Block the Sun with Outside Blinds
One of the newest concepts in home improvement is the use of outside blinds as sun blockers to reduce or eliminate the need for air conditioning. Some homeowners have foregone the use of draperies altogether, thus eliminating the need for deep cleaning the interior fabrics with chemicals and making the room less allergenic.
Europeans have embraced this concept not only in private homes, but in commercial buildings and hotels. One German manufacturer installs custom outside blinds to fit any design. Hotels often utilize an automated system that opens the blinds when a key unlocks the entrance door and closes them when the guests leave. The system also senses strong winds—over 35 miles per hour— and will retract automatically.
Home Improvement: How To Pay For It
Everyone wants to have a beautiful home. Considering that it is probably the biggest purchase of your life and where you spend the most time, it’s easy to see why home improvement is such a big business. Unfortunately, it’s rarely cheap. Even remodeling a tiny bathroom can set you back several thousand dollars or more. So let’s take a look at the different options out there to pay for these improvements.
Home Equity Line of Credit: Known as HELOC for short, this is a line of credit which uses your home’s value as collateral. Because it is secured by the equity in your home, typically this type of loan has interest rates which are less than a non-secured loan (like a credit card). If you’re looking for 10 to 50k in financing, this is one way to go.
Refinance: Just like the name implies, this is where you replace your current mortgage with a new one. This benefits the consumer in a couple ways. First of all, if you can refinance to a lower interest rate, this in itself may be hundreds less than your current monthly payment. Secondly, if you got a mortgage years ago, a refinance allows you to cash out that equity you’ve already paid for – money you can use for whatever you want, including home remodeling.
Credit Cards: Most of the time, this is not a good idea. However, if you have the means and discipline to pay off the balance quickly (within 6 to 12 months) this is an option to consider. Why? Because a number of credit cards have 0% offers on purchases. Bank cards are more likely to offer you better deals for this, but there are also store cards like the Home Depot credit card which sometimes offer 0% promotions for up to 6 months. If you decide to go this route, be sure to use comparison tools like credit card reviews and ratings to find the longest offer possible.
Personal Unsecured Loans: Similar to a credit card, these usually aren’t available for high-dollar amounts since they’re not secured by collateral. For the same reason, they also typically carry high interest rates. Therefore, this is rarely (if ever) a good way to finance anything, let alone an optional home improvement project.
Payment Plans: Large stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s don’t offer this, but some local mom and pop stores sometimes still offer payment plans to customers they trust. If the interest rate is reasonable, this is definitely a good option to consider. However due to the recent economic problems, it will be especially hard to find stores that offer this.
Reality TV: Yes, this is definitely a far-fetched option, but if you have a great story you may be able to get on Extreme Makeover or another similar show. Typically, the people featured on these shows pay nothing for remodeling. Now some of the cable channel shows do require participants to absorb some of the costs, but often the contractors are more than happy to cut a deal since it’s an excellent publicity opportunity.
Sustainable Decking Solutions
Building sustainable decking solutions tends to be a large challenge, because it means trying to get the materials involved in the decking to do what they are not naturally meant to do, including lasting for many years without requiring a great deal of maintenance. Most of the methods that are commonly used to accomplish the maintenance required by decking are actually rather harmful to the environment and therefore are not solutions at all. Even some apparently ecologically sound materials cannot hold up under scrutiny. On the other hand, some solutions that appear to be destructive to the environment can provide a much more sustainable solution.
As far as sustainable decking solution goes, natural wood decking comes with advantages that you will not find with any other decking materials. Wood is non toxic, and is extremely strong considering how light it is in weight. Wood is also easy to work and has a beautiful appearance. Wood is a completely renewable resource as long as it is managed intelligently, and wood can be produced with a comparatively small input of fossil fuels, especially if the wood products are brought it from local forest sources. Wood is also easily reused and recycled, and it can biodegrade easily without creating any pollutant byproducts.
The one problem that is associated with wood deckling springs from one of its advantages. The natural biodegradable nature of the wood is to return to the soil where it comes from, because of weather, mold, bacteria and insect activity. In order to delay these effects from occurring, it is vital to use wood products that have rot resistance in them naturally. Some of these wood products include native redwoods and cedars, and imported tropical hardwoods such as ipe or ironwood and teak.
Wood that is naturally rot resistant can be really wonderful, but these woods are more difficult to find and have become more expensive as a result. This fact forces people to search for alternatives that are most cost effective, such as decking options that are constructed from softwoods that are less rot resistant and cheaper, but that are pressure treated using chemicals as a means of inhibiting the decay. The depth of the treatment is what determines the degree that the wood can be rot resistant. The decking materials can retain the same strength as natural wood and can be finished with a variety of different stains and other treatments that inhibit decay and add to the natural beauty of the wood.
In the past, standard wood preservatives were Pentachlorophenol, Chromated Copper Arsenate (CCA) and Creosote, but these are all extremely toxic and poisonous treatments. These chemicals are beginning to see replacement by Copper Azone (CA) and Amine Copper Quat (ACQ) which are far safer results but still far from being truly benign.