Love the environment? Here are 5 tips to reflect this love in your kitchen
How to Install a Low-flow Faucet Aerator
You may have noticed a new trend lately in going green, but this choice doesn’t have to put you in the poor house. It can be as boring as attaching a $2.99 attachment to your kitchen faucet. Be aware, it’s easy to make expensive mistakes if you don’t spend some time on research. Many manufacturers label their product as “earth friendly” or “green” but there are no government standards in place currently to define what makes an item eco-friendly or not.
Follow these 5 tips to assist you on your journey to create a kitchen that will save you money, give you a fresh new look, & save the world all at once:
1. Buy a low-flow water faucet/aerator
• Why: A shiny new faucet is a simple upgrade, but kitchen faucets can vary from 1.5 – 4 GPM in water flow. Low-flow bathroom faucets with the Environmental Protection Agency’s new WaterSense label are about 30 percent more efficient than older models.
• Simple Eco Upgrade: Until the government comes up with some industry standard for low-flow kitchen faucets, for $3 to $11 you can make most new or existing taps more efficient simply by attaching an aerator. These simple devices save water plus lower utility bills as well, because less hot water is consumed. Because of this, low-flow aerators will generally pay for themselves in just a couple of months.
• Cons: With lower flow, it might take a bit longer to fill that 2 gallon pot for spaghetti night.
• Suggested Purchase: Look for a gallon per minute rating of less than 2 gallons per minute or GPM (some are as high as 4 GPM). Many Kohler models offer an aerator that can reduce the GPM rate by about 25 percent. Keep in mind you can also shop for adjustable aerators for your faucet. Keep the aerator on the low setting when using the sink for average use and set it to high flow to fill up big pans with water. Another green choice is a hands-free faucet, like the Danze Parma D421058, $480 or other low-flow Danze faucets.
• Keep in Mind: When you find a faucet that fits your budget and style, make sure it has a lifetime warranty that covers stains and water-wasting leaks. Also, some kitchen aerators will allow you to flip between two flow rates without affecting the water temperature
2. Switch to low wattage lighting
• Why: Modern kitchens can use up to 2,000 watts for lighting (especially track lighting) because standard incandescent, halogen, and xenon lights are energy vacuums. All that excess heat radiating from lights might motivate you to turn down the A/C to cool things off.
• Simple Eco Upgrade: Switch to cool-burning compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) in your fixtures, and also consider adding some LED or fluorescent under cabinet task lighting. This simple remodel costs a little under $200 for 5 fluorescent fixtures.
• Cons: A handful of CFLs and LEDs cast a bluish or other odd color light. Before you buy, ask if you can return the fixture if you don’t like the way the light looks with your décor. Better yet, try the brand new light in your local Ace Hardware or ask an associate for their opinion.
• Suggested Purchase: Strips are the most common type of task lighting, round “hockey puck” lights are best for casting pools of light onto a counter and linear lights are best if you need more versatile fixtures. Both round “puck” lights and linear lights can be found with LEDs.
• Keep in Mind: If your cabinets don’t have a built-in valence to hide task lighting, either add one or choose a fixture with a sleek housing that’s not as noticeable.
3. Install a ceiling fan
• Why: Kitchens get hot, and if you use an air conditioner to cool things off, it will gobble up a lot of energy and money.
• Simple Eco Upgrade: A ceiling fan in the kitchen will use only a fraction of the electricity that an A/C would.
• Cons: Aesthetics, few people have ceiling fans in kitchens for a reason, it doesn’t usually look good.
• Suggested Purchase: There are a number of great models from Hampton Bay, Harbor Breeze, and Hunter, and most circulate air about the same. So rather than shop for a particular brand, go for a style you like and remember that lighting affects energy use.
• Keep in Mind: You might be able to find CFLs designed for ceiling fans that can replace the original bulbs and save energy. Remember, current CFL’s don’t function correctly with fans that have light dimmers.
4. Refurbish with second hand materials
• Why: A new countertop or cabinet face can change the whole look of your kitchen, but producing them keeps coal power plants polluting the air and some “earth friendly” materials aren’t as green as they might seem.
• Simple Eco Upgrade: Before you buy new, see if you can find used materials.
• Suggested Purchase: Salvage shops are stocked with new or lightly used stone countertops, hardwood flooring, decorative lumber, and kitchen cabinets, so they’re a great place to look for bargains. Even better, Habitat for Humanity sells used and surplus building materials at outlets called ReStores.
• Keep in Mind: If you will buy brand new, at least search for greener cabinets and other products made from sustainable lumber and materials.
5. Trade in/Sell the biggest energy hogs
• Why: The appliances in your kitchen that take the most energy to operate are refrigerators and dishwashers. The older these appliances are, the less energy efficient they are and the more costly they are to run.
• Simple Eco Upgrade: Only open the doors when you know what you want. Don’t waste time “browsing” with an open fridge. Also, it usually doesn’t pay to switch out working appliances with new ones. But when you do update, look for models that use less energy and are quieter. Even with energy efficient models costing more dough, you’ll recover the investment as your utility bills shrink.
• Suggested Purchase: Look for appliances that are Energy Star qualified. When comparing ENERGY STAR approved refrigerators to those manufactured before 1993, the energy use is about half as much. Also ENERGY STAR qualified refrigerator models use high efficiency compressors, improved insulation, and more precise temperature and defrost mechanisms to improve energy efficiency. Switching out a dishwasher manufactured before 1994 with an ENERGY STAR qualified dishwasher can save you more than $300 a decade in utility costs. These also use much less water than conventional models. If not on city septic, this can also help extend the life of your septic tank.
• Keep in Mind: You don’t have to get rid of all the old appliances at once. Start with the ones that are the biggest energy hogs. It pays to replace them when repairs would cost more than half the price of a new appliance.
If this is all seems complicated some online retailers make it easier for you such as Designer Plumbing Outlet with the help of Site Search technology by SLI Systems. When looking for fixtures on their website you can refine your search by “Eco-Friendly” results. This helps makes the search easier and makes going green even simpler when buying new.
Categories: Home Improvement Tags: danze, eco friendly, environment, facuets, Kitchen, kitchen remodel, kohler, lighting, recession, save money, save water, tipcs
Creative Ways To Make Extra Space In Your Kitchen
Your own new remodelled kitchen can be the social centre of domestic family bliss and a careful choice of flooring (either real wood or tiles), cabinets and kitchen worktops all gel to make that unique combination that puts your individual stamp on your kitchens design.
Kitchen cabinets are made to function well for the kitchen needs. These cabinets are expected to create a fine storage for the different spices, the utensils, the plates, the pots and pans and a lot more other items that are used within the activities that are done within the kitchen. For this reason, every kind of kitchen cabinet needs to be both sturdy and functional especially if they are situated within small home areas.
Armed with the demand for more inventive storage solutions the challenge of creating different door designs has fallen firmly at the feet of the kitchen furniture designers, who have in turn invested in innovative 3D design programs so they can really make maximum use of any space available and work through any number of combinations and variants of cabinet design.
The new breed of kitchen cabinets has certainly been well received by consumers especially those with smaller homes or small apartments, as they seem to be able to store far more than the older traditional styles which lets face it, wasted a huge amount of spare capacity.
Some of the more popular types of kitchen cabinets and doors now include the following for example:
Basket-implanted kitchen cabinet doors:
These kinds of kitchen cabinet doors carry on a basket that would best become functional areas for utensil or plate storage as the doors are opened.
See-through kitchen cabinet doors:
These kitchen doors are functional to let the owners be able to peek inside the area and see the items within without necessarily opening the said doors.
There are of course many others, but then that is the fun of designing your own kitchen
Whatever particular function the kitchen cabinet doors have for the owners of the kitchen should be well defined by the particular role that they are supposed to perform in the said area of the home. To assure that the kitchen cabinet doors would be able to perform well for the family’s needs for all time, for a long time, it is essential that the use of sturdy cabinet door hinges should be considered.
On a slightly different note the same applies to your choice of kitchen work surfaces and Kitchen work tops, gloss kitchen worktops are more suited to casual or low level use as tiny scratches can dull the effect, whereas stronger laminate kitchen worktops would be suitable for harder wear or even one from a composite stone kitchen worktops range.
As the kitchen is a natural hub for family activity its not unusual for the kids to pile in and use the breakfast bar or work surface for some form of activity which could simply range from colouring and drawing to homework perhaps. so with all the extra space you have created with your choice of functional kitchen cabinets it may be a nice touch to give them some kitchen storage space of their own.
Have fun exploring the cabinet options available to you and good luck with your project
Categories: Home Improvement Tags: home, Home improvements, House, House and Home, Kitchen, Kitchen Improvements, Kitchen remodelling

