LED Lighting Costs Less

One of the concerns you might have with adding a lighting component to your back yard is the extra cost. Money is tight right now for so many families and a higher electricity bill is something you probably want to avoid. But what you might not know is that these new LED landscape lights are smaller and they give you light that is more concentrated thus not wasting power. LED light bulbs are more efficient than the older bulbs and many times they use as little as one tenth the energy. Add to that the fact that they last so much longer and you have a situation where you may be able to light your back yard landscape with little to no extra costs in terms of electricity.

Easy To Install

For all you DIY’ers  out there, installing LED lighting around your house is something that most people can easily do. If you buy an LED landscape kit like this one: Malibu 8400-9905-06 Pro Style LED Kit, 6-Piece it will come with everything you need to set things up yourself which can often be done in less than an hour. Depending on the size of the space you want to light up, you may need to buy more cable but that can easily be done at your local home improvement store.

LED Lighting Options

You may be able to find colored lights if you want to give your outdoor area a special look or feel. LED lights can be bought in all sorts of colors which can make for some interesting experimentation with lighting effects. You can also get solar lighting but that inevitably will lead to dimmer lights that may not highlight your yard and patio as desired.

To find a great selection of outdoor LED lights with great prices please take a look at what Amazon has to offer – Led Landscape Lights

Patio gardens can also be real gardens that flow in and around your patio. Houses today often come with very plain concrete patios which might have a small yard beyond them. While functional, this type of patio is not very beautiful and adding a garden, complete with flowers, plants, and shrubs around the patio makes for a much better looking outdoor area. Add in some strategic patio lighting and you might be able to build something quite beautiful. Some ideas for a patio garden might be found in the pictures below.

When adding plants for a container garden or in and around a landscape, you need to make sure you don’t buy the wrong kinds. Pay close attention to the labels on all plants to make sure they will be able to withstand the winter months. Not all plants will be able to survive the winter cold and it is easy to make a mistake in the store when you are surrounded by so many.

Also pay attention to the amount of shade your patio gets and make sure the plants you buy will prosper where you put them. Some plants require sun and others don’t so it is important you locate flowers and plants that will fit your specific situation. Likewise if you are planning a container garden, you will have to move everything into its optimal position so that it gets just the right amount of shade and sun. Most any type of potting soil that says “professional” on it will be good enough to do the job as it will have the right amount of nutrients.

Gardens are really quite cheap to grow and the beauty they add to any outdoor area can be amazing. Homeowners looking for patio ideas for their boring slabs of concrete can, with a little imagination, grow and build something that will greatly increase their enjoyment of their home. Add in one of those mobile patio fire pits and you will have created an area that is suddenly perfect for entertaining in.

Spring has arrived and in parts of the country where there is a lot of moisture and shade like in the Pacific Northwest, moss can be a real problem. During the cold wet winters moss seems to grow everywhere including on wood, rocks, and concrete. If you have a stone or concrete patio, you might find moss growing in all the cracks when you venture out for the first time this spring!

Moss mostly grows in wet environments but even if you have sun you can have a problem. That’s because one of the big factors that contributes to the growth of moss is the acidity of your lawn/yard area. If you lower the acidity level of your outdoor area you will find that your moss problem goes away.

If you go into your local Home Depot or equivalent home improvement store this time of year, you might find bags of moss killer and fertilizer lined up by the door. They are the two of the most popular things to be buying right now. But if you look at the price of the moss killer you will see that it is pretty expensive, usually between $15 and $20 a bag. Depending on the size of your yard it is easy to need 2 to 4 bags and that can easily cost you $30 to $50.

There is a cheaper way.

What you need are bags of lime that are MUCH cheaper than the moss killer they want you to buy. As you can see here on Amazon, a 40 pound bag of lime only costs around $9 which is about half the price of the moss killer. You won’t find these bags of lime out in the open and you will have to go look for them in the shelves somewhere in the back of the store most likely. I think they would rather you buy the more expensive official “moss killer” displayed at the front of the store but now you know better.

Lime will reduce the acidity of your whole yard if you spread it liberally everywhere. It is cheap enough to be able to affordably do that every year and that should help you get rid of the moss and keep it away so you never have a problem again!

The best kind of basement for a workshop is one that is unfinished so that you can not worry about making a mess. You DON’T want a carpeted basement as that will collect all the dust and wood chips and be very difficult to clean and maintain. Ideally, a plain old concrete floor is best because it is easy to sweep up and use with any dust control system. It is also flat, solid, and stable which is what you want for any machinery you will put in there.

Any basement workshop is going to need excellent lighting and that means adding to what is already there. Fluorescent lights placed directly over any area you are going to be working is best for safety. You can get a good selection of lighting option here on Amazon.com – basement fluorescent lighting.

Your workshop in the basement is going to have lots of metal tools, machines, and lots of wood. Those things all need to be kept dry and basements often are damp and have high humidity. This can be solved quite easily by getting a dehumidifier like the Frigidaire Dehumidifier, 70-Pint Capacity, FAD704TDP that has great reviews on Amazon. You can read how people are specifically using it to dehumidify their basements with good results.

Most homeowners end up hiring a crew to come out and jackhammer the concrete into tiny pieces so it can be carried away. They can then start over and build a custom patio to their liking. But it is expensive to have all that done and if you don’t have the money, there is a better way that few people know about.

It is not to hard to learn how to stamp your concrete patio and by doing that you can effectively create something that looks custom made. Patio stamping allows you to pick the pattern and color of the concrete you want your patio to be made of and it is all done on top of your existing patio. This is one of the patio ideas you can actually do yourself with the right guidance and it is something that can save you a lot of money and time over putting in a completely new one.

Patio stamping means that you will be putting down an additional layer of concrete over your patio and stamping in the pattern of your choice. You can pick the right color of concrete that will work best with your home and when all done, you will have no idea that your patio use to be just a bland concrete slab. Watch the video to learn how: