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The ElectraLite
April 2017
Make Every Day Earth Day with Some Simple Energy Savers
Earth Day is on April 22 this year. Here are 10 ways to celebrate by sav- ing energy at home:
1. Call a qualified air conditioning technician to service your central air conditioning system. HVAC equipment needs service every year to head off major problems and keep the system running smooth- ly all summer. 2. As long as the spring weather is mild, open a window instead of turn- ing on the air conditioner.
Draw soft spring breezes into the home by turning on your ceiling fans. 3. Cook outside on the grill as soon as the weather permits it. When you don’t turn on your kitchen’s cooktop or oven, you don’t heat up your house.
4. Close the shades. It’s tempt- ing to leave them open on beautiful, sunny spring days. But if it’s hot outside, that heat can find its way into your house through the windows and tempt you to crank the a/c up unnec- essarily.
5. If it’s sunny but not hot out- doors, throw those curtains open and let the natural daylight illuminate your home. Then, turn off the lights. You won’t need them. 6. Don’t have a programmable thermostat yet? It’s time. Sometimes spring weather calls for heat and sometimes you need the a/c. A pro- grammable thermostat will help you limit how much energy you use for either by automatically turning the temperature up or down as needed. 7. Seal the ducts in your central air conditioning system. Leaky ducts can push your cooling costs up by as much as 30 percent.
8. Likewise, caulk around win-
dows and electrical outlets so cool air can’t escape your house and hot air can’t get in.
9. Keep your home’s humidity levels low by running kitchen and bathroom exhaust fans—but only until the smoke or steam clears. Running them for too long will suck more than humidity and odor from
your home. Those fans can send your comfortable, conditioned air out of the house.
10. Change your a/c filter. A clogged filter forces your system to work harder and use more energy. It also can send the dust and allergens it collects right back into your indoor air.
How to Buy a HEPA Vacuum Cleaner
If someone in your home has allergies or asthma, you need to keep your home as free of dust and other airborne allergens as possible. A high-efficiency particulate air—or HEPA—vacuum cleaner can help you do that. If you’re in the market for a HEPA vacuum cleaner, consider: • The size of your home. The bigger the vacuum cleaner, the more expen- sive it is. So if you live in a small apartment, buy a small vacuum. If you live in a big home, though, the investment in a large machine might be worth it. • Your floor coverings. Few who suffer from severe allergies have wall- to-wall carpeting because it traps so much dust and dirt. If you do have a lot of rugs around the house, though, choose a vacuum cleaner with powerful suction, and consider an upright model. It will be easier on your back. On the other hand, hardwood floors—or even a mix of rugs and wood—call for a can- ister vacuum that can easily glide from one kind of floor covering to the other. • The size of your closets. Upright vacuum cleaners are easier to tuck into a corner or a closet than canister vacuums. But canister vacuums tend to be lighter than uprights and come with a lot of attachments for vacuuming ceram- ic tile floors, furniture and car seats. • How bad your allergies are. A HEPA vacuum cleaner can do a good job of sucking up tiny, airborne allergens that have settled on furniture and in carpets. Between cleanings, however, those settled allergens wind up in the air you breathe every time someone walks on the carpet or sits of a sofa. • For severe sufferers, a built-in central vacuum cleaner system with a high-test motor and an extra-long hose might be a good choice. The vacuum in permanently installed in a basement garage or storage room, with inlets in- stalled in walls around the house. Long hoses attach to those inlets so you can vacuum rooms. Dust and allergens are transported to a collection container in the permanent location.
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