It is almost that time of year. Christmas.
For our little ones, excitement is in the air. Santa is coming, and he will be arriving via the chimney! As a child, it wasn't hard to imagine this event - Santa would use some magic spell to elongate himself into some whispy being so that he could fly down the flue with his bag of toys in tow. My family's home happened to have a wood burning fireplace, so it wasn't that hard to believe, at the time. I've heard some other versions of this event, including some where Santa would come through a window if the house in question didn't have a chimney.
Today's new homes rarely have a 'chimney'. They also rarely have a wood burning fireplace. Today's gas fireplaces usually vent out the back of the unit and don't go up through the roof at all. In fact - most new furnaces and hot water heaters do the exact same thing - so how is poor old Saint Nick delivering his horde of goodies to our little ones in the newest residential communities?
However he does it, it is important to remember that these gas appliances have venting systems and that they all need regular inspection and could require maintenance to ensure that the gas appliances are operating safely. Your furnace and hot water heater venting systems should be checked for leaks, cracks, sags, deterioration and blockages and obstructions which could include snow, ice, frost, and even leaves. It is important to familiarize yourself with your gas appliance venting systems so that you can perform simple routine maintenance that could prevent a furnace or water heater breakdown, a costly service bill or repair bill to your system or your residence in case of a freeze-up and most importantly - it could save your life. An improperly operating gas appliance could emit carbon monoxide, both in the home and outside the home, and if it's outside it could get into the house or into your neighbour's as well.
Not all appliances vent through the roof. Most high efficient furnaces, hot water heaters and boilers are being vented out the side at ground level. This gives you good access to the venting to check for blockages, but it also could lead to blockages if the area around the vents is not maintained. Be sure to check that the vents don't get buried by snow or that the vents don't frost themselves over - simple maintenance that should be done regularly - like shoveling the walk (unless your my neighbour...) In the summer, especially with water heaters, make sure that leaves or other such debris doesn't get sucked up into any intakes.
If you have a metal chimney that goes through the roof - it is also important to inspect the venting both in the house near the appliances and at the roof level. Look for deterioration, rust, holes and leaks into the house - at the roof level it is still possible that snow drifts could block the chimney and frosting could also occur.
If you don't know where your vents are, especially with a high efficient system, take a look around the house for plastic venting pipes - most should be white plastic (and look like PVC). Some older homes might have grey or black plastic as well.
If you can't find it and want to have your system examined, contact a heating contractor - www.horizonheating.ca...
I'm involved with an industry task force that will be touring Alberta in the new year with a presentation on vent safety for high efficient products. There are some concerns out there that the products are changing too quickly and that the consumer (and even some contractors) don't know all that they need to know in order to maintain a safely operating space and water heating system. Stay tuned for more information.
In the meantime, keep your furnace filters clean.
Matthew
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Paperless Society?
We supposedly live in a paperless society - so why is my desk covered with paper?
Besides the fact that my two computer monitors take up some of the real estate that my paper piles used to take up, and the fact that my organizational (and filing) skills are, well, a comedy in the office, my desk is covered in piles of paper. You know, the white 8.5" x 11" type that the age of computers was supposed to eliminate.
Paper is here to stay, for now - but there are still some ways to save those proverbial trees.
An upcoming episode of "Treading Lightly - Minimizing Your Environmental Footprint"* will deal with this very subject. There are many strategies available to help reduce the 'paper trail', but it seems to me that there is the potential for more paper now then there ever has been even though we are now neck deep in the age of electronic data.
The physical paper trail is important for a variety of reasons in whatever industry you work in, whether it be legal, engineering, medical, construction etc. At my workplace I have drawers and drawers of files on paper - at the moment these are deemed necessary as the people that work with these pieces of paper take these paper orders and drawings to a jobsite and use them to build, track and record what happens on that site. Theoretically all of these papers could be on a laptop, but the work and cost involved to accomplish this would be a nightmare, and some of these jobsites are not the place for a laptop computer. What is not in these drawers and drawers of files though are the 'virtual paper trails' that lead to or are created by the actual paper trail - these are stored on a secure server system and are available to those that need to see them with a click of the mouse.
I used to work in an engineering firm where everything had to be recorded and available for all that required access to this information - a great policy that I still stand behind in my own office. However, the binders and binders of communication and notes and drawings that had to be printed so that someone could thumb through all the material to find a particular piece of information just in case the person in charge of that project wasn't there most likely would or could have existed in softcopy somewhere. A simple solution would be to set up the file system so that the same type of project always would have the same type of information filed electronically the same way - and make that accessible to everyone who required it. An added bonus with this is that if the system's servers were available remotely, then you could look anything up from anywhere and not be inconvenienced if you happened to pack the wrong binder on a business trip for example.
There are many ways to set up workplace servers that can be accessible anywhere that there is access to the internet - even for the smallest of businesses. (I can recommend someone for you if you wish - drop me a line!)
Communication, which is so often done by email nowadays fits nicely into this central server storage and accessibility philosophy that it almost doesn't make sense to do it any way else. An added bonus is that email clients are searchable and the days of thumbing through records for a note could almost be gone.
But, nonetheless there is still a need to print - sometimes there is no substitute for the real thing - how many times have you read something on the screen and only when you printed it that you noticed the grammar mistake in the first sentence that your word processor missed?
Here are a couple more ideas for green paper usage:
Besides the fact that my two computer monitors take up some of the real estate that my paper piles used to take up, and the fact that my organizational (and filing) skills are, well, a comedy in the office, my desk is covered in piles of paper. You know, the white 8.5" x 11" type that the age of computers was supposed to eliminate.
Paper is here to stay, for now - but there are still some ways to save those proverbial trees.
An upcoming episode of "Treading Lightly - Minimizing Your Environmental Footprint"* will deal with this very subject. There are many strategies available to help reduce the 'paper trail', but it seems to me that there is the potential for more paper now then there ever has been even though we are now neck deep in the age of electronic data.
The physical paper trail is important for a variety of reasons in whatever industry you work in, whether it be legal, engineering, medical, construction etc. At my workplace I have drawers and drawers of files on paper - at the moment these are deemed necessary as the people that work with these pieces of paper take these paper orders and drawings to a jobsite and use them to build, track and record what happens on that site. Theoretically all of these papers could be on a laptop, but the work and cost involved to accomplish this would be a nightmare, and some of these jobsites are not the place for a laptop computer. What is not in these drawers and drawers of files though are the 'virtual paper trails' that lead to or are created by the actual paper trail - these are stored on a secure server system and are available to those that need to see them with a click of the mouse.
I used to work in an engineering firm where everything had to be recorded and available for all that required access to this information - a great policy that I still stand behind in my own office. However, the binders and binders of communication and notes and drawings that had to be printed so that someone could thumb through all the material to find a particular piece of information just in case the person in charge of that project wasn't there most likely would or could have existed in softcopy somewhere. A simple solution would be to set up the file system so that the same type of project always would have the same type of information filed electronically the same way - and make that accessible to everyone who required it. An added bonus with this is that if the system's servers were available remotely, then you could look anything up from anywhere and not be inconvenienced if you happened to pack the wrong binder on a business trip for example.
There are many ways to set up workplace servers that can be accessible anywhere that there is access to the internet - even for the smallest of businesses. (I can recommend someone for you if you wish - drop me a line!)
Communication, which is so often done by email nowadays fits nicely into this central server storage and accessibility philosophy that it almost doesn't make sense to do it any way else. An added bonus is that email clients are searchable and the days of thumbing through records for a note could almost be gone.
But, nonetheless there is still a need to print - sometimes there is no substitute for the real thing - how many times have you read something on the screen and only when you printed it that you noticed the grammar mistake in the first sentence that your word processor missed?
Here are a couple more ideas for green paper usage:
- Most new copier/fax business machines can send email by scanning a document - try sending the document this way instead of faxing to save the paper on the other end. At the same time, save the digital file for your records for later
- Double side your printing where possible
- Find a paper supply that is made with maximum recycled content
- Use old or superseded paper documents as notepads
- Always recycle paper, including shredding where possible
One last note about why there seems to be more paper than before... Imagine a world without your computer - just think about the last time your server was offline or the power was out. Most of us depend so much on our computers at work that without them we believe that we can't get our job done. Well, we probably could - we just wouldn't get as much done. What the computer has allowed some of us to do is get much more work accomplished in the same amount of time. With all of this extra workload comes more paper trails, this is why my desk is still so full of paper. The computer has allowed us to save paper on a per job basis, but thanks to our friend the computer, we are working on so much more now at a time that the printers are as busy as ever.
I appreciate your comments, feel free to drop me a line and remember - keep those filters clean!
*"Treading Lightly - Minimizing Your Environmental Footprint" is heard across Alberta on the CKUA Radio Network and around the world on the internet at ckua.com.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Water, water, everywhere?
Water.
We all need it, we all use it, though many of us take it for granted.
An upcoming episode of Treading Lightly - Minimizing Your Environmental Footprint, heard on the CKUA radio network (ckua.com and across Alberta on FM and AM), briefly touches on water use in the kitchen and some quick tips on conserving this precious resource.
For most of us, especially those of us in large urban centers, we turn on a tap and out comes a steady stream of cold, refreshing and safe drinking water - for use in so many ways in addition to drinking. Afterwards, what we don't use gets treated (or not...) and directed back into the water supply for the next town downstream. So essentially, the water is recycled, so why does it matter if we let the tap run while we brush our teeth or wash those vegetables? There are other reasons to consider being mindful of letting the tap run unnecessarily than just running out of water: Energy.
There are energy costs associated with getting that water to your tap that many of us don't think of. Pumping stations, filtration and sediment removal, chlorination and chemical treating, and the rigorous testing that ensures that our water is safe. In addition, when that water goes down the drain, there are energy costs associated with our waste water as well. Even if the water is clean going down the drain, it still has to be processed at the waste water treatment facility. This includes our bathing water, while I wouldn't recommend drinking it, for the average person taking a shower, that water would be suitable for a wide variety of applications other than being treated at the local waste treatment plant.
In addition, in many parts of the developed world water supplies are getting lower while populations are growing. The less we use now, regardless of how we have to treat it, the more that there will be later.
So next time you leave that tap running, think of where it comes from and where it goes to before it safe for the next person (or being) that will use it. (The fish appreciate clean water too!)
Thanks, and until next time, tread lightly!
We all need it, we all use it, though many of us take it for granted.
An upcoming episode of Treading Lightly - Minimizing Your Environmental Footprint, heard on the CKUA radio network (ckua.com and across Alberta on FM and AM), briefly touches on water use in the kitchen and some quick tips on conserving this precious resource.
For most of us, especially those of us in large urban centers, we turn on a tap and out comes a steady stream of cold, refreshing and safe drinking water - for use in so many ways in addition to drinking. Afterwards, what we don't use gets treated (or not...) and directed back into the water supply for the next town downstream. So essentially, the water is recycled, so why does it matter if we let the tap run while we brush our teeth or wash those vegetables? There are other reasons to consider being mindful of letting the tap run unnecessarily than just running out of water: Energy.
There are energy costs associated with getting that water to your tap that many of us don't think of. Pumping stations, filtration and sediment removal, chlorination and chemical treating, and the rigorous testing that ensures that our water is safe. In addition, when that water goes down the drain, there are energy costs associated with our waste water as well. Even if the water is clean going down the drain, it still has to be processed at the waste water treatment facility. This includes our bathing water, while I wouldn't recommend drinking it, for the average person taking a shower, that water would be suitable for a wide variety of applications other than being treated at the local waste treatment plant.
In addition, in many parts of the developed world water supplies are getting lower while populations are growing. The less we use now, regardless of how we have to treat it, the more that there will be later.
So next time you leave that tap running, think of where it comes from and where it goes to before it safe for the next person (or being) that will use it. (The fish appreciate clean water too!)
Thanks, and until next time, tread lightly!
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