Healthy HVAC Equals Healthy Indoor Air Quality

By Shelly Morrison 

Isn't your work productivity affected by temperature, lighting, air quality or any other environmental conditions? The answer is, it is. Not only it has a real impact on your indoor activities, but it also affects your health optimally. HVAC systems provide ventilation and maintain pressure relationships between spaces of both domestic and commercial environments promoting safe and sound health of an individual. Regarding this, your heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) equals balance your home or office atmosphere by filtering the warm or cold air as needed. 

Failing to check HVAC systems regularly can be costly.

There are many all-in-all air conditioning companies which you should call their professionals for your HVAC repair in San Antonio. They will do a survey initially to inspect if any dust, pollen, dirt or debris circulating your surroundings and also check the building to find any leaks, mold spore is affecting the system. Other than these, especially asthma patients or people who have allergy problems can face severe health disorders if the vehicular environment comfort is not ensured. You must keep in check your HVAC technology annually or twice a year to make sure about indoor air quality. 

When In A Year You Should Check Your HVAC?

Before your city hits the cold weather which approaches the San Antonio, Texas in the fall usually, call local HVAC contractors based in San Antonio who are trusted for heating, cooling and air conditioning services and can regulate your environment through working on following factors:

Factors That Contribute to Healthy HVAC System Performance

• Temperature control, 

• Oxygen replenishment, 

• Removal of moisture, 

• Locating odors, smoke, heat, dust, 

• Finding airborne bacteria, carbon dioxide, and other gases.

To guarantee HVAC efficiency, there are multiple maintenance factors which contribute to healthy HVAC performance but in this time, master only these three factors and make your system runs properly.

1. System Size

System size plays an essential role in healthy HVAC performance. First, consider your home size and ask yourself if your system is too large or small for your home. In the case of too large, the system will waste its excessive power in starting up which can result in short cycling. Secondly, if the system is too short, it can also screw up your home or office HVAC conditions by not handling the load. The air conditioner or heater will take massive time to reach the thermostat's threshold. Both of the cases will end up wasting energy if the right size system is not installed. 

Contact HVAC professionals who can tell if you got poor system sizes and further diagnose whether or not your system fits the load requirement of your home.

2. Preventive Maintenance

Keep up regularly with preventive maintenance schedule to ensure if HVAC performance is doing well or whether it has the likelihood of failing. It is carried out when the equipment is working so that the professionals can then and there detect the downtime and improve on performance worthwhile. That's why you should have a preventive maintenance schedule similarly like a part of your health routine. Just like your body needs a regular health checkup by the doctor, your HVAC system also needs to get check its performance few times a year. Natural airing (ventilation) includes both the exchange of air to the outside as well as circulation of air within the building. It is one of the most important factors for maintaining acceptable indoor air quality in buildings as well in homes. 

Regular maintenance checkup involves testing the system's components and efficiency and fixing any problems encountered during the testing.

3. Indoor Air Quality

Air Quality Monitor

When a system is not cycled off, it leads to poor indoor air quality which makes your HVAC unit to perform even worse making it less energy efficient and consuming more power. Monitor your indoor air quality on a regular basis as it's the best way to promote healthy lifestyle for your family also making your HVAC system more efficient. 

You can also work it out a little by cleaning your indoor air handling units and outdoor compressors and removing the blockage. Check ducts for leaks, clean filters and more. This is a basic you can do to cause your system no-damage. If you fail at these checks, get mentally prepared for costly repairs.

There's another thing you can do which involves cleaning out the inside of your furnace. It will also help you with reducing your electric bills. If you're short of time and a workaholic, feel free to call experts who inspect the heat exchanger to verify there is no carbon monoxide leaking into your home or workplace.

At the end of the day, we advise you to tackle primary factors on your own and for the complex situations, you can call professionals for help to maintain your HVAC performance in a healthy way giving you more comfortable home and office with indoor quality environment.

For more details feel free to contact us:    https://www.beyerboys.com/residential/

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Healthy-HVAC-Equals-Healthy-Indoor-Air-Quality&id=10098276] Healthy HVAC Equals Healthy Indoor Air Quality

The Battle for the Future of Farming: What you Need to Know

The future of farming is ours to decide. Raggedstone/Shutterstock.com 

By Michel Pimbert, Coventry University and Colin Anderson, Coventry University.

It is widely agreed that today’s global agriculture system is a social and environmental failure. Business as usual is no longer an option: biodiversity loss and nitrogen pollution are exceeding planetary limits, and catastrophic risks of climate change demand immediate action.

Most concede that there is an urgent need to radically transform our food systems. But the proposed innovations for more sustainable food systems are drastically different. Which we choose will have long-lasting effects on human society and the planet.

Suggested innovations in food systems can be broadly understood as either seeking to conform with – or to transform – the status quo.

Kletr/Shutterstock.com.

A technological future

Some want to keep the agriculture industry as close to existing practices as possible. This is true of the increasing number of corporate and financial actors who seek to solve the food crisis by developing new technologies. These technologies are envisaged as being part of what is being called the “fourth industrial revolution” (4IR). The “answer” here is thought to lie in a fusion of technologies that blurs the lines between physical, digital and biological domains.

For example, the World Economic Forum is currently supporting agricultural transitions in 21 countries through its “New Vision for Agriculture” initiative. This initiative supports “innovation ecosystems” to re-engineer food systems based on “12 transforming technologies”. In this imagined future, next generation biotechnologies will re-engineer plants and animals. Precision farming will optimise use of water and pesticides. Global food systems will rely on smart robots, blockchain and the internet of things to manufacture synthetic foods for personalised nutrition.

Like previous green revolution technologies in agriculture, this effort is designed by and for powerful agricultural giants. These technological innovations reinforce the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of a small number of corporations. Indeed, the latter have a growing monopoly control over the “12 transforming technologies” protected by patents.

Growing multiple crops at once. Katarzyna Mazurowska/Shutterstock.com

Most notably, the spread of these technologies will expand the technosphere at the expense of the biosphere. Flying robots will pollinate crops instead of living bees. Automated machines will replace farmers’ work on soil preparation, seeding, weeding, fertility, pest control and harvesting of crops.

These hi-tech innovations radically depart from most farming practices. They are moving us towards an increasingly people-less food system. Yet they show a remarkable continuity with the logic of capitalist accumulation – hence their staying power despite their significant risks.

The spread of automated, de-localised and digitalised production and commercialisation of food is part of the “financialisation” of the global food system. Financial markets play an increasing role in controlling food systems from a distance. This generates huge social and human risks. For example, the significant growth in the sale and purchase of financial products linked to food commodities was one of the determining factors in the 2008 world food crisis.

An organic coffee plantation in Ecuador. Dr Morley Read/Shutterstock.com

Another option

But there is an alternative to this future. Agroecology involves the application of ecological principles for the design and management of sustainable agroecosystems. Our research on agroecology focuses on how it can contribute to food sovereignty, which emphasises the democratisation of food systems. Agroecology’s contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals is now recognised.

In contrast to the technological vision described above, agroecological innovations promote circular systems that involve recycling, reuse and combining resources to reduce dependency on external inputs, in particular fossil fuels. They mimic natural cycles and the functional diversity of natural ecosystems. 

We could be seeing an extension of the megafarms we know today. Igorstevanovic/Shutterstock.com

Farming systems are designed in a way that is based on beneficial interactions between plants, animals and environments. Trees and shrubs might be planted amongst or around crops, say. Or two or more crops might be grown in proximity. Agroecology reduces the dependence of food producers on expensive external inputs, distant commodity markets and patented technologies. This is achieved by relying on appropriate biodiversity to ward off pests and increase farm yields.

At broader scales, agroecology involves circular systems that combine food and energy production with water and waste management. Pollution is minimised and synergies achieved by carefully clustering industries into functional wholes. The re-localisation of production and consumption within territories enhances local economic regeneration and sustainability.

Agroecological innovations in transitions to sustainable food systems are being driven largely from the bottom up by civil society, social movements and allied researchers. In this context, priorities for innovations are ones that increase citizen control for food sovereignty and decentralise power. This is in direct contrast to the monopoly control enabled by 4IR technologies.

Who needs humans? Kung_tom/Shutterstock.com

Farming systems are designed in a way that is based on beneficial interactions between plants, animals and environments. Trees and shrubs might be planted amongst or around crops, say. Or two or more crops might be grown in proximity. Agroecology reduces the dependence of food producers on expensive external inputs, distant commodity markets and patented technologies. This is achieved by relying on appropriate biodiversity to ward off pests and increase farm yields.

At broader scales, agroecology involves circular systems that combine food and energy production with water and waste management. Pollution is minimised and synergies achieved by carefully clustering industries into functional wholes. The re-localisation of production and consumption within territories enhances local economic regeneration and sustainability.

Agroecological innovations in transitions to sustainable food systems are being driven largely from the bottom up by civil society, social movements and allied researchers. In this context, priorities for innovations are ones that increase citizen control for food sovereignty and decentralise power. This is in direct contrast to the monopoly control enabled by 4IR technologies.

A democratic debate

Government, civil society and private sector representatives will soon meet in Rome at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to discuss the future of farming. Who controls the global governance of innovation will be a hotly debated topic.

But given these highly contested views on innovations for food and agriculture, it is vital that everyone is able to exercise their right to have a say on the future of their food supply. Deliberative and inclusive processes such as citizens’ juries, peoples’ assemblies and community-led participatory processes are urgently needed to decide priorities for food and agricultural innovations. This is all the more important in today’s context of rapid global change and uncertainty.

So. Do you want to live in a world in which artificial food is produced by intelligent robots and corporations that put profits before people? Or one where agroecological innovations ensure we can nourish ourselves and our communities in a fair, ecologically regenerative, and culturally rich way?

Michel Pimbert, Professor and Director, Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry University and Colin Anderson, Senior Research Fellow, Coventry University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Off Grid Water System - What Are Your Options?

By Buck Jones

Living off grid comes with its own advantages. You, for instance, will be living in very natural, unpolluted areas, whether you buy a house off grid or you choose to buy bare land to develop your homestead on. However, most aspiring homesteaders fear the water issue that comes with off grid living. If you have been relying on city water that was never disappointed you, then you most definitely are more likely to fear having to deal with no access to water once you make the move.

Cistern for harvesting rainwater. Wikipedia

But fortunately there are still options you can choose from when
it comes to off grid water system. A good water system will not only serve your water needs on the property, but also work very well during disasters as far as water goes. There is really nothing as good as being prepared for a bad day and this is what your off grid system should be all about. So what really are your options to have enough water even when living off grid?

Rain Catchment System

The good thing about rain barrel systems is that you do not have to pay for the water. All you have to do is get barrels and create a system right from your roof and you will have enough water to sustain your needs on your property. If you live in areas that can get quite cold thus risking frozen barrels, find a way that you can keep them in better temperatures to avoid such issues. You can build root cellars for them or bury them to counter the effects of very cold months. It is also worth considering a water purifying system for your rainwater so you can drink it with no worries at all. With a good rain catchment system, you only need medium rainfall to fill up your barrels and have enough to cater to your needs.

Well Water System

Digging up a well on your off grid property is a very viable long term water solution. If your land lies low on the water table, then digging the well will be very easy, but if not, then you may need to find an expert who can advise on which point is best for the well so you do not end up digging and missing water. Once the well is all dug up, you can then consider installing a hand pump to pull water up. A hand pump saves you lots of effort and time, especially with wells that are deep, but you can also look for other options for the well you find more suitable.

Cistern Water System

Cisterns make very good water options for an off grid property. One fill can serve your water needs for months and you can fill them up by pumping from the river, your well, rain water or getting a delivery. With this water option, you can choose above ground system or a below ground system. An above ground system gives you the option of carrying to the point of filling and then bringing it back, whereas cisterns below ground work amazing in cold climates because they are protected from freezing and are usually larger in capacity.


When looking for an off grid water system, it is important to consider your water needs on the property and also the climate so you can choose a system that serves all your needs effectively. I have been training for survival with these Survival Tools for over 10 years and I am amazed that so many ignore them.



For great tips visit my Survival Blog http://www.survivaldynasty.com/blog.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?Off-Grid-Water-System---What-Are-Your-Options?&id=9876523

Exploring the Green Infrastructure Workforce

Image via the Stormwater Guidance Retrofit Manual courtesy of Philadelphia Water

Urbanization has altered the natural landscape and affected the hydrologic cycle. Where the natural hydrologic cycle maintains a balance of water circulation through evaporation, precipitation and groundwater recharge, and absorption and transpiration by plants, urbanization has resulted in an altered hydrologic cycle through construction of impervious surfaces such as buildings, roads, and parking lots. 

The water has nowhere to go except into a city's seemingly endless configuration sewer pipes, systems which are becoming increasingly overburdened and thus prone to overflows and outfalls of polluted runoff into watersheds, such as rivers, lakes and creeks during heavy rains. 

In urban areas with combined sewer systems, such as Philadelphia, Chicago and New York,  the impact is can be particularly troublesome because the discharges, known as CSOs or combined sewer overflows, often contain untreated sewage.

Green stormwater infrastructure is an incremental, ecologically centered, low impact development approach to mitigate these outfalls by reducing the amount of runoff that goes to the sewer system and by utilizing the water as a resource, via rain gardens, tree trenches, permeable paving, rain barrels, green roofs and more.

Because of its incremental approach, the implementation cost for cities is often much less than heavily engineered concrete gray infrastructure efforts. It may not be the sole solution, but it offers a plethora of benefits measured in more ways than just pollution prevention. Benefits such as awakening the urban ecosystem through tree planting and stream restoration, bringing together local communities over health and environment issues, and spawning a thriving new "green collar" workforce that offers opportunity to urban areas left buried in the ruins of the industrial age.

The NatureWORKS report by Jobs For the Future, jff.org, for example, contends that "in urban green infrastructure, there is an opportunity for entry-level jobs with the possibility for advancement. It is a win-win for cities to invest in sustainability and achieve both a healthier, greener community and a job development program."

Other efforts, such as with the Great Urban Parks Campaign, the National Recreation and Parks Association and the American Planning Association are also working to demonstrate the benefits of green infrastructure in urban communities. Their video below states that "using parks for green infrastructure is a creative and cost-effective alternative to gray infrastructure that allows nature to filter pollutants from rain water, reduce storm water issues and give communities access to more green space."




The NatureWORKS report is available for download in PDF at the following link: https://jfforg-prod-prime.s3.amazonaws.com/media/documents/NatureWORKS-Issue-Brief-032317_v3.pdf

6 Ways to Save Energy During Spring

The weather is getting warmer; it's time to pull out the grill, call the pool cleaner back, and get those gardening tools out of the basement. It's spring! But spring also means it's time to look at how you can save the most energy and the most money. 

Many Ways to Save

A lot of people can tolerate cold weather better than hot weather, which means, as the weather gets warmer and warmer, it will become increasingly difficult to fight the impulse to turn on the air conditioning and leave it on for hours. Fortunately, there are several things you can do to help keep your home cool without running up your energy bill.

Take it easy on the thermostat:

Set the temperature as high as you can while still being comfortable. The smaller the difference between the indoor and outdoor temperatures, the lower your bill will be. Keep the house warmer than usual when you are away, cool when you get home. Set "Away" and "Home" temperatures easily with a programmable thermostat.
 

Image: Wikipedia

Keep in mind: Your house will not cool any faster if you set the thermostat to a colder temperature than usual. In fact, this will likely result in unnecessary expense and excessive strain on the cooling system.

Make the most out of your windows:

Prevent heat from getting in through the windows by installing window coverings such as blinds (interior and/or exterior), awnings, high-reflective films, draperies, shades, insulated panels, and shutters. If you live in an area where it cools off at night, turn of your air conditioning and open your windows while you sleep. When you wake up, shut the windows and blinds to keep the cool air in, unless there's still a cool breeze. You can still get some good cool air into the house in the early morning before the sun starts hitting your house/yard.

Turn on those ceiling fans:

By using your ceiling fans in combination with air conditioning, you can actually set the thermostat four degrees higher but remember that fans cool people, not rooms. If you leave a room, turn off the fan. Turn on your bathroom fan when taking a shower or bath to remove the humidity and heat.

 

Drop the water temperature:

Your water heater uses 18 percent of your home's energy-use. Turn the temperature down to 120 degrees F.

Minimize appliance-use and artificial lighting:

Using the oven on hot days will make the house warmer and subsequently more difficult to cool. Stick to the stove, microwave, or grill outside. Minimize using a computer or TV, running the dishwasher, or using hot devices like hair dryers. Install efficient lighting that doesn't release much heat.

Seal leaks to keep the hot air out:

Seal cracks to keep warm out from leaking into the house. Add weatherstripping or caulk to seal leaky windows and doors.

 

Better for the Environment, Better for You

Ultimately, anything we can do to save energy and conserve natural resources will benefit all of us, both directly in terms of personal cost-savings and indirectly in preserving our world for the future. At Vosh, we are committed to doing our part for the greater good, which is why our car washers use less than three gallons of water for each wash. Additionally, we offer waterless car washes.


To learn more about us or to download the Vosh on-demand car was app, visit our website at [http://vosh.me/]http://vosh.me/.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?6-Ways-to-Save-Energy-During-Spring&id=9676317] 6 Ways to Save Energy During Spring.

Sensor Testing for Green Infrastructure Performance

Green infrastructure roadway swale

The term green infrastructure is used to describe a variety of landscape features or ecology related best management practices (BMPs) implemented to reduce the adverse effects of stormwater by diverting the water to rain gardens or similar systems for slow absorption by soils and plants or storage for later use.

But as green infrastructure is more widely adopted, detailed performance monitoring of a vast array of small projects (in contrast to a single larger ones with grey concrete infrastructure) is essential to ensuring the effectiveness of community-wide programs.

In Chicago they've launched a widespread initiative to test these kinds of low impact developments (LIDs) that have been implemented by the city, monitoring them with sensors to select the best solutions. Read more about this comprehensive effort in a recent report from Forester Network and Stormwater Magazine:

"As with many other cities that have combined sanitary and storm sewer systems, Chicago has a combined sewer overflow problem, with an average of more than 60 overflows a year. And,as many other cities are doing, it’s turning to green infrastructure to help solve the problem—infiltrating as much water as possible to keep runoff out of the now-undersized and overburdened sewer system during storms..." More 

http://foresternetwork.com/daily/water/stormwater/the-future-looks-smaller

Household Consumption Significant Driver of Climate, Other Environmental Impacts

Environmental Footprint: The world’s workshop  - China - surpassed the United States as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases on Earth in 2007. But if you consider that nearly all of the products that China produces, from iPhones to tee-shirts, are exported to the rest of the world, the picture looks very different.

“If you look at China’s per capita consumption-based (environmental) footprint, it is small,” says Diana Ivanova, a PhD candidate at Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Industrial Ecology Programme. “They produce a lot of products but they export them. It’s different if you put the responsibility for those impacts on the consumer, as opposed to the producer.”

Household consumption biggest threat to planet.

That’s exactly what Ivanova and her colleagues did when they looked at the environmental impact from a consumer perspective in 43 different countries and 5 rest-of-the-world regions. Their analysis, recently published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, showed that consumers are responsible for more than 60 per cent of the globe’s greenhouse gas emissions, and up to 80 per cent of the world’s water use.

“We all like to put the blame on someone else, the government, or businesses,” Ivanova says. “But between 60-80 per cent of the impacts on the planet come from household consumption. If we change our consumption habits, this would have a drastic effect on our environmental footprint as well.”

The analysis allowed Ivanova and her colleagues to see that consumers are directly responsible for 20 per cent of all carbon impacts, which result from when people drive their cars and heat their homes.
But even more surprising is that four-fifths of the impacts that can be attributed to consumers are not direct impacts, like the fuel we burn when we drive our cars, but are what are called secondary impacts, or the environmental effects from actually producing the goods and products that we buy.

A good example of this, Ivanova says, is water use.

Cows, not showers.

When you think about cutting your individual water use, you might think about using your dishwasher very efficiently, or taking shorter showers.

Those aren’t bad ideas on their own, but if you look deeper, like the NTNU researchers did, you’ll find that much of the water use on the planet is gulped up by producing the things that you buy.

 Consider beef. Producing beef requires lots of water because cows eat grains that need water to grow. But because cows are relatively inefficient in converting grains into the meat that we eat, it takes on average about 15,415 litres of water to produce one kilo of beef.

Dairy products require similarly large amounts of water to produce.

When a group of Dutch researchers looked at the difference in producing a litre of soy milk with soybeans grown in Belgium compared to producing a litre of cow’s milk, they found it took 297 liters of water to make the soy milk (with 62 per cent of that from actually growing the soybeans) versus a global average of 1050 liters of water to produce a liter of cow’s milk.

Processed foods, like that frozen pizza you bought for dinner last night, are also disproportionately high in water consumption, Ivanova said. Making processed foods requires energy, materials and water to grow the raw materials, ship them to the processor, produce the processed food items and then package the final product.

This is particularly bad news when it comes to chocolate, which is one of the most water-intensive products we can buy. It takes a shocking 17,000 liters to produce a kilo of chocolate.

Richer countries, larger impacts

The researchers also looked at environmental impacts on a per-capita, country-by-country basis.

Renewable energy for home use key factor.

While the information is sometimes surprising—Luxembourg has a per capita carbon footprint that is nearly the same as the United States—it mostly follows a predictable pattern. The richer a country is, the more its inhabitants consume. The more an individual consumes, the bigger that person’s impact on the planet.

But the differences between individual countries are extremely high, Ivanova said.

“The countries with the highest consumption have about a 5.5 times higher environmental impact as the world average,” she said.

The United States is the overall worst performer when it comes to per capita greenhouse gas emissions, with a per capita carbon footprint of 18.6 tonnes CO₂ equivalent, the unit used by researchers to express the sum of the impacts of different greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and sulphur hexafluoride.

The US was followed closely by Luxembourg, with 18.5 tons CO₂ equivalent, and Australia, with 17.7 tons CO₂ equivalent. For comparison, China’s per capita carbon footprint was just 1.8 tons CO₂ equivalent. Norway, at 10.3 tons CO₂ equivalent per capita, was three times the global average of 3.4 tons CO₂ equivalent per capita.

The results for individual countries also reflect the effects of the electricity mix, or the fuel source that countries rely on for electric power. The prevalence of nuclear or hydroelectric power in countries such as Sweden, France, Japan and Norway means that these countries have lower carbon footprints than countries with similar incomes but with more fossil fuels in their energy mix.

 For this reason, Ivanova says, a significant portion of household impacts from Sweden and France come from imports (65 and 51 per cent respectively), because the products that are imported are mostly produced with fossil fuels.

An enormous database allows comparisons.

The researchers relied on an extremely large and detailed database that NTNU developed in partnership with colleagues from the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic and Denmark called EXIOBASE.

The database describes the world economy for 43 countries, five rest-of-the-world regions and 200 product sectors, which allows researchers to ask questions about how different products or countries affect the environment.

Environmental impact for countries based on household consumption.

They were also able to ask how an average consumer in each of the countries or regions affects the environment as measured by greenhouse gas emissions (tons CO₂ equivalent), water use (in cubic meters), land use (in 1000 square meters) and material use (in tons).

The 43 countries represent 89 per cent of the global gross domestic product and between 80-90 per cent of the trade flow in Europe, as measured by value.

No surprises: take the bus, eat vegetarian or vegan

The advantage of identifying the effects of individual consumer choices on the different environmental measures is that it pinpoints where consumers in different countries can cut back on their impacts.

“Households have a relatively large degree of control over their consumption, but they often lack accurate and actionable information on how to improve their own environmental performance,” the researchers wrote in the journal article reporting their results.

Eventually, the goal is to be able to use this information to guide policy, Ivanova said. The effort is a part of the GLAMURS project, an EU-funded effort designed to promote greener lifestyles and environmentally responsible consumption in Europe.

In the meantime, two easy ways to cut your environmental impact are to stop eating meat, and cut back on your purchases, she said.

Currently, EU consumers spend 13% of their total household budget on manufactured products. If the average EU consumer switches away from spending money on these manufactured products to paying for services instead, this would cut close to 12 per cent of the EU’s current household carbon footprint, Ivanova said.

 “Any activity where we have a choice of buying a product or using a service, the service will have much less impact,” she said.

Source: Gemini