Save yourself time and money by doing it yourself and doing it right!

With the high cost of inflation and the low reliability of good craftspeople, many home owners are turning to the do it yourself directories to enable them to get a lot for their spendable income and to get their jobs done quickly and efficiently in manner and style of their chosing.

When making your home improvement plans, try to keep your costs down, even the long distance ones because part of good home improvements is the correct planning on the current costs, what's new, whether it is cheaper to do it yourself or have an installer do it. Sometimes calling up an old friend or two and inviting them in for a few days of working holidays will make for a nice memory. Talk about it! We have a real inexpensive plan where they can call you from anywhere for only 3.5 cents a minute. No need for cell phone plans or other expensive items. We all want the best value for our hard earned cash and we can do it for only 3.5 cents a minute nationwide or 10 cents a minute to over 200 countries with Telcom3. We have been using them for years. No state or federal taxes and we can call from anywhere using a toll free number. Check out Telcom3 today!

Just remember that at one time, most people did not know how to do things. You can learn how to do almost anything.  All you have to do is learn about what it is you want to do and then have the desire to do it. Here are a few good tips.

Home Improvement Tips Windows: Placing Windows to Capture Daylight

In the United States, electric lighting consumes about one fourth of all the energy generated. According to the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit research and educational organization that fosters efficient use of resources, this usage equals the energy produced by 170 large powerplants. It only makes sense to take advantage of daylight to provide light and warmth--but this means planning ahead during building or remodeling. The daylight that enters a building may shine directly from the sun, bounce off of bodies of water, streets, buildings, or other surfaces, or come from the diffuse, day-lit sky.

Placing and sizing windows and figuring control measures, such as roof overhangs, requires a clear understanding of the sun's path. The sun's daily east-to-west arc changes throughout the year. At the summer solstice, June 21, the sun rises and sets farthest to the north, which means that it is higher during the day. At the winter solstice, December 21, the sun's arc is at its southern-most position, with a much lower mid-day elevation. The sun's angle at any given time of the day depends on your latitude. The further north you live, the lower the winter sun will be in the southern sky.

Whether a window faces north, east, south or west makes a big difference in the type of light it receives. If you want morning sunlight to spray across your breakfast table, your breakfast room window should face east. Light from the south is bright and direct; solar houses are oriented to the south for maximum heat gain. South-facing windows are often located beneath eaves or roof overhangs that block the high, intense summer sun but allow the warmth of the lower winter sun. Western sun can be intense and glaring. Controlling it is more difficult because, as the sun sets, its low angle dips beneath eaves and overhangs. Shades, blinds or glare-resistant glazing are generally required. It's also helpful if deciduous trees are planted on the west side of a house--their spring-and-summer leaves block unwanted heat, then when the leaves drop in the fall, the trees allow the sun's warmth and light. North light, never direct from the sun, has cool, bluish hues because it comes from the sky. Because it's constant, north light is favored for artists' studios and the like. Be sure any architect or builder you hire will take all of this into account when planning your house's window placement; ask for references and call previous clients.

 Lighting: Ways to Save Energy Dollars

If you're looking for ways to trim the fat from your electrical bills, consider some of these techniques, drawn from the experience of commercial daylighting experts: · First and foremost, turn off lights that aren't being used. · Convert standard incandescent light bulbs to highly efficient compact fluorescents. Compact fluorescents use from about one quarter to one third as much energy to produce the same amount of light as a standard incandescent bulb (a 20-watt compact fluorescent will give you about the same light as a 60-watt incandescent). Though most cost considerably more than conventional bulbs, they last up to thirteen times longer which, combined with the energy savings, makes them a long-term good buy. · Move natural light further into rooms by bouncing it off the ceiling. A window located close to the ceiling works well for this, as do louvers or operable blinds that can direct light. · Consider installing a "light shelf" horizontally across a window to ricochet light off the ceiling and back into the room.. This shelf, normally located about 12 inches from the top of the window for a standard 8-foot ceiling (lower for a high ceiling), may be mounted inside, outside or in both locations. It's usually painted with high-reflectance, glossy paint. Actually, any light-toned surfaces, including walls, ceilings and floors, will reflect light. If you want more light in rooms and glare isn't a problem, look for wall paints that have high reflectance values (ask your paint dealer for them) and floor coverings that are light in color.

Water Heaters: Gas or Electric?

If you're thinking about buying a new water heater, you may be wondering whether to get one that is gas-fueled or one that is electric. Natural gas fuels more than half of all water heaters; electricity heats most of the remainder. A small percentage of water heaters burn propane (LP), oil, or kerosene. And some use wood heat or solar collectors to heat water. If natural gas is available, your next water heater should be gas fueled. Electricity is the fuel of choice only where it is the only option--or where it is impossible to run a flue out the roof to carry the water heater's combustion emissions.

Gas is both cheaper and much faster at heating a tankful of water. So are propane, kerosene, and oil, but they're less convenient because they must be delivered (not piped) to a house. A 1991 study by the Department of Energy (DOE) rated residential energy sources by the average dollar cost per million Btus of heat they produce. Natural gas was found to be $6.05; heating oil $9.30; propane $9.74; and electricity a whopping $24.15. Obviously, these amounts vary with local energy prices and do change over time, but in the relative world of energy, natural gas is by far the cheapest, most convenient fuel for water heaters.

If you have an electric water heater and want to take advantage of the economy of natural gas or propane, check out Gas-Fired Products' Seahorse®. With this innovative system, the electric heating element is removed from the existing water heater, turning the heater into a storage tank. A new gas-fired heating unit is mounted on an outside wall, where it doesn't require a vent, and it's linked to the existing tank with two 3/4-inch water lines. Gas is piped directly to the new heating unit. The new system has three times the heating capacity of a standard electric water heater.  

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