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27 Mar, 2024
Nothing spoils a fun day of Easter egg hunting like an accident involving electricity. Here are eight tips for hiding eggs safely: · If you’re hiding some of the eggs indoors, steer clear of electrical outlets, plugs, light sockets and extension cords. · Outdoors, avoid placing eggs near air conditioning units, low-hanging overhead wires or in trees near electric lines. · Pick up anything on the ground that the children could trip on. They’ll be focusing on finding eggs, not their footing. · Same goes for holes and uneven patches of ground in your yard. · Place eggs well within the boundaries of your lawn. Don’t put them close to the street or driveways. · Bushes are great hiding places for eggs—and also for bees, snakes and other critters that you won’t want your children near. · Avoid bushes that are thorny or have recently been sprayed with pesticides. · Hide your eggs no more than two hours before the hunt so they don’t spoil.
20 Mar, 2024
Spring is a great time to save energy at home when most days are neither cold nor hot, so you don’t need to turn on either the heat or air conditioning. Take advantage of the nice weather to use less energy now and prepare your home to be more efficient this summer. Some tips: 1. Open the windows—all of them—to create a cross-breeze all over the house. This keeps the home cool without air conditioning. 2. Call an HVAC service tech to inspect your air conditioning system. A springtime check will give you a chance to repair any problems before the weather gets hot and a poorly maintained system leaves you without cool indoor air. 3. Switch your ceiling fan blades so they rotate counterclockwise. This will create a downward breeze, which will keep anyone in the room comfortable. 4. Use a caulk gun to seal cracks and openings on the indoor side of exterior walls—like around cable and phone lines and electrical outlets. 5. If you don’t have a programmable thermostat, now is a great time to install one. This device can save you 5% to 15% on heating and cooling bills, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, because it adjusts the temperature for times when the family is sleeping or away from the house.
13 Mar, 2024
As you open the windows and start spring-cleaning your home, add another item to your to-do list: Clean your lawn tools. Your electric lawnmower, weed trimmer and hedge trimmer have been cooped up and unused for months. And you’ll need to do more than knock the dust off of them. Cordless lawnmowers and power tools need regular cleaning and maintenance, so they operate properly. Good news: They’re easier to take care of than gas-powered tools. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions for cleaning your specific models. Generally: · Remove the tool’s battery before you get started and slip on a sturdy pair of gloves to protect your hands. · Use a dry cloth to wipe down the device and remove cobwebs, dust, loose dirt and dead bugs. · With a plastic scraper or a bristle brush, scrub off dried mud and grass all over the device, even underneath. · Damp-clean the machine all over with a wet cloth, but steer clear of the motor. Take extra care around the blade. · Look for cracks on the casing and determine if the tool is still usable. Check that the handle is tight and sturdy. Inspect the blade for rust. · Fully charge the tool, replacing the battery if it has gotten damaged over the winter.
07 Mar, 2024
As you ready your house for warmer weather, take some time to check these items off your list: • Test the ground-fault circuit interrupters—or GFCIs—in bathrooms, the laundry room and other spaces where you use running water. Plug a hair dryer or any device into the outlet, turn it on, and then push the “test” button. The hair dryer should turn off. Press “reset,” and it should turn back on. If that doesn’t happen, call a licensed electrician to check it out. • Replace the batteries in smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Push the “test” button, and the alarm should sound. Or light a match and hold it next to the fire alarm. It should sound. • It’s almost air conditioning season, which means it’s time to change your a/c filters. Dirty filters make the a/c work too hard and can even wear your HVAC system out before its time. Replace filters about once a month during the summer.
27 Feb, 2024
New Year’s Day is far behind us, but it’s never too late to resolve to break bad habits and start good ones. At the top of the springtime list: energy-saving habits. Experts say the best way to start a new habit and make it stick is to start small. Here are a handful of simple, small steps you and your family can take to create your new energy-efficiency habits: · At the top of the list, of course, is to turn off lights, TVs and other electronics when you’re not using them. On your way out of any room, switch everything off. · Turn on ceiling fans when you enter a room and turn them off when you leave. Ceiling fans make the people in the room feel cooler but have no function in an empty room. · Once it’s warm enough to turn on the a/c, inch the thermometer up one degree each week. As your family gets used to slightly warmer indoor temperatures, you can see some real savings on cooling costs. · Use bathroom and stove exhaust fans for only a few minutes at a time, until the smoke or steam has cleared. While exhaust fans expel heat and humidity from a room, they also suck air-conditioned air out if you run them longer than necessary.
20 Feb, 2024
You still have plenty of time before you’ll need to crank up the air conditioning at home. Use the spring season to do some maintenance that could help your a/c run more efficiently and reliably this summer. Here are five tips: 1. Replace air filters before you turn the a/c on for the first time. Then, replace them again about once a month until autumn. Clean air filters allow conditioned air to flow easily through your rooms. And they lower the amount of dust, dander and pollutants that get pushed into your indoor air. 2. Move lamps away from thermostats. Electronics and lamps give off heat when they’re turned on, which can fool your a/c into “thinking” the room is warmer than it is. 3. Seal leaks. If you felt cold drafts coming inside during the winter, find the sources of the leaks and caulk them. Look around ducts, cables and wires on the interior side of outdoor walls. Those same leaks will let cool, air-conditioned air escape during the summer. 4. Switch the direction of your ceiling fan blades. For warm weather, the blades should rotate counter-clockwise. 5. Schedule an HVAC inspection. A qualified HVAC pro can spot problems with your air conditioning system before they occur and make sure your equipment is maintained and ready for warm weather.
14 Feb, 2024
One of the easiest and most effective ways to save energy in your home is to add insulation to your attic. Some clues that your attic needs more insulation: some of the rooms in your home are drafty; their walls feel hot or cold to the touch; you feel cold in some rooms or warm in others. Even if your home had plenty of attic insulation when it was built, it might need some more now. Insulation can detach from the surfaces it’s meant to cover, which means it’s not able to do its job anymore. And some homes never had enough to begin with. If your attic has a low ceiling, it might be hard to move around in, so a professional can probably do the job better and easier than you can. But if it’s roomy and you’re the do-it-yourself type, adding attic insulation can be a fairly quick and simple job.
07 Feb, 2024
If you leave your heat at the same temperature all day and night, you’re missing out on some serious energy savings. There’s no need to keep your home toasty warm while nobody’s in it—like during the day if everyone leaves for work and school. And you’re wrapped up tight in a comfy blanket overnight, so it stands to reason that you’ll be perfectly comfortable sleeping in a home that’s a bit cooler than it is before bedtime. Your best bet: Invest in a programmable thermostat that will automatically turn the heat down when you leave for work; up when you’re due to get home; down again right after you go to bed; and up again a half-hour before your alarm wakes you up in the morning. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that you can save up to 10 percent a year on heating and cooling if you turn your thermostat back seven to 10 degrees for eight hours a day.
31 Jan, 2024
It seems that if you close the door to an unused room, you can avoid paying to heat it, right? The opposite is true. When you close off an interior room, or if you close the air vents in that room, your heating system has to work harder and can even break down as a result. The reason: Your home’s HVAC system is designed to keep the whole house comfortable by distributing heat evenly throughout. If you close off a room or a duct, you reduce the airflow to room and force your system to work harder to heat it up. That can cause a pressure imbalance, which can damage your ducts or your heating system. Here’s a better idea: Save money and energy by using caulk to seal air leaks around windows and holes in walls where cables enter the house. Add insulation to the attic. Install curtains that are thermally insulated. Replace your outdated thermostat with a programmable one that will lower the temperature at bedtime and when everyone leaves the house in the morning.
24 Jan, 2024
You had your heating system serviced and added extra blankets to all of the beds in your home. But you’re still chilly indoors during this coldest month of the year. Try this: 1. Check your windows. Even energy-efficient, double-pane windows won’t keep the cold out if they’re not completely closed. Latch them, too; if it’s not easy to do that, chances are, the window isn’t closed all the way. 2. Close your fireplace flue and install an electric insert. The fire in your fireplace doesn’t help heat your home. In fact, because you have to open the flue to let the smoke out, you’re inviting a lot of cold, outdoor air into your living room. 3. Adjust your ceiling fan. The blades are supposed to push heat down into the room in the winter. On most fan models, that means they should spin clockwise. In the summer, they spin counter-clockwise and pull warm air up to the ceiling. You have to manually switch the direction of the blades each season.
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