Home Improvements

When the temperatures outdoors begin to climb as summer approaches, it is a good time to start thinking about how you are going to keep yoruself cool indoors. There are several options available to you, from the very expensive, full home installation of a HVAC system, to smaller air conditioning systems down to portable units and evaporative air coolers as well as non powered solutions such as effective shading and heat reflective paints. All have their merits and drawbacks as we shall see as we take a look at the options available to you in this article.

HVAC

Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning systems are still popular but very expensive to buy and instal in your home. You need to weigh up the advantages of having this kind of system to keep you cool in summer as well as keeping you warm in winter if needs be, depending upon the climate you have in your area. It is also expensive to run, using a lot of power which has to be paid for not just by you, but also by the environment which takes the heaviest hit from these large scale installations. You can also install HVAC in the workshop if you need a lot of air cooling and ventilation. If money is not a problem and you have a large family that will use lots of different rooms in the house at any given time, then this will be your best solution.

Individual Room Air Conditioning Systems

This is a less expensive way than a full HVAC system of cooling your home, although depending upon how you use it, it can still work out expensive to run in terms of the amount of power it uses. For smaller families where two or more rooms will be occupied at any given time, this is a good solution as long as you take care to switch off units that are cooling rooms that are no longer being occupied.

Portable Air Conditioners

These are small, portable or mobile room cooling units and are less expensive to buy and to run than larger fixed installations. They are perfect for couples or people living alone as you only need to cool the room you are occupying and you simply move the unit from room to room as you need it.

Evaporative Air Coolers

These are sometimes called ventless portable air conditioners because they don’t work in the same way as true air conditioning units. There is no CFC gas coolant and no need to vent hot air to the outside. They work by extracting moisture from the air in the same way that dehumidifiers do, except that they then recycle that moisture internally to cool the system and blow out cold air.

Shading and Heat Resistant Paints

This is the most environmentally friendly way of cooling your home and relies on shading from trees or retractable blinds to keep the sun off the walls and roof of the house, preventing them from heating up. The interior of a house properly shaded and insulated can remain 10 or more degrees cooler than the outside and in many cases means there is no need of further mechanical cooling apart from maybe some regular fans. Using heat resistant light colored or white pain on the exterior of a house can also help reduce the inside temperature. Coupled with good shading, this is an inexpensive solution that uses zero power.

If you are considering doing some remodeling to your kitchen and you are limited because of space constraints, then you shouldn’t let that put you off. You can still do a great job and end up with a kitchen space that is not only functional but appears larger than what it really is simply by making the best use of the space available and using some clever tricks.

The first thing you should do before anything is get a piece of graph paper, some sheets of tracing paper, a pencil and a rule and get planning and designing your kitchen from the ground up using a scale ground plan to see what space you have available to work with. You’ll need to start by adding important things like water inlets, waste pipes and electricity sockets because unless you intend moving them deliberately, you really don’t want to start work and then have to move them because you got a unit that didn’t fit the way you thought it would!

After you plan the floor space, then you need to draw in scale drawings of the units on the tracing paper and then overlay them on the grid sheet to see how they fit. This way you can move stuff around on paper before you ever find you have to do it for real and then something won’t fit!

Once you’ve done all the planning, you need to go shop for your units and other items that make a kitchen, such as permanent appliances (fridge, dishwasher, cooker etc) and movable appliances (microwave, mixer, deep fat fryer, etc). Choose light colors for unit doors and exposed sides as darker colors will make the room look smaller. Choose slim units and also tall, slim overhead units that will go to the ceiling to give you maximum storage space with the smallest footprint possible.

When it comes to lighting, choose under unit lights as well as dispersed ceiling lights to also give the illusion of more space. A well placed mirror can also increase the virtual space of any room and the kitchen is no exception.

Get things like trash containers that fit inside the under-sink unit door to save space. Sliding racks inside cupboards also provide extra storage space at the top of the insides of units where often nothing gets put.

These are just a few small kitchen remodeling ideas that you can try, but if you follow that link, you’ll be opened up to a whole load more to help you to create your perfect small kitchen that looks a lot larger and better designed than one that could end up looking like you threw it together randomly!