Owen Jones
How To Use Inexpensive Lighting
Lighting is the one, single most important means of altering the atmosphere of any room. Therefore, it stands to reason that if you improve the lighting and appearance of your house, its value will also rise. Lighting improves any decor. However, you do not have to use expensive lighting, budget or discount light is just as good in many cases.
There are thousands of kinds of lighting, at least one of which will go well with the sort of decor that you have. Lighting is best kept subtle. Up lighting, down lighting and back lighting are fantastic ways of lighting up objects in a room. The days of one pendant lamp hanging from a rose in the centre of the ceiling are long gone but if you do have to have one, at least put a dimmer on it.
Using many lights in place of one powerful light does not have to be more expensive. Typically, the one powerful light was a 100 watt bulb, so you could have four 20 watt wall lights and still save 20% on electricity. Or you could use one 40 watt bulb in a standard floor lamp or table lamp for reading or working and save 60% on your lighting bill.
Besides the savings, a wrought iron floor or table lamp is far more beautiful that a hanging light. How about candelabra? You could make use of candelabra to startling effect, whether you use candles in them or small light bulbs.
Candles have made a big comeback too. Many people use candles for subsidiary or even back-up lighting and candelabra are one of the hottest latest trends. Interior designers are snapping them up antique shops and painting them bright colours. You can see them in the photos of the houses of many celebrities. A lot of people use candelabra in conjunction with aromatherapy too.
Another aspect of lighting is security. A well-lit house is less likely to be burgled than a dingy house. Outside lighting can also play a key role in security measures. External lighting that is controlled by movement or heating sensors to switch them on are the best means of discouraging burglars.
External lighting is the best deterrent, but it can also be beautiful. Back or up lighting on a water fall, a pond or a striking arrangement of plants or bushes is stunning in the dark. Spotlights have a role to play in lighting up garden plants as well.
If you would like to give your fish free, organic meat to eat, put a floodlight or even an ultraviolet light at the pond side. If you switch it on for a few hours after dusk, hundreds of flies, moths and mosquitoes will be drawn to it and fall into the water, where your fish will be waiting for them.
You can have a lot of fun with lighting and the possibilities are infinite. Both indoor and outdoor lighting can enhance the beauty of your home and garden, but they also have functional uses: they enable you to see what you are doing and what other people are doing, which is why they are a good deterrent. Good lighting also makes anyone living alone feel safer.
Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on several subjects, but is at present concerned with researching wrought iron floor lamps. If you would like to know more or check out great offers, please go to our website at Wrought Iron Light
The Best Way To Treat Your Clothing With Insect Repellent
Have you ever heard of clothing that repels mosquitoes and other airborne insects? If not, I am willing to bet that there have been times when you have wished you could get some. Mosquitoes and midges can ruin a holiday or even make you have to get out of your own garden once it begins go get dark.
There are various ways that you can fight mosquitoes and the other terrors of the twilight, but they always seem to find a place where I am not totally protected. Often that spot is on the shoulder blade, where they will stick their proboscis through the material of your shirt to suck your blood.
I enjoy my garden, but so do the mosquitoes as there is a lot of open water in the surrounding area. My first technique of defense against mosquitoes is to plant flowers and trees that they are known to hate the smell of. I think that the odour that they hate the most is that of lemons.
Therefore, we have a few small lemon saplings, which will soon be playing a vital role in our protection, a patch of lemon grass for my wife’s favourite Thai curries and some as yet poorly-looking citronella plants. (I think that Thailand may be too hot for them, but I am hoping that they will acclimatize).
Then I have two mosquito lamps. The type that entice the insects to an ultraviolet light and then electrocutes them with 25,000 volts. They are very effective, but more so in the dark than at dusk, when they are probably less discernible to the insects. I am aware that there are insect lights that use smells or pheromones to lure mosquitoes, but I have not seen any for sale over here yet. I did once try a device that emits a sound on a high frequency that was alleged to drive them away, but it did not work on our mosquitoes.
In conclusion, if it was a bad night I used to put on some insect repellent ointment, often something that had DEET in it. This is very effective for a few hours, but it can damage some textiles and some plastics, which is why the makers suggest that you only put it on your exposed skin. If you do that, your shoulders and your legs become targets, even if you are wearing trousers and a shirt.
This is when it becomes a good idea to treat your clothing with insect deterrent. It seems that the military has been wearing them for years. The active ingredient used is called permethrin and it should be used at a concentration of 0.5%. There are two means of applying it: by drenching clothing in it, as the army does or by spraying it on. I assume that you will be spraying it on.
Do the spraying in the garden well away from any fish pond as permethrin kills fish too. Spray the clothing and wait for the chemical to soak in and dry out. Clothing treated with insect repellent like this will protect you for about six weeks and will still work after six washes. However, sunlight breaks permethrin down, so dry the items indoors and store in black plastic bags for longer effectiveness.
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on quite a few topics, but is at present involved with indoor mosquito repellent. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Mosquito Repellent For Dogs.
How To Create A New Garden | creating new garden
The question when you are thinking about making a garden is: do you have a choice of where to put it. For example, you may have a very big garden or you may be looking for an allotment from the local council. However, if you do not have a choice, then you will have to choose the kind of plants you want for your garden according to its location and condition.
If, however, you are fortunate enough to have a choice, then the chief consideration is the sun. In deed, even more significant that that is what type of plants you want to grow. If you want flowers that prefer the sun or if you like plants that cannot bear it, then the location of the garden is vital.
In the northern hemisphere, the majority of gardeners would pick a south-facing garden, if they had the choice, but not everyone. Some gardeners are interested in marsh plants or woodland plants, for instance. If you do make the majority choice and go for a south-facing garden, then your planting beds should run from north to south, because that way they will receive maximum exposure to the sun’s rays.
If, however, you cannot get a south-facing garden, but you can get one facing southeast, then your flower beds should run north-west to south-east for the greatest exposure to the sun. Other directions can be worked out in a similar fashion.
The plan, whichever way your garden is facing, is to get the sun shining as near to 50% on each side of the plants as possible. The only real way of gaining success in this matter is by having a south-facing garden in the northern hemisphere or a north-facing garden in the southern hemisphere.
When you have worked out the best place to put your garden, or which way it is facing, you should start designing it. This can best be carried out on graph paper. The first step is to draw a scale diagram of your garden. Once you have done that, you should prepare the ground by either clearing it of rubbish or clearing the scrub.
If your garden has decent turf, plan on your graph paper where you want your flower beds to be and draw them in. Then cut these areas out of your garden.
Depending how much area you have set aside for plants, you can now either dig it over or rotovate it. Whichever means you choose, do it to the best of your ability, because once you have flowers and bushes in your garden, you will not find it so straightforward again. Dig plenty of manure into the earth while you are about it.
Now that you have a decent environment for your future plants, you can go about choosing your plants. This has to be done with the orientation of your garden in mind, if you want to make the most of the space that you have available to you.
If you want to moderate a south-facing garden, this can easily be done by adding trees and bushes to provide shade, but it is not easy to heat up a cold north-facing garden.
Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on a number of subjects, but is at present involved with visual comfort lighting. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Outdoor Wall Lamps.
Sponsors
 |
 |