Landscaping Tips to Save Water

While landscaping can really make your house exteriors look great, it can make you water bills shoot up high. This can lead you to question whether you really need that much water. The truth is that you can save a lot of water by making a few simple modifications to your water usage.

Here are a few tips to help you save water with landscaping.

Inefficient watering systems

Everybody wants their piece of automated equipment, whether it is the latest automatic land mower or the modern sprinkler system. Most often these automated sprinklers cause a lot of waste of water.

You might have noticed the water running off the lawn down into the street. This is utter wastage when you need to save water. However, most homeowners who have a landscaping use this kind of inefficient watering systems that causes so much waste. If you can find a good and efficient one then it will save water and prevent wastage.

Find an efficient watering system to suit your needs

You should remember a great thumb rule. It says that the bigger and closer to the ground, the delivered water droplet is, the better it is. Systems that give fine water sprays usually lose most of the water to the wind and evaporation.

You might be surprised to know that a hand held hose is the most efficient way to water, saving as much as 33% water compared to other systems.

Automated systems are no better

You might think that because relying on modern technologies means saving money and time. Well, you need to think again, at least as far as watering systems are concerned.

These automated systems such as the ground sprinklers, in fact use 35% more water while those systems that have an automatic timer to accompany utilise 47% more compared to other places that do not use any of such systems. While these devices keep you under the illusion of saving time, they are actually causing you to spend more.

Add some rain sensors or soil sensors

If you already have some kind of an automated system, then you do not need to throw it out and incur more loss. Instead, add such sensors to your system. This will help the sprinklers to know when the soil is moist enough not to need any watering. Hence, you will end up saving water.

Go for automatic drip irrigation

These systems are more efficient compared to sprinklers and with the sensors they will work even better.

Green Cleaning Tips

If you’re interested in saving the earth, you should know about green cleaning products. These products help you keep your home clean and allow your stay eco-friendly at the same time. Although cleaning with no chemicals does take some getting used to, once you start you’ll find that green cleaning products are an effective and inexpensive alternative to traditional cleaners.

You can rid your home of non eco-friendly products by taking a quick look at the labels of your cleaners. Anything with ingredients that you can’t pronounce, cleaners will special scents and those with dyes should be avoided. You should also look at the bottle to see if it’s recyclable.

You can make a lot of your own green cleaning products at home. With a few basic ingredients, you can make products to clean most surfaces in your home. You can use baking soda, borax, cream of tartar, hydrogen peroxide, lemon juice and vinegar to create a wide variety of eco-friendly cleaners. For example, you can use vinegar and baking soda as a deodorizing cleaner for your kitchen sink. You can find recipes for green cleaners online or find books that have recipes for helpful cleaners.

If you’re not the type who likes to make your own cleaners, many commercial brands are now making eco-friendly cleaners to respond to the market’s demand. You can find these brands at your local supermarket. Eco-friendly kitchen cleaners, bathroom cleaners and air fresheners will help your home stay clean and green all at the same time.

DIY Moving – Saving Green

Moving is often a very stressful time for you and your family. Instead of paying big bucks to hire a moving company to do it for you – consider just hiring the truck and doing most of the manual labor yourself. Go a step further and use recycled eco moving boxes and packaging.

The first step is to do some shopping around – call or inquire online to various moving services New York before you decide on a company to go with. Most companies can give you a good estimated quote based on the amount of furniture you intend on moving. Tell the representative how many rooms of furniture you need to move – you’ll get a good idea of how big of a truck you’ll need to rent. Also, just to keep things in perspective, inquire how much it would cost for the same amount of rooms to be moved if the company did it all for you. You may be shocked how much you can save if you do most of it yourself!

You can find many places to re-use boxes for moving. A good source is retail stores such as grocery, drug store or even clothing stores. Go well in advance to local stores and find out when their usual shipment delivery dates are. Then you can go on that store’s delivery date to ask for moving boxes. It’s very likely the store would be happy to see their boxes recycled instead of going directly to the trash.

Definitely inquire if the moving company’s new york packing services offer recycled packaging goods. Many moving companies offer recycled boxes as well. If you can’t get boxes from local retail stores, contact any local moving company to see if they sell boxes and packaging supplies – you’ll find most do.

Whatever Residential moving company you decide to do business with, do your homework and ask questions well in advance of your moving date. Book your moving truck early and confirm a week or two before your date for peace of mind. If you plan ahead, your next move doesn’t have to cost a small fortune.

Eco Home RetroFitting – Save Energy and Save the Planet

A lot of attention is paid to new eco-friendly building practices, but what can you do if you have an older home? While you can’t tear down your house and rebuild with sustainable materials, you can take steps to save energy. Natural Resources Canada will provide you with a free assessment to determine your energy usage. With this information, you can take steps to improve the energy efficiency of your home.
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10 Ways To Be More Earth-Friendly

Earth Day has come and gone, but Earth’s challenges remain. Climate change, energy conservation and deforestation are just a few that come to mind. These problems are so huge that we might be inclined to believe that one person cannot make a difference, but that is not true. Here are ten tips that can help you be more “earth friendly.”

(1) Call companies that use more packaging than necessary for their product and ask them to reduce the amount of packaging they use.

(2) Pay your bills online and go paperless with as many of your bills as possible.

(3) Recycle all glass, paper, metal, plastic and newspapers and everything you possibly can.

(4) Batch your errands to minimize gas consumption.

(5) Fix leaky faucets and use low-flow toilets and shower heads.

(6) Replace your incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents.

(7) Switch off lights whenever you leave a room and turn off any electronic devices you’re not using at the moment.

(8) Borrow books from the library instead of buying new ones.

(9) Only do full loads of laundry and use cold water instead of hot.

(10) Lower your thermostat two degrees in the winter months and raise it two degrees in the summer.