Keeping Your Wine Cool With Wine Cellars
Consider the space you have to work with, the size and weight of the unit and make sure to add the additional weight for the wine which averages about 3 pounds per bottle. When building a new home the best time to think or install a wine cellar would be when the home is being built, make sure the specs include such things as a cooling system, shelving and storage, if you live in an existing house find a space and make sure you plan it out well.
The degree and the speed of the temperature change are critical to successfully storing and aging wine. Expertise lies in getting the temperature just right. Temperature is at the top of the list for the reason that it is the single most important factor to consider when planning or installing your own wine cellar.
Modular wine racks are a great investment because they can be modified to fit anywhere plus they are not expensive and they come in many different finishes and grains. Decorative racks are available in a number of different styles, ranging from metal racks to wrought iron racks. There are many different types of wine cellar racks to install in your wine cellar, the types are wooden, metal and there many others. It is extremely essential to carefully store the wine bottles in the cellars and wine racks seem to be the only possible solution to this need.
Having a system that can cool wine is very important especially in a wine cellar, if you don’t have a wine cooling system the wine cellar is not worth the bottles in the cellar, the cellar needs to be cool to operate correctly. Wine coolers can be either free standing, built in with the wine cellar or can be hidden under the counter. To keep the correct temperature in your wine cellar you need to invest in good cooling system, the cooling system will maintain the temperature and humidity and keep the wine tasting perfectly. The coolers vary in size, some having the capacity to hold two to four bottles, while others have larger capacities of up to 50 bottles.
Wine cellars and racks for the home allow the individual wine lover to convert any space in their home into an instant cellar in a matter of moments. There are many different kinds of wine cellars, there are case storages, triangular shelves, curved corners, half weights and many others.
The advantage of having a wine cellar is that you don’t have to go out and get a bottle of wine every time you are ready to sit down and eat, or want to enjoy a glass. Some of the popular wine cellar accessories are metal racking, kneeling butlers, wine chillers, wine coolers, decorative bottle corkers, corkscrews, wine tags, bottle openers, and wine markers.
The great thing about wine cellars is that you can sit back and enjoy a bottle of wine that you chose from you wine cellar. Bottles should be stored on their side so that the cork remains moist and they should also not be exposed to vibration or temperature change.
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Bamboo Wood Flooring Is Hot
What a great choice. Bamboo is one of the hottest wood flooring trends at the moment and with good reason. It’s durable, low maintenance, very pleasing to the eye and it’s not too precious to live with. Aside from those qualities, it’s also a wonderful material in terms of sustainability, the latest environmental buzz word.
Since it’s actually a grass, and can be harvested time and again from the same plant, it produces a crop every 3 to 4 years, making it very handy indeed. Even the manufacturing processes are environmentally friendly, so jump on the bandwagon and tell your friends!
Now, as for the best method to install bamboo wood flooring, well it all depends on your skills level, how much you really want to do it yourself and whether saving money is a big factor to you.
Concrete slab floor
You also have to be aware that there are some preliminaries that need to be observed before you even choose a method to install bamboo flooring. Firstly, what kind of floor do you have? A concrete slab will need to be absolutely flat and clean, not to mention dry. Bamboo is excellent for resisting moisture, but a dry surface is the best starting point for any flooring installation.
Do a moisture test by taping a plastic bag on to the cement and leave it there for 24 hours. When you remove it, if there is moisture on the plastic, then you will need to take steps to remedy it. Gluing is necessary for installing bamboo flooring to a cement slab and it’s vital that you use an adhesive recommended for this material.
Wood sub floor
If you have a wood sub floor, it too must be clean, flat and dry. Sheets of ply of a minimum thickness of 5/8″ are most commonly used for wood sub floors. Remember that if you’re installing the sub floor over a crawlspace, a moisture barrier of 1/4″ polyurethane sheeting is advised to go over the soil.
Glue down installation
After acclimating the bamboo you’ll be using on your floors for 2 to 3 days before installation, you can then set to work. Manufacturers recommend glue down as the best method to install bamboo wood flooring, though it can also be installed using nails or staples. Nailing and stapling require more expertise and specialized equipment so unless you’re keen to go the difficult route, gluing is far preferable for these reasons.
Before you begin any type of remodeling work, you need to determine how you will go about it. Some graph paper will help you to create a diagram of your floor to scale. Mark in all the measurements and from those you can calculate how many bamboo planks you’ll require to finish the job.
Figure a 1/2″ expansion space between planks and walls into your calculations otherwise they’ll be incorrect. Installing the bamboo flooring itself is relatively easy but if your measurements are out, you will make the job harder.
Also before you start, it’s a good idea to spread out the bamboo flooring planks to get a good look at the natural variations in color. This will help you determine how to distribute them in a way that allows the contrasts to work successfully. Otherwise you could wind up with dark boards all in one area and lighter ones elsewhere; no balance at all.
The right glue for the job
Always use manufacturer recommended adhesives when you install bamboo wood flooring. Using an inferior product or one that is not intended for this kind of flooring will bring costly results. It would be a great shame to install your flooring then have to pull it all up and start again.
In summary, the best method to install wood flooring is the glue down method. For nailing or stapling, call in professional wood flooring contractors, who have all the expertise and tools needed for the task.
Shane Hester has been helping website owners increase online profits through exclusive webdesign and marketing services at WebFirstCreations.
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How to Design the Kitchen of Your Dreams
Kitchen renovating is a thing that many people forget to do until they realize their kitchen doesn’t look so good anymore. That’s when they will really start searching for new ideas and they will acknowledge the fact that design trends are very different from what they used to be.
And the truth is that the kitchen is probably the most important location of your home. It’s where the food is made, it is also a source of warmth and of family gathering. These are even more reasons to consider kitchen remodeling if the time has come.
Kitchen remodeling ideas can come from a variety of sources like open hose views, open kitchen displays, expos, magazines or web sites. The availability of information is no longer a problem nowadays. The real problem is making a sketch, a design, and what’s the most difficult, implementing it.
In general, kitchen renovating is much different in the case of a large kitchen than in the case of a small kitchen. People prefer different designs. Some want space, as much as they can get, while others prefer the intimate, warm and cozy feeling of a small kitchen. Whatever the case may be, there are options available for absolutely every need.
If you have a large kitchen, you will want to fill that bit of extra space with interesting pieces of furniture that will make the kitchen more appealing. Also, think carefully about the size of the items in your kitchen. For example, a tiny coffee table will probably seem out of place in a large kitchen.
Accessories may also be very important in the case of a large kitchen. If you collect things, you can have them displayed in special urns to show them off. Of course, it also depends on the stuff you are collecting. Also, flower vases are recommendable in the case of a large kitchen because they fill space and they look beautiful. Just make sure you don’t forget to water them.
Lighting must also match the size of the room. Many people make the mistake of not taking this into consideration. For large kitchens, larger lighting items are needed, like big chandeliers. They need to spread their warmth to every corner of the room.
Small kitchens can be very well redecorated too. In this case, you will have to find smaller pieces of furniture and appliances, which will leave a busy woman space to work in also. If done right, a smaller kitchen can look just as good as a large one, with an extra plus for a cozy feeling.
So don’t be hasty when you make a big decision like this. Research, see how your friends and relatives designed their kitchens, and make your own idea of how it should look like. Grab a piece of paper and a pen and start making a sketch. When the contractor comes, you will have something that will show him the kitchen renovating that you really need.
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Air Barriers Not Vapor Barriers
The key to moisture control is the control of air transported moisture. This requires an air barrier system or air pressure control that may or may not be combined with an air barrier system.
There is a big difference between air transported moisture and vapor diffusion. Proponents of vapor barrier systems tend to confuse these two transport mechanisms do they control the vapor diffusion part, the air transport part or both? It is not always clear.
What is clear is that air transport is far more significant than vapor diffusion. What is also clear is that you do not need a 6-mil polyethylene barrier to control air transported moisture. Permeability values of materials are irrelevant in air barrier systems. Although 6-mil polyethylene is an excellent vapor barrier it is often a very poor air barrier.
I will agree that it is possible to install 6-mil polyethylene as an air barrier. The key point that needs to be made is that although air barriers are a good idea everywhere, vapor barriers are not.
Moisture flow by vapor diffusion is governed by the second law of thermodynamics (basic physics to some, not so basic to others). Moisture will flow by diffusion because of a concentration gradient as well as a temperature gradient (from “more to less” as well as “from warm to cold”).
This means that it tends to go from the inside out up north and from the outside in down south. In the middle of the country part of the year it goes from inside out and part of the year it goes from outside in. It is easy to say lets put a vapor barrier on the inside up north and on the outside down south. It is much harder to define “north” and “south”.
Everyone can agree to put a vapor barrier on the inside in Burlington, VT, and on the outside in Miami, FL. It is a little more difficult to agree on where to put a vapor barrier in other locations. If you put a vapor barrier on the inside in Washington, D.C., half of the year it will be in the wrong place.
You certainly do not want to put a vapor barrier on both sides of the wall. It’s pretty obvious that you do not want a vapor barrier at all in most assemblies in mixed climates. “Flow-through” design makes more sense in mixed climates where vapor diffusion is slowed down, but not stopped. Hence, the term: vapor retarder.
When moisture storage effects are added, things get real interesting. Take a brick veneer cladding that experiences rain-wetting followed by exposure to solar radiation. The sun tends to drive moisture inward. It makes sense to put a vapor barrier behind a brick veneer to stop this inward flow.
But what happens when you install a vapor barrier behind a brick veneer in a cold climate? Do you also want to install a vapor barrier on the inside? I think that would be a vapor barrier on both sides. Maybe we want a vapor barrier on the outside behind the brick veneer and a vapor retarder on the inside.
Maybe we should use an insulating sheathing that is vapor semi-permeable on the outside with sufficient thermal resistance to elevate the temperature of the condensing surface during the heating season, and have a vapor permeable interior finish to permit drying to the interior? It sounds complicated and it is.
It turns out that the distinction between a vapor barrier and a vapor retarder is a necessity. Let us examine a common building material: kraft-faced fiberglass insulation. Is the kraft facing a vapor barrier or not?
It depends on the time of year. If the facing is installed towards the interior in a climate such as Washington, D.C., it is a vapor barrier in the winter and a vapor retarder in the summer.
How is this so? Well, kraft-facing is impregnated with bitumen and the paper-bitumen composite is hygroscopic. It adsorbs water as the relative humidity it is exposed to rises. As the quantities of adsorbed water increases, the vapor permeability of the composite changes.
This reflected by the differences between dry-cup permeability test values and wet-cup permeability test values. Under dry-cup testing, one side of the material is maintained at 0 percent r.h. and the other side is maintained at 50 percent r.h.
Under wet-cup testing one side of the material is maintained at 50 percent r.h. and the other side is maintained at 100 percent r.h. So under dry-cup testing the kraft facing has a perm rating of 1 perm, and under wet-cup testing the kraft facing has a perm rating of 5 perms.
In the winter months, when the inside relative humidity is high, we have a vapor retarder on the inside, that permits drying to the inside.
It sure would be a dumb idea to replace this kraft facing with a 6-mil polyethylene sheet that would trap water in the wall assembly during the summer.One of the problems in the building industry is that we have a spreading “cult-like” mentality that worships at the “church of polyethylene”.
This cult views the answer to all moisture problems as the installation of a polyethylene vapor barrier condom on the inside of buildings. This cult is also responsible for many more building failures than building successes. It’s time that the cult deprogramming started.
Shane Hester has been helping website owners increase profits through exclusive webdesign and marketing services at WebFirstCreations.
See his companies latest creation: Carolina Siding Contractors, at http://www.hestercontracting.com or contact him directly at http://www.webfirstcreations.com.
All You Ever Wanted To Know About Polished Concrete
Concrete can be polished to a high shine for beautiful flooring which needs no coating or waxing. You can grind new or old concrete floors to a high gloss finish. Polished concrete looks like polished stone and is highly durable. It is decorative, practical and also economical.
Concrete is polished with sanding pads and grinders until it is glossy and smooth. The flooring industry is experiencing demand for polished concrete right now from showrooms to retail facilities to private homes. If kept dry and clean, a polished concrete floor is no more slippery than regular concrete. In fact, it is less slippery than linoleum or polished marble.
Almost any concrete floor can be polished but if it is new, you should wait a month before polishing it. Existing floors might need some cleaning before being polished. A contractor with experience can advise you on what would give your floor the best result.
If the existing surface needs to be solidified and densified, the contractor might apply penetrating hardeners to the concrete. This usually happens after stage one of the grinding process. The hardeners can be used on existing or new floors and react chemically with the concrete to result in a hard crystalline structure. In addition, the hardeners offer extra protection from staining and water penetration and prevent the concrete dusting.
Concrete floors can be dry polished or wet polished. Most are polished with a combination of the two processes. Wet polishing uses water to minimize the dust produced and to cool the diamond abrasives down. Water acts as a lubricant and reduces friction so the polishing abrasives will last longer. Resin bonded disks melt at high temperatures so the wet process can lengthen their life. Wet polishing can produce a lot of mess and slurry. Having to clean this up can make the polishing process longer. With dry polishing, the machines used have inbuilt dust containment systems. The initial grinding, when concrete is being removed using metal-bonded adhesives, is usually done with dry polishing. Wet polishing is normally introduced when the surface is markedly smoother and finer resin-bonded adhesives are used instead. There are now resin-bonded disks available, meaning that the whole process can be done dry.
A polished concrete floor requires dusting occasionally and the luster will last for years. If it does get dull, it can be buffed to restore its high shine.
If you want a high luster, economical floor, which resembles polished stone, polished concrete could be the perfect solution.
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