Sustainability

Greening Your Home: Ask the Experts

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Today and tomorrow, Tamara and D. Hassen Saker, owner of Organic Home LLC, will be at Bloomingdale’s chatting with eco-conscious shoppers about important strategies for greening their homes and lifestyles. Don’t miss these “Greening Your Home: Ask the Experts” events and your chance to ask questions and receive valuable advice pertaining to your own home.

Thursday, April 29th – Bloomingdale’s, Willow Grove Park Mall
2400 West Moreland Park Road
Willow Grove, PA 19090
11 am – 2 pm
Willow Grove: Cosmetics Dept., Level 1

Friday, April 30th – Bloomingdale’s, The Court at King of Prussia
2 Rt. 202 North 660 West DeKalb Pike
King of Prussia, PA 19406
11 am – 2 pm
King of Prussia: Housewares, Level 3.

Energy Rate Caps Expiring: How Prepared Are You?

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There’s good news and bad news when it comes to electricity consumption in Pennsylvania. The good news is the rates that electricity suppliers could charge you have been capped since 1996 as part of Pennsylvania’s “Electricity Generation Customer Choice and Competition Act.”

The bad news is those caps have already expired – or will do so by year’s end – across the state. Those markets that have already become “uncapped” include those served by UGI Utilities Inc., Pike County Light & Power Company, Citizens Electric of Lewisburg, Wellsboro Electric Company, Duquesne Light Company, Pennsylvania Power Company and PPL Electric Utilities Inc. The remainder – areas served by West Penn Power Company, Pennsylvania Electric Company, Metropolitan Edison Company and PECO – will expire on 12/31/10.

In some cases, consumers have found that their rates have gone down after the caps came off, but in the majority of cases, the costs have skyrocketed – in fact, some rates are predicted to rise by as much as 70%!

So what’s an energy consumer to do? As a result of loosened restrictions, there are many companies that will now be able to supply your electricity through the infrastructure supplied by your current utility company. Start shopping now for a competitive electricity supplier to try to minimize the hit you’ll take. To find a list of suppliers in your area, visit The Public Utility Commission’s website You can also take steps to minimize your electricity usage – including installing proper insulation and energy-efficient windows, doors, appliances and lightbulbs, keeping your thermostat at a moderate setting, and unplugging small appliances and turning off lights when not in use.

Home Energy Audits – Part I

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As you may already know, we supply home energy auditing for our customers, usually as part of larger home-renovation projects. It’s with these larger projects that we attend to enough area of the home to really affect the home’s total energy performance. But even with smaller projects, energy efficiency is top of mind during design and construction.

As part of the home efficiency testing, auditors get a look at past utility bills and existing appliances, and they test the tightness of the home. They should also test for indoor home air safety, including C02 and other toxins. We find that drafty windows and doors, uninsulated spaces in walls, and breaks in the vapor barrier or thermal envelope of the home are the usual sources of air leaks. And air leaks are very costly because they cause you to use more energy keeping your home comfortable in hot or cold weather.

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A Look at the 2010 Old House Fair…

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This past weekend, we attended the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia’s (PAGP) Old House Fair, an event that brings together homeowners and aspiring owners of older and historic homes with historic preservation specialists from throughout the Philadelphia area. This is the second year in a row we’ve attended the fair, and we always seem to run into many great folks we’ve known for a long time but haven’t seen in a while.

Our company is excited and honored to be involved with PAGP — and to be receiving one of their 2010 Preservation Awards for our work on an extensive window-renovation project at The Fleisher Art Memorial (link to 3/10/10 press release).

At the Old House Fair, our customer, Carolyn West, was also honored with a Homeowner Award from the Preservation Society! You can see her receiving her award in the photos below (she’s wearing the blue blouse). And our own Tamara Myers hosted a workshop for homeowners who were eager to learn more about window projects in historic homes. Tamara has more than 25 years of experience with window issues in older homes.

Check out some snaps from the event:

Easy DIY Projects With Big Results

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When we bought our house, it was a “granny house.” No offense to the grannies out there, but everything in the house was either pink, or ruffles, or completely vintage and spotlessly clean circa 1957. The house even smelled of lady’s powder.

“Granny” is an adjective that no homeowner wants to hear when someone is talking about their house, but it’s a great descriptor to hear when you are buying a home. It generally means you will get a house with good bones, but perhaps some stylistic or cosmetic issues. So you can buy the house a bit cheaper than if it had been updated, and then update the house the way YOU would like. This was the case with our house.

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Myers Constructs, Inc., Wins a Grand Jury Award in Renovation from The Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia!

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We’re thrilled to announce that we recently received an award from The Preservation Alliance for a major renovation and repair project at The Fleisher Art Memorial, the nation’s oldest tuition-free art school located on Catherine Street in South Philadelphia.

This project entailed repairing and replacing 83 wooden windows – most of which were nearly a century old – with the goals of maintaining the historical integrity of the buildings, achieving energy efficiencies, and providing a safer and more secure environment for the 17,000 people who visit Fleisher throughout the year. Click here for details on this project.

Anti-Vinyl, And Proud of It

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One of the things that distinguishes a higher-end remodeling project from a lower-end one is the products that are used.

Typically, a less-expensive project will use cheaper products. Many times, these cheaper products will not last as a long as higher-priced ones. If you think about it, you can purchase cheaper products two or three times over within the same time frame that a more expensive product would last.

Another thing to remember is that cheaper products will typically pollute more than more expensive ones. An example of this is vinyl siding. The case against vinyl siding is illustrated nicely in this video clip from the documentary Blue Vinyl.

Vinyl siding is not recyclable. It pollutes when it’s made — and later when it’s removed and goes to the dump. No one else will tell you this. The guy selling vinyl siding door-to-door in your neighborhood is certainly not going to tell you this. He will tell you it’s a green product that insulates your home. He wants to sell vinyl siding, a lot of it.

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Here’s a Post We Love from Canadian Kitchen & Bath

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BLUM hardware co created this aging suite to show you how your mobility is effected as you age, and how great kitchen design can help you age in place.

BLUM VIDEO

Listen to the speakers comments too on how most kitchen renovation buyers spend more time researching their car purchase than their kitchens, even though we all try to keep kitchens much longer than we keep our cars.

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Who Wouldn’t Want to Use This?

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Whatever happened to water fountains? Look at these beauties! You would feel like royalty using these. I did when I happened upon them at the Parkway Administration Building, a beautiful, LEED-certified building on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina.

These are a perfect example of how great design and craftsmanship make life better, even on the seemingly mundane level of getting a drink of water, which we all take for granted in the U.S.

Bottled water is very wasteful. It costs more than gasoline. It puts millions of pounds of plastic into the landfills and the Pacific Gyre, where it kills animals. And plastic containers have also been linked to cancer in humans.

Businesses and other non-domestic buildings should bring back water fountains! Make them beautiful, and people will use them.