Eco-Remodelers

Gardening Tip:

By Sara Snow; Green Lifestyle Expert, TV Host and Author of Sara Snow’s Fresh Living

Summertime is the time to be outdoors and gardening is a perfect activity to relax a busy mom’s mind and entertain small children.

Even if you don’t have a big yard for a garden, you can use a small patch or containers to grow some edible plants with your kids.  What you plant is completely up to you, but I recommend starting with foods that you’ll actually eat because those will be the things you’ll most happily tend to.  Basil, oregano, chives, parsley, and rosemary are good starter herbs.  And cucumbers, tomatoes, pole beans and lettuce are great easy vegetables to grow.

Here’s a simple idea: grow a salad bowl.  Take a large container, about three feet across, and plant a variety of lettuces (arugula, romaine, endive, and red leaf will make a colorful and nutritious salad mix), as well as some chives and other herbs for dressing, and a dwarf cherry tomato plant.  Harvest and enjoy!

With a few strategically placed pest-repelling plants, you can make your garden a more restful place, so you can relax outdoors without the temptation of spraying chemical laden repellants.  Studies have shown catnip to be ten times more effective at repelling mosquitoes than the common bug spray ingredient DEET.  Catnip, geraniums, lemon thyme, marigolds and rosemary are just a few mosquito-repelling plants that you can easily grow.

The people over at Best Buy have let me know that it’s National Vampire Awareness Day. Oddly enough, it is not in honor of the Halloween holiday.

No, this day is being set aside to make you aware of the energy vampires found in your home. And they’re not sucking your blood… they’re sucking your checking account dry.

Energy Vampires are the electronic devices - your computer, DVD/VCR, stereo, cellphone, etc. - that continue to use energy even when switched off or in standby mode.

This excess energy consumption is costing you money and it’s causing power plants to send more carbon dioxide into the air - for no reason!

Head over to the Vampire Awareness Day website for more details, a fun video, and a Fact Sheet.

What Can You Do?

• Easy. Attach power strips to all your major (and minor) electronic toys and switch off the strip when they’re not in use.

• Unplug your battery and devices chargers when not being used to charge your stuff. That’s right - even your cellphone charger is using power when the phone is not attached to it.

• Don’t rely on the “sleep” mode for your computer - shut it off. Otherwise, you’re blowing $70 a year to keep it powered up (in case you need it at 4 in the morning.)

• Buy only Energy Star electronics and appliances the next time you go shopping for more toys.

Why Should You Do it?

Individually, these appliances and electronics don’t use up much. But every house is full of devices that rob you of money. Add them all up and you could potentially be spending an extra $1,000 a year. Think about how many more electronic goodness you could buy with that kind of money…

For more information on how to save money and energy, check out the Department of Energy Energy Savers page.

One room is done! The fourth bedroom, which is also going to be my office, is finished. I installed the bamboo flooring in this room because it is my practice room - if I mess it up there, not many will ever see it!

So, the dining room will be next, but it will have to be after we move. Our current, official move-out date for our townhouse is October 15th. I’ll take up the dining room, which is considered a non-essential room at this point, after we’re in and settled.

The bamboo floor was not very difficult to install. And all the planks were perfect. I didn’t have a single bad one in the bunch.

To install this flooring, I had previously screwed down the plywood subfloor to give it a stable base.

Next, I bought an air compressor (that also came with a brad nailer) and I rented a flooring stapler from Home Depot.

I put down the black felt underlayment that I bought with my bamboo flooring. I nailed down my first row of bamboo planks using my brad nail gun. I had to cut a piece around the air conditioner register using my mitre saw. It’s important to start on the longest “outside” wall in the room - it’s usually the straightest. But you’ll want to put down a chalk line to make sure you’re installing the boards straight.

I had to nail down the 2nd row as well.

You might be able to see the brad nails in the picture above. I used a nail set and hammer to tap down the nails below the surface of the bamboo. I’ll use a wood filler that matches to cover up those nail holes.

After that, I had room to use to my stapler. I would tap each plank into place, making sure the bamboo boards were tight against each other, then I would line up the staple gun. I simple whack of the mallet on the staple gun and it would drive a two-inch staple through the tongue of the plank and into the subfloor below.

As you can see in the picture, the staple split the tongue on the bamboo plank. I backed off the pressure of the compressor to under 95 psi. This kept the staple from driving in so hard that it would split the bamboo.

I did it on my own and I completed a 13 foot by 9 foot bedroom in one day. I would line up each row of bamboo and then go along and staple each board down. Luckily, I didn’t have to use a table saw to slice up the last row to make it fit. The last row was an exact width of the bamboo plank. I did, however, have to nail in those last two rows - because the staple doesn’t allow you to have any room to strike it with the mallet when its so close to the wall.

I staggered all the boards in a random pattern. Never let the seams of the boards line up. This helps give the flooring extra strength. Also, you don’t want to install the flooring right up to the walls. You want to give the wood (or bamboo, in this case) room to expand and contract. Leave about half an inch all around the floors to make sure there is space. When you install the baseboards, if you can still see a gap then you can install a section of quarter-round to the baseboard to fill it.

Also, I did one particular room in an “un-green” fashion. While I was at Lumber Liquidators, I tried to see if they had any spare bamboo or other eco-friendly flooring options. But… they didn’t. They did have some hardwood flooring but it was in such a small amount leftover they couldn’t sell it. I only needed to fill a 6 foot by 6 foot walk-in closet in our master bedroom. So… I bought the hardwood. I needed to do it.

Using all the same equipment, I installed the flooring in our closet on Sunday.

It’s a maple hardwood that was stained a rich, red cherry color. I had just enough to fill the small closet with only one 3 foot board left over.

Even though hardwood is not a green material, I was able to put their small leftover quantity to good use so that none was wasted. I know… I’m rationalizing, but I needed flooring and I got it for less than a dollar a square foot.

Here’s a closeup shot of the stapler resting on the floorboard so it can drive the staple into the tongue.

And the final product. It turned out very nice. Now I just need to re-install the baseboards around the floor in both rooms. I’ve primed and painted the baseboards before installation to avoid spilling any paint on the new floors.

I’m still working on the house and getting it ready for the new carpet. I picked up my bamboo flooring yesterday and dropped it off. Hopefully, I can get it installed on Sunday.

In the meantime, I wanted to write a post on something that I’ve been thinking about for a while. Most people hesitate to even think about “going green” because they’re convinced it will cost them a lot of money.

So, I wanted to throw out a few ideas of how you can do your part… even if you don’t have much money to spend on being more green and lowering your carbon footprint on our planet.

Recycle - this is important to cutting down on trash in our landfills, lowering our need for foreign oil, decreasing our use of limited resources, and most areas now have recycling operations. About the only expense you would have would be the purchase of a trash can to hold your recyclables.

Pre-Cycle - Precycling is the act of lowering the amount of resources you use up. It could be a matter of avoiding unnecessary purchases all together. There are other examples, such as buying items in one large package instead of a dozen smaller ones. By precycling, you’re choosing ahead of time to buy less and use less to prevent the need for things to ever be recycled.

Turn Off the Water - drinkable water is a valuable commodity and it’s getting harder to find every year.  Many of us waste a lot of it every day. If you want to cut down on your water bill and help preserve drinkable water, you only have to make slight changes:

• Many people leave the faucet running while they brush their teeth. Gallons of water can run down the drain while you spend the needed two minutes minimum while brushing teeth.
• Turn the water off to shave (or shave at the sink.) Just fill a cup of water and use that to rinse your shaver off.
• Don’t flush your toilet after every single use. There’s an old saying, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.” Words to live by.
• Take a bath instead of a shower every once in a while.
• Turn that 45 minute shower into a 20 minute shower. You’ll save gallons upon gallons of drinkable water.
• Fix those leaky faucets. Even a small drip can add up to gallons of good, clean water being wasted over time. You might need to spend a little for a repair kit at the hardware store, but you’ll save a lot of money.

Turn off the Lights - Every time you leave a room, shut off the lights. Even if you might be coming right back. Leaving most of the lights on in your house can burn electricity and keep your electric bill high. And, you’re not doing much for the planet by wasting electricity. The more power you need the more that coal-burning plant need to send harmful CO2 into the atmosphere.

Shut the Door - Ever stand in front of the refrigerator and wonder what you want to eat? While you’re deciding, all that cool air is falling right out the door. And then your fridge need to kick back on to replace the lost cool air and that kicks up your electric bill. Also, if you’re running your air conditioning or heater and you or your kids leave the back door open? Same thing. All that conditioned air zips right outside costing you money and the planet some valuable time.

Shut off Electronics - Even though your stereo or computer is on “stand-by”, it’s still using power. If you put all your major electronics on a power strip and shut them off completely after each use, you’ll cut down on electricity usage. And it doesn’t cost a dime…

That’s all I can think of for now. I’ll continue to add to this post as ideas come to me. Do you have any ideas on how to go green without spending any money? Let me know.