Green Basement Ideas

When most people look to expand their living area they seldom think of using their basement. For some reason people think of basements as dark dungeons and fail to see the real potential that they offer. Generally a basement has the same square footage as your home, so you could almost double your square footage if you have a one level home.

Benefits of turning basements into living areas include:

1. Does not change the footprint of your home (you still have your yard).

2. Basements are cheap to heat since the ground does half of the work.

3. Basements are cheap to cool since the ground does half of the work.

4. The per square foot of a basement remodel is much less than the cost of an addition.

5. You can add rooms as your budget permits.

picture from Bilco.com

Some common faulty thoughts about basements:

Faulty Thought #1. The windows are too small, they are unsafe since we could not fit out of them in case of a fire.

Solution: A few companies make basement egress windows that bring in a ton of natural light and provide an egress in the case of an emergency. These egress windows will make your basement windows around 3′x4′.

Faulty Thought #2. Our basement gets wet or has a damp smell.

Solution: Don’t be lazy, your home does not have proper drainage. Check to make sure that your gutter downspouts drain away from your home. Is the outside grade (slope of your property) draining toward your home–fix it! In some cases a basement drain system might be needed but most basement moisture issues can be solved with a few easy repairs.

Faulty Thought #3. Our basement is so dark, why would we want to have rooms down there?

Solution: Basements are generally dark because they have dark gray walls and not a bunch of light. Once you install walls and paint them a light color your basement will lighten up. Most basements are designed with only a few overhead lights, once you build rooms you can install as many lights as you want.

Faulty Thought #4. The toilets and sinks will not be able to drain up, our drains are not in our basement floor.

Solution: Use buckets or rent a porta-john (kidding). If you look around on the internet several companies make toilets that will pump up your waste into your drain pipes. There are options to attach these to your shower and sink drains so a basement bathroom will not be a challenge.

I could go on for pages of how a basement remodel can benefit you, your family and the environment. Just the savings on your heating and cooling bills can help to make it a green project.

Most of the green blogs that I visit have been spreading the word about Earth Day for the past month.  A month ago April 22nd was about a month away…………………..about 2 hours ago I figured out that today is April 22nd.  I admit that I seldom think of what day it is or at times even what month it is.   My promptness depends on events being in my PDA or people e-mailing me reminders.  The funny thing is that I never miss business appointments, family events  or social functions so long as I key them into my PDA.

In my feeble effort to repent for forgetting about Earth Day, I have decided to officially extended Earth Day.  From this day forth Earth Day is now everyday excluding Christmas.  I excluded Christmas for the religious people and the people who like to create landfills of garbage on that special day.  When you think about it, who really cares about the earth when you have piles of gifts in front of you?  Now that I have granted you one day off a year you can focus on the other days and what you can do to make our earth a nicer place.

The picture is from a site called http://www.care2.com, I joined there last week in order to network with other people that care about the Earth.  They have some really good ideas on how everyone can treat our planet with a little more respect.  Here’s my own short list of baby steps;

1.  Plant a tree.

2.  Grow a garden.

3.  Take a hike in a local state forest.

4.  Go camping.

5.  Turn off your T.V. and spend some time outdoors.

6.  Buy, rent or steal a canoe and enjoy a nice journey on a local river or lake.  If you venture into the ocean, trust me and leave the canoe at home they don’t handle waves that well.

Once you have tried a few of the above steps ask yourself how you can protect your environments air, soil, and water.  If you can’t think of any ideas take a look at some of the blogs on my blogroll or some of the sites that I’ve “stumbled” at stumbleupon.com.

Charles Faust, Green Home Improvements