Decorating With Grass

By Tricia Deed

We have cleared the land and we are now ready to plant grass. What is grass? It is a living plant carpet which covers the ground for beauty and protection. Decorating with grass is essential for both beauty and function.

Grasses have many benefits:

1. Attractive decoration surrounding a house
2. Comfortable when walking with bare feet
3. Pleasant odor
4. Adds oxygen to the atmosphere
5. Supplies oxygen for our bodies
6. Cools the soil and the environment around buildings
7. Helps hold garden furniture level
8. Support for a blanket cover for the picnic setting
9. Gentle on the knees when playing sports
10. A play pen for children

Planting grass is the easiest garden one will ever plant and it is low maintenance. Water, fertilizer, and mowing will continue a yard for many years. Grass is unlike any other plant in that it has a long living cycle and does not require a lot of exacting care.

Depending on your landscaping design you may choose to apply seed or sod when starting to decorate a new lawn. The most important foundation is soil preparation. Equip the earth with the nutrients that the chosen seed or sod will need.

Know your growing zone and what grasses will thrive in your area provides added success. The local landscaping or plant stores can advise you or check with your state agricultural department.

Yard care tips:

1. Fertilize your lawn at appropriate times for the grass which you selected. It is not advisable to fertilize during the months of July and August. It is too hot to force new grass growth during these hot summer months.
2. Mow the ideal height for grass type. The average height is between 21/2 and 3 inches.
3. Water deeply a few times a week to support a strong and healthy root system and discourage weed growth.
4. When working with professional landscapers understand how much work is expected of you. There lies the key to the type of grass you would like in your landscaping design. Ask yourself, "How much work can I do to upkeep my lawn?
5. Pest control can be a do it yourself ongoing project or hiring a professional pest company may be necessary.

To maintain pest control in our virgin property a professional exterminating company needed to be hired. There were roaches, spiders, mosquitoes, scorpions, and other insects which needed to be removed.

Newly constructed homes receive a preparation of termite control, however, there is no guarantee that the product used by the builders will be satisfactory.

I highly recommend a termite inspection. I have seen the damage which termites can do to a structure. As a homeowner inspections and preventive treatments are a priority and a necessity. Why gamble on your home being destroyed?

Educate yourself by checking with your state or county agricultural services to get recommended grasses and pest management advice.

Discover more information decorating with grass or finding more information on landscaping. Visit the garden section of Infotrish at http://www.Infotrish.com and review
Ideas4Landscaping introducing "Over 7000 Landscaping Designs, Instructions & Videos... To Build The Landscape You Always Wanted!

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Lighten Up Your Home In Style With Arc Floor Lamps

By Kim Byrne

A Floor lamp is a stylish fixture that is chic and capable of adding volumes of sophistication to your decor. If you are someone who loves to experiment the look of your house with varying light elements and intensities, floor lamps are something you must have considered. They give your place a touch of class with a warm amicable ambiance. This type of lamp is perfect for any type of setup, be it office, home or any place where you can just sit, relax and enjoy the vibes of the place. A modern variety of floor lamps is the Arc Floor lamp, which is mostly made of steel. The fundamental difference between the traditional lamp and its modern cousin is that the stem of the lamp in arc floor lamps is curved. Thus, in order to keep the lamp fixated and in place, a firm base is required. This base may be made out of steel or any other material that may be found appropriate to bear the weight of the lamp and balance it. Several variations of this type of lamps are available with differences in shape, type of bulb used and the position of the switch. Arc Floor Lamps are available in different head shapes from the standard lampshade look to hemispherical shaped heads. Besides this, lamps with closed heads made out of glass are also an option. The choice of head shape is solely determined by the light effect you are looking for.

A hemispherical head shaped lamp will have a limited reach and will light up areas only within its field of view. On the contrary, a glass head will light up the entire space. Depending on the type of lighting and the effect you desire, you can have a look at lamps with halogen bulbs or Type-A bulbs, in addition to several other options, which are also available.

The variations that use halogen lamps provide bright white light and are a good option if you wish to use the lamp for reading purposes as halogen lights are soft on your eyes without ruining the aesthetic value of the lamp. However, its dimmer counterparts are excellent options for living rooms where lamps are solely used for creating a warm ambience. For the sake of convenience, which of course differs from person to the person, you can choose a lamp with a foot switch or an in-line switch.

Irrespective of whether you are looking to change the entire look of your room or add value to your existing interiors, the Arc Floor lamps are an excellent option. In fact, they are used by most interior designers, to "push" the wall, and make the look of the room strong. In addition to its aesthetic value, the Arc Floor Lamp is an excellent choice if you are a regular reader who likes to sit in the arm chair and read something till late evenings. These lamps are capable of adding a special touch to any space giving it the 'wow' factor that it was previously lacking.

Kim Byrne is an interior designer running the blog MyHomeLivingBlog.com providing ideas on using modern furniture for decorating luxury homes and beach houses. MyHomeLiving.com sells a wide range of high quality furniture for modern homes.

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Family Survival Training Strategies

By Darrell V. Walker

Do you find yourself focused on the protection of your family? You should seek out strategies to prepare your whole family for occasions which include disasters and other risky conditions. Check out this article to educate yourself regarding family survival training strategies.

Coaching your whole family for earth quakes along with other disaster events can easily significantly raise your odds of surviving. It's very important to prepare routinely and practice survival skills until they turn into 2nd nature. Most people are at first in shock after an all-natural disaster or in another threatening situation. Your entire family ought to be willing to apply their survival skills.

Successfully navigating unique circumstances can easily lower the anxiety you will experience. An incredible risky situation can have a significant effect in the development of a young child. Through organizing your spouse and children for these situations, you are able to lower the anxiety of your young ones. Remaining well prepared will assist you to keep your family safe and give your children a comforting surroundings.

Make sure absolutely everyone within your family masters common survival skills. Create a strategy you can use to locate each other just in case you end up being divided. You may for example agree with a rallying spot away from area. Never request a lot of out of your young children.

You must not teach your young ones survival skills till they're the right age to grasp the events they may be preparing for are not likely to take place. Small children are typically impressionable and will imagine that the things you are get yourself ready for is going to occur shortly and will experience a lot of stress and anxiety as a result.

Training children a few survival skills after they are old enough. Your sons or daughters might get lost or perhaps be split up from the entire family in case of a catastrophe. Show your kids where to find their way home or the best way away from the forest if he or she get lost there. Show them how to find food in numerous conditions.

Take time to explain exactly why you should drink plenty of water plus conserve body heat. You may for example spend a fun afternoon inside woods so that you can show your kids how to construct a small shelter.

Put together a survival kit for the complete family. Each family member should have a little book-bag which has an individual survival kit adapted to their needs. It's also wise to have a bigger kit for the whole family. For people with young children, add some cloth baby diapers and formula to your survival kits.

The individual kits should include first aid items, food, water, a survival blanket, a number of tools plus some things you are able to use to attract the attention of rescuers. Show the kids how to use all the items within the kit once they are of sufficient age.

Organizing your family for emergencies will allow you to keep your spouse and children safe in case something happens. Working on your survival skills with each other is an excellent way of spending some time as a family when training children helpful skills.

Darrell Walker is an expert in Family Survival Training. Check out his recent article, Essential Family Survival Supplies and his website here at http://familysurvivalguidehq.com

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Financial Implications of Primary and Sub-Metering

By Ryan R Rudman

Very little awareness is given to the service providing aspect of distribution and services delivery, required so that we can simply press a switch, turn a tap or open a valve that allows electricity, water or gas to flow.

While some sectional title schemes do have direct billing from their local municipality, most have a bulk services supply. To obtain a bulk service the body corporate of the scheme would have to apply for and open an account with the relevant authority.

The terms and conditions of the account agreement are broad and are out of context for this discussion. For our purposes we will focus our discussion on tariff and charges normally found on a utility statement. For simplicity we will limit this discussion again to billing for electricity. As with any supplier, utility companies create product offerings. These offerings are designed to match the requirements of different customer requirements. Usually the organization of product offerings will be arranged into broad groups. For example: Eskom categorizes various product offerings into the Urban, Residential and Rural groups. Within these groups there may be one or more product offerings. Each product offering is comprised of a number of billable components. Following is a list of common factors that determine how and how much electricity costs:

- supply size - measured in kVa

- service charge - charged as fee per day

- admin charge - charged as fee per day

- transmission network charge - charged as fee per kVa

- distribution network charge - charged as fee per kVa

- energy demand charge - charged as fee per kVa

- (active) energy charge (non time of use) - charged as fee per kWh

- (active) energy charge (time of use) - charged as fee per kWh

- reactive energy charge - charged as fee per kvarh

- electrification and rural subsidy - charged as fee per kWh

- environmental levy - charged as fee per kWh

As you can see, these charges are quantity-based. The fees charged for each of these components vary between different product offerings. As a result, knowing which product offering or tariff your body corporate is on is a good starting place. We assume that your body corporate has applied for and has an account agreement that is suitable for the capacity and demand requirements of the scheme.

As a starting place it is always worth checking that the tariff plan you are on is suitable. It can happen that you have applied for and been placed on a tariff that is far in excess of on the ground infrastructure capabilities and requirements. In this case, starting costs for electricity will already be higher than required.

Changing tariff may result in immediate savings for a sectional title scheme. However, investigation into whether your tariff plan matches your measurement may also reveal that you need to change to a more expensive plan. In either case getting a sectional title scheme onto an appropriate tariff plan from the start is the basis for all decision making when developing a billing regime for sub-metering. Understanding the different charges found on a utility bill is an important input for schemes that have sub-metering infrastructure.

The billing regime must also cover costs associated with management of the sub-metering infrastructure. Typically there is either a charge per meter per month or a percentage fee of funds collected on the meters which is levied by a private metering company contracted to the body corporate management company.

Armed with this information, the body corporate must calculate and determine how they will recover all associated costs. The decision making essentially centres on where the money will come from to pay for various aspects of the service. In some cases levies will be used to cover certain costs and in others a tariff charge will be imposed that includes these costs.

Whichever method is used, the body corporate must plan a billing regime that will ensure 100% recovery of all costs charged by the utility supplier and private meter readers. The financial implications discussed will have a direct impact on levy and cost of utilities. In some cases levy may be reduced while in others it may be increased. It all depends on where the cost of electricity and services is billed. However the billing plan engineered by the trustees of the body corporate must be able to justify the expenses in order to comply with local or national regulations.

Copyright: http://www.PrepaidMeters.co.za. PrepaidMeters.co.za is a leading sub-metering service provides operating in South Africa and internationally.

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Challenges Faced in the Prepaid Industry

By Ryan R Rudman

The utilities industry has advanced at a rate at which the infrastructure, law and market cannot fully support or take advantage of. Large state-owned enterprises and private entities have dictated the agenda, leading to unsanctioned competition and a focus on improving profit without the consideration of service delivery quality.

There is a huge amount of pressure with multiple challenges in transforming the relatively slow-paced nature of the utility industry into a more dynamic one. The major challenges utilities face are, environment, operational efficiency, regulatory compliance, consumer expectations, aging infrastructure, and security.

The concern regarding carbon emissions has a substantially large impact on business activities; however, due to the nature of water and energy services, the utilities sector faces greater expectations from governments and consumers alike. It is therefore the responsibility of the utility provider, not only reduce their own carbon footprint but also help consumers reduce their footprint as well.

The utility process needs to be streamlined and the provider needs to provide reliable services timeously, and this is key to optimising revenues and to avoid any loss of energy across the utilities infrastructure. Once utility price increases will no longer be a viable option, optimization of utility processes will force utility companies to provide top-of-the-range services with new innovative solutions for the industry.

Although energy resale is a regulated market it is far less enforced than it should be. However with the continuous price increases, specifically in the electricity sector utilities and providers thereof will have to adhere to governmental agreements and standards set in place due to consumer pressure.

On the consumer side, people want to see transparency to endure that they are billed correctly and an easier ways to interact with their service providers. The use of mobile devices, the Internet, IVR, and ecommerce opens a new avenue for utilities providers to satisfy the needs of consumers, especially when it comes to billing and informational services. Unfortunately this does require true innovation and fairly new infrastructure to delivery consumer centric services. Relaying on the already existing infrastructure may not get the industry very quickly where it needs to be. As consumers become far more sophisticated in their use of technology, it will eventually drive utility service providers to adopt and develop more suitable solutions to satisfy the requirements of the consumers.

With any business there are risks and the risk of a security breach in the utilities industry will have a negative impact if any data would be compromised. When choosing a service provider make sure the provider has stick security measures in place with will negate the effect of any attack on personal data stored by your provider.

Copyright: http://www.PrepaidMeters.co.za. PrepaidMeters.co.za is a leading sub-metering service provides operating in South Africa and internationally.

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