Lately everybody seems to have videos on their websites. Usually I find it distracting from the real information I am trying to get. But, every once in a while you find a video that you feel everybody should view. If you want to know more about how the government is handling global warming you need to watch this fun and informative video. Take a few minutes out of your day to make a difference for you planet.
Greening Our New Home - So Far, So Good...Mostly. So here we are in week #4 in our new home, 1000 miles away from our old home. Back in California, we had our "green-ness" down pat - we knew where the good stores were, we knew how much water we were using, we watched our energy usage and knew......
Watch the unit prices at the grocery store Last night I bought a couple boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese because my wife likes "the real thing" once in a while. (Yes, she knows that the generic brand is cheaper but she can taste the difference, and no this point isn't negotiable.)If given the choice between (a) individual......
I don’t usually like to get political or get involved in the discussion of the national economy, but… It just seems to me that when a company from a foreign country comes in and buys a large portion of an American company it threatens our national security. Just my personal opinion. Now I am reading how companies from Japan and Germany are coming in and buying into American renewable energy to take advantage of new renewable energy initiatives (http://bit.ly/B5Byb). Are we selling ourselves and our wind overseas? I would love to hear your comments on this.
Learn About Solar Power And Its Applications by Jim Martin Understand the workings of solar power and understand how it can help us by coming in use in various energy generating applications. Where do we get solar power from and how does it work? The popularity of solar power seems undiminished even after decades of its discovery.......
Greenwash Of The Week: The Shell Eco-Race. My friend Keith over at The Unsuitablog pointed out an article that I am proclaiming the Greenwash Of The Week - an Eco-Race sponsored by the Shell Oil Company. I never saw this article when it was published over at the Guardian but Keith caught it and was quick to......
My wonderful husband has taught our German Shepherd, Duke, to open and close the screen door by himself. It originally started innocently enough. We were remodeling downstairs and often times my husband would be carrying heavy things in and out and nobody was around to open the door for him. Duke would jump through hoops of fire for my husband and quickly mastered this trick. The problem is that now the remodel is over, I refuse to use the energy to turn on the air conditioner so the doors are always open, and now Duke uses the screen door as his private doggy door. Needless to say the screen has been pushed through and ripped and is now a public mosquito entrance.
I decided to go online and see if any of the local stores carried that pet screening that stretches instead of ripping when an animal jumps up. What I found is a great energy saving screen. A company named Phifer, that makes the pet screening, makes a whole line of screening and fabric. I never even knew there was something called weave technology, where the type of fabric woven in different ways can have different effects. The one that caught my eye was the Super Solar Screen.
The company claims the Super Solar Screening reflects 90% of the suns heat and glare, improves daytime privacy, and still allows for excellent outward visibility, not to mention it keeps the bugs out. Sounds like the claims on an infomercial, but at the Home Depot site the product had been rated and review by two individuals. Both reviews gave the screening 5 out of 5 stars and both said it performed as advertised.
This will be a huge benefit for a house like mine that faces northwest. I get full sun at my backdoor every morning in the summer; I don’t like to open the door and shades because it raises the temperature in the house. Then in the late afternoon I get the full effect of the sun as it gets ready to set so I have to close all the doors and shades on that side of the house. I am hoping with my Super Solar Screen, I will be able to get airflow from the windows and doors without the heat and glare from the sun. If I decide to turn on the air conditioner it should not have to work as hard with the Super Solar Screen. But maybe with the heat and sun reflected away from the house I won’t have to turn on the air conditioner at all. Sounds like a huge energy saver to me.
As for my screen door, apparently there is no pet friendly screen that can hold back a German Shepherd. I am going to replace the screen with the Super Solar Screen and buy pet guards to keep Duke from going through it.
Saving Money With Solar Panels From The Very First Day by Juergen Schulze Enough of high power bills? Today it's very simple to manufacture your own solar cell panels, because there are all the required data and do-it-yourself kits to purchase out there. Those past big and challenging to handle panels have today been redesigned into much smaller and economic......
Simple Energy Solutions That Save Big Money As energy prices go up, many people are looking to alternative power solutions in order to save money. However, converting an entire house to go off grid can be costly, and the work involved may be too much for some homeowners. That doesn't mean that you have to abandon the......
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. – Helen Keller
Sometimes people don’t vote because they think “one vote can’t change anything”. I think the 2000 election proved that wrong, but some people still don’t believe. Now is your time to be counted by your elected officials. If you want this country to move forward with cleaner energy contact you Congressional Representatives and Senators today. It only takes a minute but can help save the earth a life time.
Work At Home - Online Marketing Business Opportunities Are Boundless! Why do you want a genuine work form home online opportunity? Most people's reply to this is to spend time with family, have more freedom and live the life they wish to, rather than be strapped to a 9-5 soul siphon. So is it possible to locate one of these......
The 7-Day Turnaround, Day 4: Slash Your Expenses This is the fourth article in Frugal Dad’s week-long series, The 7-Day Turnaround: One Week to Change Your Family's Financial Destiny. Each day brings a new step to implement and help you get control of your finances. At this step in your 7-Day Turnaround it is time to take a......
When it comes to clean energy, saving our environment and living green, the best and only place to start is energy conservation. For every unit of energy saved, a unit of energy does not need to be produced. That sounds so very simple, yet I see it over looked time and time again. People are so impressed with the newest solar product, the next residential wind turbine or if hydrogen technology will replace natural gas, that they forget that all this technology can replace a greater percent of our energy if we use less energy to begin with. In other words energy conservation and efficiency are very often more economically worthwhile than renewable sources and also helps bridge the gap between demand for and availability of renewable energy.
We have all seen list after list of ways to save energy around our house; these should not be pushed to the side because you “did” the list last year. Like all maintenance around the house, conservation cannot be done once and forgotten about, that is why they call it maintenance. There are always new products coming out that can make energy conservation easier, more efficient and more affordable.
My attic is always the first place I look when thinking about energy loss. I have a cathedral ceiling in my living room and just never feel comfortable in the room during the cold winter months. Obviously I have insulated but I still just feel the heat escaping. So I went up to the attic at night leaving the living room lights on and the attic lights off. Bingo! I was able to identify several areas that were not completely insulated around the recessed lighting (make sure your recessed lighting fixtures are rated to have insulation around them). Next I went up to the dark attic on a very sunny morning, before the heat made it unbearable. Again, Bingo! There were a couple of places along the eaves where I could see daylight. Once these were fixed I started looking at different insulation products for attics that were DIY friendly and wallet friendly. Two products caught my eye: Super Insulating Radiant Barrier and the Battic Door Attic Stair Cover.
The Super Insulating Radiant Barrier is a fold out, insulating, reflective product that goes over your current insulation and/or over the roof rafters to create a barrier that actually radiates heat back down to the living space.
The Battic Door Attic Stair Cover is an insulating box that goes over dropdown attic stairs and keeps heat from escaping. This product is a huge improvement over ones of days gone bye. I have had a similar product for about fifteen years and can see this will pay for itself in very short time.
Take time to look at these and other energy saving products. A dollar spent today could save hundreds over a life time not to mention helping to save the environment. Never under estimate the heat, or cooling, loss in your home. Keep vigilant about conservation, any energy saved is energy that does not have to be produced.
Renewable Energy From An Old Concept by Michael Edwards When doing the research for a article on new green products, I was unaware of many of the different ways to convert the energy of the sun into electrical power. I have written about solar cell or photovoltaic cell systems, so let's look at another type of......
9 Weekend Home Projects That Will Save You Money Winter is one of those double-edged swords that we must endure in life. We know we’ll have to endure mind-numbing coldness, but on the bright-side, this allows us to finish all of the DIY-warrior projects we have been putting off. (If you live someplace where the winter means it’s as......
Thumbs up to Ken Salazar and the Department of the Interior, they have issued five leases to private companies to explore offshore sites for wind energy. All these sites are off the shore of New Jersey and Delaware. I hope this is only the beginning of government being proactive in helping private enterprise develop off shore wind sites.
Here in Massachusetts, where I live, Cape Wind has been fighting an uphill battle, at their expense, to get government approval for a project in Nantucket Sound. Eight years of pushing for wind energy is too long if we are actually going to make wind and renewable energy a reality. In order for individual states to meet any renewable energy quota we need more positive government actions like this.
Lets all pray that the government will continue to put their money and decisions where their mouth is.
You can use wind generated power for your home. by Bart Forcey The need for alternative fuel sources has been a topic of hot debate and dire concern for decades. It is only as we reach points of energy catastrophe and economic peril that the issue is taken seriously. Researchers and scientists in many countries have been planning for......
Green Building Materials Green Construction is the practice of building in a way that increases efficiency of the use of materials like energy, water and other materials and resources while reducing the impact on human health and the environment during the process of building through more efficient design, site selection, construction, operation, maintenance......
In a June 1st article by Dan Cook, in Arizona’s The Daily Courier, he wrote about a Habitat for Humanity home that had been built as a “net-zero energy” house.The idea is to use smart building products and techniques, as well as alternative energy sources, such as solar, so that the house does not use any energy from the grid or fossil fuel. This is a whole new niche in the building industry and there is an unlimited amount of products and services to choose from. The problem is that builders and prospective homeowners, we don’t know which products are proven, or will work in our situation, or have a chance to see the product installed or talk to a builder who has actually installed the product.
That is why I found this article interesting. If the companies offering these great new innovative energy saving products donated them to Habitat for Humanity, we would all benefit. First the company would win, getting actual exposure to the public with their product, as well as goodwill, for donating the product. Any builder interested in the product could donate their time to help install the product at the Habitat for Humanity job site. This gives them goodwill for helping, but also gives them experience with new products and techniques that they can sell to their clients. The homeowner wins because they are buying a product that they have seen work and are having it installed by someone who has had experience with the product. The recipient of the Habitat for Humanity home wins with lower or no utility bills. And last, but not least, the environment wins every time we do not use fossil fuel to power our world. This could be the ultimate win-win situation.
The Best Program For Making Money These are the kind of credentials that make a great work from home program, and are credentials that you will not find in 99% of other programs claiming to make you huge money online. 1. Tons of great information! 2. Information put together to educate a beginner or advance online......
Solar Power Systems That Serve Entire Neighborhoods. Dear EarthTalk: I know of solar power systems that people can put on their roofs to generate electricity or heat water. Are there systems that serve whole neighborhoods? Collective bargaining is a good strategy when looking to get the best price on a given product or service. Solar power is......
According to Boston Business Journal, Boston’s Museum of Science announced this week that it will be putting a wind turbine laboratory on its roof. Apparently they have already done wind studies for a year and have come to the conclusion that there is not enough viable wind in their location to create any meaningful electricity. They already have two turbines up and intend to put up three more of varying shapes and sizes ranging from 7 feet to 40 feet. The idea is to “demonstrate small wind turbines that could be erected on small businesses and homes”.
The problem is that small wind turbines cannot be erected on any building, ever. Mother Nature is a very formidable force to deal with. Any and all wind turbines have an incredible vibration; this can cause both structural and noise problems. Roof top turbines have been known to cause nails to vibrate right out of the roof. While the museum roof may be substantial enough to withstand this, with a full time maintenance crew, the average home is not engineered to withstand these forces.
Second, there is no usable wind on a roof. When you see a small wind turbine on a roof spinning wildly, it looks like it would be generating plenty of power. The truth is, all that spinning is the turbine trying to find a steady wind in a very turbulent area. Wind is invisible, and most people don’t understand what they can’t see. Think of a stick lazily drifting down a calm stream, making slow but steady progress, then there is a rock in the way, the stick goes around the rock but gets caught twirling in the eddy behind it, there is a lot of movement, but no progress. Wind is the same way, once it hits an object, such as a house or a tree; there is wind turbulence behind the object. Another way of looking at this is a sailboat in the lee of a bluff. You feel the wind on your face, it feels strong, but the sail is slapping madly and the boat is going nowhere. A wind turbine is the same way as it searches for the wind in the turbulence.
The Boston Museum of Science would be doing the public a huge favor by teaching the physics of wind and turbulence using smoke chambers and roof mock ups to show how a nail or a screw can be loosened due to vibration. They should teach the benefits of clean wind energy when placed in the right location and the uselessness of putting it in the wrong location. With all my heart I hope the Boston Museum of Science is not advocating building mounted turbines, not only would they be putting the public at risk physically and promoting a waste of money, they will be putting a black mark on wind energy when these turbines never produce any meaningful electricity.
Look for an upcoming blog on proper wind turbine location.
For more information check out the Warwick Wind Trials data on building mounted turbines.
The Stimulus Package And Green Jobs. Dear EarthTalk: What kind of job opportunities might be opened up by the new federal emphasis on green projects? If itâs a U.S. industry that has the potential to be cleaner and greener, chances are the Obama administration has already set aside some stimulus money for it. In February 2009,......
Gleneagles Golf Course Today I played Gleneagles Golf Course in McLaren Park San Francisco (map). This course is a hidden gem. We played on a Friday morning at 7am and no tee time was required. Unbelievaable! Jack Fleming was the architect. Founded in 1962. 9 holes (but 2 different sets of tees to......
Haven’t you always wanted to go to a convention and find out more information, but you just couldn’t justify the time and expense of going? Now is your chance. Virtual Energy Forum is offering a free two-day converence on clean energy. No plane trip, no hotel room and no credit card bill!
Just sit down at your computer and wonder through the convention. Catch a live presentation by a keynote speaker or ask a vendor some questions. All while sitting at your desk, you can learn the latest about the most important issue facing the world.
This is your chance to find out how you can make a difference in clean energy without wasting any of your energy. Sign up today for free at Virtual Energy Forum. They can’t make it any easier than that. Set the date June 24th and June 25th, 2009.
Is Solar Right For Me? - Part 1. This is part 1 of "Is Solar Right For Me?" from Neil Kaminar, author of Solar Basics. Part 2 will appear next week. The answer may be no. There are many factors that determine if solar is right for your home, including your motivation, how much electricity you use, the......
Study Shows Homeowners Using Landscaping to Save Energy and Water In this current day and age, where common activities among people include the tightening of wallets and the fearing of soaring energy bills, almost everyone has had to adopt some substantial practices inside and outside of their own homes. Americans are also incorporating techniques in their landscaping that are allowing......
Great news on wind. The American Wind Energy Association had announced 2,800MW of new wind energy installed in the first quarter of 2009. This is awsome news for renewable energy and puts us on our way to reaching President Obama’s goal of 25% of our electricity coming from renewables by 2025.
But we still have some major obstacles, the largest of which is the lack of updated, smart grid transmission lines. Unfortunately, most great land wind in areas with smaller population densities. We need to get this great power to where it is needed. We need a renewable energy standard (RES). Everybody who wants a cleaner, healthier future needs to write their Congressmen, their Senators and President Obama and demand what we voted for, a RES today.
Home Solar Power Owners Get Credit In 2009 If you are thinking of getting home solar power in 2009, then the good news is that the number of federal and state incentives for having an energy efficient home has never been greater. The bad, of course, is that many of us are strapped for cash or home equity......
What Is Geothermal Energy & How Does It Work? Dear EarthTalk: How are heating, cooling and electricity produced by geothermal energy? I donât understand how it works. The term âgeothermalâ is derived from the Greek words for Earth (geo) and heat (therme). In essence geothermal energy is power harnessed from the Earth itself. Heat from the Earthâs core, which......
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Jun 16, 2010 
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Greening Our New Home - So Far, So Good...Mostly. So here we are in week #4 in our new home, 1000 miles away from our old home. Back in California, we had our "green-ness" down pat - we knew where the good stores were, we knew how much water we were using, we watched our energy usage and knew...... 
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