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Incorporate Feng Shui into your interior design.

27 Jul

In order to incorporate Feng Shui into you interior design you need to have a clear understanding of what Feng Shui is. Feng shui is an ancient Chinese practice. It is the art of placing and arranging matter and space so that harmony with the environment is achieved. This harmony can refer to the harmony in the home, in relationships, in wealth and many other aspects in our lives. The practice has been around for several thousands of years and is still practiced in China and many parts of the world today teaching us how to create harmony and balance around us.

Feng Shui design cannot be of much help without looking inward. Doing a self-evaluation is the best place to start before trying to incorporate Feng Shui design. The self-evaluation is nothing more than taking a long, hard look at how you feel and how you live on a daily basis. Taking stock of your emotions, your relationships, your finances, and everything in your home that affects you throughout an ordinary day is crucial for trying out Feng Shui design changes.

Cleaning out the clutter and get rid of everything you do not love in your house. Clutter clearing is a time and energy consuming process that will feel like therapy, but it will help you lighten up the load metaphorically speaking.

Feng Shui is all about energy, and light is the strongest manifestation of energy. In fact, the light in your home both natural and artificial lighting greatly influences the quality of your home’s energy. Smart lighting and good quality air are the very basics of good feng shui, and should always be on top of your feng shui priorities for any space. These two elements are essential for good feng shui energy in your home, called Chi. Open the windows often, introduce feng shui air-purifying plants or use an air-purifier. Allow as much natural light as possible into your home, and consider using full-spectrum lights.

Your body reacts to everything around you, and you either get nourished or drained by the energy that surrounds you. I strongly encourage you to become aware of the quality of light in your home or office and its influence on your health and well-being. Light is our # 1 nutrient and has been called the medicine of the future. Make a habit of paying attention to how much good quality light you actually enjoy throughout the day, as well as the quality and number of the indoor light sources in your home. It is interesting to note that the use of cool white fluorescent lights has been legally banned in Germany at a Federal level. There are numerous studies on the negative effects of fluorescent lighting, as well as the benefits of full-spectrum lighting.

Knowing that color is light, how many colors are you actually enjoying in your space? Yes, you might not want to create an absolute rainbow of colors in your home, but the truth is that many homes are starving for beautiful, pure colors, starving for more light energy. Think of the happiest humans out there, the little kids; their energy is constantly nourished by an abundance of colors. Allow yourself to tap into a source of better energy, bring beauty into your home, bring more color, have good lighting. Educate yourself on how to light a home, and go for at least three sources of light in any room. Most young children are vibrant, creative, happy because they allow themselves to absorb different frequencies of light. Can you imagine a little child clinging to a beige decor scheme? It just can’t happen, as children are intuitively drawn to good energy.

Every Feng Shui design change that you make is important, even when the change is in a form of a furniture placement or positioning of other inanimate objects. As has already been discussed, elements have their own yin and yang energies. Wood represents life force and spirit—the wood grain rings indicate how many years that the tree has lived. Since wood represents growth, too much wood in a home can cause the energy to become too vigorous, too aggressive. Feng Shui design uses all elements in moderation for creating the balance in a space as shown in the pictures.

Try to keep your Feng Shui design ideas focused on areas that deserve your utmost attention, and don’t spread your energy too thin. Instead of addressing five power spots or problem areas at once, for example, start by addressing one, then move on to the next.

The following Feng Shui design idea can help you to understand the concept of Feng Shui design in a clearer manner:
A long room or hallway is often incorporated into an architectural home design and is a problem area that Feng Shui seeks to deal with because a long, narrow hallway or room carries Chi directly in a straight line. This allows Chi to gather force and become “rushing” or “raging” Chi. That’s not ideal. Aggressive energy can be harmful, leading to imbalances, and the room at the end of the hallway where the rushing Chi collects is probably suffering because of it. Having the bathroom at the end of the hall way is even worse. Since plumbing is symbolic of a house’s finances, losing Chi this way is literally “flushing money down the toilet”! This type of problem area can be fixed using Feng Shui design tips like keeping plants in the area as seen in the kitchen above, placing big pictures in the hall, or placement of the objects and furniture in accordance with the principles of Feng Shui elements. Enhancing the room or hallway in these ways can help the Chi to stay back in space rather than just rush in straight line. A Feng Shui bathroom, on the other hand, can help you to have money flowing in.

Corners are another major problem area as they are often overlooked place in the home where Chi is incorrectly channeled or missing all together. With Feng Shui design though, you can prevent Chi from missing corners. A suitable object placed in the corner can attract beneficial energy–a plant perhaps. Lamps, such as a floor spotlight placed behind a palm plant, are excellent for this purpose. Using different Feng Shui design ideas one can transform a dark, dreary corner to a well-lit corner that is full of life and vitality. Shining a light up through a palm plant makes the light dance on the walls and ceiling making wonderful designs.

Study the elements Feng Shui theory to help you balance the feng shui five elements in your home, as well as strengthen specific elements in specific feng shui areas. For example, if you are working on attracting more prosperity, you will introduce the feng shui elements of Wood and Water in the Southeast area of your home.

Know Your Feng Shui birth element and create a home to support your personal feng shui element. For example, if your own element is Fire, you need to introduce the expressions of Fire, such as the Fire element colors(red, orange, purple, magenta, pink, yellow), and triangular shapes. You will also need a strong Wood element in your home, as Wood feeds the Fire in the relationship of five feng shui elements.

Always be mindful of the state of your home and how the energy in your home influences your well-being. Make a habit of paying close attention to the so-called feng shui “triangle” that is deeply connected to your health – your bedroom, your bathroom and your kitchen. Nothing is static in the world of energy, so be wise and keep your home healthy and happy.

After you have mastered the home feng shui steps, you can explore the deeper levels of feng shui, such as, for example, the flying star school of feng shui. Be sure to start with the basic steps, though, before applying complex feng shui formulas.

According to Feng Shui, power spots are unique to each person, family and home and some of these are determined not only by the things that are going on in your life right now but also by the design and architecture of your particular living space.

If you are planning to build a new house, you are in fact in a position to draw the maximum benefit from the Feng Shui design. You can consult a Feng Shui consultant who can offer you a number of Feng Shui design ideas that can be easily implemented in your home. The most ideal situation according to the Feng Shui design would be to define the power areas first and ask the architect to design the whole house around them. It would be in your best interests to apply Feng Shui tool ‘Bagua’ to have the best Feng Shui design in your house.

By exploring Feng Shui design ideas, you can take the most beneficial and effective actions in every part of your house or the problem areas to encourage the optimal flow of Chi. While experimenting with the Feng Shui design ideas, as stated above, instead of using the Feng Shui design in the whole house , it is best to target particular problem areas first and then move systematically from room to room as a means of improving Chi flow in all parts of your living space.

The key to making the Feng Shui design ideas work for you in your home lies in accurately honing in on your most important problem areas and taking care of them first. To help you determine which parts of your living space are most in need of your attention. You can determine a problem area in your house by relating it to the problem you are facing presently in your day-to-day life. For example, if you are facing financial problems you can find out the areas that correspond to finance using the bagua and then use Feng Shui design to enhance the Chi flow in that area to bring about the desired change.

The areas where you are likely to spend most of your time are the best power areas. These areas can reside in the center and then you can have the whole house designed around it. For instance, the bedrooms can be located in the area that corresponds to a section of bagua which represents love, marriage and health. Since it is important for you to have proper sleep for 8 hours to allow the body to rejuvenate and energize itself. Feng Shui bedroom design also provides you tips for deciding the direction of your bed. The home office can be situated in a direction that supports financial and career achievements. The entrances to the house can be designed in a way that they receive the Chi, or life force energy, from the most favorable directions for the building. As there are power areas in the house there can also be problem areas, that can affect your health, relationships and finances in a negative ways. Feng Shuialso provides guidelines for knowing these problem areas and provides Feng Shui design ideas for improving these.

A power spot is an area of the home which can be as big as a room or as small as a tiny little nook, but this particular area has strong associations with your life (or parts of your life) that mean a great deal to you at a particular point in a given time frame. Feng Shui power spots are unique to each person, family and home. They are determined not only by the things that are going on in a person’s life presently but also by the design and architecture of their particular living space.

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Josef Frank; The father of modern Scandinavian art

16 Jul

Josef Frank was born July 15, 1885 in Baden, Austria, and he spent a good period of his life in Sweden. As an architect he was considered one of the fathers of modern Swedish design and is remembered for his prominent work in architecture and design for which he received prestigious awards during his lifetime as the State of Austria Grand Prix two years before his death. In fact, Josef Frank had left Vienna in 1934 for Sweden, since most of his work was rather misunderstood in his homeland. Frank’s work has been described as always in motion, bringing life to a room. Josef Frank was recognized internationally for his great work, this contributed to art which evolved into more modern techniques. Apart from his famous textiles, his designs range from furniture, lighting, glassware and architecture. His work plays with imagination and colour. During his lifetime Frank created a range of products, leaving over 200 patterns after his death in 1967. Some of his most famous textiles are Elephants and Manhattan.

Josef Frank was a renowned and prominent Austrian-Swedish architect and designer. Because of Swedens architecture and design, the artist stood out as the father of modern art in Scandinavia. It was in the Swedish soil where Josef was able to excel in the art world while working for Svenskt Tenn, the textile company that has created many designs that made him win the title of father of modern art.

His work is closely identified with the Swedish Modern aesthetic that emerged in 1930s and was widely admired in the decades following World War II. Before World War I, he worked on architecture and interiors including the interior of the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne in 1910. After the war he entered academic life, becoming Professor of Building Design at the Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule in 1919, a post he held until 1925. From 1921 to 1924 he worked alongside Peter Behrens, Josef Hoffmann, Oskar Straad, and Oskar Wlach on the design of Viennese apartment buildings and, in the following year,he founded the Haus und Garten interior design firm. Most of his work in the later 1920s and early 1930s was centered on private and public housing, the most notable of these projects being the design of a two-family home for the celebrated Deutscher Werkbund housing exhibition at Stuttgart in 1927.

Architect, designer, and theorist, his work is closely identified with the Swedish Modern aesthetic that emerged in 1930s and was widely admired in the decades following the Second World War. Educated in Vienna he worked on architecture and interiors and after the war he entered academic life, becoming Professor of Building Design at the Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule in 1919, a post he held until 1925. From 1921 to 1924 he worked alongside Peter Behrens, Josef Hoffmann, Oskar Straad, and Oskar Wlach on the design of Viennese apartment buildings and, in the following year, founded the Haus und Garten interior design firm.But Frank fell from grace when he emerged as a forceful critic of the extremes of modern architecture and design during the early 1930s. Dismissing the demands for a unified modern style, Frank insisted that it was pluralism, not uniformity, that most characterized life in the new machine age. He called instead for a more humane modernism, one that responded to people’s everyday needs and left room for sentimentality and historical influences.In 1932 he made contact with Estrid Ericson, the founder of Stockholm furnishings firm Svenskt Tenn, and two years later emigrated to Sweden where he would work as a chief designer for the company until his death 33 years later. His work came to define Swedish (or Scandinavian) modern design, producing colorful, cozy, and eclectic designs that provided a refreshing alternative to the architectural mainstream of the day and presaged the coming revolt against modernism in the 1960s. A celebratory exhibition of Josef Franks work is held at Svenskt Tenn in Stockholm, Sweden, where he lived for many years. Josef Frank died in Stockholm January 8, 1967. After 125 years his designs are still desired and celebrated. Long live creativity!

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Frans Hals: Portraitist of the Dutch bourgeoisie

12 Jul

Frans Hals was the great 17th-century portraitist of the Dutch bourgeoisie of Haarlem, where he spent practically all his life. Hals was born either in 1580 or 1581, in AntwerpBeligum. Like many, Hals’ family fled during the Fall of Antwerp (1584-1585)to Haarlem, Netherlands, where he lived for the remainder of his life. Frans Hals left no written evidence about his life or his works, and only a brief outline of his biography is known. He was the son of a clothworker from Mechelen and of a local girl, and the family moved from Spanish-held Flanders to Haarlem in the free Netherlands by 1591 and except for a brief visit to Antwerp in 1616, Hals lived all his life in Haarlem.

What he did for the first 25 or 30 years of his life is not known. The earliest indication of his activity as an artist was that about 1610 he joined the Guild of St Luke of Haarlem, a group who’s purpose is to register artists as masters. Shortly afterward he married his first wife, Annetje Harmensdochter Abeel. She bore him two children before her death in 1615from child birth. Two years later, Hals married Lysbeth Reyniers, who was to survive her husband by some nine years. In all, Hals had 10 children, and 5 of his 8 sons became painters. None, however, rose to fame.

Hals studied under the Flemish-artist, Karel van Mander whose Mannerist influence, however, is not noticeably visible in his work. At the age of 27, he became a member of the city’s painter’s corporation, the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke, and he started to earn money as an art restorer for the city council. The most notable of these were the works of Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Jan van Scorel and Jan Mostaert, that hung in de St. Jans kerk in Haarlem.

Hals evolved a technique that was close to impressionism in its looseness, and he painted with increasing freedom as he grew older. The jovial spirit of his early work is typified by the Shrovetide Revellers. In middle age his portraits grew increasingly sad, revealing sometimes a sense of foreboding, as depicted by Nicolaes Hasselaer, 1630-33; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The paintings of his old age show best his genius for portraying character as seen in the Man in a Slouch Hat,1660-66; Staatliche Museen, Kassel.

Frans Hals seems to have begun his career with sober portraits and with group portraits of members of the local guilds and military societies. The best of these early works – which already shows complete competence in portraiture – is a monumental painting entitled Banquet of Officers of the Civic Guard of St. George at Haarlem(1616; Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem), painted with a loose brushstroke technique that is unlike anything else in Dutch art of the time. It already has a sense of life and of relationship between the figures that was then unknown in this type of subject matter. By about 1620, however, Hals had begun to introduce into his paintings the jovial spirit that characterized his early works and that portrays with accuracy and enthusiasm one important aspect traditionally ascribed to Dutch character. Many of his portraits are simply pictures of merrymakers. The portrait of Hans Wurst in The Merry Companyshows the sitter in a tall, wide-brimmed hat, wearing a necklace made of pig’s feet, herrings, and eggs. The portrait of Mr. Verdonck (c. 1627) shows the subject joyfully brandishing the jawbone of a horse. Similar in spirit are the portrait of Peeckelhaering (c. 1628-30) clenching his beer mug, The Merry Drinker, and two later portraits, a picture entitled Malle Babbe(1633-35; Staatliche Museen, Berlin), which portrays an old madwoman laughing, with an owl perched on her shoulder, and a joyful picture in the Louvre Museum of a laughing, carelessly dressed Gypsy Girl(1628-30). In Hals’s group portraits this jovial spirit is evident and it revolutionizes the hitherto austere genre. One such painting is his second Banquet of Officers of the Civic Guard of St George at Haarlem(1627; Frans Halsmuseum), in which the figures take up postures normally employed for the expression of mystical religious rapture to celebrate their well-nourished contentment. In this painting, Hals displays his unmistakable genius for mise-en-scène; the dramatic effects he achieves here set him apart from most other painters. His militiamen are linked in a harmonious composition that makes the viewer aware of the cohesion of their group as a whole. Each conducts a dialogue with his neighbour, and here and there one figure is made purposely to disrupt the scheme with a gesture or a glance in the viewer’s direction. Nothing is happening except a meal shared by typical members of the Dutch middle class and their conversations. Yet there is a majesty to this scene that is equal to any depiction of an incident from the life of a king.

By the 1620s Hals had definitively evolved a technique that was close to impressionism in its looseness. Like the contemporary Spanish painter Diego Velázquez,he used colour to structure forms; and this use of colour is what sets the two artists apart from their contemporaries. Unique to Hals, however, is his use of quick, loose strokes of bright colour that suggest rather than enclose form and are highly expressive of movement and of the subjects’ vitality. Most painters of the 17th century approached their paintings slowly, with preparatory drawings, a certain amount of underpainting, and an elaborate finish. Although there is no certain evidence of his method, Hals seems to have started directly on the canvas and painted quickly, leaving his first spontaneous expression, which is almost an oil sketch, as the finished work. Hals continued to use this technique, which gave a striking immediacy to his perceptive portrayals of character, all his life, painting with increasing freedom as he grew older. Man with Arms Crossed (1622). Others follow that contain the same theme: The Laughing Cavalier (1624; Wallace Collection, London), Portrait of Isaac Abrahamszoon Massa (1626; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto), Pieter van den Broecke (1633).René Descartes. Still, although some continued to value his subtle perceptions, the public had generally begun to favour a more elegant style made popular by the portrait painter Anthony Van Dyck in England. What commissions he did receive were not enough to support him, and, like his two great compatriots Rembrandt and Vermeer,he saw his possessions sold at auction for debt in 1654. It was not until 1662 that his right to public assistance was recognized, and he was accorded a yearly pension by the city. In spite of this adversity the portraits of Hals’ last 16 years are his masterpieces. At this point, a view of the world is revealed in his painting in which the human comedy takes a tragic turn, and something breaks in the order that had kept the reasonable man and the madman separated. His portraits, no longer tempered by laughter, seem to express a realization that simply being is enough, after a certain age, for life to impress its tragic seal. group of old men and the other of old women, his men seem overcome with drunkenness and his women entranced by the obsession of death. Here he presents us with the most extraordinary reunion of senile decay ever assembled in the history of the pictorial arts; he shows us the quavering flame of dying life. It is not known whether these portraits were comprehensible to his models.

The joviality began to disappear from the paintings of Hals’s middle age. In the portraits painted after he reached the age of 40, the subjects seem to eye the world knowingly, with a shade of sadness in their faces. The period from 1630 to 1650 was Hals’s most productive. He was very popular among the staid citizens of Haarlem’s middle class, and during this time he painted more than 100 single portraits and 6 group and family portraits.

Frans Hals lived to be very old, and it is in the paintings of his old age that his genius for portraying human character is fully revealed. The last years of his life were difficult materially, and he was harassed by discouraging family problems. Although he continued to work steadily, he received markedly fewer commissions after 1650. He had, during his long career, achieved an impressive reputation; he had been honoured by many important commissions, had become in 1644 an officer of the Guild of St Luke, and in 1649 had painted the philosopher

Henceforth, Hals drew gradually closer to traditional subjects and stored away his drinking glasses and his tableware. At the same time he diminished the intensity, the vividness of his themes, a greater simplicity appeared in his compositions, and he took more and more liberty with his painting. His palette lost a good deal of its lustre. But through decades of work he had evolved a remarkably broad range of blacks and whites to choose from, and these colours were sufficient for what he wanted to show.

Old age fostered self-denial and a strict discipline in Hals, along with a new freedom in his painting. It most certainly was a painful time for the great painter. But the years had also sharpened his vision. There is no sign of religion in the evolution of his art; and it may be assumed that to Frans Hals, painting was a secular concern. Nevertheless, the loving compassion that permeated his art becomes, in his last years, something spiritual.

Like many artists whose style is unique in their own time, he left few direct followers. Hals was for a long time regarded as a competent but limited painter whose consistent neglect of any subjects other than portraits gave him no place in the history of significant art. It was not until the 19th century that interest in his work was revived. He influenced Édouard Manet with his free style and Vincent van Gogh with his subtle range of colours. In modern times he has been appreciated for the serious and excellent realist painter that he was.

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Keep cool, stay cool, be cool!

06 Jul

Well summer is finally here and now we have to think about how to stay cool. This can be fun if you set your mind to it. Running outside in the sprinkler like you were a kid has to be fun. As in all adversity we can either choose to see it as a challenge to turn something bad into something good or we can just complain. Here are some ideas to help keep your home cooler and lower your electric bill as well.

If you set your air conditioner to a slightly higher setting you will save electricity. If you set your thermostat at a lower setting that will force your system to work harder. Worse yet, it’s easy to forget to turn it back up. Stick with the warmest setting you can tolerate, and try other stay cool ideas.
Wear cool, loose clothing even indoors. It’s your space, dress for comfort. The cooler your clothing, the less you’ll need air conditioning.
Take cold showers. If you live in an area experiencing water shortages, skip this one. Otherwise, a quick three-minute cold shower is a fantastic way to cool down. Going longer than three minutes won’t make you feel much cooler, so skip the soap and just enjoy the relief. For regular showers, avoid using hot water during the summer. In most temperate locations, tap water is plenty warm for bathing by July. The cooler you run your shower, the less heat and steam you’ll need to remove from your living space. Use the exhaust fan if it’s vented outdoors.
Draw drapes and blinds on windows exposed to direct sunlight. Window coverings are one of the few home additions tolerated by most landlords. Curtains, blinds and window shades can all go with you at the end of your lease. In warm weather, you’ll want to be sure the space at the top of curtain between the rod and the wall is covered, or hot air will rise through the gap. It’s possible to buy curtains and shades with thermal ratings, so shop around or make your own. Window coverings have the added benefit of keeping heat from radiating outward during the winter. Shutters are a wonderful option as in indoor window treatment.
Use box fans to improve air circulation and set existing ceiling fans properly. This goes hand in hand with not being afraid of a little sweat. Fans use a fraction of the energy required by air conditioning. Just as in the case of wind chill outdoors, moving air will substantially lower the perceived temperature. During the summer, a ceiling fan should (in most cases) be running counterclockwise when viewed from below. You want the setting with maximum downdraft. Flip it next winter to bring warm air down from the ceiling. Just keep in mind that fans are for people, not rooms. There’s no point running them when nobody is around.

Drink plenty of water. You can’t sweat if you’re dehydrated. While some traditions, discourage consumption of cold liquids, they’ll temporarily cool your body core. Alcohol and caffeinated drinks tend to dehydrate, so choose wisely.
Indulge your taste for spicy food. There’s a reason Indian and Latin food is hot: it makes you sweat! If you have proper air circulation, sweating is an effective way to cool down. That sheen on your arms, face and legs is pretty much odorless, by the way. Crank up the heat in your food, and you’ll feel cooler. It may also provide other health benefits, such as improved circulation.
Cook outdoors. Grilling is a classic summer pastime. Best of all, it keeps heat outside. Of course, you want to minimize the environmental impact of outdoor cooking so don’t use chemical fire starters.
Use the microwave. The lowly microwave is your kitchen’s most efficient plug-in appliance. In addition to saving money year-round, microwave ovens are a good bet for summer cooking. Here’s why: microwaves direct most of their energy into the food, rather than the kitchen. That means you’ll stay more comfortable and burn less energy removing cooking heat from your home.
Eat more smaller meals through the summer months. The bigger the meal, the harder your body must work to digest it. Try splitting mealtimes across the day, opting for more and smaller meals when it’s warmest. This will keep your body from having to stoke its metabolic afterburners. It’s also a great time to experiment with cold foods — perhaps even raw cuisine. Less heat in the kitchen; less heat in your tummy.
Spend more time outdoors or away from home. A trip to the woods will be cooler and a walk is great exercise. Visit a friend and enjoy their air conditioning too? A little window shopping never hurt anyone, and it’s likely there are several ice cold destinations within walking distance or a short bicycle ride from your home. While eating out is a luxury for a lot of people these days, blowing a couple hours with a frosty drink and a book someplace cool isn’t a bad way to spend a sweltering summer afternoon.
Try a cool pillow. It’s tough to sleep when you feel like you’re in a sauna, and the alternative is running a fan or air conditioner all night. In addition to dressing out your bed with seasonally appropriate sheets and bed covers, consider a “cool pillow.” They’re marketed under names such as Chillow. Cool pillows are designed to draw heat away from your head, where about 30 percent of body warmth is dispersed. They require no power or special preparation. Here’s a low-tech idea for beneath the sheets: fill a hot water bottle or two with icy water. It’s like a refrigerator for your bed.
Shut down unnecessary electronic devices. Here’s another year-round energy saver. During the summer, however, it’s even more important to pull the plug on home electronics. Anything with a transformer creates heat. Shut down unused desktop computers (they have cooling fans for a reason); televisions; entertainment systems — pretty much everything with a plug.
Wash your clothes at night and line dry them in the morning. Some power companies offer off-peak rates to their customers. Take advantage of these. In any event, even a properly vented clothes dryer radiates heat. Restrict its use to the coolest part of the day. Wherever possible, line dry clothes. It worked for our parents’ generation, and it will work for ours. A simple line between two sturdy supports will do, and umbrella-style clothes lines are an affordable investment. Line drying is more of a challenge for apartment dwellers. You may be able to get away with a small line on a porch — check your lease terms. It’s also possible to dry indoors, and there are many retractable lines and racks made just for that purpose. Indoor drying may be the best choice if your area is dusty, or if you happen to be particularly susceptible to outdoor allergens.
Shut down your furnace pilot light. It’s small thing, but there’s no point running a gas furnace pilot light through the summer months. Locate the gas shutoff valve. There are safety issues here, so if you have any question about how to properly extinguish a pilot light, consult your building supervisor, utility company or heating and cooling professional.
Close doors to unused rooms and closets. Your winter clothes do not require air conditioning, so get into the habit of keeping closets and cabinets closed. Shut unoccupied rooms and their cooling vents. If you’re using window units, close the door in the air conditioned room whenever practical.
Replace or clean your air conditioning filter. Dirty filters dramatically reduce air conditioner efficiency. Check your filter once a week, and replace as often as necessary. Filters are generally throwaway items, but some may be reusable if thoroughly vacuumed. Clean window unit filters once a week. Some window air conditioners have a warning light to indicate when air flow is restricted.

Close your fireplace damper. If you’re fortunate enough to have a fireplace, close the flue during warm weather months. Chimneys are another void you don’t need to cool, so keep fireplace doors shut or construct an airtight screen to close the hearth when not in use.
Replace standard bulbs with low-energy equivalents wherever practical. The heating effects of incandescent bulbs are generally overstated, since most lights are mounted close to the ceiling. But every degree matters when you’re trying to keep power bills under control, and the money saving benefits of year-round CFL or LED light use are obvious. So do your homework and see what might make sense in terms of energy saving improvements. There may be local, state or federal incentives for things such as improving insulation values or weatherization. In the evening, once the sun’s rays become less direct you can quickly bring the temperature of you house down several degrees by spraying your roof down with a garden hose. some people even mount sprinklers on their roofs for instant swamp cooler effect.

Be sure to visit our Summer Shop for all of your summer decor needs!

Be COOL!

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Posted in Seasonal