Environment-Friendly Home Improvement Flooring Products Gain Mass Appeal

Posted by admin on October 11th, 2008 filed in HomeDecor

One of the first things home owners think of when embarking on a home improvement project is pulling up that dusty, stained and frayed old carpet. The next step is deciding what to put in its place - new carpet or some other type of flooring.

A trendy new craze sweeping the country is to replace existing carpet with environmentally friendly flooring such as reclaimed wood, linoleum, cork or bamboo. Such types of flooring are not only helpful to the environment, but are also coveted for their exquisite beauty, texture and form.

People are fast realizing the dangers of using products for the home that can be detrimental to the environment and to the residents who live in the home. Jumping on the bandwagon, architects, builders and decorators are suggesting flooring products that protect the environment and the people who live and work in the buildings.

Advantages of Choosing Environment-Friendly Flooring Over Carpeting

If you’ve ever pulled up used carpeting in a home or other heavily-trafficked area, you’ve probably been aghast at the debris and filth hidden in the carpet and padding. The truth is that no matter how fanatical you are about vacuuming and shampooing your carpet, residue, mold and mildew will accumulate in the fibers beneath. The carpet then becomes an allergen magnet, hording germs that can affect humans and pets who come in contact with it.

Besides the advantage of avoiding allergens, the durability and beauty of wood or other environmentally correct floorings remains undisputed. It is easily cleaned and comes in a wide variety of patterns and colors to fit any d

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Taking Solar Into Account When Designing Your Home Improvements

Posted by admin on July 23rd, 2008 filed in HomeDecor

Using the sun to heat up a home is growing by leaps and bounds in popularity these days. To really save money with solar, the best way is to design your home or improvements with solar in mind.

Taking Solar Into Account When Designing Your Home Improvements

In this case, we are not talking about using active solar panels to heat your home. We are merely talking about orienting your home in a particular way as well as emphasizing certain features. While this may sound odd at first, it is an extremely popular and cost effective energy production method used throughout the world.

To pursue this strategy, you must pay careful attention to how you design your house or improvements. One of the biggest errors made by people is the failure to take in all aspects of home heating and cooling. This can lead to a situation where you are producing far too much solar heat and the house becomes an oven. Get it wrong in the other direction and you don’t have nearly enough heat. Here are the key issues to consider.

The first issue, the site location, is almost always overlooked. Ideally, you want unobstructed sunlight to hit the south side of the home for at least six hours in the middle of the day. Contrary to popular opinion, it doesn’t matter what part of the United States you live in. There is sufficient sun exposure everywhere, although areas heavy with fog and cloud cover may be problematic. Regardless, the home must receive the aforementioned amount of sunlight. If it doesn’t, you are not going to be happy with the results.

The second issue many people miss out on is commonly known as the axis orientation. In the Northern Hemisphere, the south wall of structures will receive the most sun exposure. To efficiently use this energy, your home must be oriented to expose the longest wall of the structure to the south. The more surface area you have facing the sun, the more heat and light you will be able to generate in the home. On the other hand, if you orient a short side to the sun, it is going to produce less heat and be harder to circulate it through the length of the home.

The third issue ties in into axis orientation. To produce heat, you must have a vast majority of the windows on the south side of the home. Unless you are using a solar capture wall, it makes little sense to orient your home correctly without letting the sunlight in. Conversely, you need minimize windows on the north side of the home or at least use super energy efficient windows to keep heat from escaping. You don’t want to create a wind tunnel from the south to north side of the structure as air temperatures try to balance out!

You may have some doubts about how much heat a properly planned structure will produce. Hyperbole aside, your home will cook. The sun is incredibly powerful. Imagine sitting in your car on a sunny day with the windows rolled up and no air conditioning. The same thing will happen with your home.

To combat excessive heat, you should include some mechanism for reducing the amount of sun coming into the home. The easiest answer is to put curtains or some such thing on the interior, but it doesn’t always work for large bay windows. To resolve this problem, you should put some type of a retractable overhang on the exterior of the home. You can install the roller under the lip of the roof. They don’t look nearly as cheesy as they used to and you’ll be happy you did so when summer rolls around.

Taking advantage of the sun for heating is not particularly complicated. If you keep the above issues in mind, you’ll be able to smile when your neighbors complain about their utility bills.

Rick Chapo is with SolarCompanies.com, a directory of solar energy companies. Visit us to read more articles on solar power and passive solar floor plans.

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