Because they are usually pretty accessible, attics are one of the easier places in the home to inspect and insulate. And if there is no insulation, it’s usually the most cost-effective insulation project you can do. Keep in mind the rule that you want to insulate any surface that divides inside living areas from outside [...]
Plastic sheets from corn sugar, plastics that degrade in the soil within weeks and plastic-producing trees — the material is all set for a makeover in the next few years.
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Walls are important to consider in an insulation evaluation because percentage-wise, they are a large portion of the building envelope. However, because of the difficulty and expense involved, insulating walls in an existing home is hard to cost-justify.
You can check to see if your walls are insulated by removing an electrical outlet cover and [...]
Slab perimeters should be insulated with rigid insulation at the time of construction. However, this is a somewhat new practice, meaning older homes are unlikely to have slab insulation.
Slabs lose heat at their perimeters because concrete is a fairly good conductor of heat. With no insulation, the temperature difference between the slab and the [...]
Second only to insulating the attic, insulating basements and foundations walls is often a cost-effective home improvement. It’s one that can also make the home more comfortable.
Basements that are used as living space and heated or cooled should have insulation separating the living area from the outside air or ground. If there is none, you [...]
Vermiculite is a mica-like laminar material; Perlite, a naturally occurring volcanic glass. Both are heat-expanded materials familiar to gardeners as planting media. Because they are inexpensive insulators, they are useful as home insulation.
Besides their relatively low cost, other advantages include being easy to install because they pour to fill irregular spaces, they are also [...]
Use energy-saving settings on refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines, and clothes dryers.
Survey your standard (incandescent) light bulbs for opportunities to replace them with compact fluorescents. Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) can save three-quarters of the electricity used by incandescent bulbs. The best targets are 60-100 watt bulbs used several hours a day. Measure the [...]
Weather-stripping is designed to reduce air leakage around parts of the house that must move relative to one another, like doors and windows. Weather-stripping is easy to install and may be one of the most cost-effective home improvements. Besides improving the efficiency of your heating and cooling systems, weather-stripping keeps out dirt, dust, noise and [...]
Hygrometers are instruments used for measuring humidity. A simple form of a hygrometer is specifically known as a “psychrometer” and consists of two thermometers, one of which includes a dry bulb and the other of which includes a bulb that is kept wet to measure wet-bulb temperature. Evaporation from the wet bulb lowers the temperature, [...]
WASHINGTON: A Cardiff University research team is working towards creating greener energy by recycling precious metal like platinum from road dusts and vehicular exhausts.
Platinum is a rare metal and is used in fuel cells. Now, Dr Hazel Prichard and her team from the School of Earth Ocean and Planetary Science are working towards finding [...]
Definition:A humidifier is a household appliance that increases humidity (moisture) in a single room or in the entire home. There are point of use
humidifiers, which are commonly used to humidify a single room, and whole house or furnace humidifiers, which connect to a home’s HVAC system to provide humidity to the entire house.
Detail of [...]
A dehumidifier is a household appliance that reduces the level of humidity in air.
Mechanical/refrigerative dehumidifiers
Mechanical/refrigerative dehumidifiers usually work by drawing moist air over a refrigerated coil with a small fan. Since the saturation vapor pressure of water decreases with decreasing temperature, the water in the air condenses, and drips into a collecting bucket. The [...]
As the name implies, window fans are located in window openings. Depending on how they are set, they either pull warm inside air out of the home or blow outside air in. Most people do not like the blast of outside air window fans create when they pull air into the home. So more often, [...]
Three key patented technologies are being exploited to produce biofuels and other products. New IP has been identified and will be developed to make the system commercially viable.
Induced Blanket Reactor (IBR): A patented anaerobic digester uses a steady flow process to produce biogas from animal wastes such as those found in a dairy operation.
Solar [...]
Urethane insulation is made of plastic polymers and contains 80 to 90 percent closed cells containing refrigerant gas rather than air. It is one of the most effective insulators, but is flammable. When it burns it emits cyanide gas and is therefore banned in some areas of some country.
Source:Home Energy Library