Your Place: Repair or replace a recurring question in tough times
01.01.70
When should you repair and when should you replace?
With the economic downturn keeping people in their homes longer and money ever tighter, it is a choice being considered by more homeowners these days.
For example, with winter coming, and concerns about energy costs mounting, many cash-strapped homeowners are trying to figure out how to reduce the $1,900 per year that the Department of Energy says the typical family spends on utilities.
A new furnace or energy-efficient windows, although both very obvious ways to lower heating costs, may not be in the budget.
In the meantime, caulking around windows and doors doesn’t cost that much and can significantly reduce the flow of cold air into the house. Opening the curtains, shades, or blinds on a sunny winter’s day can add warmth to a room.
The Home Builders Institute of the National Association of Home Builders suggests a few other inexpensive ways, including applying weather stripping around windows and doors, changing the filter in the furnace, using draft dodgers inside exterior doors, and installing programmable thermostats to control when the furnace goes on and off.
Source: The Republic
Generator buying guide: Portable and standby models supply emergency power in ...
01.01.70
Going days without electricity has a way of making a person plan ahead for the next time the lights go out.
Portable generator makers and big-box retailers are reporting increased demand for portable generators among the hundreds of thousands of New Jersey residents who endured extended power outages after Hurricane Irene and again just two months later with a Halloween eve snowstorm.
“We’ve sold more generators in the past three months than we have in the past two years,” says Mike Babinski, assistant manager of the super-size Home Depot in Union. In the summer after Irene, people needed to run sump pumps, he said. “If you lose power in the winter, then it’s a bigger problem, you lose heat, and pipes can burst.”
But keeping the current flowing safely requires more than just heading to the nearest home improvement store to pick up a new generator. With at least two New Jersey residents having lost their lives by carbon monoxide poisoning from a power generator they were running in their garage, it bears repeating that no generator should be operated inside or near windows, doors or any other area that might allow toxic exhaust to seep in. A suggested distance is at least 10 feet away.
Source: NJ.com
