unshaded, south-facing location on your property (many people use their roofs), then you can install a solar hot water heater. Though installation costs are higher than with electric water heaters, the free solar energy pays for itself within five years, and in many areas federal tax credits are available when you make the upgrade.

If you’ve got an old, ugly radiator acting as a sore thumb in an otherwise well-appointed room, you’re not alone. Some of the most popular posts here have been on hiding radiators with cabinets and heater covers that hide baseboard vents.

If none of those solutions work for you and you’ve got the money to have something custom built, you could invest in hand-crafted wood radiator covers that blend seamlessly into a room’s decor.

The handsome angled mahogany radiator cover here looks so much like a window seat that you wouldn’t even guess that there is a heater underneath. It’s the work of John Carlton Custom Woodwork & Furniture, and something like this will cost you $2,200.

If you like the idea of a warm, crackling fire, but your home didn’t come with a chimney, you could pick up an electric fireplace or perhaps a “jel fuel” fireplace.

“Add the beauty and romance of a crackling fire anytime, anyplace, without the hassles or mess caused by soot, creosote and smoke.”

These units are vent-free, portable, and require no hook up. They burn cans of alcohol-based jel fuel, which you can buy in cases (it’s about $50 for a 12 pack, and each can should burn 2-3 hours–just right for an evening’s entertaining).

The fireplace shown here is available at Plow & Hearth and comes with a surround, mantel, and bookcase, making it look like a built-in piece of furniture.

Before buying, you may want to do some jel fuel research though, as some people have found the odor irritating, and others have complained of headaches when burning the substance.

Central heating is convenient–just adjust one thermostat, and the heat for the whole house is handled–but it can also be a waste of energy, since it heats rooms that aren’t in use. Do you really need the bedroom to be 72 degrees in the middle of the day when no one is back there? Or do you need the heat on in the living room or home office at night?

If you’d prefer to save money by just heating the part of your house that your family is using, you might get some mileage out of the Vent-Miser Programmable Energy Saving Vent.

These special vents replace your existing floor/ceiling/wall vents and allow you to shut down heat to unoccupied rooms and force it into parts of the home where warm air is needed (they also work with central air conditioning systems).

The Vent Miser isn’t a replacement for your heating/cooling system, just an addition that runs independently. The battery-operated vents can easily be programmed for settings for each day of the week via three buttons, so you don’t have to think about turning them off and on once they’re set.

The programmable vents are certified to save you money on heating and cooling bills, and one reviewer at Amazon noticed a 30% savings after installing them.

They sell for $26 over there:

Vent-Miser Programmable Energy Saving Vent