One of the carpet cleaning questions professional carpet cleaners gets asked the most concerns wool carpets and rugs. Given that we are told that woollen items such as clothes should be washed in a certain way, it is likewise the case that wool rugs and carpets must be cleaned differently from most other rugs and carpets made from alternative materials.
The reasons people buy wool carpets and rugs are that they tend to be durable, they help to keep a room warm, they feel great underfoot, and they also look fantastic, but only if they are cared for properly, including proper cleaning. However, if you clean them using the wrong carpet cleaner solutions, then disaster can strike in the form of damage and, in the worst cases, ruined carpets or rugs meaning a replacement is required.
One issue that homeowners with landscaped gardens have to deal with is periods of drought where there is little rain, and as such, they must take several steps to ensure that their landscape design is maintained appropriately. Several years ago this advice might only have applied to specific areas, however, across the world there are locations whose climate and thus their weather seems a whole lot different than 20 or so years ago.
Primarily, there are places where the word drought was barely mentioned, but where now it is fast becoming a common scenario, and many campaigners claim this is due to global warming and the climate change that it is creating. Whatever your views on climate change and the many claims and counterclaims that are made, you will know yourself what the reality is for your landscaped garden as to whether the amount of rainfall is sufficient or if droughts are more common.
The point is, to the plants, grass, and other faunas in your landscaped garden, opinions on climate change are irrelevant because they will thrive or perish depending on the reality of the amount of rainfall and hydration they receive. As such, you are the one that needs to take action should drought be an issue where you live. To assist you with that, here are five tips that can make those actions effective and beneficial for your landscaping and what grows within it.
Drought Tip #1 – Get Rid Of Clutter And Debris
To anyone that clears their garden of debris and clutter daily, ignore this tip other than continue to follow it. For everyone else, you must know clutter and debris in a garden are not conducive to healthy plants, nor to a thriving lawn. Pet’s and children’s toys, fallen leaves, litter, and other debris stop grass from breathing and it can also prevent precious nutrients and moisture from reaching roots during a drought.
Ok, so you have decided you want decking for your garden, and one of the contenders is composite decking, but have you weighed up every pro and con? We say that because there may have been someone who has told you that composite decking is the only option you should consider. On the other hand, you may have had a friend say that timber decking has to be your choice.
We can understand if your head might be spinning by all the votes for and votes against composite decking so to help you move your decision along we are going to outline some of the pros and cons of composite decking and do so in as neutral a manner as we can. You might wonder why would want to list the ‘cons’ of composite decking, and that deserves an explanation.
In truth, EVERY product that exists has at least one or two downsides, and anyone who tells you otherwise is doing you a huge disservice. Even though we love composite decking, it is not perfect for everyone, and whilst it has many advantages, there are some disadvantages too, which we have a duty as Sydney deck builders to tell you.
When lawn care hasn’t been your top priority over the years, it’s easy for your lawns to no longer look at their best. You may even be looking at neighbouring properties with envy, wondering if your grass will ever look as vibrant as theirs. It can. In fact, if you focus more on what your lawns are lacking, you may see them end up looking even better than the properties around you.
What to Do First
One of the first things on your to-do list is a soil test. This can help you establish whether your soil is too alkaline, too acidic, or just right. It can also help you understand what your lawn has high levels of, dictating whether or not what you add to it next will do its job.
For example, if your grass has too much copper, it can lack nitrogen and iron. Too much nitrogen and it can lack copper. If your lawns are high in calcium, you may find it lacks magnesium, boron, iron, and potassium. However, if you have too much potassium in your grass, it’s likely to lack magnesium and calcium.
While lawn care can seem like a complicated science, it doesn’t have to. Lawn care experts and even your local garden store worker may be able to shed some light on the nutrients your lawn needs for brightness and vitality.
Regular carpet cleaning is a crucial part of running a successful business. However, it’s something that many business owners neglect, largely because of its cost and inconvenience.
Because of this, we decided to put together this complete guide to carpet cleaning for businesses. In it, we’ve outlined everything you need to know before, during, and after the cleaning process.
Before You Get Your Carpets Cleaned
Preparing correctly for the carpet cleaning process is important, especially if you’ve never been through it before. There are a few things that you need to be aware of to ensure the entire process goes smoothly.
For starters, it’s important to do some research to help you choose the right cleaning company. Some carpet cleaners are much more efficient and flexible than others. In a perfect world, you should go for a company who is willing to work on the weekend or at another time when your business isn’t running.
Similarly, you should spend some time preparing your office for cleaning. If possible, move as much furniture and other items out of the room as you can. Identify areas that need special attention, and spend some time dusting baseboards and vacuuming the floors.
On the Cleaning Day
Getting things right on the day of your carpet cleaning is also important. Fortunately, the cleaning contractor that you’ve employed should be able to guide you through the entire process, but we’ve still included a few tips below.
With the rise in popularity of things like glass balconies and pool fencing, different materials and products have been invented to help maintain the appearance and strength of glass panels. One of the most widespread addition to glass fence or balustrade panels today is nano glass protection, which is offered by many major glass fence retailers in throughout Australia.
Nano glass protection is a protective coating that is added to the surface of pool fencing and balustrade glass panels. If helps to protect them from the elements, as well as making them easier to maintain and keep clean.
What Is Nano Glass Protection?
Basically, nano glass protection is a relatively new technique that involves coating the surface of your glass panels with a protective coating. This coating is tough, transparent and resistant to wear, which means that it will help your pool panels stand up to the test of time – lasting years, or even decades longer than untreated panels!
Variations of nano glass protection are becoming widespread throughout Australia and the world. Different coatings are used by different companies according to their location and the prevailing environmental condition in that location.
If you aren’t a landscaping expert, figuring out what plants to establish in your yard and where can be a challenge. It gets even more complicated when you’re trying to create hedges for a sense of charm in your space.
The best thing you can do before landscaping is to hire an expert. An experienced landscaping company like Intreeg Landscapes knows what to plant and how it will look in your yard before it even begins. However, if you want to do everything yourself, then you need to know which plants will be perfect for hedges.
Below is a list of the most common and preferred.
Buxus
Buxus must be one of the most common and preferred plants for creating hedges. Buxus, or boxwood as people call it, is an evergreen shrub that people use all the time for sculpting and landscaping. You can shape it, use it as a border plant, and enjoy how little maintenance it requires. It’s also a plant that will thrive in full or partial sun and well-drained soil.
Weeping Bottlebrush
Weeping Bottlebrush, called Callistemon Viminalis, is a common hedge plant in windy and coastal regions. It grows in most soil types, in full sun or partial shade, and requires minimal pruning as they grow. What’s more, the Weeping Bottlebrush is an excellent option for hedging if you live somewhere prone to droughts or frost. It’s hardy and will tackle most weather head-on.
When you begin putting plans in place to start landscaping, you will hear many people throw around the term ‘mulching’. If you don’t know much about gardening, at least not yet, then you may put it in the “too hard basket” and neglect to do it.
Mulching is an integral part of landscaping, as many experts will tell you, but not everyone knows enough about it. Do you want to be at the top of your game before you get your landscaping plans underway? Here’s everything you need to know about mulch.
What is Mulching?
Mulching is the process of using materials to cover your soil and the space around your plants. Its role is to keep your soil at an even temperature, stop it from blowing away in the wind, keep weeds at bay and to prevent nutrients from being washed away in rainfall.
What Type of Mulch Do I Need to Buy?
Now that you know what mulching is and how important it can be, you will then need to go out and buy some. However, did you know there are all different types on the market? Before you start landscaping, it’s helpful if you have the correct type lined up.
There are two options – organic and inorganic. Organic features grass clippings, bark, straw, and leaves, and almost anything that will break down and benefit your plants. Inorganic, on the other hand, are things like black plastic, landscaping fabric, gravel, rocks, and newspaper.
When some people get an idea in their head, they want to run with it and complete it as soon as possible. It could relate to something as straightforward as choosing a new baking recipe, or something challenging like landscape design. While hurrying to complete a project is not something that will always have negative results, in the case of landscaping, it just might.
Taking your time with your landscaping design is crucial, so don’t let your excitement get in the way. Talk through your ideas with an expert team, such as Pool Renovations Perth, or sit on them for a few weeks while you do your research. Here is why you need to sit back and take your time with landscaping.
Keeps it Within Budget
When you want something a certain way, and you want it now, it can come at a price. Let’s say, for example; you wanted a particular type of plant included in your landscape design. At that time of year, it might be hard to get, and what you can get, costs a premium. You end up spending more on something and potentially going over budget, all because you didn’t want to wait.
Warning! Lead to Be Shown Leaching from Brass Taps
The presence of lead in tap water is often due to old plumbing used to bring water to your house and even more often due to the plumbing in your house. When water sits in the pipes for 6 hours or more Lead can seep from the pipes into the water. How can you know if there is lead in your tap water? And what can you do about it if you find it?
A Bit about Lead
Experienced plumbers advise that lead is soft, gray metal that is used in a variety of ways. It was used extensively in plumbing both for making lead pipes and for soldering before it was phased out then banned. Before 1960, paint used inside houses commonly contained lead until it was discovered that paint chips in water or paint dust inhaled were both very toxic.
How Does Lead Get into Our Drinking Water?
Houses built in the 50’s and 60’s often used lead pipes in home plumbing. The service lines bringing water to individual homes were often made of lead. This resulted in high levels of lead in drinking water. Lead solder was used to seal the joints of copper pipes and leas leaked into drinking water from this solder. (more…)
Knocking Wood
It’s probably 50 years ago that the most popular option for flooring in a house would be timber flooring. Maybe the reason for that, 50 years ago, was that there weren’t a lot of other options. Over time, synthetic flooring materials have been introduced and floors made of wood have taken a bit of a back seat. Tiles and carpets became super popular as both conservationists and cost relegated timber floors much lower on the desirable scale.
More recently though, timber flooring has been making a comeback and gaining favour with homeowners. Now, the problem is more one of choice and for consumers to decide what is the most appropriate product for their homes.
Different Types
Lots of different types of timber can be used for your floors and it’s a matter of personal preference. For example, oak flooring adds beauty to your home with its rich texture. But there are many choices such as blackbutt, jarrah, karri, Tassie oak, and even bamboo. Before making a final decision, you should at least look at all the options.
If you are working on a major renovation or construction project, such as building your own custom swimming pool, there is usually a need to clear land to be able to set and plan the job. Regardless of your enthusiasm when taking on these DIY jobs, it’s neither practical nor smart to own every piece of equipment required for the job. If you’re clearing land you are going to need tip trucks, excavator, trench diggers and probably a front-end loader. Fortunately, you can avail yourself of equipment hire to help you clear large rocks, tree stumps, create some new levels and do whatever it is you wanted to do to spruce up your outdoor space.
Regardless of how much you might know about construction, such as how to do it and safe operating procedures, you’re still going to need the right earthmoving equipment, еѕресіаllу while wоrkіng оn particular terrains аnd at сеrtаіn hеіghtѕ.
Here аrе ѕоmе mасhіnеѕ that аrе gеnеrаllу rented for land сlеаrіng jоbѕ:
All homes require fencing of some kind, both around the boundaries and sometimes internally as well. For instance, you will need to fence off a swimming pool, but you may also require fencing around a vegetable garden or driveway. While fences are not that difficult to install, it will certainly save you time and effort to hire fencing contractors to do the job.
As with most tradesmen, you will need to ensure your fence tradesmen have a good reputation and don’t charge too much. You can usually get a good idea of who is popular by asking your friends, neighbours or hardware stores in the vicinity, where they would be known for purchasing their supplies.
If you were abandoning that good idea of adding a porch to your home due to the cost, wait up. Many patios can be used for a front porch or a back porch, partly because they are much more affordable than having one made from brick or timber, which is more like an extension to the home with a similar price tag.
Using a pergola as a porch is a great idea that can really change the look and feel of the home. It can give you a sheltered place to relax and even make the house cooler, especially if you add shade cloth or shade blades, which can be opened or shut according to the weather. Shade blades can be added to the walls as well as the ceiling for the ultimate in pergola convenience.
Many people think up ways to save on products the use of which can be detrimental to the environment. By instigating sustainability procedures into your lifestyle, it is possible to reduce your use of paper, thus saving trees as well as saving waste from going into landfill. Here are several ways to save on paper usage.
- Undo presents carefully so you can re-use the paper for the next present you give someone else. Keep the wrapping and ribbons to reuse too.
- Keep those strong envelopes that arrive in the mail and use them as needed. Simply glue the new address over your old one, then bend and staple the ends together, since the glue on them is no longer usable.
Many automatic pool cleaners not only suck debris off the floor of the pool, but scrub as well. Some can scrub the walls and steps. This is an excellent benefit, especially when your pool is in the shade for some parts of the day. Mould is usually found in the shaded parts before those sunny areas. It is always wise to inspect places such as behind the hand rails and other hardware in the pool which can cast shade onto the pool walls and floor.
However, simply running your hand over the walls below the water line will tell you if mould is starting to propagate before you can see it. The surface of the walls will feel slippery to the touch. It’s essential to get those walls scrubbed down, then shock the pool by adding more chlorine well before you see any black stains.
Swimming pools are not only fun for those that have them, they provide an opportunity for entrepreneurs to have their own business. If you are tired of the 9-5 rat-race you may be considering going into business for yourself. A skill set that includes knowledge about installing or maintaining pools would point towards starting a business in that area.
Here are 3 different types of businesses you could have.
- Purchase a swimming pool franchise. There are pros and cons for most franchises; you have to pay the ‘boss’ a percentage of your income as well as paying for the franchise and equipment needed. That said, it’s still often cheaper than going out on your own. And you get to use the name of the company which many people are familiar with and trust. Some offer training an ongoing advice. It’s wise to read the fine print carefully before signing up and make sure you understand what it means. If you don’t, take it to a solicitor and ask them to explain it.
If everyone followed at least a few sustainable living tips the world would be a better place. Many people have good intentions, but find it too hard to change their lifestyle. However, by making just one change per month, you easily get into a new habit and before you know it, are doing many things that will make a big difference to the earth’s resources – and often to your own costs as well.
By starting small you won’t feel overwhelmed. Here are 8 easy steps towards sustainability.
- Create an urban eco-pack to use when buying take-aways. It should contain a re-usable food container, eating utensils and a mug. This will enable you to refuse plastics, especially those that are disposable after only one use.
When you run a business you’ll need to have an office to work from and whether it’s at home or in a shopping complex that office will need to have special furniture from the furniture store. Just what kind and how much depends on what type of business you have and how big it is. At a minimum you’ll need to consider desks, chairs and storage. You may also need dedicated bench space for office equipment if it’s something that will be used by more than one person.
However, there is more to think about than the actual furniture.
First think along the lines of how much space you have and how many computer desks you’ll need to fit into it. There is no point purchasing four huge desks to fit in a small space. Likewise, having four tiny desks when your office space is large will look silly.
Sustainability is an important factor in many things these days, from recycling rubbish to building new homes or renovating older ones. If you are considering a renovation or addition to your home you will probably consider sustainability in at least some parts of it. Shade sails are considered sustainable for several reasons.
- They use less material than an actual building that needs foundations and framework. This is due to the light weight of the sail that doesn’t need all that much support. It is also due to the design of it. Sails have that twist in them to prevent the wind from getting caught underneath and lifting them, which causes a great deal more wear and tear.