It’s true, in Modern House Magazine and the larger movement for a greener living environment new modern houses get most of the attention. This makes sense for people who perhaps are looking for their first house or have the mobility to move to a new house, but if you are stuck in your current house because of financing arrangements or you’re attached to your neighborhood, what can you do to improve your current living environment?

Despite the inequality mentioned above, it turns out quite a lot. Even though you may not be able to create a house with the same environmental credentials as some of the newer house designs without a major remodel effort, there’s still a number of ways to “re-green” your current house.

To help homeowners get green, King County in Washington State (think Seattle) now provides a great visual with their Eco-Cool Remodel Tool, a virtual house designed to help homeowners “find ways to green up your next home remodeling project.”

In the virtual remodel house you can click on icons for each room to get tips specific to that room. Once you learn all the tips you can click on additional resources that can “save you money, increase your home’s value, and help protect the environment.”

Depending on your own knowledge level more or less of the remodel information may not be new, but for most it is a great starting place to help you think about what you want to improve and how to move in that direction.

Retrofitting the nation’s buildings with the latest green technologies is a huge focus including billions in the recent stimulus bill to upgrade federal buildings, and as mentioned above to the extent most people can’t or don’t want to move to become green, resources like the Eco-Cool Remodel Tool provided by King County can help millions of residential buildings compete in the coming green real estate market.

Eco-Cool Remodel Tool