Grilling outdoor during warmer months is a great way to bring people together, so long as users remember they are literally playing with fire.
Spring weather is wonderful in the south. It’s been a year since I moved and got rid of most of the things we never used in the garage. Now I’m perseverating over which grill to buy so my fiancé and I can finally make grilled turkey legs and stir-fry vegetables while watching the neighbor kids play tag between houses. Despite my pale bald head that sunburns almost instantly, I feel the need for some fresh evening air. Very little makes the afternoon better than sitting in a metal chair and joking about the neighbor’s gazebo plans while you casually take food off the grill.
I have to be honest – I sort of fear the back yard. There are gnats, neighbors with all manner of projectiles (frisbees, basketballs, volleyballs and even footballs have flown past me when all the neighborhood kids are running around!), and all the dust that my edger kicks up. But the social energy of such an active development is why I moved there. It seems a waste to eat dinner on nights like these. After all, a backyard barbecue is the highlight of summer.
But managing fire is one of the most dangerous things you can do in flip-flops. Read More
In conversations with both friends and people I have met through emergency calls with the fire department, I often observed that a lot of people never give a second thought to that little lifesaver mounted on the ceiling or the wall of their home. That little lifesaver is the smoke detector.
On average, a fire department responded to a fire somewhere in the United States every 23 seconds in 2024. A civilian was fatally injured in a fire every two hours and 14 minutes Read More
It’s that time of year again. Freezing rain, flurries of snow that don’t stick around, and mornings using a spatula to scrape dreaded ice off our windshields. I’ve lived in the south most of my life, and I know the combination of excitement and dread that my compatriots and I are likely to face during the winter months. Let’s face it, we may know how to cook pulled pork, but when it comes to freezing temperatures most of us don’t have much experience! Read More
Fire. Something about fire touches our brainstems…both good and bad! Uncontrolled fire is terrifying and deadly to be sure. But the controlled burning of wood at a campfire or in a fireplace in your home almost can’t be beat, to my mind! For that very reason, a fairly common amenity to houses nowadays is the gas log fireplace insert.
When not installed properly, these logs will generate soot. These soot particles can leave the fireplace and meander. All. Over. Your. House. Read More
In the old-timey Fire Triangle, you have heat, fuel, and oxygen. Get these three together in the right quantities, and you get fire. What if the fuel provides its own heat? That’s spontaneous combustion, or spontaneous ignition. NFPA921 defines this as “initiation of combustion of a material by an internal chemical or biological reaction that has produced sufficient heat to ignite the material.” Read More
Welcome back to my multi-part series about water resistance in windows and doors. Last time we discussed weatherstripping. Today, we move on to a product common to sliding doors and coastal areas – sill risers.
Sill risers offer a brute force way to reduce water infiltration when a LOT of water is expected to hit a fenestration product. Unlike weathersealing, buried drainage, or weep systems, sill risers block water by providing a dam. Coastal homes with wind driven rain frequently have sill risers. They are practical and require less maintenance than weep holes or buried drainage systems, plus Read More
Welcome back to my multi-part series about water resistance in windows and doors. Last time we discussed weep holes. Today, I’d like to talk about weatherstripping (also known as weathersealing).
During the life of typical exterior fenestration products, every driven rain is a test of the product’s water weathersealing system. Most windows and doors handle water without much homeowner input, but racked or misaligned windows, poor weatherstripping corner joints, and torn piles all contribute to reduced water infiltration resistance. They can allow moisture into the structure, where damage to flooring, walls, and Read More
Did I lose you in the title? Fire alarms! Ah, those mysterious systems required by, discussed in, and described by hundreds of pages of sometimes baffling and circular code text. They can be intimidating to think about. Have you considered that these mysterious red boxes could have information helpful in a loss? Let me describe why it could be advantageous to have a knowledgeable person to check out the fire alarm system after a loss, and not just for fires. Just as an airplane’s black box may hold information Read More
One of the more innovative products to emerge on the plumbing scene in the past 20 years or so (in my opinion) is the flexible supply connector. A lot of people have seen but probably not paid much attention to them under their sink or perhaps from the toilet supply valve to the toilet tank. Most have Read More
The United States Department of Energy (DOE) finalized energy efficiency standards for residential gas furnaces in late 2023. These new standards are slated for implementation in late 2028. The last time the DOE raised the efficiency rating of gas furnaces was in 2007, when the minimum efficiency for gas fired furnaces was raised from 78% to 80% efficient.
Let’s look at what efficiency means in this context. In simple terms, Read More
