Home Improvement, Real Estate (Residential)

Add Style with Adding Ceiling Fans

There are many benefits to adding ceiling fans into your home’s design that go beyond cooling off a room. Using ceiling fans throughout the home greatly reduces energy costs, while also providing comfort, style and beautiful lighting.

In the summer, fans should rotate counterclockwise to push cool air down to the floor. The cool air evaporates perspiration and creates a wind chill effect, which makes you feel cooler without affecting the room temperature. This allows you to set the thermostat at a higher temperature without forfeiting comfort. Cooling comfort is just a small benefit of using a ceiling fan in the summer. Homeowners who use fans during the summer can save as much as 40 percent on air conditioning bills.

In the winter, fans should rotate clockwise at a low speed to pull cool air up. The gentle updraft pushes warm air, which naturally rises to the ceiling, down along the walls and back the floor. This makes a room feel warmer, which allows you to lower the thermostat temperature and decrease the use of heating devices. Homeowners who use ceiling fans during the winter can save as much as 15 percent on heating bills.

Ceiling fans are a style driven accessory

Ceiling fans are available in a variety of sizes, styles, and finishes to complement your unique interior style. Fans are more than just functional; they can serve as a statement piece or focal point of a room.

Ceiling fans provide beautiful and functional illumination

Fans with lights allow you to contribute to the layered lighting design of your room. Select a fan with a built-in light, or easily install a fan light kit, for general illumination benefits.

Container gardening, House Plants

Terrariums

I have been thinking about terrariums lately. My terrarium happens to be a large vessel with a narrow throat I received for Christmas. The biggest point depending on the success of these types of container gardens is providing for good drainage because glass containers don’t have bottom drainage holes like regular flower pots. You can use any size glass container to make yours, ranging from a jar or brandy snifter to a fish tank.


I got these steps off the internet. 
1. Start with a 1 1/2″ layer of small pebbles on the floor of the container.
2. Cover the pebbles with a thin layer of loose charcoal, which will help keep the water in your garden from stagnating.
3. Cover the charcoal with an inch layer of sphagnum moss . Look in the aquarium/terrarium section of a pet store for the pebbles, charcoal, and moss.


4. Now, add enough potting soil so that the total contents occupy about 1/4 of the container. There will be some settling of the layers.
5. Choose small or miniature plant varieties so they don’t overtake the container. You have to experiment to see what type of plants do well for you. The plants that have found to be the best suited for terrariums are slow growers, tropical plants. Most cacti and succulents are suited for an open dry container.


I like miniature animals (especially dinosaurs), otherwise it’s just a garden in a glass bowl. I will show you my terrarium when it is done. Below are some examples:

Gardening & Landscape, Lawns

Buffalograss

Buffalograss, is a perennial grass native to the Great Plains from Montana to Mexico. It is one of the grasses that supported the great herds of buffalo that roamed the Great Plains. Buffalograss also provided the sod from which early settlers built their houses.

Buffalograss is, perhaps, our only truly native turfgrass in North America. Its tolerance to prolonged droughts and to extreme temperatures together with its seed producing characteristics enables this grass to survive extreme environmental conditions. Overgrazing and, in the case of turf, over use or excessive traffic are the pressures that lead to the deterioration of a stand of Buffalograss.

This type of grass is not adapted to shaded sites or to sites that receive heavy traffic. Also, under intensive management bluegrass and other more aggressive grasses tend to replace Buffalograss in the lawn.

Buffalograss does offer many advantages for a low maintenance turf and is gaining acceptance and popularity in dry areas. Buffalograss thrives in neutral or alkaline clay soil, even heavy clay soil. It is native to our shortgrass prairie region. Drought tolerance is its best feature. A lush buffalograss turf requires only 50% of the water requirements as does bluegrass and fescue. However, it will survive on a great deal less, going into dormancy that is readily broken by rainfall.

Mowing requirements are infrequent; once a month is sufficient, once a year for a naturalistic landscape. Fertilization is not only unnecessary, but harmful.

The disadvantages are it does not green up until mid-May and goes dormant in September. Also, some do not like the green-gray color, however, there are other varieties that are greener than gray. Baffalograss does not mix with other grass varieties. The seed is more expensive than with our grass varieties.