How To – Should I use Beer To Kill Slugs?

garden lettuce

Everyone has probably heard this tale about using a bowl of beer in your garden to attract pests like slugs.  What is the real truth about this and should you give it a try?

Its probably not a great idea to use this method if you really value your plants.

The truth is you are probably more likely to get your cat drunk then really cure your pest problem with bowls of beer throughout your …

How To – 3 Season Vacation House Upgrade Considerations

Recently we had a conversation with a new home owner that purchased a 1950’s built Victorian styled three season vacation home in upstate New York who wanted to convert it for use as their primary residence.  They were wondering how they could improve the home to make it livable year round.

The home is located near a lake with electric, well water and phone service but with no access to natural gas. The structure of …

How To – Review Self Cleaning Ovens

The most important aspect of any kitchen tool is it’s ability to let us get our work done faster.

If you are making a salad for yourself then chopping everything up and using a hand grater for your carrots is a lot faster then pulling out the food processor and cleaning it afterwards. On the other hand if you are feeding a family of 6 a food processor may …

How To – Corn and Pellet Stoves

Wood Burning for Heating is the Number One Alternative Energy Resource in the USA. It far outweighs any other fuel source with over 60% of the market. Solar, wind, geothermal are all less then 5% of the alternative energy market so when you look at fireplaces and wood burning you should remember they are green resources of renewable energy.

Today you can still purchase wood burning stoves that look …

How To – Silver Polishes

Owning Silver items means you need to care for them often to restore and maintain their natural finish. Oxidation can cause tarnish and foods such as coffee can cause stains so what is the best way to care for your silverware and other household items?

Here we will cover a few different products that can make your job easier.

The first thing you should do is use a mild detergent …

How To – Outdoor Holiday Lighting

As the Holiday season approaches quickly most of us will want to decorate our homes with outdoor lighting. This HowTo will cover some of your options and some safety tips that will keep your holiday happy.

First and most important is that you always look for an outdoor UL rating on any outside light that you install. This is true for holiday lights or basic landscape lights. Testing by …

Paint Products – Manufacturers Guide

When painting your projects you always want to use professional grade products.  Skimping on the finish after weeks of hard work is always a bad idea.

The following list of manufacturers may not provide direct sales so look for a distributor in your local area.

This list will be updated as needed. Also see our Directory.

Kirker Automotive Finishes – Provides a specialty line of paints at discount prices. Pre-selected factory fleet line is wide enough to provide a good section along …

Absorptive Chillers Cooling Without Electric

The absorptive chiller processing has been used for many years but will it become the solution for cooling in the future?

Every Summer we hear brownout or black out warnings from our power companies durring peak energy usage but can some simple technology with little or no moving parts reduce our dependency on large amounts of electricity to cool our homes, businesses and schools?

Proving the point for over 15 …

I Want To Install Solar But Where Do I Start?

It depends where you live if you live in the southwest then you have a great chance that between government and electric company rebates you can do it totally free

You should install a system that is Certified so it can be hooked to the electric grid this means buying the right parts, saving reciepts and having it inspected. It may also mean you pay someone to install it …

How To – Wireless Internet Routers

Wired or Wireless, that is a question for many homes as we go from dialup modems and a single shared computer to everyone having their own computer and wanting to do their own thing online.

Today the best wireless routers are multi-band gigabit routers and they can provide great connectivity for local networking and internet access.

With duel Band or Multi Band technology you can assign traffic to different computers or …

How To – Steps To Hiring A Contractor

Every project is different and the skills that a contractor needs to complete yours will vary. Unfortunately there is no perfect way to pick the right contractor especially when you haven’t worked with them before but lets go over a few tips that may help you reduce your headaches.

The first thing you need to realize is that nothing is ever perfect and every job will have its mistakes. This also means that every contractor will have a bad day or project …

Construction Loans – Understanding Pulls

Although building your own home or tackling a large remodeling project can be difficult the more you understand about the process and the better you plan ahead will give you that margin to deal with the unknowns.

You can think of it like planning a trip. You know where you are going to go and you know basically how much it will cost. You do some research on the …