Stay Cool and Use Less Energy This Summer With a ceiling fan

For most people, owning a vacation home does not always mean it comes equipped with all the amenities and creature comforts of a primary home. Second homes for many are rustic modest summer cabins where the carefree days of summer are enjoyed. In general, this is all that is required but there are exceptions such as temperatures rising into triple digit heights. Taking cover from the noon sun offers no respite if the cabin is not equipped with something as basic as a ceiling fan. I can vouch for this first hand as our mountain home was enjoyable throughout the year, until July. When the thermometer hit 106 degrees, an emergency trip was made to the local lighting store to purchase two ceiling fans.

Choosing the Right ceiling fan for your Needs

Looking online or in your local lighting store youve probably found the choices in fans to be extensive. Whats the difference, you ask? Its a summer home, lets get the cheapest fan possible. Right? Maybe not. You should make sure that the fan youre choosing has enough power, pitch and blade diameter to substantially move the air around the room because thats really all a ceiling fan can do. A fan doesnt actually cool the air, it just creates wind chill that aids in cooling as you perspire.

Top of the line fans will have a 14 15 degree pitch as opposed to a low end fan that has about 10. 12 degrees is adequate. As for blade diameter, for a large room youll want something with at least 52 inches. A really large room may need more and visa versa if the room is smaller.

Last, the power and speed options. Obviously, if youre only using the fan during the summer, then the highest speed the ceiling fan is capable of will be your main focus. But if this is for all season use, a very slow speed is important, too. This allows you to circulate air in the room during the winter months without creating a breeze, to assist in warming the room throughout.

ceiling fan Installation

Installing your new fan can be straight forward provided there is easy access to connect into the power source and ample strength for support in the actual spot you plan to hang the fan. Given that best case scenario its probably safe to say youll run into at least one small problem during your installation.

We have open beam ceilings in our summer home, no attic and no power source in the ceiling. This meant extending power out to the beam using wire mold which we later painted to match the beams color. Strength for support was thankfully not an issue but the process of getting into the walls, connecting into the existing power source and tacking up all the wire mold took some time. And all of this needed to be done by an electrician.

Energy Saving

The great thing about ceiling fans is that besides using far less energy than running an air conditioner or swamp cooler, they can also be used in conjunction with AC to help lower energy use. Basically, if you run a ceiling fan you can set your AC thermostat much higher (78 84) and the breeze created by the fan will keep you just as cool. Remember to turn off the fan when youre not in the room as it only cools people, not the room. And if you can avoid using AC entirely, youll be happy to know that ceiling fans use about 90% less energy than standard air conditioning, which again, is all you really all need in a summer home.

Nicole Martins, a senior editor at Chandeliers-and-Home-Lighting.com, writes regularly about home dcor and garden design. You can read more about discount ceiling fans at: http://www.chandeliers-and-home-lighting.com/ceiling-fans.htm

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Four Critical Web design Rules

When creating a new website or redesigning an existing site, there are four critical rules which the designer should follow to make the site effective and functional - and successful.

1. Easy to Read

When building a website, the first thing you need to be sure of is that your website is easy to read. When you write content, remember that most web site visitors don't read every word of a page - in fact, they only scan pages to find what they want.

Break up Your Content

Break up your pages and use headers between major ideas so people scanning your site can find what they want quickly. Use meaningful headers between each paragraph or major idea - this helps with SEO. Headers should be created with the H1 through H4 tags for SEO. Always use good writing structure. Additionally, avoid long paragraphs that run on. You should break up any long paragraphs.

Color and Fonts

To help readability, use high contrast colors between font and background. Black text against a white background may seem stark, but it is very readable. To make a website easy on the eyes, try an off-white background and a dark gray (almost black) text color.

Things to avoid with content color:

• Avoid vibrant background colors like purple or yellow. Such back colors make text difficult to read.
• Avoid using an image behind your text.
• Avoid using bright text colors on bright backgrounds.

Fonts Matter One simple statement covers the font issue:

• Simple fonts are the best; the more fancy the font, the harder it is to read.

Since many browsers only have the standard font set, use standard fonts. In reality, there is no "standard", but there are certain fonts that are installed on most browsers. These include Arial, Verdana, Tahoma and Times New Roman. Your readers will see something different than you see if you use other fonts.

Standard Compliant Browser for Development

When developing and testing your site, use a Standards compliant browser like FireFox. If you develop your site to be standards compliant, it will work in most browsers, including MS Internet Explorer (IE). It is recommended that you test your site using the latest and last browser versions of IE (IE6 and IE7). To run multiple versions of IE on the same machine, TredoSoft.com has a free installer that will install multiple versions of IE. It works great!

2. Simplify Navigation

The menus and links make up the navigation that the visitor uses to get from page to page in a site. Always plan a site around how people will get from page to page. A visitor to your site should be able to get to what they want within three clicks of their mouse.

Multiple navigation points makes it easy to find things. Repeat the top menu and at the bottom. Also create a left or right menu.

Using links within your text to other areas on your site. You can create links so that they are good for search engine optimization (SEO). There are generally two ways to create links within your text:

1. The wrong way: "For search engine optimization techniques, click here."
2. The right way: "Good techniques for search engine optimization are important to use."

Using link text (anchor text) that describes what the link is about is the best way. Search engine web crawlers (programs that automatically index the contents of websites) visit your site, they "read" links. Spiders can index descriptive links into a subject or keyword category. Spiders have nothing to work with when reading a "click here" until it reaches the linked page. This is Cross Linking - use it as much as possible when it makes sense to do so when writing your content.

3. Consistent design

At most, one or two layouts should be used in your site design. As a reader browses your site, they should be able to get used to looking in the same place for your navigation, for your sub-navigation and for your content. That's all there is to say about that.

4. Lower Page Weight is Better

Page weight is the total size of a page on your site in bytes - code, text and images. Your site's page weight makes a big difference to your viewers. Lighter page weight is better for your readers because the page will download faster. The faster a page downloads, the faster they will get to the content.

What is Means to be Light

• No large images. (unless the site's purpose is to showcase images, art or photos)
• Fewer images are better.
• Optimize images for the web at no more than 72 dpi
• Use as small an image dimension as possible for the given design.
• Use a table td bgcolor attribute or a background-color style attribute for solid color backgrounds.
• Make gradients horizontal or vertical (not diagonal) so that you can use a small image "strip" and repeat it.

How "Heavy" Should a Web Page be?

Certain studies show that 64K is a good maximum webpage size. 64K is a maximum, however it is still, in my opinion, really big! The smaller the page, the better. 25K is good, 15K is even better. There is a balance between design and function. It is a good idea to focus more on function.

Try putting pages on your web host server as you build your site so you can test it as you go. For pages online, you can test the page weight to be sure you are on track.

Ways to make pages lighter:

• Use linked style sheets
• Use DIVs instead of TABLEs where possible
• Use simple repeating backgrounds for effect

Summary

Visitors to your website should be able to find what they are looking for within about three clicks. Making a site easy to read with consistent page design, and easy to navigate will make it easy to find information. You will be on the way to building a readable, effective, functional and hopefully successful website if you follow these rules.

About the author:
Nicholas LaPolla has been a web applications developer for 11 years. He created AcmeWebResources.com to help others build or improve, market, and monitize their websites with a focus on web design, website seo / internet marketing, and working to make money online.

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