Author Archives: Melissa Guy

Make Every Day Earth Day

The first Earth Day was held in 1970 as a grass-roots earth_day_1effort to challenge the environmental politics of the time. It has since blossomed into a day of awareness and celebration of all the ways that we can – and do – give back to the earth.

  1. If your shower fills a one-gallon bucket in less than 20 seconds, replace the showerhead with a water-efficient model.
  2. Put food coloring in your toilet tank. If it seeps into the toilet bowl without flushing, you have a leak. Fixing it can save up to 1,000 gallons a month.
  3. Turn off the water while brushing your teeth and save 25 gallons a month
  4. Catch water in an empty container to measure sprinkler output. One inch of water on one square foot of grass equals two-thirds of a gallon of water.
  5. Monitor your water bill for unusually high use. Your bill and water meter are tools that can help you discover leaks.
  6. Try installing a timer on your indoor and outdoor lights.
  7. Unplug your appliances when you aren’t using them. The plugs are still drawing energy even when the item it powers is not in use.
  8. Consider solar chargers for items like smartphones and tablets. We DO get enough sun in Oregon to power your phone, we promise.
  9. Recycle your old batteries. Safe disposal of old batteries will help prevent soil and water pollution.
  10. Compost your waste. There are so many things you can compost.

“Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.” ~ Scott Adams How To: Keep Your Pipes From Freezing And What To Do If Disaster Strikes

Frozen pipes are always a risk when temperatures skid to the freezing-and-below mark. Here are a few tips on how to keep your pipes from freezing, and what to do if disaster strikes:

  • Let your faucets drip overnight, particularly un-insulated pipes located on an exterior wall. Lukewarm water is your best bet.
  • Keep cabinet doors to those areas open to allow the heat from your house to circulate around pipes near exterior walls.
  • Keep your thermostat set to the same temperature both day and night. Experts recommend setting it no lower than 68 degrees Fahrenheit 20 Celsius.
  • Know where your main valve and water heater valves are, just in case.

Monitoring your pipes

  • The first sign of freezing is reduced water flow from a faucet. Check the flow before you go to bed and when you wake up.
  • Check your pipes around unheated areas, exterior walls, and crawl spaces. They tend to be the most vulnerable.
  • Check for drafts and caulk areas near pipes where you feel cold air coming in.

If your pipe freezes

  • Inside, a hair dryer can do a great job of warming up the pipe. Just make sure you’re not standing in water!
  • Heat water on your stove and soak towels in the hot water, then wrap your frozen pipe in the towels. Start with the portion of the pipe nearest the faucet.

If your pipe bursts

  • Turn off your water at the main valve.

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Don’t let this happen to your water pipes

Facts on Water Usage

Many of your everyday activities use water – from bathing and cleaning the house to drinking and cooking. On a broader scale, water is necessary for agriculture, power plants and industrial or mining.

  • The average Canadian family spends approximately $500 per year on its water and sewer bill Victoria B.C. is much higher.
  • Treating and delivering water takes a lot of energy – letting your faucet run for 5 minutes takes as much energy as letting a 60-watt light bulb run for 14 hours.
  • More than 30 percent of household water is for outdoor use, such as watering lawns.
  • Turning off the tap water while you brush your teeth can save 8 gallons of water a day – that equals about 200 gallons of water saved per month.
  • A faucet that leaks 1 drip per second wastes 3,000 gallons of water each year.
  • Leaky toilets can waste up to 200 gallons per day, the equivalent of flushing the toilet 50 times for no reason.
  • Older toilets use 60 percent more water per flush as compared to newer high-efficiency model (look for the Water Sense label when buying a new toilet).
  • The average bath requires 70 gallons of water while a shower uses 10 to 25 gallons.
  • A running hose outdoors – for washing cars or watering plants – can waste 6 gallons of water per minute when left unattended.

Water is a precious resource. There are steps that each of us can take to help preserve and save water in our homes every day.

Water Saving Tips

SHUT THE WATER OFF

Instead of letting the water run while you brush your teeth, shave, peel vegetables or scrub dishes, turn it off until you need it.

SHOWER EFFICIENTLY

Don’t run the shower for five minutes to warm it up while you are doing something else – adjust the temperature when you get in. And keep your shower time to five minutes. Turn the shower off if you need to shave or deep condition your hair.

INSTALL ENERGY-EFFICIENT APPLIANCES

Use an Energy Star® washing machine and dishwasher and only run full loads, or at the very least use the lowest water level setting you need for smaller loads.

UPDATE YOUR TOILET

Install a low-flow or high-efficiency toilet to save nearly 2 gallons of water per flush.

CHANGE YOUR SHOWER HEAD

In addition to shorter showers; install a low-flow shower head, which will also reduce water waste. While you’re at it, repair your leaky faucets.

PLANT SENSE

Change your landscaping and house plants to low-water, native or drought-tolerant plants. Then do your watering in the morning or evening when there is less chance of evaporation. Additionally, use your broom instead of the hose to clear debris from your driveway and side-walks.

In a typical home, more than 9,000 gallons of water are wasted while running the faucet waiting for hot water.

Nuisance Power Outages: What to Do

Many of these instances are situations where a Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter, has tripped. And the reason it tripped could have been because someone had something plugged in, such as various power tools that demanded too much power, or water may have come in to contact with the plug.

In most cases, the problem is simple and doesn’t require an electrician to solve it.

The first thing to do is to check your GFCI outlets (see above), To see if the small red (sometimes black), button is protruding away from the face of the outlet. If it is, simply press it back in to place and check your power again.

It should also be noted that, sometimes one or more outlets are connected to a single GFCI outlet thus sharing the same circuit for power. In other words, if the GFCI outlet trips shutting off it’s power, any outlet connected to it also will be without power.

Finally, it’s a good idea to check, at least annually, the functionality of your ground fault Interrupter. This is a safety device installed in rooms where the presence of water could cause a dangerous situation. Should the GFCI ever get wet, it automatically turns the power off to that circuit. Once the area is dry and safe, the outlet can be reset.

The outlet pictured above is called a ground-fault circuit interrupter (GFCI). It’s there to protect people from electrical shock, so it is completely different from a fuse.

The question on appliance plugs talks about fuses. The idea behind a fuse is to protect a house from an electrical fire. If the hot wire were to accidentally touch the neutral wire for some reason (say, because a mouse chews through the insulation, or someone drives a­ nail through the wire while hanging a picture, or the vacuum cleaner sucks up an outlet cord and cuts it), an incredible amount of current will flow through the circuit and start heating it up like one of the coils in a toaster. The fuse heats up faster than the wire and burns out before the wire can start a fire.

A GFCI is much more subtle. When you look at a normal 120-volt outlet in the United States, there are two vertical slots and then a round hole centered below them. The left slot is slightly larger than the right. The left slot is called “neutral,” the right slot is called “hot” and the hole below them is called “ground.” If an appliance is working properly, all electricity that the appliance uses will flow from hot to neutral. A GFCI monitors the amount of current flowing from hot to neutral. If there is any imbalance, it trips the circuit. It is able to sense a mismatch as small as 4 or 5 milliamps, and it can react as quickly as one-thirtieth of a second.

So let’s say you are outside with your power drill and it is raining. You are standing on the ground, and since the drill is wet there is a path from the hot wire inside the drill through you to ground.

If electricity flows from hot to ground through you, it could be fatal. The GFCI can sense the current flowing through you because not all of the current is flowing from hot to neutral as it expects — some of it is flowing through you to ground. As soon as the GFCI senses that, it trips the circuit and cuts off the electricity.