Home and Garden Answers and Expertise
Replacing the water heater anode is a normal home maintenance item that could prevent premature water heater failure.
Filed under: Water Heater Problems
If you’re not in a hurry there is another, more benign method I used on my garden shed roof. I spread the Tide Powdered Laundry Detergen all over the upper elevations of the roof and went away. Meanwhile, the rain dissolved the Tide and it ran down over the entire roof, killing the moss. I did it in the autumn and actually forgot about it. By spring the roof was moss-free and clean.
Filed under: Building Maintenance
To compost -or, to make a compost pile, is to turn once living things into a soil conditioner, weed preventer, fertilizer. It’s taking those things, putting them together in a ‘compost pile’, managing the process so they decompose and leave you with a great result. Compost is a key, critical component to effective organic gardening.
Filed under: How-to Gardening
After a thunderstorm, or a natural disaster like a tornado, hurricane or flood, there is often the need to clear debris away from homes and property. This discussion centers around the homeowner who might find himself using a chainsaw for the first time -or who may only seldom use a chainsaw. Understanding proper safety features of the machine, proper technique, and the safety gear (PPE) available for protection is paramount in preventing serious injury or death and becoming more productive.
Filed under: Safety at Home
For most home projects, Ready Mix is the way to go. Simply dump the bag in a wheelbarrow, add a little water and mix away. Always add water sparingly. Start out with a stiff mix and add a just a little water at a time to reach the desired consistency.
Filed under: Home Renovation
There are dozens of hazards to our eyes in the workplace -which includes work we do at home and in our gardens. Normal eyeglasses are not enough. Normal eyeglasses add to the hazard by shattering when hit by an object.
Filed under: Safety at Home
Tuckpointing (or, Tuck Pointing) has historical significance in England but for all practical purposes, in the U.S. today, tuckpointing is the term used for repairing / restoring the loose mortar in a brick structure. The term is interchangeable with ‘pointing’ -as in ‘pointing up’ a chimney or other brick structure (like a wall, for example).
Filed under: Home Renovation
We talk about ‘sweating a joint” or “sweating copper pipe.” It is the same as “soldering copper pipe.” Sweating and soldering -both references mean the same thing. To explain, for the benefit of the uninitiated, copper piping is joined with fittings of different configurations. A ‘coupling’ joins two straight sections, an elbow is used to fashion a 90 degree angle. There are other configurations -a 45 degree, for example, that enables one to route the pipe just about wherever you need to go, as well as fittings which allow the transition to a male or female threaded connection (threaded adapter).
Filed under: Plumbing Repair
One of the best things you can do ecologically is to provide a ‘stopping spot’ for butterflies and other insects to feed along their way in an urban area. This is consistent with the ‘Green’ environmental movement. Not only do we create something beneficial for the butterflies -we get a benefit from it as well. We get all the beauty.
Filed under: How-to Gardening
Tomato plants should be pruned throughout the season starting when the suckers are between two and three inches (2-3″) long. To do so increases the yield and reduces the disease pressure on the plants.
Filed under: How-to Gardening