Heating Your Home For the Cold Season

Winter is here and in some parts of the country temperatures have dropped to freezing or even below freezing point. Without adequate heating inside your home it could be uncomfortable to move around the house and do stuff. You probably would just want to stay in one spot where you can comfortably warm yourself up under a nice cozy blanket.

If you look around the stores there are actually several portable heaters that you can get to heat up your home. They come in different shapes and sizes and they are normally selling below $100 or even below $50. The problem with these portable heaters though is the fact that they could be a fire hazard because they suck in too much electricity which can really pose a problem especially if your house wiring is not updated or you still have old non-standardized electrical setup in your home. These portable heaters though small in size can consume as much as 1500 watts per heater. Imagine fifteen 100-watt bulbs all lit up at the same time. Take three heaters and run them at the same time and bam!...your fuse will blow up or your circuit breaker will trip off especially if you are using other appliances at the same time. You could be lucky if you have a circuit breaker in your house. What if you don't and you live in a house wherein the wires used are old and not meant for high-powered appliances? That's where the risk of fire comes in because the amount of electricity pulled out from the source is too much more than what the wires can handle, thus, causing the wiring to overheat and who knows what's going to happen next? Imagine small pipes with a strong surge of water pressure going through it. It can't withstand the pressure, thus, the pipes burst open. Do you get my point?
Don't take the risk especially if you don't have a circuit breaker in your home. Fires triggered by faults in electrical wiring can easily spread throughout the house in seconds.

In our case, we don't use our central heating unit because it's too much to heat up the entire house. Instead, we opted to use several portable heaters for the different rooms. When we had two 1500-watt heaters everything was fine but as soon as we added one more heater of the same power rating the circuit immediately shut off. Power overload--that's what it was. So now I was left with a dilemma as to how I can keep my room warm enough for me to sleep comfortably at night.

After searching the internet I found another form of heating that uses low electric consumption and doesn't dry up the air unlike typical heaters. What I found was Econo-Heat panel heaters. It's basically just a panel made from a heat conductive material that you can mount on your wall and it uses less than 500 watts. I experimented with it and I'm actually happy with the result. I replaced one of my portable heaters with two panel heaters that I installed in two separate rooms. What this heater does is, it dissipates a low but constant heat while it's ON. And that heat really keeps the room at a comfortable temperature. Besides the heat that is emitted from it does not really suck up the moisture of the air because the amount of heat dissipated is at a constant low. You have the option of plugging it through a timer so it automatically turns ON and OFF at certain times of the day or you can also plug it through an automatic temperature sensor so it does the same thing once a desired temperature is set. This panel heater can be easily mounted on the wall but make sure that you put it in a strategic location away from windows or openings with cold draft coming in. It is best to put it on the part of the room which is properly insulated so the heat can bounce off across the room. It is best if you make sure that your room is properly sealed from small openings where cold air can come in. Insulate. Insulate. Insulate your room properly. If you have a bigger room you will most likely need more than one wall panel heater. Keep in mind also that when you install these panel heaters, you don't put them too high because heat rises.

These panel heaters are a little more expensive than the portable ones that you see around the stores but they could be more cost-effective in the long run. And perhaps they maybe the only solution you can get if your household electrical circuit cannot handle too much electrical load.

I also needed another portable heater for my computer room because it can really get so cold at times so I shopped around for a low-power heater. Luckily, I found one at Sharper Image and it only takes 150 watts of power. It's good for its size but you have to keep it really close to you because you cannot expect it to heat up the entire room. They refer to it as the big small heater because it really is able to dissipate enough heat for its small size enough to keep you warm.

There are other heaters in the market and they claim to be safe, economical, efficient and effective but they are way too expensive at more than $400 for a unit.

For now I'm happy and warm with my choice of heating our home during this really cold season. I hope you are warm and happy too.

Bracing For A Tough Exam? Make It Easy!

So you're getting ready for a major exam. It could be a certification, licensure, board, prequalification, career or simply the biggest exam of your life with dire consequences if you fail. How do you prepare for it and make sure that you'll hurdle the test with flying colors?

PREPARING FOR THE EXAM

• Utilize visual aids. Write down your graphs, charts, formulas, symbols, definitions, key words in a piece of paper in big, bold, black, permanent ink and nicely arrange them like a wallpaper on your favorite spots where you can easily visualize them. Put them on the ceiling so when you're laying on your bed, there they are right on top of your head where you can easily read them. Put your visual aids in strategic locations--locations where you normally spend much of your time, sitting down, lounging, relaxing or laying down. Your idle time will not be wasted. You can even put them in the bathroom if you spend much time there. Doing it this way, gives you unlimited access to your study materials, even at times when you are simply doing personal chores. The constant visual input helps your memory absorb the lesson better.


• When you read your lessons, read out loud. Reading out loud allows your brain to have dual inputs--visually and acoustically. The acoustic part is even better. It helps you remember things as if remembering the lyrics of your favorite song.


• Record your lessons on your electronic gadgets. Listen to them as often as you would listen to your favorite songs on your MP3 players or your other electronic recorders and players. Getting a chance to listen to them as often as possible helps you remember them easily.


• Get an audio version of your book if it's available and listen to it endlessly. If it's not available check out for an electronic version (ebook). With it you can easily integrate your lessons with the available gadgets that you have to help you study. You can either listen to your audiobooks anywhere you go or read your lessons on the fly from your PDA, your cellphone, or your laptop.


• Scribble, scribble, scribble. Find a stash of paper, any writable paper. Make a pen handy. As soon as you sit on your desk, write down a quick formula, definition, graph, or any important lesson. Pick out at most three lessons, formulas, illustrations, or graphs that you want to remember. Write it down on the sheet of paper that you have and fill the paper from back to back. Keep on doing this until your hand remembers it. For a single formula, use as many paper as you want until you really get tired of scribbling the formula. You write it as if you are practicing to write your first letters of the alphabet. All As, then Bs, then Cs, until your hand automatically remembers it. Repetition is the key. Compare it to writing your own signature. No matter how intricately coded it is, your hand always remembers how to do it. The same principle applies to this trick. With this, even if you can't visualize the formula or the lesson in your head, your hand can still do some magic.


• Make up a good coding system to help you remember things easily. Here's a few examples:
  SOH CAH TOA CAO SHA CHO - In trigonometry, Sine is equal to the opposite side of the triangle over the hypotenuse; the cosine is equal to the adjacent side of the triangle over the hypotenuse... and you continue with tangent, cotangent, secant, cosecant.
  
  ROY G BIV - Not the name of your first boyfriend, but the colors of the rainbow arranged accordingly from the highest spectrum: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet
  
  SM VEM J SUN P (es em vem je san pe) - It is the alignment of the planets from the sun. Sun MERCURY VENUS EARTH MARS JUPITER SATURN URANUS...
  
  DESSERT or DESERT - Dessert (the 'ss' for 'sweet something') or Desert (the 's' for 'sand')
  
  You get it now? Customize your own coding system to help you remember things much more easily.


• Use flash cards to quickly check on your progress. In this day and age, there are already electronic versions of flash cards that you can easily load in your computer or PDA. But if you have no access to such, stick to the traditional way of doing it by using index cards. It will help you a lot.


• Take a periodic quiz on your own and gauge your passing percentage. Books often have chapter quizzes. Answer them and find out how much you really know about your subject matter. This will tell you to catch up or to maintain your pace of learning.


• Do hands-on exercises using your computer. Put your skills to the test. You will be able to sense how much you've learned and how much more you need to learn.


• Study with a group of people who have the same goal as you. Interaction helps clear certain questions about certain lessons or topics.


• In this age of internet technology, join groups and collect study materials from the group. If you are a member of a study group over the internet, you will most likely have access to dumps, guides, practice tests, notes and other useful materials that are made available for the group's free use. You can try this by searching for groups that share your field of interest. Start with Yahoo groups.

THE DAY PRIOR TO THE EXAM

• Relax.


• Don't open any books or study materials.


• Avoid stressful situations.


• Think about happy thoughts.


• Have a good night sleep.

ON THE DAY OF THE EXAM

• Keep yourself calm and composed.


• Focus.


• Don't miss your breakfast. Your brain needs carbs to fuel it up.


• If you feel tense during the exam, take deep breaths to loosen up.


• Ooppss! Memory malfunction? Take a minute. Find something green to stare at. It will help refresh your memory.