Solar water heaters can really bring down the cost of hot water for many residential and facilities, but unless the following concepts are thought about, the investment will be wasted away. Before actually installing a Solar Water Heater, consider the following points.

1. How much water do you really need to heat up? - Try to get a consumption report of your showerheads to understand the capacity requirements. Do this by using a pail and stopwatch, then estimate average showertime, and get total consumption accordingly. Regular shower heads use 4.5 gallons per minute, Eco Friendly showerheads use 1.5 gallons per minute. Investing in even a high end eco showerhead is still a lot cheaper than buying a very big solar water heater.

2. What direction is your solar water heater facing? - Get the right angle and direction. North facing is best to get sun from its axis east to west. This will maximize heating time for water.

3. Flat collector panel or evacuated tubes? - Evacuated tubes are cheaper but they are not designed for the local climate. On hot weathers, these pipes burst, causing great inefficiency. You will not notice this problem as your back up electric water heater will run instead. This means, lots of money wasted on electricity that you were trying to save.

4. How's the weather? - Good brand solar water heaters can still get heat from a cloudy day. Invest a little more for a good brand and you will better appreciate your returns.

5. Any other use for hot water? - Do not forget to get a complete idea on where else you can use hot water. A pre heated water will be faster to boil for cooking as well, this point should not be discounted.

Green roofs and a balanced greener surrounding is now ever more so necessary given the need to immediately offset and balance out carbon emissions and have a healthier production of oxygen in the environment. It was always pointed out that we should plant trees, but while this is valuable, its efficiency in immediately improving our own immediate environment is not as effective as having greenery right where we are.

There is a more immediate need to balance out humans to plants per square meter in urban areas. There are still opportunities to use roofs, balconies, and even windows for plants. Green roofs, which has gained great popularity in US and Europe, was able to present through its case studies that it has helped reduce the hot island effect, increase oxygen levels, and even bring back avian species to the city. There are many more advantages to bringing in window plants (compliments of an advocate friend, Romana, in teaching me about it), roof gardens, and balanced plant ratio in areas with no plants. Many other places do take advantage of this concept and actually come up with community gardens as well.

It is strange enough that while we are completely knowledgeable about the benefits of having plants, we ignore and go otherwise. If we can take this opportunity to green our urban surroundings, and many advocates would love to do so, we can create a greener change.

- Haresh Daswani