Daily Home Renovation Tips

Our third contest of the year ended at a few days ago.

Sponsored by The Home Depot, we offered a chance for a $100 Home Depot gift card good in Canada or the United States for each entry which provided us with an energy or a water conservation suggestion which could be used in and around the home.

The suggestions received during our similar contest last fall lead to the creation of our Un-Official Guide to Home Energy Conseration, which contains more than 240 home energy conservation tips in total, of which more than 100 cost absolutely nothing to do and a further 75+ which cost next to nothing.

We wanted more. Our goal is to provide you with a listing whereby you can get into a habit of at least thinking about, if not actually acting upon, a home conservation suggestion every day of the year. Habits are hard to break. That, arguably, is why it can be so hard to take action different from what one typically does in order to conserve non-renewable resources … even if such action will save you money… and save the environment.

To do this we exanded this contest to include suggestions for ways in which either non-renewable energy and water resources could be reduced.

Did we meet our goal of 365 home energy conservation tips as a result of the suggestions in the contest? That will have to wait for a few days while we work to publish our Un-Official Guide to Home Energy and Water Conservation, 2nd Edition! Here is are some hints:

          Yes, the Second Edition will contain many more suggestions than the current first edition.

          Yes, there will be many more  home energy conservation tips (i.e. not related to home water conservation)

          Yes, there will be many, many more tips which cost absolutely nothing to do.

          Yes, we more than tripled the entries received in this contest compared to the 497 total entries we received during our Fall 2008 contest (even though last time we received three gift card prizes from The Home Depot).

Perhaps our site is becoming more well known? Perhaps people are telling their friends about our site? Perhaps there is a greater focus energy and water conservation? Perhaps there is a greater focus on saving money?

For now, the statistical results from our contest:

          1,723 - Number of total entries

             470 - Number of contestants

               3.7 - Average number of entries per person

But wait, there’s more. How about:

            69% - The percentage of contestants who provided only one entry.

This really, really surprised us. We stated that anyone could enter as many times as they wanted as long as each entry contained a unique energy or water conservation tip good for use in and around the home. And, a gift card from a well known international retailer in the home improvement section which could be used for, well, anything at the store would be more sought after than our prior contest which was for a specialty energy conservation product (EZ Snap Exterior Solar Blinds).

As well, in our original posting we hinted that entrants could use home energy conservation tips already on our Un-Official Guide to Home Energy Conservation in case they could not think of any themselves. Some did this; most did not.

Now, the winner and winning home energy or water conservation tip? It came from one of the people who actually made only 1 entry.

Jacob LaFountaine of Helena, Montana (the State Capital) provided the following home energy or water conservation tip with his winning entry:

     “Always think about how much it will cost you”

This is an amazing tip on so many levels.

First, what has attracted so many people to our Un-Official Guide to Home Energy Conservation since we published it last fall is the 100+ suggestions which cost absolutely nothing to do.

Second, we are adamant that individual households do not have to spend much, if any money, in order to reduce it’s consumption of non-renewable energy can clean water resources. Start with the low-hanging energy conservation fruit and once you have begun to save big time, then use those savings if you want to fund the more expensive energy conservation appliances.

Third, as we mentioned above habits are hard to break. However, if we would just get into the habit of thinking how much it costs us to leave the TV on all day just for background noise, or 25 minute hot showers, or leaving the sprinkler on the lawn for hours at a time, we just might think twice about our actions.

Fourth, there are short term or immediate costs, the financial ones, to not conserving non-renewable resources or clean water. As well, there are medium and long term costs, both the financial as well as the environmental ones.

Fifth, we like common sense.

So, congratulations again Jacob!

And to everyone, shortly we will not only publish our expanded Un-Official Guide to Home Energy and (now) Water Conservation, 2nd Edition. We will also write about all of the additions to the Un-Official Guide, both those we received as a result of this contest as well as others we have come across on our own.

Tomorrow we reveal the most popular home energy and water conservation tips which were submitted by our contestants; some may surprise you.