Healthy Homes of Rochester

How to take 10 Years off the appearance of your palace

As I walked around the yard picking up fallen twigs and debris blown my way, I looked at the old place and decided that there are a few things that I should think about to give my home a facelift. While in the budgetary mode, a few simple changes can still be made.

Assess what needs attention. Is your home suffering from year old dirt on your siding, windows, and roof? The simple fix to clean just about anything, is a power washer. Power washers can be rented, but they are a relatively inexpensive purchase. Start at the top of your home and spray your way down. The roof can be washed and cleared of dirt and debris, work on the gutters too while there. If the paint is not in good shape, stand about 3-4 feet away while spraying.. you don’t want to loosen the paint even more. Wash the siding using a sweeping motion and let the water run down, until all the dirt is removed. While you have the sprayer out, wash the deck to remove stains and mildew.

Clean the yard. Pick up sticks, rake autumn’s leftover leaves, and clean up debris. Walking around the yard with your wheelbarrow , rake and garden clippers, visually decide what needs attention. Is it the garden? Does your house need painting? Is your patio furniture looking shabby?

Paint your shutters. A fresh coat of paint on the shutters will give your home a lift. Try a new shade of dusty aqua on a grey house, or a deep, blackish green on a brick home. While painting the shutters, also give your front door a color change. Try something new. Add a bright color, maybe orange or sunny yellow. Do your window boxes need a boost? Plant your window boxes with herbs this year. It is convenient to have your herbs close and off the ground when cooking. One year, I planted mine with different varieties of parsley. They were lush and full, and so easy to care for.

Edge your lawn. Place a stake at one point and then a stake at another point. Tie a string between them to make your straight line. Follow it with your garden tool to scribe an edge. If you have a sidewalk that has grass growing between the grooves, easily remove the grass with an old steak knife or sprinkle salt between the cracks. Use new mulch around your shrubs. Some towns offer it free. Call your town to find the location, bring some heavy plastic bags and a shovel and you are in mulch heaven.

How does your porch furniture look? Buy new throw pillows for the chairs, Pier One has so many to choose from. Remember they don’t have to match. Mix it up. Be creative. Try fresh, bright colors like grass green or orange. I made new slipcovers for my pillows from remnants in my fabric caboodle, using all mismatched stripes.

The most important fix to add Spring freshness to your home is buy a new door mat. There are so many to choose from this year. At your home stores, you can find florals, stripes, and amusing designs- more than a boring black ”welcome” mat. I found one that mimics a post card- too cute!

Have fun with your home’s appearance. Add color, bright color, this year. You will improve your home’s curb appeal, while taking years off your home’s face.

Edison’s invention is about 100 years old. It’s about time we thought about using something a little more up to date.

Actually Edison didn’t invent the light bulb. He improved it, devising one in 1879 that burned for 40 hours, achieving 1,220 hours a year later (a number a little better than modern incandescent bulbs, 750-1,000 hours). GE patented tungsten-filament bulbs in 1906.

But all these still require a source of electricity. Batteries made the situation better, but they still have to be replaced periodically. They’re also not great for certain applications, such as the lawn where sprinklers can get them wet.

Enter: solar-powered lawn lights.

Though the initial cost is sometimes a bit higher than other lawn lamps, they make up for it in several ways. Since they’re stand-alone units, no wiring is required. No need to dig trenches and plug into the house current. They also outdo battery-powered units because, as noted, there’s no risk of internal decay. They’re well sealed.

With that degree of independence and functionality, solar lawn lights can be placed anywhere. If you later decide to expand the lawn, adding more is a snap. Just shove them into the new ground and you’re good to go. Ditto, if you decide to turn part of the yard into a walkway or patio. Pulling up solar-powered lawn lights entails no risk of hitting the wires and no need to re-wire an existing design.

That flexibility makes it ultra-easy to move lights. It makes it just as easy to replace them. They can last for 10,000 hours or more (that’s almost three years if they burn 10 hours a night, every night). But ultimately the batteries will need to be replaced. That’s super easy since you just pull one up and insert the new ones. With the rate at which people move houses today, they may well last as long as you own the house.

The Ni-Cad or NiMh batteries used in these units today have little or no ‘memory’ so they’ll recharge fully over and over again, even when the light doesn’t run out of power before dawn arrives. That can be an issue in certain Northern climates where, during the summer, there’s only a few hours of darkness.

By the same token, there may not be enough sunlight hours to fully recharge the batteries. The lights may not burn all night. But many people set a timer on wired lights to turn off well before dawn. So, as with any option, solar lighting is an individual choice.

There’s no need to turn them off and on, or even to set a timer. Sensors cause them to charge as long as there’s sunlight and to come on when the ambient light dips to levels at dusk. Most modern solar lamps will produce almost 7 watts for 8-10 hours. They can achieve that because most use highly efficient, low wattage consumption LEDs instead of incandescent bulbs.

They’re a great option, durable and attractive. Give solar lawn lights a try. We have included a few popular choices below.

…Without spending a dime!
1. Turn the water off while brushing your teeth and get a Faucet Aerator.
2. Purchase an inexpensive Toilet Tummy and place it in your toilet tank to displace water.
3. Purchase an inexpensive Shower Timer and use it to cut showers down to 5 minutes.
4. Turn off the water while shaving.
5. Fix toilet and faucet leaks immediately.-to check if your toilet is leaking drop food coloring into the tank if it shows in the bowl w/o flushing-you have a leak
6. Don’t use your toilet as a trash can.
7. Collect “warm-up” water to irrigate your lawn and flowerbeds.
8. Conserve energy. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that .47 gallons of water are lost for every kilowatt-hour of power generated by coal power plants.