Toronto Realtor

Challenge Indoor Pollution Fast And Environmentally Friendly

Most homeowners lack knowledge of a crucial detail: the air is inside our lofts, colleges and workplaces probably is totally polluted. This may sound disturbing, but don’t stress – there are many simple ways to refresh the air in your lofts.

People traditionally neglect the significance of air quality. Homebuyers take it for granted that because their lofts are clean, the indoor air is hygienic as well. Unfortunately, micro particles such as dust, mold spores, and pet dander can be prevalent in even the most hygienic of houses. There is a number of air cleaners distributed on the market, but if you’d opt out to go for a eco solution, we suggest the following options:

1. Air cleaning plants
While all flora are able of destroying harmful particles from indoor atmosphere, research by The National Aeronautics and Space Administration proofs that certain cleaning plants are remarkably successful in destroying toxic particles and carbon dioxide from the air we breathe. You should keep a cleaning plants for every 9 sq m of floor space. The more vigorous the cleaning plants, the more air it can filter. These are the key cleaning plants that can be found in NASA’s top list: Janet Craig dracaena, English ivy, Australian sword fern, peace lily, rubber plant, and weeping fig.

2. Essential oils
It was examined that distributing essential oils into the surroundings is one of the most convenient ways to sanitize the surroundings people live in. The essential oils enjoy certain anti-bacterial features that help to remove viruses and other pollutants in the surroundings.

3. Beeswax flame
Common paraffin candle sticks are made from petroleum that intoxicates the surroundings every time you burn the candles. Candles made from beeswax, on the contrary, are a big improvement over petroleum ones: once the candle sticks burn, they filter the surroundings comfortably , in the same time emitting a natural honey scent, a comforting and yellow flame. It represents a wonderful solution for spacious rooms - like Toronto lofts

Natural wax is the sole material able to spread negative ions, which assist to cleans bacteria from the surroundings.

Adjusting Your Way Of Life? - Hints To Make Your Lifestyle Go Green

Thinking about making some green changes to your life and as a result helping the environment? We may love the idea of saving money, but here are some tips that could save you money, possibly improve your health and be eco friendly at the same time.

Donate your old glasses

Maybe your old prescription lenses are not fashionable anymore, but they can help millions of people with eyesight issues. Only 13% of visual impaired people live in developed countries, which means a significant number live in countries that don't have easy access to the correct support. By donating unwanted prescription lenses you can give the gift of sight to someone else. Old glasses are clearly not the major pollution source, but giving away this item gives you an extra good feeling.

Save the rain water in a storage barrel

It is probably not the best idea to drink rain water, but it can be great for watering your garden or washing driveway. There is a huge offer of barrels in shops, or you can create your own.

Drying your clothes the environmentally way - in the great outdoors

Our mothers and grandmothers hung their washing out and they didn't have any concerns with it. Hanging clothes outdoors keeps them fresh and smelling nice, is eco friendly and saves money. Individuals worry that they many be judged unfavourably if they put washing outdoors and are uneasy people may think less of them. All I can say is 'don't be ashamed', being eco friendly is the in thing; so set a great example and be proud of being green.

Take a bath less frequently, shower more

Health troubles can be created by bathing and showering too much or for long periods of time; apart from that your bills will jump up and heating of water consumes lots of energy. Chlorinated water is fine to drink, but when you breathe the chlorine from the hot shower steam, you inhale chlorine in somewhat high concentrations which are a risk to your health. Another great idea is to use an attachment on your shower that cuts down the amount of water you use.

Share transport with one or two work mates

Car sharing is not a new thing and it is promoted by authorities, but many car owners still don't do it through lack of incentive or knowledge. Unfortunately, as a Toronto lofts realtor I have to drive a lot. Commuters who use their cars for work are said to drive about 20 km each day. By teaming up with a friend you could save about 170 litres of fuel a year which is a lot of money and it protects the environment by cutting carbon dioxide by around 400kg over the same period. Some business's have a car sharing scheme already set up which is worth checking into, if not try and set one up yourself; ask people to see who would be interested in saving money.

How Has Our Lives Been Affected by Green Events?

Environmental and green are the two words most often used when people talk about things affecting us. Every one has got on the band waggon from governments to big companies, trying to promote sustainability and renewable resources. What are a few of the most important developments, which made green lifestyle a hot topic for politicians, businessmen, scientists, and the majority of the western world citizens?

Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs

Incandescent lamps are a product of the past in lots of cases and are extremely energy inefficient compared to the new compact fluorescent light bulbs. These light bulbs consume a lot less power and are longer lasting when comparing them to the incandescent bulbs they supersede. Whilst there are many positive points to these bulbs, it is worth remembering that they contain mercury like any other fluorescent light bulb, so disposal is difficult.

In spite of this inconvenience, they're still much more considerate both towards our environment and our wallets though their price is usually a bit higher then the price of standard light bulbs, they can save much more in the long run.

Extreme Weather

When you compare weather patterns over history, extreme weather is the name for those incidents that happen only seldom. Many of us will remember the earthquakes across Haiti, hurricane Katrina, the boxing day Tsunami and the Indian ocean Tsunami; all these events plus many others have occurred over the last decade and all over the world. It is accepted that these disasters are only the start of it, with more disasters coming our way, though many climatologists can't agree whether mankind is having a negative impact on the world we live in.

Renewable Energy

Sunlight, wind, geothermal heat, rain and wood all provide energy that is renewable, these natural resources of energy are called renewable energy resources.

Advancements in the use of these sources has increased over the last decade and is the way forward for sustainable development of the future. We can no longer rely on the supplies we have at the moment to generate electricity and need to look in alternative directions to create it Extending the renewable energy sector will be crucial for allowing meaningful cuts of the emissions while helping us find long-term solutions for electricity generation.

Mexican Gulf Oil Disaster

It is not likely many of you will not know about a fairly recent disaster, one that is still being felt worldwide - the Mexican Gulf oil spill. The Deepwater Horizon oil platform was at the heart of the problems, with a large explosion and fire on April 20th 2010. Despite the first reports stating that relatively little oil had leaked, the consequences were catastrophic. The reported amount of oil lost per day was quadrupled by the end of May, from 5,000 to up to 19,000; the size of the disaster was escalating.

We may not hear about tragedies surrounding oil very often, but they are becoming more repetitive, which is not good news. Recent events raised questions once again - are we even capable of underwater oil drilling without threatening the environment substantially?

Being environmentally friendly is a matter of personal decision - everybody can choose unique way. I am trying to be environmentally friendly condos in Toronto agent. Can you think of any choice for you?

picture by BoyReale

GTA Needs to Start Being Environmentally Friendly

A new chart has been distributed by Mercer Consulting when it released its annual Quality of Living report, called the Eco-City Ranking. While Toronto was located at a solid 16th place in the world and in third place in North America, in terms of regular quality of living, our position in the Eco-City chart is not so good.

This chart named the best cities in terms of water availability and drinkability, waste removal, calibre of sewage systems, air pollution and traffic congestion. In other words, the top-notch cities create minimal pollution and take advantage of maximum renewable resources. While we would assume the green cities such a Oslo to rate high, we wouldn't have assumed industrial cities such as Stuttgart to be more eco-friendly than Toronto, but they are! Even when you only compare the North American cities, Toronto didn't do very well, easing in at number 11. The city with world's highest ecology standards is Calgary, trailed by Honolulu and both Ottawa and Helsinki receiving the bronze medal. Two more Canadian cities ranked better than Toronto and they were Montreal and Vancouver in 13th place.

While the figures for general quality of living may be okay, the figures for the eco-city push us down to 16th place, consequently we need to do something about the eco-friendliness of Toronto. As Slagin Parakatil, Senior Researcher at Mercer, said: "A city’s eco-status or attitude toward sustainability can have significant impact on the quality of living of its inhabitants".

Our dragging our heels in environmental quality of life may have control on our overall quality of life, quicker than many of us would expect.

Julie Kinnear is local green enthusiast and a MLS Toronto professional

Awards go to the Best Green Inventors in the Greater Toronto area

Green Innovators Awards event knows its three winners. April 23rd gave the announcement by Mayor David Miller, Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone and CityNews Meteorologist Michael Kuss of the top green innovators, at the Direct Energy Centre, Exhibition Place. The prize of $50,000 was shared out between the award winners and they each received the coveted Green Toronto Award.

The young innovators hope to maintain the environment, the prize money is just a bonus. All the finalists presented fascinating green solutions and improvements. Since the idea was to show real resolutions, most of the projects were affordable and easily applicable, so one day you may see them applied also in your neighbourhood, or in your own house.

Next are the top three award winners:

• Olivier Trescases, PhD and Chris Lea, with Green Gym: A fitness centre that takes energy from the equipment as it is used and sends it to the grid.
• Sarah Lazarovic and her idea GreenHouseTO; multi-purpose web and mobile restoration application for all Torontians interested in Toronto buildings: architects, constructors or just everyday individuals.
• Robert Kori Golding, for his concept My Green City: A Facebook and iPhone cross-platform application. Build a virtual town on these applications/games and claim reward points to use on your town by supporting the environment.

Green is always the way to go!

Community Projects Award, Energy Conservation Award, Environmental Awareness Award and 6 more prizes, were handed out: as well as these rewards. There was reward money of $5,000 to all of the finalists which they shared with a charity of their choosing.

Article published by Julie Kinnear, Toronto Royal LePage

Appraisals are obstacle for green homes

Developers would like to see green property projects rise rapidly. Unfortunately appraisals are slowing down the rapid advancement of the environmentally friendly property projects. Imagine you are going to build a standard $500,000 home. You decide that you want the real estate to be more environmentally friendly, therefore you ask your architect to design the new house so it makes use of the sunshine and you put in high quality insulations and solar panels. Due to these green choices, this will add another $100,000 to the cost of the property.

The appraiser from your bank or mortgage business doesn't look at it the same way. David Snook is an appraiser and associate of the real property committee on education for the American Society of Appraisers and he does doesn't think it's about the cost of the house but more about resale value.

Shall we continue with our example? Although the property cost $600,000 to build the bank or mortgage company will only accept the appraisal at $550,000. This escalates your payment by $50,000 working on a 20% down payment. For those of you that can't afford the 20% down payment and wish to take out a high-ratio mortgage, (5% down payment) then your payment will be $77,500. That is a very large amount of cash to save for upfront. This might force you to look at the cheapest green alternative, using older and cheaper technologies, or maybe you will abandon the whole green idea of the project altogether.

Still, as a green MLS expert I realize even though there is a rise in cost going green does make a big difference According to Green Work Realty statement, green homes are priced 8.5% greater on the resale market, and also sell 22% faster. This information doesn't help you though if you are dealing with bank or mortgage business appraisers who don't have much if any experience with the green home technology.

While you can give the appraiser the costing, until they have the experience then there is not a lot you can do about it. Support could be on the way for appraisers and future home owners if strong initiatives are put in place that will standardize environmental and energy efficiency. Green real estate is not only about the environment, it's also about money. When looking at purchasing a car, one of the first things you look at is its fuel consumption, how many miles to the gallon does it do. Understanding property energy consumption is the normal next step.

 

Picture by Hammer50212

Keep Your Home Clean - Without Chlorine

Having house cleaning in mind, you would probably arm yourself with bottles of chlorine and various acids. Yes, you guess right they are not very healthy, but what else to use to keep the hygienic standards for your home? Beside my daily dealing with MLS listings, I am fanatic into green lifestyle. Therefore I gathered few tips about environmental friendly house cleaning, which you may find helpful.

Cleaning the Microwave

Quite often you forget about cleaning the inside of the microwave; after a while it is full of crusty food leftovers, a horrid smell, and a coat of grease and splatter that is hard to get rid of. British professionals on hygiene recommend using a bowl of water in which you place slices of lemons and oranges. Heating these on full power for about 5 minutes has many advantages, as the steam softens the dirt and grease therefore making it easy to wipe clean, the oranges absorb the grease, while the lemons get rid of offensive smells. Water from a damp cloth will create steam if the dish and citrus fruit method can't be achieved - a note for safety: always use a damp cloth as dry cloth could cause a fire. The item of cloth needs to be left in the microwave for a few minutes for the greatest result.

Cleansing the Fridge

Using a small amount of soap, make soapy water to clean the spills and marks inside your fridge. In difficult to get to places, you can make use of a toothbrush with a tiny bit toothpaste on it. Turn off your freezer if that needs washing and place a tub of hot water inside, this creates heat which helps the ice melt. Cleanse the inside with lemon water to get rid of the food odours-it will leave your fridge and freezer smelling nice.

Cleaning the Kitchen Stove Top

Possessing glass-ceramic or induction cookers means you need to pay careful attention to your cleaning methods due to the fact these products can be damaged easily. Day to day cleaning of your cooker top, by wiping of any spills and marks to stop build up of stubborn marks should be an intrinsic part of cleaning your cooker. Nevertheless, if there are any food spills or you can't get rid of the greasy film, use a mixture of baking soda and water and a plastic scrub brush to carefully scrub the top clean.

Ideas on Cleaning Out your Oven

I bet like most of us you don't like cleaning out your oven. Though self-cleaning ovens are fantastic, what about those of us that don't have one? With quite a few ways and means of completing the job, it can be quite easy. One of the easiest mixes that you can create at home that really does the job is: Mix 5 tbsp of baking soda, 3 drops of liquid soap, and 4 tbsp of white vinegar into a thick paste. Coat it inside the oven and use a sponge to scrub the interior Before rinsing the oven, wipe the mix off the surfaces with a clean piece of material and allow to dry. Another accepted technique is to leave a glass filled with a cup of ammonia in the closed oven overnight. Get rid of the ammonia in the morning and clean the surfaces down with a wet cloth to see the results of your work.