Green Cooling Ideas for Your Home

Staying cool in warm weather can be tricky business. Rising temperatures outside and strong sunlight beating down on your home and into windows make it difficult to keep indoor temperatures comfortable. Air conditioning certainly helps, but with the high cost of initial installation and mounting utility charges, this isn’t always the most practical option. Additionally, there is the issue of chemical refrigerants used by residential air conditioners that can contribute to pollution and global warming.

If you’re looking for a greener alternative to traditional air conditioning, the following common sense ideas and low-cost changes can cool your home without harming the environment or depleting your budget.

The best way to keep your home naturally cool in the summer is to prevent heat from building up indoors in the first place. The most obvious source of indoor heat gain is direct sunlight, which gets absorbed by your home’s roof, walls, and windows. Other, lesser known sources include air leakage around poorly sealed and insulated doors and windows, and heat from household appliances like dryers, dishwashers, and computers.

To keep heat from building up inside your home, use heavy curtains or blinds on windows to block direct sunlight, enhance the landscaping around your home with trees and shrubbery that help deflect or bar the sun’s rays, make sure doors and windows are properly sealed, turn off heat-generating appliances like televisions and computers when not in use, and limit the use of other appliances that use heat —- like the washing machine, dryer, and dishwasher—to early in the morning or after dark when outdoor temperatures are likely to be lower.

In hotter climates or in larger homes, simply deflecting the sun’s rays and restricting the use of heat-generating appliances are not enough to cool effectively. Fortunately, there are several environmentally responsible strategies you can employ to supplement traditional air conditioning.

Any time you can reduce the strain on your home’s air conditioning system, you’re saving money and lowering your energy usage (and impact on the environment). So things like shading windows and sealing doors are a good first step in greening up your home’s cooling. Fans and evaporative coolers go even further.

Ceiling fans won’t cool a room, but they make you feel cooler. Using a fan can make a room feel up to four degrees cooler than with air conditioning alone. Installing a fan means you can turn up your air conditioner several degrees, reducing your energy usage and helping you save money.

Evaporative coolers cool the air using water vapor and are only appropriate if you live in a dry climate. However, they consume about a fourth of the energy of conventional air conditioners, which makes them environmentally friendly and energy conscious.

There are now more rebates and financial incentives than ever for homeowners who choose energy efficient options for home cooling. Many utility companies and local governments participate in a variety of programs. If you’re thinking about greening your home’s air conditioner, contact your utility company or local environmental conservation agency for information about available programs in your area.

Related Information from Horizon Services...

• Horizon Air Conditioning Services
• Air Conditioning Alternatives
• Seasonal Energy Saving Tips
• Home Energy Myths Debunked
• Cutting Edge Solutions for Energy Efficiency
• Green Your Home...Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

PULI AVAL


I always like this delicious snack. This is an ideal dish for the breakfast and a different one. For this, we have to use hand made rice flakes, not the machine made one. There are so many dishes like aval upma, aval pongal, aval apayasam, aval pulav we can prepare with rice flakes. But I think this is the tastiest of all!

புளி அவல்

Ingredients:

Rice flakes-4 cups
Tamarind- a big lemon size
Gingelly oil- 4 tbsp
Ghee- 1 tsp
Mustard seeds- 1 tsp
Black gram- 1 tsp
Red chillies-6
Bengal gram- 2 tbsp
Groundnuts- 2 tbsp [optional]
Shredded coconut- half cup
Curry leaves- 2 arc
Chopped coriander- 3 tbsp
Fried cashew nuts- 3 tbsp
Asafetida- half sp
Turmeric powder- half sp
Salt to taste

Procedure:

Wash the rice flakes and drain all the water thoroughly.
Soak the tamarind in 2 cups of water for half an hour in warm water and then extract its juice.
Heat a big pan and pour the oil.
Add the mustard seeds and when they splutter add the grams, asafetida, curry leaves, ground nuts and red chillies.
Fry them on slow fire until they turns to light golden brown.
Add the curry leaves with the turmeric powder and fry for a minute.
Then add the tamarind juice and allow it to boil.
When the gravy thickens add the salt.
When the gravy thickens almost to a paste and the oil floats on top add the drained rice flakes with enough salt.
Mix well on slow fire for a few minutes until the rice flakes are coated well with the tamarind paste.
Add the ghee and a tsp of gingelly oil and cook for a few seconds.
Lastly add the fried cashew nuts and the coconut.
Mix well for once and now the tasty puli aval is ready!

Chakka Pradhaman- Jackfruit & Jaggery cooked in coconut milk

I wrote in my last post, that I used up the chakka varatti. Yes, I prepared chakka pradhaman as neivedyam for the first friday of Aadi/Karkidakam. I usually make only neipayasam on all fridays. This time I made an exception. If you have chakkavaratti and coconut milk in hand, then making this pradhaman is a breeze. In Kerala, payasam is referred to as pradhaman when coconut milk is used. Now you might think, then how come palada pradhaman where milk is the ingredient. In earlier days, Ada pradhaman was made with jaggery and coconut milk. May be later on, with the availability of milk in abundance, some chef might have come up with this version.

As in all pradhamans, you need 3 sets of coconut milk- thick, medium thick and thin. The first extract from the coconut is the thick milk and subsequent extracts are the medium thick and thin, which are called as first, second and third milk in the order of extract. Coconuts used are not very matured ones. While selecting coconut for milk extraction, look for the coconuts which doesn't have dark brown shell. The ones which has shades of cream are good. Sorry, I forgot to click pics of the coconut. It would give a better idea.

For 1 cup of chakka varatti, you will need about 2 medium sized coconuts. Take the amount of chakka varatti and coconut milk given here as an indication. You go by your instinct and it cannot go wrong. Little less or more of any quantity may not effectthe end result in a big way. So here comes the recipe

 

 

 

You need

•  Chakka varatti - 1 cup, packed
• Three sets of milk extracted from 2 coconuts.
• Chukku podi/Dry ginger powder - 1 tspn

  

Method

 

Grate the coconut. Pulse the grated coconut with very little water. Add water just enough to ease the grinding. Squeeze the milk out with the help of a muslin cloth lined on a strainer. For the successive extract, you can add around half cup of water. Keep each set of milk separately.

  

1) Take a thick bottomed vessel or kadai. Dilute the chakka varatti in a cup of hot/warm water.
 
 

 
2) Then add the third milk. Bring to boil. Simmer for 10 minutes.
 
 

 
 
3) Add the second milk and simmer in medium low heat till it thickens. You can smel the flavor of jackfruit and jaggery as it thickens.
 
 

 
Once you add the first milk, no more cooking is done. So it will dilute the payasam. keep that in mind and let it thicken well. Finally add the first milk and remove from heat. Don't leave it on heat once you add the first milk, since there are chances of curdling. Add a teaspoon of dry ginger powder. Serve hot or cold.
 
 
 

 
You can add cardamom in place of chukku podi. Chukku/dry ginger will aid in digestion and probably thats the reason why it is added.