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Archive for the 'Georgia Mountain Home Tips' Category
With Labor Day looming, the autumn and winter months aren’t far behind. It’s a good time to reflect on your home’s heating and cooling costs, and take steps to lower your energy bills. Finding air leaks may be a perfect first project.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, up to 30 percent can be cut from a home’s energy costs just by reducing drafts. For example, a 1/16-inch gap unsealed gap around a window is equivalent to leaving the window 3 inches open.
That’s a lot of wasted North Georgia Mountain air.
The good news is that air leaks are rather simple to identify, and simple to fix. The key is to know where to look. And, to make the job easier, the government offers a complete DIY Guide To Sealing and Insulating a home.
Some of the key tips include:
- Focus on the attic and basement, where most air is lost
- Locate problem areas on a chimney
- Check recessed lights which allow air flow between conditioned and unconditioned air
The government’s website also provides a 13-page PDF with detailed images, instructions, and recommendation to help you with the work.
However, if the job is beyond your skill set, be sure to call a qualified contractor. Sealing your home from air leaks will reduce your monthly energy bill and the money spent to pay a professional will be just a fraction of what you’ll save over time.
(Image courtesy: US Department of Energy)
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Over time, the grout in a shower can become dirty and discolored, and start to separate from its grout lines. This is a potentially dangerous condition for a home because broken grout lines allow water to seep into the walls, which can then lead to the growth of mold spores.
Fortunately, keeping your grout in tip-top shape is simple.
In this 2-minute video, you’ll learn how to clean the existing grout in your shower and to prepare for a new coating. You’ll also learn how to replace its caulk.
The video’s tips include:
- Why you should remove excess grout diagonally with a sponge
- How to protect your tub from damage while the re-grout is in process
- Choosing the right caulk for the job
The North American Tile Cleaning Association also offers helpful grout-cleaning advice. Visit their website at http://www.tilecleaning.org.
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Sometimes, a backed-up sink is too big of a job for a bottle of Drano. To clear the clog, you have to get your hands dirty. But what do you do? This quick, 2-minute video from Lowe’s is an excellent tutorial.
The video starts with basic safety preparation, then shows you how to:
- How to identify the J-trap beneath your sink
- Position a plastic bucket to catch water run-off
- Use your finger to clear out debris
- Replace the J-trap beneath the sink
Unclogging a sink can be simple homeowner project, but if you’re uncomfortable working with plumbing or just want to outsource, be sure to call a professional.
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Just because the expiration date has passed, that doesn’t mean that the food is spoiled. It’s a deep-seated misconception that results in the average American household wasting 14% of all food purchases.
The estimated cost of waste like that totals in the billions.
The data comes from a study commissioned by ShelfLifeAdvice.com, a website devoted to helping households cut food bills by providing better information of how to properly store food; of how food expiration dates work; and, by defining what “use by”, “sell by” and other product dates actually mean.
Among survey participants, women fared better than men, older people fared better than younger people, and married people fared better than non-married people. Overall, however, there’s room for better understanding.
For example:
- Milk will remain safe for about a week after the “sell by” date. It’s safe to drink beyond that, but the taste may change for the worse.
- Cottage Cheese will remain safe for about 2 weeks after the “sell by” date.
- Mayonnaise will last for up to 4 months after opening, when kept cold
And, perhaps the biggest surprise, is that eggs, if properly refrigerated, will remain fresh for up to 5 weeks after the “sell by” date on the carton.
Read the survey’s complete results on the ShelfLifeAdvice.com website, including facts you may not have known about keeping your food beyond its expiration date. What you learn will keep you from pitching food prematurely, and help you save money at the grocery store.
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This week marks the start of August, a popular vacation month for Americans. Maybe you’re among the many who will leave for the North Georgia Mountains for a few days — or a few weeks. But, before you leave your home, make sure you don’t leave clues for burglars.
Sure, there’s the basics like using an alarm system, locking your doors, and having a neighbor pick up your mail, but there’s additional precautionary steps you should follow, too. In a piece titled “Tips a Burglar Won’t Tell You“, NBC’s The Today Show shares some of them. They’re tips gleaned for a series of interviews with ex-convicts.
Among the advice:
- Have neighbors remove fliers and other solicitations from your driveway and/or mailbox
- If you don’t have a safe, hide valuables in a child’s room — not in a sock drawer
- Don’t announce your vacation on Facebook, Twitter or other websites
It’s impossible to protect your home from burglary completely, but you can take steps so that your home is not the most obvious target on the block. Start with common sense protection, then follow the extra tips from the video.
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According to the EPA, if every household in America replaced one “traditional” bulb with an energy-saving compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) light bulb, it would result in $700 million in energy cost savings each year, plus a greenhouse gas savings equivalent to that of 800,000 automobiles.
They’re expensive, but CFL bulbs tend to pay for themselves in less a year, and often last for several. It’s no wonder they’re so popular with homeowners in Hiawassee. But, CFLs also come with health risks.
Namely, CFL bulbs contain mercury — an average of 4 milligrams per bulb.
The mere presence of mercury doesn’t make CFLs dangerous. It just means that you should exercise care when handling them, and take certain precautions when disposing of them.
The Environment Protection Agency offers some tips:
- Screw/unscrew the bulb from the base and not the bulb to prevent breakage
- Never force a CFL bulb into a light socket
- When the bulb burns out, bring it to one of 3,106 recycling centers
The EPA website also give guidance for dealing with broken bulbs. Among the recommendations: Don’t wash mercury-covered clothing to prevent contaminating other clothing, too, and don’t vacuum up the poison, either. There are special handling instructions to prevent poisoning yourself and others in your household.
The EPA’s CFL safety PDF is 3 pages long and can be viewed on its Web site.
CFLs provide long-term energy and environment cost savings. And, with some common sense care, their risks to your health can be minimized.
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In May 2010, Retail Sales at non-store retailers — a category that includes Amazon and eBay — topped $29 billion, up 16 percent from May 2009. Clearly, Americans are doing an increasing amount of shopping online. And we’re paying our bills online, too.
But how well are we protecting our identities?
In this 5-minute piece from NBC’s The Today Show, you’ll learn the basics of online fraud and methods to minimize the likelihood of identity theft. Furthermore, the tips go beyond the basic “choose a challenging password”. For example, you’ll hear about:
- Why you shouldn’t pay bills from a coffee shop
- Who might be hiding behind an unprotected public wifi network
- The dangers of storing credit card numbers with an online retailer
And, although, at one point, the interviewee goes over the top with respect to spyware and anti-phishing prevention, the point being made is a good one — you can’t be too careful with your online financials and common sense goes a long way.
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As the mercury rises into the summer months, don’t forget to change your home’s air filters regularly. It not only extends the life of your HVAC unit, but can help keep your energy costs down, too.
Not all air filters are created alike, however. Don’t go cheap.
Your local hardware store carries a variety of air filters ranging in price from less than a dollar to $20 or more per filter. They’re all purported to do the same job, but after watching this 1-minute video, you’ll see why cheaper isn’t necessarily better.
Airborne particles are smaller than most mesh filters. Pleated filters are recommended instead.
Most high-quality air filters start around $11 and can be purchased in bulk from Amazon at discounts of up to 20 percent. 3M’s Filtrete line of products is a popular, well-selling brand and can last up to 3 months.
If your home has shedding pets or is dust-prone, consider changing them monthly.
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Carbon monoxide (CO) is an odorless, colorless gas found in combustion fumes, stoves, gas ranges and heating systems. It’s poisonous to humans because carbon monoxide binds to red blood cells, preventing the flow of oxygen through a person’s bloodstream.
There’s a bevy of CO sources in the home and that may be why more than 20,000 Americans are sent to the emergency room each year because of Carbon Monoxide poisoning. 5 percent die from it.
Therefore, whether you own a home in the North Georgia Mountains or rent one, equip your place with working carbon monoxide detectors and test them regularly. In this 2-minute video from Lowe’s, you’ll learn how to get started:
- How to mount CO detectors using basic household tools
- In what rooms to install CO detectors for maximum safety
- How often CO detector batteries should be changed
Carbon monoxide poisoning is a four-season danger at home. Protect your yourself and your loved ones.
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After moving into a new home here in the North Georgia Mountains, you should immediately replace its deadbolt locks. It’s not just the home’s former residents that have the key, after all, but so might a relative, a friend, a neighbor, a dog-walker, and others.
You may call a locksmith for the job, but you can save some money if you can do-it-yourself.
In this detailed, 2-minute video, you’ll learn how to remove and replace a deadbolt lock using nothing but a Phillips screwdriver and a deadbolt from a hardware store. It’s a simple project that requires little mechanical skill.
And one that can make your new home more safe.
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