Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween Everyone!

Plumbing Basics

Everyone has plumbing in their house, but most people ignore it until something goes wrong. However, if you   know some basic information about your plumbing, you will know some basics on how to take care of it. And if you know how to take care of your plumbing, plumbing disasters will come along a lot less frequently. Here are some basics about plumbing from Ace Pelizon:

Fundamental Plumbing

Plumbing is based entirely on the properties of gravity and water pressure. A plumbing system has two basic systems – one that brings water in and one that removes that water once you’ve used it. To bring water into your home, it is pressurized. With enough pressure, it can travel against gravity, rising in the pipes to your fixtures.

Every fixture in your home has a valve on it that allows you to shut off the flow of water when making repairs or if there is an emergency. If the emergency is big enough, you can turn the main water supply valve off outside your home as well.

Drainage Systems

While the water coming into your home is relatively simple – pressurized cold water goes directly to the fixtures and hot water comes from your hot water heater – the drainage system is slightly more complicated.

Once water has exited the faucets in your fixtures, it is no longer pressurized so gravity is needed to remove it. Each drain consists of a few basic parts – the flange, tail piece, trap, and drain extension. When you put water down a drain it goes into the trap and flows into the drain extension, eventually to the sewer line.

The trap is designed to always hold a small amount of water so that sewer gasses cannot back up into your fixtures. Vents are installed in your home as well to ensure there is always air in the plumbing system. That air ensures a vacuum doesn’t generate. If it did, water couldn’t flow out of the house. It’s the same as pouring from a small hole in a can – if you poke a hole in the opposite side, it flows much faster because air enters the can to displace the liquid.

For more information about plumbing, visit their website.

Americans and Solar Heating

Americans are becoming more and more energy conscious every year. This is leading to increased interest in alternative energy solutions for residential homes. One of these is solar heating. As almost everybody knows, solar power (and solar heating) uses the sun's rays and converts them into energy. This is very easy to implement in the case of water heaters, which are a large percentage of any home's heating cost. An article from Earth Techling explains how Americans are taking advanatage of this technology:

“Solar heating and cooling technologies” is an umbrella term used to describe solar energy technologies that capture the sun’s heat, providing energy for water and pool heating as well as space heating and cooling. These technologies save homes and businesses money by offsetting the use of electricity, natural gas and home heating fuels. Today, there are enough solar water heating systems installed in the United States to serve 1.5 million homes.

A recent study by Gotham Research Group, conducted on behalf of the Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA), found that public support for solar water heating remains unsullied by the the bankruptcy of Solyndra (a cutting-edge photovoltaic company, after all). The poll found that three out of four respondents (74 percent) agreed that “the growth of the solar water heating industry will produce jobs and help the American economy.” Positive perceptions of solar water heating systems exceeded negative perceptions by more than 10 to one.

For the full article, click here.

Fall is here!

Happy Fall! How is the foliage where you live? Here is a great picture from Weather.com that really shows how beautiful fall can be!

Taken In Bethlehem, CT By FineArtVideo
The sun shines brilliantly through a panorama of red maples. 

Nest Thermostats

Not a lot of us worry about the thermostats in our house. Even if you have a programmable thermostat, only a few homeowners will utilize its full, energy saving potential. But there are lots of savings available if your thermostat is able to adjust your heat accurately; you will save money without having to feel uncomfortable. In order to pursue this end, the Nest Thermostat was developed. Here is some of what it is capable of:

However, Nest reckons it’s the Learning Thermostat’s intelligence that will be giving you chills, not the temperature. The system observes your normal heating/cooling routines – using movement sensors, humidity and temperature sensors, and proximity control – and can mimic them itself, as well as automatically tweaking the settings when there’s nobody home. That takes about a week, Rogers claims. It can even pull in weather forecasts over WiFi to adjust temperatures automatically based on conditions outdoors: cranking up the aircon if the sun makes an appearance, for instance.

The Nest Learning Thermostat will go on sale priced at $249 in Best Buy midway through November, and is intended to be easily installed by the home owner (rather than demanding professional help). If that seems a lot for a fancy thermometer, Nest reckons that in a year it will pay for itself: saving 20- to 30-percent of the average $1,000 energy bill for the American home.

To learn more, check out the full article here: http://www.slashgear.com/nest-learning-thermostat-makes-heating-ipod-sexy-25190536/

Happy Monday

A customer’s new, computerized furnace stops working. But each time the technician shows up, it works flawlessly.

The exasperated technician tells the customer:

“I had a car just like that. Every time I drove it past the junk yard, it ran just fine”.


HVAC tech to homeowner:

“Your furnace has a few problems. But things could be a lot worse.”

Somewhat, relieved, the homeowner replies: “Oh, that’s good news.”

HVAC tech:

“I know. It could be my furnace instead of yours.”



And I have no idea how to describe this, but it is definitely worth watching: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=02a_1307119966

Fall Maintenance

No one likes to think about maintenance, it often seems like a lot of trouble for no immediate cause. But when  your heating system breaks down in the middle of a cold night because you neglected it's fall checkup, you can quickly regret not taking the time to maintain it. Here is some great advice from Design Comfort about fall maintenance:

Most heating and cooling contractors offer service or maintenance agreements, which lock in at least one or two visits a year for furnace or air conditioner inspection. It is rare to find a contractor who will schedule a furnace inspection during the cold winter months. They know that time is usually saved for people with real emergencies. If you don’t have a service agreement with a contractor, you may want to consider signing up for one and avoid the risk of waiting in line for a furnace repair in the dead of winter.

During fall maintenance, your heating equipment will be switched on and inspected. That may sound routine but by running your heating system early, you may be spared the expense of repairing your system when it fails to operate or run smoothly during the cold months. If there is a problem, it is better to fix it ahead of time.

There is no guarantee that a furnace that is tuned up in the fall will last throughout the winter without needing service. But a little preventive maintenance ahead of time will save a lot of heartache – and dollars – when a real emergency comes up.

For the full article, visit their website.

High Tech Heat Gear

If you want to try something a little different this fall, try purchasing some high tech heat gear instead of cranking up the thermostat. A whole new wave of clothing with heating features is being developed, many of which are very stylish. The New York Times had a great article about it:

“In the wintertime, generally people like to warm up more and more, and as a result, people become really bulky,” said Aoi Matsumoto, Uniqlo’s manager for global marketing and communications, explaining how the idea for its Heattech line was born. “We thought we’d like to make people feel comfortable. If we warm up closer to the skin, people can actually enjoy fashion.”

Uniqlo has sold 100 million Heattech items globally since sales began in 2003. The company started with basic tops and tights, but this year has expanded to leggings, mufflers, hats and, yes, even skinny jeans.

It is not alone. Brookstone offers its own line of “Cold Weather Gear,” which includes jackets and fleeces with “built-in heating” — basically thin, battery-powered heat bundles that can reach up to 113 degrees and last up to five hours, according to the company Web site. There are also heated sock liners, complete with a battery strap that seems disconcertingly like an ankle bracelet Lindsay Lohan might wear.

And then there is WarmX, the family-run, Germany-based business that stumbled upon its heating line after “some experimentation with fabrics for the German government,” said Keith McCoy, the company’s distributor for the United States and Canada. Their clothes have silver threads woven into the fabric that, when hooked up to a battery pack, create a current that runs along the threads and into the clothes. “It’s like your whole body is immersed in a warm bath,” Mr. McCoy said.

For the full article, click here.

New Cooling Tower Technology

We often wonder if it is better to replace our old systems or get a new one. This is the same for commercial buildings, whose HVAC systems are huge investments that can require a lot of time, money and manpower to replace. But the people in the LAX Airport Center office were grateful that they decided to upgrade their cooling tower. They upgraded to engineered plastic cooling towers from their old galvanized metal towers, which was great for them when the heat wave hit. Here is more info from HVAC News:

"We felt that a newer type of cooling tower, designed with a shell of engineered plastic, would be more efficient and less maintenance-intensive for the application than simply replacing the old injector system with a new one," McGuire says.

 The engineered plastic cooling tower, innovated by Delta Cooling Towers (Rockaway, NJ), has been used in industrial and commercial applications of many types because of its inherent resistance to corrosives as well as high-efficiency features.

Because the 5777 West Century Boulevard building was located near Los Angeles International Airport , it was exposed to the corrosive effects of industrial effluents, jet fuels and the nearby Pacific salt air. Those corrosive effects as well as prevailing high humidity no doubt were contributing to the increasingly waning performance of the building's old injector cooling tower system. McGuire was convinced that the Delta plastic model would be best for this application.

"I like the Delta design," he says. "The double-wall plastic shell is impervious to UV light, pH or corrosives, so it's very low in maintenance. The tower operates well in high humidity. The shell has a 15-year warranty, which is unique in the cooling tower industry. Also, I think it's got strong price advantages."

The model that McGuire recommended was a single, 500-ton Delta TM series cooling tower to replace the old injector tower. The high-efficiency TM Series is an induced draft, counter flow design that is modular, and capable of providing from 250 to over 2,000 cooling tons.

 The cooling tower fan runs off a variable-speed drive, so the fan runs slower, consumes less energy and creates less wear and tear on the motors. In office building applications, the variable-speed fan gradually starts in the morning as the weather warms, typically running at 30 percent until it shuts off in the evening.

For the full article, click here.

Radiant Heating

Have you heard of radiant heating? It has been used for centuries to heat house without needing a furnace or air ducts, it warms people and objects directly instead of heating the air around them. Here is what Wikipedia has to say:

Radiant heating heats a building through radiant heat, rather than other conventional methods such as radiators (mostly convection heating). The technology has existed since the Roman use of hypocaust heating. Underfloor radiant heating has long been widespread in China and Korea. The heat energy is emitted from a warm element, such as a floor, wall or overhead panel, and warms people and other objects in rooms rather than directly heating the air. The internal air temperature for radiant heated buildings may be lower than for a conventionally heated building to achieve the same level of body comfort, when adjusted so the perceived temperature is actually the same.

The radiant heating systems can be divided into:

• Underfloor heating systems—electric or hydronic
• Wall heating systems
• Radiant ceiling panels

Underfloor and wall heating systems often are called low-temperature systems. Since their heating surface is much larger than with other systems, a much lower temperature is required to achieve the same level of heat transfer. The maximum temperature of the heating surface can vary from 29–35 °C (84–95 °F) depending on the room type. Radiant overhead panels are mostly used in production and warehousing facilities or sports centers; they hang a few meters above the floor and their surface temperature is much higher.

Do you have radiant heating in your house? Have you ever been in a house that has? Share your experiences!

Space Heater

Space heaters are a great way to supplement a main heating system for rooms that are inadequately heated. It can also be a way to zone your heating, only have space heaters for rooms that need to warmer than the rest of the house. However, safety is an important concern for space heaters, the government estimates that more than 25,000 fires each year are associated with their use! With that frightening statistic, it is important to understand some of the safety precautions you can take. Here are some guidelines from Energy Savers:

Only purchase newer model heaters that have all of the current safety features. Make sure the heater has the Underwriter's Laboratory (UL) label attached to it.

Choose a thermostatically controlled heaters, since they avoid the energy waste of overheating a room.

Select a heater of the proper size for the room you wish to heat. Do not purchase oversized heaters. Most heaters come with a general sizing table.

Locate the heater on a level surface away from foot traffic. Be especially careful to keep children and pets away from the heater.

For more information about space heater safety, check out more the Energy Saver's website.

Solar Heating Savings

As we mentioned a few days ago, solar heating is a new trend that can save you a lot of money. You simply capture the radiation from the sun and use it to heat water to use in your house. Here are some great statistics from The Press Association on how much money it can save you:

Solar water-heating systems can provide as much as 60% of a home's hot water if they are properly installed and used, research into the technology has shown.

On average, the systems provide 39% of a household's hot water, a study of 88 homes which had solar thermal panels installed found, but there was a wide variation in how well they performed.

While the best systems were able to deliver 60% of the hot water demands of the home, some were providing as little as 9%, the study for the Energy Saving Trust said.

With most solar hot water systems retro-fitted into existing homes and heating units, good quality installation and insulation, for example of hot water tanks, was key to delivering a high performance.

And the way people use their hot water will also affect how much benefit they get from the technology.

For more information about how solar water heating can help you (and how to utilize it efficiently), check out the full article. 

Energy Saving the Easy Way

We are all looking for ways to cut down on our energy bills and save some money this fall. Actually, there are quite a few simple chores you can do to make your house more energy efficient and save you money on your utility bills.  I promise that you can perform almost all of these energy saving tips yourself, and you will very grateful for the added heat (and the lower bills) when winter really sets in. Here is a list from mass.gov:

Windows and Doors

Repair broken or cracked glass and putty older windows; check to see that windows close properly and window locks pull sashes together.

Make sure doors close properly; repair or replace non-working doorknobs, latches and striker plates.

Weatherstrip windows, doors and attic accesses; caulk the frames around windows and doors from the inside using a clear, pliable caulk.

Other Air Leaks

If you have a fireplace, be sure it is fitted with a tight sealing damper that is closed when the fireplace is not in use. If the fireplace is used infrequently, use a chimney block to eliminate heat loss.

Caulk foundation cracks and openings. Make sure kitchen and bathroom vent dampers close properly.

Lights and Hot Water

Replace incandescent light bulbs with energy efficient fluorescent lights. Over its lifetime, a fluorescent bulb will save $30 - $50. Look for rebates from utilities to save you even more. Today's new compact fluorescent bulbs perform even better than the models of a few years ago.

Install low flow showerheads and faucet aerators to save energy and water.

Reduce your hot water heater temperature to 120°.

Repair leaking hot water faucets, tanks and pipes.

All of these tips are easy to do and they make sense, why waste money heating air that escapes outside? For more information, check out the Massachusetts State website.

Ground Source Heat Pumps

When you think of geothermal energy, you think of a massive project and lots of digging to put pipes under the ground. But there is another way to take advantage of geothermal heating and cooling, and that is with a ground source heat pump. Many homes all of the US are taking advantage of the heating power that they earth can provide. Here is some more information about ground source heat pumps and their history from the New York Times: 

Ground-source heat-pump geothermal systems take advantage of the earth’s constant temperature below the frost line to heat and cool buildings.

That line varies according to latitude, but ranges in the United States from about three to six feet. Below that depth the temperature stays around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, give or take a few degrees. That is why a subterranean cave feels warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Wells for this geothermal energy usually go down in the hundreds rather than thousands of feet.

The technology is hardly new. The first successful commercial installation of ground-source heat pumps for climate control was in 1946 in an office tower in Portland, Ore. And the technology is best known in the Midwest and the South where the Department of Energy reports two-thirds of the nation’s geothermal systems are located.

The trend is steadily upward, according to Steven Chalk, chief operating officer of the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The 115,442 heat pumps that shipped from manufacturers in 2009, the latest year for which statistics are available, Mr. Chalk said, “was triple the number from a decade earlier.” He said that 3.5 percent of homes built that year installed geothermal heat pumps.

Click here for the full article.

How to Fix a Furnace Fan

Your furnace breaking, even in the early fall, is pretty upsetting. But there are a few things that you can do to see if you can get it working again without having to call in a professional. A problem with your furnace fan can be simple to fix. Here are some suggestions from RineAir Heating and Air Conditioning of things your should check if your furnace fan stops working:

The first thing to check when your furnace is running but the fan isn’t turning is whether or not the fan is actually switched on. Certain models of furnaces have a separate switch to turn the fan on and off. While there is probably no reason that you would want to turn off the fan by itself, it’s worth taking a look just in case. If that really is the problem, you’ll be up and running and back to dealing with better things in no time.

If that’s not the problem, you might try looking to see if any wires leading to the fan are loose or the fuse is blown. If the fan has no power, of course, it won’t be able to work but the rest of the furnace likely would work just fine as long as it doesn’t run on electricity as well.

Of course, the problem very well may be beyond your power to solve on your own. Don’t despair though. Even though you need to call in a professional, that doesn’t mean that the problem will be expensive to fix. In fact, it may be as simple as replacing your thermostat or the motor for the fan itself.

For the full article, go to their website.

Solar Hot Water Heating

Everyone knows about solar energy, but have you heard of solar heating? Solar heating is a simple and effective way to heat your home's water. It is clean, renewable, and best of all, it is free! While the installation cost might be more expensive, you will more than make it up with the money that you save each month on your energy bills. But how does solar heating work? Here is a great explaination provided by Solar Novus Today:

The technology relies on the sun’s radiation being absorbed by a “collector” to heat water in a thermal store. The collectors are the most critical system components and come in two main forms: flat plate and evacuated tube, although a third type, unglazed plastic, finds more specialised uses such as heating outdoor swimming pools. Flat plate designs are the most simple and are based on a thin sheet of metal, typically copper or aluminium, which absorbs the solar energy, backed by a fluid tubing system and placed in an insulated casing with a protective glass cover. Fluid is circulated through the tubing which absorbs heat from the collector and transports it to the thermal store.

Evacuated tube types are more complex and costly and the absorber material is located in an evacuated and pressure-proof glass tube. The heat transfer fluid flows through the absorber and several single tubes, serially interconnected, or tubes connected to each other via a manifold, make up the collector.

Solar thermal systems may be classified as active or passive; the former uses an electric pump to circulate the heat transfer fluid whereas a passive system has no pump and relies on convection. Some active systems minimise power consumption by using a small PV panel to power the pump. Systems are also characterized as open-loop (direct) or closed-loop (indirect). An open-loop system circulates household water through the collector whilst a closed-loop system uses a heat transfer fluid (e.g., water or dilute antifreeze) to collect heat and a heat exchanger to transfer it to the household water. 

For the full article, click here.

Ensuring You Have a Radon Resistant Home

Radon is a toxic substance formed by the decay of uranium in soil. It happens throughout the globe and normally it isn’t a risk. It dissipates in the air and no one is the wiser. However, when we started building houses and closing them off to the outside world with closely fitting windows, insulation and concrete foundations, radon became a problem.

Because it rises from the soil naturally and can enter your home through cracks in your foundation, a sump pit or a crawlspace, it is a very real danger for many homeowners. Worse yet, there are no specific risk factors you can watch for when buying a house. Any home can high radon levels, regardless of where it is located. So, it is important to build radon resistant homes to combat the problem. It costs only $350-$500 to build radon resistance into a new home versus upwards of $2,500 to add it to an existing home.

What Does Radon Resistance Incorporate?

There are a number of factors to take into account when retrofitting a home or building a new one to block radon from entering. The following features are used to vent the gas from the basement and ensure it doesn’t enter the home at any point.

• Gas Permeable Layer –A four inch layer of gravel or other permeable material is placed beneath the slab or flooring of a non-crawlspace house. This allows the radon gas to permeate throughout the soil, not just straight up into your home.
• Sheeting – A plastic sheet is then placed above the permeable layer to block the gas from entering your home and force it away from the house toward the open air where it dissipates naturally.
• Sealing – All openings and vents from the soil are closed with caulking and sealant. This requires a careful inspection of the space, especially if you have an existing home that needs to be sealed against the radon gas.
• Venting Pipe – a pipe is placed from the layer of soil beneath your slab or flooring to vent excess gas up and away from your home through the roof.

When combined, these features reduce how much radon can enter your home and ensure when it does it gets vented out quickly so it doesn’t cause any health problems for you and your family. Proper testing is a must before any upgrades are made, so call a local air quality inspector near you today.

Recycling Shower

Did you know that your shower not only wastes water in your house, but it also can be a drain of power? Heating the water for a shower requires a lot of energy, and it also wastes a lot of that energy because a lot of the water that is heated is never used! It just goes cold in the pipes and storage tanks. To save water and power, Nick Christy invented the recycling shower. Here is a summary of what is does from GreenBeat:

The recycling shower captures water you have already used in a reservoir, which is likely to be built into the base of the shower. The water is then filtered in a component called a hydrocyclone, which uses similar technology to a Dyson vacuum cleaner, and spins the water around to separate out any heavier particles or materials. The 70 percent of the water that survives this filtering mechanism is pasteurized to kill any bacteria and redirected back into the shower head. The whole real-time, recycling process takes a mere 25 seconds and reduces the amount of water used in an average shower by 70 percent. Since you are recirculating water which is already warm, energy costs are further reduced over heating cold mains water.
The inventor of the shower technology, Peter Brewir, is a director of Water Recycling Shower. He also invented concrete canvas, a fabric that, when sprayed with water, turns into concrete with 24 hours. Concrete canvas allows solid structures to be built quickly in disaster zones.

 To read the rest of the article and learn more about this amazing device, check out the original article: http://venturebeat.com/2011/09/15/water-recycling-shower-wins-684000-in-the-green-challenge/

Ways to Reduce Your Heating Bills

As fall sets in, I am sure that many of you are trying to think of ways to reduce your heating bills. Here are some great tips from the Kansas Corporation Commission with some ideas:

Reduce thermostat setting to 68 degrees.
Reducing your thermostat setting can substantially lower your heating costs. Putting on those extra layers will help you stay comfortable while saving on your heating bill.

Set back thermostat at night and when you leave home.
Setting the thermostat back 10 degrees at night or when the house will be unoccupied can save up to 15% on heating costs. The furnace will have to run more to reheat the house, but the energy saved while the home is cooler more than offsets the extra run time to reheat the home.
Install a programmable thermostat. 

Programmable thermostats allow you to reduce your home's temperature at night and during the day and still have the home warm when you wake up or come home from work. Some programmable thermostats cost less than $50 and can be installed by homeowners.

Change furnace filter monthly. 

Clogged furnace filters lower the heater's efficiency by preventing proper airflow through the furnace. Low-cost filters are available from your local hardware store. Check filters monthly to see if they need changing.

Have furnace "tuned up" annually.
Having your furnace cleaned and tuned annually helps the heating system operate safely and efficiently. Tuning may involve resetting the fuel-air mixture for proper combustion as well as cleaning of the blower and burners to assure maximum airflow and complete combustion. New furnaces don't need to be cleaned and tuned for the first few years.

Let sunshine in south windows.
Open drapes on the south side of your home during winter days and close them at night. Sun angles are low in winter, allowing substantial solar heating through all south windows. You may want to trim vegetation that shades south windows.

For the full list, visit their website.

Radiant Heating

Radiant heating is a method of warming your house by supplying heat directly to the floors, walls, or ceilings of your house. The heat is then transferred to people and objects by the radiation of this heat.  This type of system also depends on convection, the natural rising of heat from the floor to the ceiling. As an article on Inspectapedia tells us, there are a number of advantages to using a radiant heating system:

The radiant heating system is unobtrusive - in fact not visible in the occupied space, saving floor space as well

Radiant heating systems are quiet and clean and require little or no maintenance (depending on the heating source: an oil fired heating boiler supplying a radiant heated building will still require annual maintenance).

Radiant heating systems save energy compared with comparable convective heating systems where the same fuel is being used to produce btu's of heat. Savings accrue from lower air temperatures as well as the omission of duct or pipe heat losses in the system.

Heating savings from radiant heat systems depend largely on the amount of thermostat set-back that the occupants find comfortable. Occupants of a radiant-heated building often are equally comfortable (compared with other heating methods) setting back the thermostat 5 degF - about a 20 to 25% savings on heating fuel expense.

Radiant heat "feels special" or "like being heated by the sun" - (an opinion difficult to verify objectively).