Monthly Archives: March 2015

Easy ways to keep your home cool in summers.

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While you are lucky enough to own the top most home with a terrace or a balcony, don’t forget its tendency to trap heat. With summers catching up, it is important to know all the good things you can do to keep your place cool, and prevent heat from entering your home. This can also help you make significant cost savings on air-conditioners’ electricity bills.

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Gardening without owning a garden

One of the most satisfying thing is cultivating own food. One of the most annoying thing is being a garden lover trapped into a teeny-tiny home. The simplest way to stay cool is to stay green. You can plan a garden in open space of your home. There are plenty of easy to handle plants, which one can have. This will add beauty to your home and will dramatically make it cool.

Aluminized Blinds or Insulated Curtains

For the windows you can have properly insulated curtains. These curtains will keep the sun’s heat away from your windows but will let the breeze blow if you wish to keep the windows open.

Let a few windows be open after sunset

This will make the cooler air blow throughout the evening. Also, leave all the internal doors open. You can open the closets and the kitchen cabinets as well, as they keep the daytime heat and your home will cool off the most in night. Don’t forget to close the windows and the blinds early in the morning as soon as the sun appears.

Manage your appliances

Incandescent light bulbs also create heat, so switch to compact fluorescents or LEDs. Turn off your appliances like computers and lamps when they are not in use. You should also turn off TV because it produces a lot of heat. And the same should be done with some plug-in power adapters.

Go with smooth and light coloured linen

You can use linen bed sheets and linen cover for the other furniture. Place white cotton fabrics over sofas since the upholstery fabrics are thick and cause sweat. Light-coloured fabric will reflect the heat instead of absorbing it and this relaxing ambience will give you a feeling of coolness.

Cross-ventilation

 If you find it windy outside, you can create a breeze inside your flat by simply opening windows. We know the wind naturally flows from the high pressure area to the low pressure one, opening the windows on both sides of your flat will allow the air to move across the flat thus will create a breeze.

Apply these ideas and mark the significant changes in the environment of your home. Stay cool and enjoy the summer season too because it is one of a kind.

How to toddler proof your house?

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Home, the safest place in the world. But with babies growing up to become notorious toddlers, even the safest place needs to be toddler-proofed!

Supervision is the best way to prevent injuries, in the home and out, but even the most watchful parents can’t keep kids completely out of harm’s way every second of the day.

So if you have a growing baby at home, here area few safety measures that you can take to childproof your home.

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The Kitchen

 

  • Install safety latches on all cabinets and drawers to keep children from household products. Anything you know to be poisonous, place out of reach of children and lock it up.
  • Store household products and medicine away from food and beverages.
  • Use the stove’s back burners and turn pot handles toward the back of the stove to keep hot pots and pans out of the reach of children.
  • Keep kitchenware and appliances out of reach and away from the edge of counters and tables.
  • Put visual reminders from poison prevention centers on potential poisonous or hazardous items.

The Bathroom

  • Install safety latches on cabinets and drawers to keep children from potentially poisonous household products.
  • Store medicines and other products in their original containers.
  • Install toilet locks to keep toilet lids closed. Children are more top-heavy than adults and can lean and fall into a toilet easily. They also can drown in just one inch of water.
  • Unplug hair dryers and electric rollers after use to prevent electrocution from contact with water in the bathroom. Also keep them away from curious children to prevent burns.
  • Cover unused electrical outlets with outlet protectors or safety caps. Make sure outlets in the bathroom and kitchen — or near any water source — are updated with ground fault circuit interrupters (GFCIs), which turn off electricity if appliances fall into water. For outlets in use, especially those low to the ground, there are devices, which make it difficult to pull out plugs.

Around the House

  • Use safety gates at the top and bottom of stairs and in the doorways of rooms with hazards. Gates with expanding pressure bars should not be used for the top of staircases. Use gates hardware-mounted to the doorframe instead.
  • Use doorknob covers to keep children away from rooms and other areas with hazards, such as swimming pools. Be careful, though, that these devices are easy for adults to use in case of emergency.
  • Put corner and edge bumpers on furniture and other items like a fireplace hearth to protect against injury.
  • Place furniture away from high windows so children won’t climb onto windowsills. Screens aren’t strong enough to keep children from falling through windows.
  • Make sure window blinds do not have looped cords – they can be strangulation hazards for children. Also, always lock blinds into position whether they are all the way up or down.
  • Remove free-falling lids from toy chests, which should have lids that stay open or very light, removable ones.
  • Prevent furniture from tipping by securing bookcases, shelving, and heavy furniture to walls with brackets and anchors. When storing items, put heavier items on bottom shelves and in bottom drawers.

How should you light up your house?

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Lighting greatly affects the mood of a person. To master the art of altering mood with lighting you have to remember a few basic principles. The hardness or softness of light effects the mood of any space dramatically. The more diffused the light is, the softer and smoother it will look. To remember this more easily, look at a shadow cast by the sun. On a bright sunny day, the shadow is dark and the edges are very sharp because the sun is a strong, intense light. We call this hard lighting. On an overcast day, the shadows have very little definition and are soft at the edges. This is because a huge diffusion layer of clouds covers the sun. We call this soft lighting.

Through the use of lighting patterns of varying levels of illumination, and of colour in the light source and in the illuminated object, it is possible to produce certain moods such as: solemnity, restfulness, gaiety, activity, warmth, and coolness. The lamps themselves can be used to dramatize elements of interior design—line, form, colour, pattern, and texture.

Higher levels of lighting generally produce cheerful effects and stimulate people to alertness and activity, whereas lower levels tend to create an atmosphere of relaxation, intimacy, and restfulness.

Depending on the mood you wish to create at various areas of your house, you can choose the combination of light quality and sources. For example, for the living room, bright and cheerful lighting is preferred, while in the bedroom, soft, relaxing lights are a good choice.

Similarly, for the study, it is advised to have sharp, white lighting arrangements, as the place requires concentration and attention.

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Here’s a quick guide that you can follow while choosing lighting for your home or work areas:

Ambient lighting provides an area with overall illumination. Also known as general lighting, it radiates a comfortable level of brightness without glare and allows you to see and walk about safely. In some spaces such as laundry rooms, the ambient lighting also serves as the primary source of task lighting.

It can be accomplished with chandeliers, ceiling or wall-mounted fixtures, recessed or track lights and with lanterns mounted on the outside of the home. Having a central source of ambient light in all rooms is fundamental to a good lighting plan.

Task lighting helps you perform specific tasks, such as reading, grooming, preparing and cooking food, doing homework, working on hobbies, playing games and balancing your checkbook. It can be provided by recessed and track lighting, pendant lighting and under cabinet lighting, as well as by portable floor and desk lamps.

Task lighting should be free of distracting glare and shadows and should be bright enough to prevent eye strain.

Accent lighting adds drama to a room by creating visual interest. As part of an interior design scheme, it is used to draw the eye to houseplants, paintings, sculptures and other prized possessions. It can also be used to highlight the texture of a brick or stone wall, window treatments or outdoor landscaping.

To be effective, accent lighting requires as least three times as much light on the focal point as the general lighting surrounding it.Accent lighting is usually provided by recessed and track lighting or wall-mounted picture lights.

What is Vaastu Shastra? Why should my building be Vaastu compliant?

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Vaastu Shastra is an ancient science, which helps one to get the natural benefits freely offered by the five basic elements of the universe in which we all live. These basic elements are Akash (Sky), Prithvi (Earth), Paani (Water), Agni (Fire), and Vayu (Wind). Vaastu Shastra can be applied by keeping in harmony with these basic five elements of nature.

Sometimes, one might feel that the wheel of family life is not moving smoothly and there is lack of peace, harmony, affection and well being in one’s family. One should always choose a house that is Vaastu Shastra compliant, to expect good results and well-being gradually and steadily.

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Vaastu Shastra is the traditional Indian system of architecture and design of Vedic origin. Vaastu means the dwelling of humans and Gods. Many Vaastu rules are derived from ‘Vaastu Purusha Mandala’, which is depicted as a man lying with his head pointing northeast, in a grid of usually 64 squares. The different directions and sectors are assigned to different Gods and Guardians. It aims at providing guidelines for proper construction. Vaastu orientates, places and dictates the proportions of every detail in building lines, skylines, elongations, levels, slopes, water (underground and overhead), kitchen, bedrooms, toilets, staircase, heights of ceilings and roofs, entrances, loci of doors and windows, compound walls and so on. Vaastu is affected with positive power of three elements: the earth, the water, the fire (the sun).

Vaastu Shastra cannot be directly linked with prosperity. It only suggests ways in which we can live in tune with the laws of nature so that we can be healthy and peaceful and work efficiently. The ancient texts of Vaastu Shastra have probably claimed to bring prosperity, as an indirect consequence of being able to perform well at home and work.