It’s about that time again: time to start compiling a list of new year’s resolutions. Only this time around, don’t just think about improvements for the new year, consider making changes that will benefit you for years to come. With this new decade will come new opportunities, new challenges, and new trends, and keeping up with these changes could be important for your day to day life.
This is very much the case when it comes to your home: a new decade gives you a new opportunity to make sure you’re prepared for the challenges we know are in front of us, and new technology has come about to help us meet them and continue to live in a way that’s both comfortable, sustainable, and efficient. Here are four of these technologies that will improve your home and quality of life by investing in them over the next decade.
Power Stability: Backup Generators
As the 2010s come to a close, the aging and overloaded California power grid seems to have reached a breaking point. With wildfires tearing through the state every year and tremendous liability being assigned to utility providers, power shutoffs during peak fire conditions have now become the new normal and likely won’t be changing anytime soon. When temperatures are high, brush is dry, and winds are blowing steadily, electric companies have stated they will not hesitate to shut off the power grid in impacted areas until conditions are safe again. Unfortunately, during windy seasons, this could mean several days without power, and that could be devastating for those who depend on energy for their day to day life.
A backup generator is the answer you’re looking for. Standby generators are permanently installed, powered by natural gas, and automatically switch on when your power goes down. Because they draw their fuel from your natural gas connection, they can potentially stay online infinitely without having to manually refuel every few hours like portable generators need. They also come in various sizes and can provide you with just enough energy that keeps your most important appliances and devices running while the public power grid is down. With rolling blackouts becoming a common part of life, you absolutely can not afford to go without a reliable source of backup power.
Clean Water: Water Filtration Technology
One thing that certainly isn’t changing in the new decade is our dependence on water. While we’ve been blessed with a larger amount of rainfall this year, the truth is California’s water supply is still limited. Buying bottled water is expensive, tedious, and creates a lot of plastic waste that may or may not actually make it into the recycle bin. Water that comes from the tap may have strange tastes or textures that can impact everything from your cooking to your laundry to the cleanliness of your fixtures like faucets and showers.
The solution: get clean, superior-quality water from any tap or fixture in your home with a whole-home water filtration and treatment system. A whole-home system is mounted on your main water line, filtering all of the water that enters your home and removing contaminants and inclusions that contribute to these issues. Limescale and hard water issues will be a thing of the past, as will levels of chlorine, fluoride, and other inclusions that aren’t harmful but can contribute to water quality issues that are extremely common throughout the state.
Energy Efficiency: Solar Energy Systems
California is blessed with well over 300 days of bright sunshine every year. With long hours of daylight each day, our state is one of the best places in the world to take advantage of rapidly-advancing solar technology. A solar energy system harnesses the power of the sun and uses it to power your home with the electricity you need. Anything you don’t use can either be stored for later (more on that in a moment) or sent back to the grid for a credit on your utility costs. Those who switch to solar often see their energy costs cut down to a tiny fraction of what they were before, or even see it disappear completely! Likewise, with the addition of a smart inverter, you’ll gain even greater power stability from an emissions-free and tremendously reliable power source.
Switching to solar in the first couple of years of this decade allows you to take advantage of a solar investment tax credit—a benefit that allows you to claim a percentage of the cost of your solar installation as a credit on your tax return for the year. This lowers the cost even further and allows your system to pay for itself in savings even faster!
Power Cost: Battery Backup Systems
With rising energy costs and time-of-use rates becoming the new normal here in California, avoiding using energy during peak consumption hours is critical to managing your monthly power costs. With a battery backup system, you can do just that. Battery backup systems are giant batteries that collect power either from the grid itself or from your solar energy system during high-production hours, including the middle of the day when consumption is generally low. When the sun goes down or usage rates reach their peak, your home switches over to your battery backup system and uses that supply of stored power to keep your home running without the tremendously high cost of purchasing from the grid. Battery backup systems can also provide emergency power when paired with a smart inverter, giving you emergency power that can help you through both shorter and longer-term blackouts.
Start the new decade off right by investing in quality of life technology for your home! Call the experts from Quality Home Services at (800) 985-8103 today to request an estimate.