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Installing a domestic solar hot water system is an extremely cost-effective way of lowering your costs on water heating. For a family of four the cost is six to eight thousand depending on the options to the system such as on-demand instantaneous water heating. Companies like Taylor Munro Energy Systems can design a pool heating system that can save you big money as well.

Although the payback can be quite long, double- or triple-pane windows can be a good investment in your home if you consider resale value and comfort plus noise reduction. Use expanding foam to install and seal around the wood or plastic frames.

Replace your hole-in-the-house fireplace with a modern efficient wood-burning insert or plug the hole with ceramics and put a more heat-providing wood stove in front of it. Wood burning is actually carbon-neutral, which is better for the environment that burning fossil fuels. Were you aware that it takes one barrel of crude oil to produce twenty barrels of Middle-East easy oil, but yet it requires one barrel to extract just four barrels of tar-sands oil? We may have to start burning some of that beetle-killed pine after all. Modern efficient wood stoves emit a fraction of the chimney smoke of older less efficient stoves. Canadian federal government information on buying the right kind of wood-burning appliance can be found here under Bioenergy Publications.

Metro Vancouver has a web site on green building at www.gvrd.bc.ca/buildsmart.

Consider purchasing a hybrid vehicle if you use a car. The mileage on these things is incredible - both fuel and longevity. The further from work you live, the more you'll save! Look at this site for more info.

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