Buzzword: Radon

What it is. Radon is a colorless, odorless radioactive gas that results from the natural decay of uranium in soil and rock. The gas moves up from the ground and can diffuse into the air or enter a home, typically through cracks and holes in the foundation or concrete slab. (Radon can also enter the home through well water and by way of some building materials). The presence of radon in the home can pose a danger to your health, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. In fact, radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in this country.

Why the buzz? Radon has been in the news recently with reports that some granite countertops can release dangerous levels of radon. This isn't a new claim—it surfaced in the 1990s—and it's fairly controversial. In April 2008, BuildClean, a nonprofit that aims to educate consumers about safe and healthy building materials, made news when it announced that its pilot project would provide free in-home radon testing of 300 homes in Houston to determine whether granite countertops emit harmful levels of radon. It's worth noting that two big makers of quartz countertops, Cambria and Cosentino (which also sells granite counters), are the sole funders of BuildClean. "By its nature, granite emits radon—the second leading cause of lung cancer in the U.S.," said Sara Speer Selber, BuildClean's president, in a press release at the time.

Next, in early May, W.J. Llope, Ph.D., a senior faculty fellow at the T.W. Bonner Nuclear Laboratory at Rice University in Houston, released a report in which he analyzed 18 articles covering 95 granite samples. In "Radiation and Radon from Natural Stone" (PDF download), Llope reported that 92 of the granite samples emitted no or very little radon, though two were in the 3.1-to-3.4 picocuries per liter (pCi/L) range, and one registered 4.2. (These measurements assume a hypothetical unventilated room, not a standard home, according to Llope's study.) The EPA estimates that the average indoor radon level is 1.3 pCi/L and suggests that you reduce radon when the level in your home is 4 pCi/L or higher.

Keep your baby safe at home

Many of the accidents that injure or kill more than 2.5 million children age 4 and under in the United States each year could be prevented if adults were to take the time to safeguard their homes.

If you have a baby at home or are expecting, learn how to make your home a safety zone well before your baby starts crawling.

Read our general safety tips, watch our video (right), and follow our expert advice for these areas:

• Baby's room
• Basement, driveway, and garage
• Bathroom
• Deck, porch, and yard
• Kitchen
• Living room/den

Essential information: Prevent accidents at your pool this summer.

A tale of a DOA dishwasher

Last week, I spotted an interesting post on Consumerist.com about a dishwasher purchase gone awry. The buyer related the following tale, and while his story, the beginning of which follows verbatim, might not be common, there are some shopping lessons to learn from it:

"This past weekend, I purchased a $1300 dishwasher from Sears.. They delivered it Saturday morning, less than 24 hours after order. Great! However the dishwasher that they delivered was defective, I immediately called the store where I purchased it, and spoke with the Sales lady.. She told me that Sears has outsourced their customer service to a company called OneSource and that I that she couldn't help me. . . . "

(Read more about the disheartened buyer's experience and the dozens of comments that ensued. Long story short, the guy is expecting a replacement dishwasher to be delivered on July 1.)

Many commenters urged the dishwasher buyer to use the charge-back feature of his credit card, which would give him the right to dispute a charge if he were dissatisfied with the quality of a purchase. But as we pointed out in an article about the consumer rights you have when you shop with a credit card, there are limits to charge-backs, including:

• You must have made a good-faith effort to resolve the problem directly with the merchant before disputing the charge.

• The charge must be at least $50, and the transaction must have occurred in your home state or within 100 miles of your current billing address. The transaction location depends on your state or other laws, which complicates matters, especially if you make a purchase online, by phone, or through the mail.

• The geographic restrictions and the $50 rule don't apply if the card issuer or close business partners sold you the product or service and also do not apply to billing errors.

One way to avoid getting stuck with problem appliances is to inform yourself about the products and the brands you're considering. There are no guarantees you'll be satisfied with what you buy—indeed, Kenmore dishwashers have not been repair-prone, based on more than 112,000 reader responses about dishwashers to the Annual Product Reliability Survey by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, as detailed in our Brand Repair History. But you might be able to avoid getting stuck with an underperforming item or an unreliable brand.

Read our expert advice for buying appliances, and if you're in the market for a new dishwasher, visit our product page to find the latest report and Ratings (with Brand Repair History, available to subscribers). Look for our latest review of appliance retailers and the services they provide in the August 2008 issue of Consumer Reports, online and on sale in July, and see how we test dishwashers (right).—Gian Trotta

Essential information: Read about a plan by Sears to start selling its brands at other retailers. And use our Home Improvement Guide interactive to take a room-by-room tour of the top-rated appliances and most cost-effective improvements you can make to your home.

New feature! Home Improvement Guide Interactive

Remodeling a room in your home or simply replacing appliances or buying new gear for your yard and garden?

The Consumer Reports Home Improvement Guide interactive (picture shown) on ConsumerReports.org lets you click on any room in your house and choose the top appliances, paints, flooring, and other remodeling products for your home's interior and exterior, from the kitchen and bathroom to roofing, siding, mowers, and tools.

The Home Improvement Guide includes expert remodeling tips as well links to Ratings of top ranges, refrigerators, dishwashers, decking, mowers and tractors, room air conditioners, windows, washing machines, vacuums, and many more appliances, tools, and remodeling materials you need to upgrade your home.

Take a room-by-room tour of our interactive home today!

10 Questions for . . . Steve Feldman, President of Green Demolitions

In this installment of 10 Questions for . . . , Senior Editor Daniel DiClerico talks to Steve Feldman (shown below), founder of Green Demolitions, a nonprofit organization that recycles and then sells appliances and materials from kitchens, raising money for a 12-step-program charity. Feldman discusses the origin of the operation and the many people it benefits.

Where did you get the idea for Green Demolitions?
I was fund-raising in Greenwich, Connecticut, in March 2001. One of my donors lived next door to Farah Pahlavi, the last empress of Iran. She had lived for 10 years in a beautiful 10,000-square-foot estate. I'd seen the home from the street in the past, but on this day a sign in the driveway said a demolition was in progress. I walked up the driveway and the house was a pile of rubble and brick. I stood there staring at the pile and thought to myself, Why not start a demolition donation program for the outreach projects I was fund-raising? I started talking to contractors and real-estate agents in the area, and they thought the idea had merit.

How does the process work?
A prospective donor contacts our office, where one of our coordinators gets the details of the job--what items are available, what condition they're in, etc. We'll often request pictures to get a sense of how much time would be required for the removal. We can't accept all donations. As an entrepreneurial charity, we have to operate like a business, meaning there has to be a resale value to the items or we won't make a profit. If we accept the project, an inspector visits the site, takes more photos, and fills out a detailed report. Then we issue a donation agreement, order the insurance, and send in a crew for the dismantling. Most jobs are done in a day. The items are inventoried and we leave behind a hand-written receipt, which is followed up with a typed receipt indicating the fair-market value of all contributions so that donors can claim the proper deduction.

What do people gain by donating their kitchens?
The biggest financial gain is definitely the deduction—we've sold a single kitchen for as much as $36,000. But another big incentive is the savings in labor costs. Our crew handles all the dismantling, and if they don't have the knowledge and skills required, we'll bring in a specialty crew. We did a Park Avenue apartment in New York City recently where I hired a marble specialist to remove the antique fireplaces. "Restoration removal" we call it. A third benefit for donors is reduced disposal cost. Each Dumpster on a job costs $600 or $700, even more in cities.

Besides homeowners, where else do the donations come from?
We also have retail donors, for example kitchen companies that have in-store displays of discontinued inventory. Another source is wholesale distributors. I recently worked out an arrangement with the exclusive American distributor of a major European appliance line. We'll be receiving a truckload of top-quality discontinued or display models. Donations also come straight from manufacturers, whether returns, discontinued models, or overstock. We're also the national charity of the National Kitchen & Bath Association's annual trade show, the Kitchen/Bath Industry Show. At the end of every show, exhibitors can load their wares straight from the floor onto our Green Demolition trucks. The companies save a bundle on warehouse space and disposal cost. I've heard of entire exhibits getting demolished and thrown in the Dumpster, product and all. Green Demolition is a cheaper way to go and keeps the product out of landfills.

Essential information: Learn how to properly dispose of household items when you're remodeling and read about Home Depot's new recycling program for compact fluorescent lightbulbs.

Home Depot launches CFL-recycling program nationwide

Home Depot has done something other major retailers and government at many levels throughout the country have not been able to implement. The home-improvement retailing behemoth today started a free collecting/recycling program for compact fluorescent lightbulbs, or CFLs, at its 1,973 U.S. stores; a similar program at Canadian stores started last fall.

“Recycling is expensive, but if you’re waiting for recycling [of CFLs] to be economically feasible, you’ll never do it,” says Ron Jarvis, Home Depot’s senior vice president for environmental innovation. The retailer’s effort is not a pilot program—it’s here to stay, according to Jarvis, who adds, “We won’t increase the cost of CFLs.”

The move by Home Depot comes at a time when more Americans are installing these bulbs that use about 75 percent less energy to produce the same amount of light as standard incandescent lightbulbs. In 2007, Home Depot stores in this country sold 75 million CFLs; Wal-Mart, 137 million.

Those energy savings don’t come without a cost: CFLs contain mercury, a neurotoxin. (All of the manufacturers of the Energy Star-qualified CFLs we tested claim to use less than 5 milligrams of mercury per bulb.) The presence of mercury raises several issues, including the recycling and the handling of broken bulbs.

To recycle CFLs at a Home Depot, you bring spent, unbroken bulbs to the store’s returns desk. (Starting in September the stores will have special receptacles on-site for the bulbs.) There’s no fee, and the stores will accept any CFLs, even those you didn’t buy from a Home Depot. The CFLs will be shipped to a recycling company, which will break down and recycle the bulbs and properly deal with the mercury, according to Home Depot.

Here’s hoping that Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, and other retailers nationwide follow Home Depot’s lead.—Kimberly Janeway

Essential information: Read our comparison of the major brands of CFLs (available to subscribers).

U.S. housing prices continue slide

What happens when there’s a glut of houses for sale? Beyond the agita unsold homes might cause their owners, one of the obvious results is that prices fall—something sure to spark joy among potential buyers out there.

There’s an 11.2-month supply of homes for sale in this country, according to the National Association of Realtors. And, based on the latest S&P/Case-Shiller index of home prices, which tracks fluctuations in the value of residential real estate in 20 U.S. metropolitan areas, home prices are dropping nationwide. The S&P/Case-Shiller index for April 2008, released today, shows a more than 15 percent decline from a year earlier.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Mark Zandi, chief economist and cofounder of Moody’s Economy.com, said that by next June prices will have dropped about 25 percent from their peak in 2006. (The median price of an existing single-family home in 2007 fell to $217,900, down from $228,200 a year earlier, according to The State of the Nation's Housing 2008 report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.)

“I think it is going to take another year nationwide for us to work through all of our problems in the housing market, at least to make a significant dent,” Zandi said in an article in The San Diego Union-Tribune. “In some parts of the country, the market will remain depressed well into the next decade. It is going to be a slog.”

Essential information: If you’re planning to move, learn how to sell your home in a buyer’s market.

Tip of the Day: Clean your ceiling fans

My approach to housekeeping is akin to the “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise?” conundrum: I don’t mind the weekly ritual of cleaning my house, but I do cut corners where I can—if I can’t see the grime, then it doesn’t count.

I’ve often taken this tack when with ceiling fans. From below, I usually don’t notice the dust and grime on my fans. But when I recently climbed a stepladder for a closer look at the one in my bedroom it was clear I had to clean the fan. The dust and grime weren’t overwhelming—yet. So I decided to tackle this simple task before it could turn into a messy ordeal.

When you’re cleaning your ceiling fans, first find out what steps the manufacturer recommends, and then consider our experts’ suggestions below. Remember, clean a fan only after you’ve turned it off and the blades have come to a full stop. And cover the floor (and furniture) beneath the fan with a drop cloth. If the blades are lightweight, handle them with care.

• Use a long-handled, ceiling-fan duster to remove dust. (These special round brushes are sold at hardware stores and home centers.) The blade fits in the inner part of the duster and will clean both sides of the blade at the same time.

• If your fan is equipped with a light, gently dust the fixture (and the bulb, if it’s exposed) with a soft cloth.

• To remove accumulated grime, wash the blades and fan housing with a damp cloth sprayed with an all-purpose cleaner or dipped in a solution of water and mild detergent. (Learn how to make your own household cleaners.)

• Then wipe the blades with a cloth dampened with water to remove detergent residue.

• Finally, dry the blades thoroughly— dampness attracts dust.

Be careful when you’re reaching up to clean the blades if you don’t have a brush. If you need to buy a ladder for this and other household chores, see our review of ladders.—Kimberly Janeway

Essential information: Read our latest report on ceiling fans to choose the right models for your home. And learn how to stay cool without running up your utility bills. Use our Home Improvement Guide interactive to take a room-by-room tour of the top-rated appliances and most cost-effective improvements you can make to your home.

Buying Advice: Portable air conditioners

A portable air conditioner that you can roll from room to room might appeal to you if your window space is limited or if you live in a building where regular room air conditioners are prohibited.*

But our past tests of three large portable air conditioners, each with a claimed cooling capacity of 10,000 Btu/hr., showed that they delivered less relief from the heat than their manufacturers touted. What’s more, these $400 to $500 appliances were pricey, especially compared with the window air conditioners we recently tested. (Use our free calculator to determine what size air conditioner(s) you need.)

The portable units we tested had a single exhaust hose that routed air from inside the room over the air conditioners’ condenser coils and finally to the outside. A typical portable air conditioner comes with a low-profile vent adapter bracket that you place in a double-hung window to allow the hot, humid air to  exhaust (generally no tools are required for this installation).

While portable air conditioners might be convenient, those we tested delivered only about half of their cooling capacity—that means they operated with an energy-efficiency ratio (EER) of about 5 or 6. Compare that with the minimum EER of just under 10 for the window air conditioners we’ve recently test (we tested window models with an EER as high as 12).

Why are portable units are so inefficient? The air they exhaust to the outside comes from inside the room you’re trying to cool (as well as from adjacent spaces). The energy used to cool and dehumidify the air is essentially wasted since it gets sent out the vent hose.

What’s more, this setup means that warm, humid outside air will leak back into the room, and that air must then be cooled and dehumidified. The result: inefficient operation.

Some portable air conditioners have two hoses—one that brings in air from the outside to cool the condenser coils and another to exhaust that air back to the outside. (We haven’t yet tested models with this configuration.) This setup mimics the process of a traditional window air conditioner, so these models should come closer to delivering their stated Btu/hr. ratings.

However, moving the air through these hoses can waste energy, so their efficiency levels are typically lower that those of typical conventional window air conditioners.

*If air conditioners are prohibited in your building be sure you know the reason why. For instance, older buildings with older electrical wiring might ban them for safety reasons.

Across the great divide: Household chores

As part of our annual kitchen-remodeling special section, which will appear in the August 2008 issue, the Consumer Reports National Research Center asked homeowners nationwide about their kitchens. The questions focused mainly on how folks interact with their kitchens: how many small appliances they own, what causes the most clutter, where they eat their meals, and so on. But we also covered gender issues, asking participants about cooking and cleaning in their homes. Women still do the majority of the cooking, but when it comes to postmeal cleanup, 54 percent of men said they usually perform the task.

I was reminded of these findings on June 15, when The New York Times Magazine marked Father’s Day with the coverline “Will Dad Ever Do His Share?” for the issue’s main feature. As a new father, I felt compelled to read the story. So while my wife changed the baby and tidied up our apartment, I dove headlong into the article. (Only kidding. Our daughter was napping and the apartment was clean.)

Drawing on the University of Wisconsin’s National Survey of Families and Households, author Lisa Belkin found some pretty stark disparities in household labor. In homes where both parents have full-time jobs, the wife does 28 hours of housework compared with 16 hours for the husband.

Granted, my wife and I have been parents for only a few months, but I think we’re achieving some parity. I like to cook, so most meal prep falls to me. My wife is crazy for folding and sorting, so she keeps the closets in order. We are still settling into a system for the rest of the work but hope to keep it 50-50—or as close as possible. And based on the results of our latest kitchen poll, we’re not the only ones. To be fair, the Times article also included a few couples who live by absolute equality.

So what do you think? Should equal labor be the law of the household? And if so, how do you achieve it? My wife and I are new to the parenting game and will take all the help you can offer. Send in a note to let us know how things work at your home.—Daniel DiClerico

Pest Patrol: How to get rid of grubs in your yard

If irregularly shaped sections of your lawn are withering away, the problem could be grubs. These small beetle larvae live in the soil and feed on lawn roots.

To determine whether you have a grub problem, cut into your lawn near the edge of a brown area and lift the grass. If it comes up easily, as if you’re rolling up carpet, your yard has grubs. Odds are, you’ll see some of these milky-white, wormlike creatures with brown heads and three pairs of legs curled into a C shape (shown).

The remedy: Apply chemical insecticides with imidacloprid or halofenozide in July or August when grubs are immature. After a couple of days, reseed or replant any damaged areas. (Learn how to plant the perfect grass.)

To kill mature grubs this fall or next spring, combine Heterorhabditis nematodes—sold in pastelike form—with water and apply to the soil according to the package instructions.

Next week’s pest: There’s one other reason to target grubs—they’re a favorite food of moles, whose extensive tunneling can exacerbate the damage grubs do to your lawn. We’ll target ways to control the five species of mole common to the U.S. in an upcoming installment of Pest Patrol.

Essential information: Our updated Complete Lawn & Yard Guide offers how-to advice for planting and pruning and Ratings (available to subscribers) of a wide array of lawn and garden equipment. You’ll also find the best ways to deal with weeds, lawn diseases, and common insects as well as an interactive tour of  major lawn problems.

Grilling season is in full swing

In the market for a new gas grill? Read our latest report on these outdoor cookers as well as our recent First Look on the Perfect Flame 720-03533 gas grill.

This four-burner model is an electronically controlled gas grill with an interesting feature: Its control panel has a digital touchpad—there are no dials or knobs. This Perfect Flame also has another unusual twist in that you need to plug it in for the grill to work.

Essential information: Follow our expert advice to ensure you avoid common grilling mistakes and to keep your grill cooking better, longer as you make our delicious, easy-to-prepare dishes and use the chef-restaurateur Bobby Flay’s recipes.

Q&A: Does it make sense to buy flood insurance?

I live in a coastal area. Should I buy flood insurance?

It doesn't take a Katrina-style coastal disaster to bring flood damage your way. Snowmelt repelled by frozen ground can cause flooding. New development can leave less soil surface to absorb water, making formerly safe homes suddenly vulnerable.

Yet a typical homeowners insurance policy won't cover those perils. You'll need separate flood insurance, which ranges in cost from several hundred to several thousand dollars a year, depending on coverage and risk levels.

"With most insurance, we say if there's any doubt, don't buy it," says Robert Hunter, director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America. "But in this case it's the opposite."

Learn more about flood insurance in this article on ConsumerReports.org and watch our video (right).

Essential information: Our Storm & Emergency Guide offers practical advice  on dealing with weather-related situations.

Be prepared for weather emergencies

Recent fatal tornadoes and extensive flooding in the Midwest—and the start of another Atlantic hurricane season—should serve as a reminder that now is the time to plan for weather-related emergencies.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, AccuWeather, and Colorado State University’s Tropical Meteorology Project are all calling for a near-normal or above-average Atlantic 2008 hurricane season, which runs through November 30.

An average Atlantic hurricane season sees 11 named storms, including six hurricanes. Of the six, two usually reach major—Category 3, 4, or 5—status.

The NOAA’s 2008 outlook is calling for a 60 to 70 percent chance of 12 to 16 named storms, including six to nine hurricanes and two to five major hurricanes.

AccuWeather is predicting 12 named storms in the Atlantic Basin and expects 40 percent of them—up from the usual 25 percent—to cause tropical-storm or hurricane conditions on the U.S. coastline.

The Tropical Meteorology Project at Colorado State University used “hindcasting” (predicting probability by analyzing past activity) to arrive at its June 3 revised estimate of 15 named storms and a 69 percent chance of a major landfall of a Category 3, 4, or 5 hurricane on the U.S. coastline.

A number of meteorological factors have contributed to the higher forecasts for the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season.

“Water temperatures are warmer in the than normal off the mid-Atlantic and northeast coasts of the U.S.; we’re still in the warm phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation,” notes Ken Reeves, AccuWeather’s senior meteorologist and director of Forecasting Operations.

(Reeves also notes that oil production in the Gulf Coast should remain relatively unaffected this year. “This [storm] season doesn’t look as potent as 2005, but there could a week to 10 days of disruption to the energy production facilities of the Gulf Coast,” he says.)

Preparations after the predictions
Predictions aside, “It takes only one storm making landfall in your area to make it an active hurricane season for you,” notes Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist and coauthor of the Tropical Meteorology Project report.

Even if you don’t live along the Atlantic or Gulf coast, you could be affected by extreme weather. An active jet stream has helped spawn unsettled weather—including tornadoes that had killed 59 Americans this year as of June 13—according to Greg Carbin, warning-coordination meteorologist at the NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. The conditions result in flood- and mudslide-inducing heavy rains and wildfire-sparking lightning storms across the country.

In this neighbor dispute, air-purifier maker clears the air

They say good fences make good neighbors, but in one New York City apartment building, an air-filtration system was key to keeping the peace.

The dispute became known last winter after news stories reported that a couple, lawyers who live in an upscale Upper West Side apartment building, had sued a neighbor on their floor because cigarette smoke was wafting from her condominium into the common hallway. The plaintiffs have a young son whose health, they claimed, was being affected by the secondhand smoke.

New Yorkers love a good real-estate dispute, and this one had the makings of a reality-TV classic (the defendant had also been accused of having her dog urinate on a the plaintiffs’ stroller). But the parties settled the matter out of court, thanks in part to the third-party efforts of Aerus, which makes vacuums and air purifiers.

Shortly after the suit was filed, Aerus offered to install an air-filtration system for free in the defendant’s apartment to help capture the smoke from her cigarettes. In a New York Times article, Joseph P. Urso, chief executive of Aerus, said the filtering system was instrumental to reaching a settlement.

We’re currently working on a story on neighborly disputes, and would love to hear your stories about any nuisances you’ve had to deal with, including issues related to topics like noise, fences, trees, boundaries/property lines, safety, and esthetics.

If you have a compelling tale to tell, send us an e-mail with all the details. As always, we’ll respect your privacy—read our privacy policy—and will keep your information confidential. Please indicate if you’re willing to be contacted by a reporter working on this story.—Daniel DiClerico

Essential information: When you’re in the market for an air purifier, read our latest report on these devices and follow our advice to determine whether you need one and to choose the right model for your home. Ratings of room and whole-house models are available to subscribers.

10 Questions for . . . Bruce Irving, Renovation Consultant

In this installment of 10 Questions for . . . , Senior Editor Daniel DiClerico speaks with Bruce Irving, a former TV producer who's now a renovation consultant based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Irving (shown below) shares his thoughts on the remodeling process and talks about ways to save on a major renovation.

How did you become a renovation consultant?
After I left the PBS show This Old House, where I was the producer for 17 years, most people assumed I’d stay in television. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the TV was secondary. It was the projects themselves that turned me on, the process of transforming people’s houses into places they could really love. I saw how well that could go, and I wanted to offer my clients the same kind of experience.

Why is remodeling such a charged experience for so many homeowners?
From a strictly hard-nosed, economic point of view, your home is the most valuable thing you’ll ever own. And when you think about it, to be able to spend money on fixing it up is a great privilege. So it’s doubly tragic when something you should enjoy and take pride in goes horribly awry. On a psychological level, our homes are a reflection of who we are. They’re very near and dear to our hearts, so operating on them is like operating on one of your kids. You want it to turn out really, really well.

How do you differ from a general contractor on projects?
I’m not a builder, nor am I an architect. But for years and years I stood in the midst of builders and architects, as well as materials suppliers, building inspectors, town officials, and of course, homeowners. I got a very good education in the multiple dynamics at work on a renovation project. When I come to a job, like the renovation of the Georgian Revival home outside of Boston (shown above), I’m not carrying the perspective of a builder or an architect. I’m coming at it almost as a reporter, seeing it happen in many different ways. So what people buy when they hire me is a no-agenda opinion. I just call it like I see it, and I think people appreciate the objectivity. That third-person-in-the-room factor becomes very important during the project, as I make sure that everyone—homeowner, architect, builder—gets heard and heard fairly . . . kind of like a marriage counselor!

What’s the most important lesson your objectivity has taught you?
I’ve come to realize that there’s something unpleasantly contentious about many jobs. People are pitted against one another early on, and echoes of that persist throughout the project. It starts with the bidding process, when you have finished drawings that builders compete from, and it so often boils down to “the number.” It sends a sort of dehumanizing message. I’d rather get the drawings 50 percent there and then bring in a few potential builders. You can get to know them better, and they don’t have to spend hours and hours drawing up a bid for a project they may never get. Once you settle on the builder, you can finish drawings with the benefit of their input. Basically, I’m a big fan of team play on a project.

Tip of the Day: Dehumidifiers can keep your home comfortable and prevent mold and mildew

Deploying a dehumidifier in damp areas of your home is an easy way to not only boost your comfort but also to prevent a number of problems, including sickness, mold and mildew growth, and damage to your home and its furnishings.

My own “FOBFU”—find out by fouling up—lesson illustrates why it’s smart to use a dehumidifier. I stored a bunch of camping equipment in my basement, which tended to be very humid. When I went to retrieve a sleeping bag for a camping trip, I found it ruined by the damp environment. I immediately went online to read our recent report on dehumidifiers. It turns out you can get a capable model for about $140 dollars—and perhaps even less if you combine it with a rebate or tax credit by buying an energy-efficient version.

Most dehumidifiers have features such as a built-in timer, which can be useful in some situations, and a hose-attachment point to drain the water, eliminating your having to empty a reservoir. One model even comes with a pump and plastic tubing that sends the collected water out a window or up to a slop sink or other high drain. Other factors to consider when buying a dehumidifier include energy use, noise, performance in brownout conditions, and the ability to automatically restart after a power blackout.

I’ve learned my lesson. My new dehumidifier is now humming away down the basement, keeping my camping gear in good shape.—Gian Trotta

Essential information: Learn how to alleviate other basement-moisture problems. To keep the rest of your home comfortable this summer, read “How to Keep Your Cool” and our latest reports on room air conditioners and ceiling fans.

First Look: Samsung FTQ386LU SteamQuick range

We recently tested the Samsung FTQ386LU SteamQuick range, a 30-inch-wide, stainless-steel electric smoothtop range with a five-element ceramic-glass cooktop, a three-fan convection system, an oven with a claimed capacity of 5.7 cubic feet, and a warming drawer. One other feature you might find appealing is what Samsung calls “SteamQuick,” a light-duty cycle that gets the oven ready for you to wipe clean in 20 minutes.

Find out how this $1,300 range has performed in our tests in this First Look.

Essential information: Look for our full report on ranges in the August 2008 issue of Consumer Reports, and read about and watch our range-vs.-microwave cook-off. And use our Home Improvement Guide interactive to take a room-by-room tour of the top-rated appliances and most cost-effective improvements you can make to your home.

Protect Your Investment: Maintain your air conditioner

Air conditioners can be energy gluttons, but if you keep your air-conditioning in tiptop shape, you can decrease how much energy your cooling system uses this summer and maximize its efficiency. Consider that a dirty, clogged filter reduces airflow, can lead to operational problems like coil freeze-up, and in general makes your system work harder.

Best of all, the work is easy and won’t cause you to break a sweat.

Installation steps
• Vacuum any debris from the indoor and outdoor coils with an upholstery-brush attachment before you install your room air conditioner. Take care not to damage or deform the soft fins.
• Seal the perimeter of the installed unit with new weatherstripping, if needed.

Monthly jobs during cooling season
• Take out the filter and vacuum off debris. Wash it in warm, soapy water. Rinse the filter let it dry completely, then reinstall. If the filter is very dirty or your usage increases significantly, clean the filter more often.
• If dirt and debris have bypassed the filter, you will need to remove the front panel and vacuum dust and debris from the coils.
• Replace a deteriorated filter.

Tips for a central-air unit
• Call in your service contractor if you haven’t already. The pro should change all filters; clean and flush the coils, drain pan, and drainage system; and vacuum the blower compartments. Additionally, the service contractor should ensure that the system is properly charged with refrigerant, that there are no leaks, and that all mechanical components are working properly. Our experts also recommend that you:
• Clean or replace the filters monthly or as needed. Also clean the grilles.
• Clear debris and dirt from the outdoor condenser coils. And keep vegetation at least two feet away from the unit.
• Check if there’s a blockage in the pipe that drains condensed water from the indoor unit.

At the end of the cooling season, follow the expert advice in this Q&A from the Home & Garden blog.— Kimberly Janeway

Essential information: Read our latest report on air conditioners, including Ratings of dozens of models (available to subscribers). Also find out how to use less air conditioning this summer and read our review of ceiling fans. And use our Home Improvement Guide interactive to take a room-by-room tour of the top-rated appliances and most cost-effective improvements you can make to your home.

Sharper Image to shutter its retail stores

Planning to shop at a Sharper Image store for a Father’s Day gift?

News flash: Under new ownership, the retailer has put $50 million worth of inventory at its remaining 86 stores on a closeout sale as it morphs into a company without any brick-and-mortar stores. All merchandise, the San Francisco-based company announced, is selling for 20 to 40 percent off the regular price. On Monday, June 9, the Sharper Image Web site had only a listing of retail locations, a link to send the company an e-mail, and this message: “Sorry to keep you in the dark. But, there’s something big coming. Soon. Stay tuned.”

Even with the price breaks, we don’t favor the Sharper Image Hybrid Germicidal Purifier SI724GRY electrostatic precipitator-type room air cleaner, $500. It rated only a fair in our latest review of room and whole-house air purifiers.

(Part of the financial hardship that led to the company’s February 2008 declaration of Chapter 11 bankruptcy and its May 2008 sale for $49 million grew out of a proposed settlement to a class-action suit filed on behalf of millions of consumers who purchased a Sharper Image Ionic Breeze Silent air purifier after April 1, 1999. Learn more about the legal issues in this January 2008 story from the Home & Garden blog.)

The company’s retail stores will accept all major credit cards, but all sales are final. Forget about discounts based on prior purchases or other discount offers; the company says it won’t accept them. And if you have any Sharper Image gift cards, read about the restrictions the company placed on the gift cards after it filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February and learn about the efforts by competitors to lure away chagrined customers.—Ed Perratore

Essential information: When you’re in the market for an air purifier, use our advice to determine whether you need one and learn how to choose the right model for your home. Ratings of room and whole-house models are available to subscribers. You'll find Father's Day gift ideas on our dads and grads page.

Buzzword: Induction

What it means. You’ll see the term “induction” frequently used on maternity wards—“Things aren’t progressing. I think it’s induction time, Mr. and Mrs. Smith”—and in conjunction with sports halls of fame—“Slugger Mark McGwire’s induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame is not a sure thing because of allegations of steroid use.”

Today, induction is getting play in kitchens, too. It refers to a cooking technology that uses electromagnetism instead of a conventional cooking surface powered by gas or electricity. Only the pans heat up on induction cooktops, not the elements themselves. That feature makes these appliances somewhat safer to operate than gas or electric cooktops.

Why the buzz? To be fair, the induction hubbub is still more of a hum—just a small fraction of the 515,000 electric cooktops sold in the United States in 2007 have at least one induction burner. But based on the high performance we’ve seen from these appliances in our test labs, sales of induction cooktops could heat up.

We started testing induction appliances three years ago, realizing that the technology could well be the (electromagnetic) wave of the future. This spring, our engineers wrapped up their evaluations of the latest models, and once again the technology has earned excellent marks. In fact, the Kenmore (Sears) Elite 4280[0] induction cooktop, $1,800, set a new standard in our high-heat test, boiling six liters of water in just 8 minutes. (Electric and gas cooktops on average need about 12 to 16 minutes.) The Viking Professional VCCU105-4B[SS], $2,200, a hybrid unit with two induction elements and two electric radiant elements, needed 11 minutes to reach a boil, yet like all the induction models we reviewed, it excelled at simmering tomato sauce and melting chocolate—two of our typical cooktop tests.

There are some downsides to induction cooktops, price being a primary one. But as with any emerging technology, costs are trending downward. Five of the nine induction cooktops we tested top $2,000 (the priciest is $3,500), while the GE Profile PHP900DM[BB] induction cooktop costs $1,700. Our Best Buy noninduction electric and gas cooktops cost $580 and $650, respectively. (Read about the Diva 365 (shown), one of the first induction ranges on the market.)

Also note that induction elements work only with magnetic pots and pans, like cast-iron or enameled-steel cookware, so you might need to add some cookware to your collection. Finally, we don't yet have reliability data for these appliances, though if you’re an early adapter, the technology might be worth a look.—Daniel DiClerico

Essential information: Read our buying advice for cooktops, and see our Ratings of electric and gas models (available to subscribers). Look for more details on induction cooktops in our annual kitchen-remodeling special, in the August 2008 issue of Consumer Reports, on sale and online in July. If you own an induction model, tell us what you think about it. Use our Home Improvement Guide interactive to take a room-by-room tour of the top-rated appliances and most cost-effective improvements you can make to your home.

Q&A: Which direction should the blades on my ceiling fan rotate?

My ceiling fan has a switch that reverses the direction the blades rotate. How do I know which direction to run the fan during warm- and cold-weather months?

During warm weather, you should run the fan so that the breeze blows downward. This wind-chill effect—the same cool breeze you feel when you roll down the window in a moving car—will cool you.

Many ceiling-fan manufacturers and various Web sites out there suggest that you run the ceiling fan so that it blows in the opposite direction—upward—when the weather is cold and the heat is on in your home. The idea is that the fan mixes the warm air collecting at the ceiling and moves it back down to the perimeter of room, creating a higher average room temperature and less need for heat. (All of the ceiling fans we recently tested have a switch that you flip to reverse the motion of the blade.)

 

But in our past tests, we found that the draft caused by the fan can have a chilling effect on people in a room—and lead to higher thermostat settings and more energy use. So we recommend that you not bother to reverse the motion of your fan—just leave it off during heating season. Note that there might be some situations where reverse operation would be be beneficial, such as in a room with a wood stove running or a very high vaulted ceiling.

If you’re looking to lower your energy bills during cooling season, use ceiling fans and turn off your air conditioning or turn up the temperature on your A/C a few degrees and let the fan go to work. Remember that ceiling fans cool you and not the space you’re in, so turn them off when you leave the room for an extended time so as to not waste electricity.

When shopping for a ceiling fan, you’ll find old-style models that conjure memories of Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca and versions that are modern twists on an invention that first appeared in the U.S. in the 1860s. In our latest report on ceiling fans, we found that while the pricier fans did have fancier finishes, they didn’t necessarily provide better performance. What’s more, most fans performed similarly in our air-movement tests.

Essential information: See our advice on staying cool this summer without cranking up the A/C, and share your tips for keeping comfortable, in our forums.

Vintage Consumer Reports: Ceiling Fans

With ceiling fans, “you can go from breeze to bluster to benign zephyr,” we wrote in our July 1982 report on summer cooling. “Even the most profligate model,” we noted, “would cost only pennies a day to run.”

Ceiling fans haven’t changed much over the past 26 years. (The top fan shown is from 1982; the bottom one, from our July 2008 story on ceiling fans.) Although they cost slightly more to run today than they did during the early part of the Reagan era, ceiling fans can decrease energy consumption and save you money, but only if you use your air conditioner less or set it to a warmer temperature and rely on the cooling breeze from the fan. (See our latest report on and review of air conditioners, and learn more ways to keep cool this summer.)

“A ceiling fan can conjure up an exotic feeling even in a raised ranch in the suburbs,” we wrote in the 1982 article. If a virtual experience isn’t enough, you can put the money you’ve saved toward a real getaway. Read our Ratings-based reports on airlines and hotels.

Q&A: Should we fix or replace our old water heater?

Our storage-tank water heater is on the fritz. Should we get it fixed or buy a new one?

It depends on the nature of the problem and whether your water heater is still under warranty.

Storage-tank water heaters are fairly long-lived, and most are backed by a 10-year or longer warranty. But when one does give out, it usually happens suddenly; you’ll probably notice water leaking out through a corroded spot in the tank. (Note to self: The typical storage-tank water heater holds 40 gallons of water, and a hole in the tank is really the same as an open spigot—the water will keep flowing until you shut off the supply So consider buying a wet/dry vacuum to deal with this type of mess.)

While you can’t salvage a corroded, leaking tank, a leaky drain valve or temperature/pressure-relief valve or a worn-out electric heating element can be repaired. But replacing the heater might make more sense.

First, get a repair estimate. Then weigh that amount against the $500 to $600 you’ll pay for a new heater and its installation. The $100 per hour you’ll pay a plumber for a repair will quickly add up to the cost of a new water heater. So put your money toward installing a new unit, especially if the warranty on your current model has expired.

Essential information: Learn more water heaters, including details on buying a new model. Read about actor/activist Ed Begley Jr.'s energy-efficiency efforts, and look for our report on tankless water heaters in the October 2008 issue of Consumer Reports.

Brand new on ConsumerReports.org

Check out the latest Appliances and Home & Garden product reports and reviews on ConsumerReports.org:

Room air conditioners, which features Ratings of more than three dozen models and expert advice to lower your utility bills this season.

Ceiling fans, which includes expert buying advice.

Deck stains, which provides Ratings of fully tested 16 opaque, semitransparent, and clear stains.

Deck materials, which includes Ratings of wood, composite, plastic, and aluminum decking products as well as tips for keeping your deck safe.

Tip of the Day: Test your soil

Experts recommend that you test the soil in your lawn every three years to determine whether your yard has gone “sour” or “sweet”—industry parlance, respectively, for lower (heavily acidic) and higher (heavily alkaline) pH levels.

But our tests of six home-use soil-test kits found them returning inaccurate or inconsistent results. Instead of using a home test kit, have your soil analyzed by a lawn service, a private lab, or your local cooperative extension services, whose tests cost as little as $15 apiece. You’ll find state-by-state listings of cooperative extension services on this page from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Read “Test the Soil” (available to subscribers) and watch the video (right) for more details on soil testing and some ways to adjust the pH level of your soil.—Gian Trotta

Essential information: Read "7 Steps to a Better Lawn" for more details on making your yard look its best. You’ll find additional ways to improve your outdoor spaces in our Complete Lawn & Yard Guide.

Protect Your Investment: Buy quality paints

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