Love the sun and warmth that skylights provide, but wonder what part they play in an energy efficient home?

Skylights can provide you with some energy saving benefits, but there are many things to consider in avoiding some common skylight slip-ups.

Skylights allow sunlight into our living spaces from above without compromising privacy. In delivering abundant daylighting, skylights can reduce energy consumption used for lighting, particularly in interior rooms that do not have direct access to exterior windows.

So, which features should you look for to enjoy the benefits and minimize any negative side effects that skylights can have? Consider the following when evaluating skylights to ensure that they are a bright feature in your home.

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Last week I took a tour of NEXUS, Boston’s Green Building Resource Center. An very knowledgeable employee of NEXUS, Shoshana Friedman, showed me around their new space on 38 Chauncy Street in Boston.

NEXUS is more or less the epicenter of green building resources for Boston, MA. It has a product showroom, a material and resource library, space for events, and provide a place for people studying for LEED certification. You can also take a tour of the building from their friendly staff!

I was curious if other similar green building centers exist. They’re a little hard to find—a quick search I did turned up one in Atlanta and one in Santa Monica (which is actually co-sponsored by Global Green USA). Let us know if your searches turn up other green building centers in different parts of the country.

In addition to serving as an educational resource to the building community, NEXUS is a working example of green products in use. They are currently in the process of being LEED certified under the Commercial Interior (CI) bracket. Here are a few “green” features that I found interesting:

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Part of building a home with renewable energy systems, such as solar panels, is deciding whether or not it should be connected to the electrical grid. There are numerous considerations — namely practical, economic, and environmental –involved in making your decision.

However, this choice can be difficult without a good understanding of what the terms grid-tied and off-grid actually mean. A grid-tied home is connected to power lines which transmit electricity to the home, mainly from power plants, yet can also produce power on-site using renewable energy systems. An off-grid home is not connected to power lines and, therefore, it relies solely on renewable energy systems to produce electricity and storage systems such as batteries to mediate the supply.

As we examine the practical implementation, cost, and environmental impact of each, we’ll see how being connected to the electrical grid is typically more beneficial than being completely detached from the predictable source of electricity and storage it provides.

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Ditching your commute for a home office may seem like a great way to save money, but working from home isn’t entirely free. Running computers, office equipment, heating/cooling equipment, and lighting all day as opposed to just the few morning and evening hours in a day will increase your utility bills.

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Windows are important to the overall design of a home. They come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and styles in order to give our home the look we want. Windows also provide us with sunlight and beautiful views. But if you are planning on building a green or energy efficient home windows are also essential to the efficiency of the design. Is it possible to have the both of best worlds?

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Note from Your Green Neighbor: Occasionally I will profile little tasks that are easy to do and yield big benefits when it comes to improving the performance of your home’s efficiency and the environment.

A good way to go green is by starting small.

Sure, recycling cans and bottles is a pretty standard practice and throwing away used batteries is no longer a habit of yours, but what about taking it a step further?

Did you know that replacing incandescent bulbs (typical household light bulbs) in your home with compact fluorescent bulbs (aka CFLs) is a small task with big benefits?

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