It is easy to see the aesthetic benefits of planting trees. The visual appeal of a well landscaped property with nice large trees easily beats out a bare lot for most of us. Did you know though, that planting trees can help save you hundreds and even thousands of dollars in annual energy use costs? The most amazing part of this is that it can save you money in both the Summer AND the Winter!

Winter Heating Cost Savings for North Dakota Trees

North Dakota winter are harsh. We have some of the longest, coldest winters in the US. North Dakota is far from the coasts and gets no benefits from the warm air off of the oceans. North Dakota is far north of the equator and gets less than 8 hours of daylight in the deep of winter. Worst of all, North Dakota is very windy especially it seems, in the winter. This is where trees in North Dakota can save you some big bucks in the winter. A North Dakota tree row wind break can help to reduce heat loss on your home by 10% even as much as 25% according to the USDA. As the wind roars across the North Dakota plains, when it is met by a wind break of North Dakota trees, the wind speed on the other side is most greatly reduced at distances of 2-5x the tree heights. That means if you have a thick row of hardy North Dakota Evergreen Trees that is 30 feet tall, the wind is most greatly reduced at a distance of 60-150 feet behind that tree row windbreak. Inside that area, the reduced wind speed carries up to 25% less of your homes heat away, and 25% less heat carried away by the North Dakota winds means that you are spending less money fueling your furnace to replace that heat. Given that we experience windy days almost every day in North Dakota, and that we have a solid 6, up to 7 or 8 months of winter here, that could mean a large savings by reducing your heating costs. If your average heating bill over those winter months is $150/mo., then you could save almost $40 every month. Over the entire winter that adds up to about $250, and over a 10-year period that number jumps to $2500 in heating cost savings alone from an effective North Dakota tree row. Of course, it can take time for trees to grow to a mature size providing an effective windbreak, but according to the USDA you can experience 3% savings only a few years after planting conservation grade trees, and up to 13% savings after only 15 years. If you plant larger trees to start you could see those savings almost immediately. North Dakota Grown evergreen trees like Colorado Spruce or Scotch pine are often available in sizes of 3 feet, 5 feet, up to 8 feet tall or more. A 5-foot-tall Colorado Spruce gives you a jump of about 10 years on a bare root conservation grade sized tree.

Summer Cooling Cost Saving for North Dakota Shade Trees

While winters in North Dakota are brutal, Summer can be almost as far to the opposite extreme. With long daylight hours, and often dry periods lasting months long the heat of 100-degree summer days can really be hard on your home air conditioner. A small relief from that heat in the form of shade can be a very welcome treat. Enter, the North Dakota Shade Tree. While we do not have a vast selection of native North Dakota shade trees, we do have some excellent selections, and there are always new varieties being grown and tested by the NDSU ag research extensions. A few well-placed shade trees can reduce the radiant heat of the sun on your home's exterior, and even shade the interior where there are windows on any but the north side of the home. Even with blinds or shades on a window the radiant heat from the sun can increase the interior temperature of you home in that room by as much as 10-15 degrees. Choose a nice North Dakota shade tree like a Bur Oak, Silver or Autumn Blaze Maple, Prairie Expedition American Elm, or even the great North Dakota Native Cottonwood Tree. These trees can have canopy spreads of 40 feet or wider in their maturity. When properly placed in your yard to provide shade on the exterior and windows of your home, these large trees can provide an energy savings by blocking the heat from the sun when it is at its strongest in the late morning and early afternoon. Smaller trees or even tall shrubs placed to block the sun from the East and the West will provide shelter then in the early morning, and the late afternoons. This strategy can provide protection from your home, and energy savings all day long in the hot North Dakota summers. This shade can also make your outdoor spaces more pleasant and encourage you to want to use them more often. The added advantage of the wind break benefits discussed for winter, also carry over to make your backyard a calmer more enjoyable space in the summer.

Transpiration is another way that trees can help to cool your yard and your home, and reduce your energy costs as well as actually regulate outdoor temperatures. You may be asking yourself, what is transpiration, and how do North Dakota Trees regulate outdoor temperatures. Take a look at the infographic below, and read on for more information.

North Dakota Trees need water. They use this water in a few ways. One way is for growth in the process of photosynthesis. Trees absorb water through their fine roots, collected into the larger roots and transported up the trunk and out to the leaves where they use light energy to convert the water, carbon dioxide and minerals absorbed through the roots along with the water into oxygen and energy rich organic compounds. Photosynthesis though is only one way that North Dakota tree utilize water. The rest of the water used by trees is used for regulating temperature through evaporation which we all learned about in elementary school science classes, and transpiration another process returning water in the form of vapor to the atmosphere. This process uses the same water absorbed in through the tree's roots, and up the trunk out to the leaves, but this water is then released into the atmosphere by the tree when the heat is higher than ideal for it. The release of the water utilizes energy from heat and the radiant energy of the sun (which would otherwise be converted into heat) to transform the water into water vapor. This use of energy results in a reduction of heat energy. This is the tree's way of regulating its own temperature, but it results in a reduction of the temperature of the air around the tree as well. It is estimated that trees in large urban areas can reduce air temperatures by 5 degrees or more. 

Planting Trees in North Dakota for Energy Savings Year-round

With a bit of planning, your North Dakota tree planting can help you to save money on energy costs all year long. The same tree, if proper selection and placement is made, can provide all of the energy saving benefits above. A good North Dakota landscaping tree plan with a variety of tree species and tree planting arrangements can offer the greatest energy saving benefits for the entire year. A few staggered rows of shrubs, medium sized trees and North Dakota grown evergreens can provide a wind break, as well as providing the late afternoon or early morning shade. Those same rows will provide a lot of cooling effect in the Summer through transpiration. With the additional of a few well-placed shade trees, your North Dakota landscaping can provide you these energy cost saving tree planting techniques all year long. And of course, they will look great while doing it.

Thank you for reading, and I hope that you have found this information on the energy cost saving benefits of North Dakota trees interesting and helpful.

Helping you Grow, Row by Row

If you are interested in planting trees in North Dakota for energy cost savings, we can help. We are a licensed North Dakota nursery, and a licensed landscape contractor in Bismarck, North Dakota. We have trees available for retail sales, and we also provide tree planting services near Bismarck, North Dakota. All of our selections are trees hardy for North Dakota, and many of them are trees grown in North Dakota. If you are looking for a wind screen tree row, a large North Dakota shade tree, or even just some landscaping trees near Bismarck, we are here to help with all of your North Dakota tree needs.

To see a few of our services offered: Tree Nursery, Landscape - Tree Rows 4 U - Bismarck, North Dakota 

To see some of the trees we have available: Trees (treerows4u.com) 

To contact us to order trees or to inquire about having us plant trees for you:
Tree Rows 4 U