For most people, houseplants are a vibrant and welcome addition to add some color and life to their home. Plants can help brighten up a room and make it more inviting but you may not know that houseplants can actually “clean” your air by mitigating pollutants and, helping you and your family to breathe better. We all learn about this stuff in school, but they don’t teach everything about plants. Mostly, we learn about photosynthesis — […]

Spring is rough for a lot of us. I just travelled from the seaside, where the ocean breeze and the summer fog keep the pollen to a standstill, back home to Boulder, Colorado, where the trees are blooming like crazy, the wind carries the bright white fuzzballs everywhere, and the lack of humidity means if you have allergies, you’re in the barrel now for sneezing, watery eyes, and a generally miserable experience. So, what causes all this nonsense? […]

You’ve probably already heard lots of stories about the country’s latest environmental challenge from the news but if you haven’t, pollen counts around the United States are at an all-time high. From sneeze-inducing levels affecting allergy sufferers in places like Arkansas and Tennessee to the fine yellow mist that has doused Washington, DC, this fine, light dust has been a real problem this year. There are many strategies to keep pollen from infiltrating your […]

We’re jetting now out of the first quarter of 2019 and that means this year’s most fashionable trends for exterior paint colors for your house are starting to really fall into place now. Unfailingly, springtime has been a great time to tackle home improvement projects like painting, and mixing up the colors of your home’s exterior can be a great way not only to mix things up but to change you and your family’s mood as you […]

We’re almost out of the first quarter of 2019 and that means this year’s most fashionable trends for paint colors for your abode are starting to crystalize. Perennially, Spring has been a great time to tackle home improvement projects like painting, and mixing up the colors you surround yourself with can be a great way to change your mood, clean things up a bit, and deepen how you feel about your particular surroundings. It’s a very mixed reaction this year […]

Spring cleaning is upon us but the good news is that the stuff you need to spruce your house up is mostly in your house already. Everyday household items like vinegar, lemons, soft drinks, baking soda and salt can be combined to yield powerful cleaning products that don’t trigger allergies, asthma or other negative health reactions like store-bought cleaners do. Here’s a few simple ideas about how to make your own cleaning products from a […]

Selling a home can be complicated if you don’t plan out your strategy. There are a lot of different aspects to selling a home, from number-crunching to staging your house for open houses and visits. But real estate professionals agree that home sale preparation is the single most important part of selling a house. It’s pretty obvious when you think about it—it’s been your home, probably for years and maybe for decades, but that […]

Yuck! Last time we talked about the creepy crawlers that can invade your home during the upcoming winter so now it’s time to talk about what to do about them. Specifically, let’s talk about how to keep them out of your home so they don’t get in and require professional intervention. Trust us, there are plenty of them to go around. From cockroaches in Arkansas to spiders in California to the common stinkbugs that […]

We’ve written lots of features here at Storm Guard about the threats to your home posed by hurricanes, tornadoes, dangerous winter storms, and flooding. But there are plenty of things you can do to help protect your home or building before severe weather arrives. Here are six proactive steps you can take for protecting your home, family or other occupants from dangerous storms. Tip #1: Inspect and Repair your Roof Letting a leaky roof […]

It seems like every summer we see the Western United States ravaged by wildfires, with the destruction augmented this year by an exploding volcano in Hawaii. These disasters are leading fire experts to investigate new technologies to help supplement existing efforts by fire departments to combat this growing threat. Structural engineers and other experts have been visiting burned homes, stores, and other sites in California to help brainstorm new ideas to provide next level […]