If you didn’t see this past week’s episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, you missed an episode dedicated to making a new “green” home for a Navajo family. This episode was full of innovative ways to conserve energy and help ensure that the family would never have to pay an electricity bill for this big, beautiful new home of theirs. They had solar panels outside that moved throughout the day to follow the sun across the sky. This way, they are always collecting the maximum amount of sunlight all day long. Also, they had a wind turbine on their property to produce even more electricity for them. After all was said and done, they were able to produce more energy than was needed to power the home and were even able to put the excess back into the power grid to help the rest of the community. They also gave the family all Energy Star appliances in their home and really pushed for viewers to follow their example and do the same in their own homes. They even had plants growing on the roof of the home, which I had never heard of before, but apparently it helps cool the home and keeps the roof last much longer. In addition to all of the environmentally friendly parts to the home, they also handed over the keys to a brand new Ford Escape Hybrid to the family (not to mention there were several Escape Hybrid commercials throughout the TV broadcast). They showed off the car to the family as well as the viewers and educated people about what the environmental advantages are of having a hybrid. The show itself was quite entertaining and educational, but most importantly, it was of great importance that a popular TV show made a point to put the word out there about ways that we can all help the environment and keep our energy costs down at the same time. This may prove to be of huge significance if other shows follow their lead and especially if people start to learn more about the techniques used in the show and want to do more of it to their own homes. 

-LINKS-

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition 
Ford Escape Hybrid

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 10:26 pm and is filed under Around The Home, Conservation, Entertainment, Solar, Wind. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.