Paul Duffau

With the cold weather and low inside humidity at my house, my kids and wife have been having a problem with dry skin. If you have sensitive skin like my duaghters do and need to know what goes into your laundry detergent, now you can make your own. Costs are low and the process takes no more than 15 minutes.

Obligatory Cautions:

Don't mix any of the ingredients with ammonia derivatives (surfactants) or chlorine. Always use appropriate eye protection, a mask, and gloves if necessary. In addition, do not eat the detergent, poke it in your eye, or stick it up your nose. Any substance can be harmful if handled inappropriately.

Most homemade detergent recipes recommend the use of washing soda (available in grocery stores or from pool cleaning companies), but baking soda will work in a pinch. If you wish to substitute your favorite bar soap for Fels-Naptha laundry soap, use a full bar instead of 1/3 bar.

This first recipe is one I have made and enjoy. $3.50 buys enough ingredients to make 2 full batches. Use 1/2 cup to cup per load depending on level of dirtiness. Each batch yields 16 cups.

Ingredients:

1 gallon hot water

1/2 bar finely grated Fels-Naptha soap

1 cup baking soda

Grate soap into a saucepan and add enough hot water to cover it. Stir frequently on medium low heat until all the soap is melted. Meanwhile, heat 1 gallon of water in a larger pot (do not boil). Add melted soap and mix thoroughly. Finally, add the baking soda and stir it in well. Allow mixture to cool before pouring into storage container. Keep container sealed and stir contents before each use.

For extra cleaning power, you can follow the directions above using the following ingredients:

1 gallon water

1/3 bar finely grated Fels-Naptha soap

1/2 cup washing soda

1/2 cup Borax

If you prefer a dry detergent, you can use this recipe:

Powdered Laundry Detergent

2 cups finely grated Fels-Naptha soap

1 cup Washing Soda

1 cup Borax

Mix these ingredients well and store in an airtight plastic container away from heat. Use 1-2 tablespoons per full load.

Additional Tips:

1. All these detergents work fine in cold water, so save the hot cycle for soiled cloth diapers and other materials that need to be sterilized.

2. Contrary to what your mother taught you, neither your clothes washer nor the earth itself will cease to spin if you do not separate light and dark clothing. Once excess dye has been removed from dark cotton clothing by the first few washings, it is safe to mix colors. However, I still tell the kids to separate the reds. There's only so many pair of pink underwear I want in the house and none of them should be mine.

3. Try using vinegar in a Downy ball or add 1/4 cup during the rinse cycle as a natural fabric softener (just don't use vinegar and bleach in the same load).

4. You can fill a square of flannel with the fragrant herb of your choice (lavender works well) and sew it shut. Pop this in the dryer to add your favorite scent.

Whenever I think of company towns, I think of the Jimmy Stewart classic "It's a Wonderful Life", of Bedford Falls and the evil Mr. Potter. That is the usual image - big bad company taking advantage of the little worker. And there were far too many instances where this actually occurred.

But I also think of a town like Moscow ID. The largest employer is the University of Idaho (with the quite excellent Gritman Medical Center and the local school district as the next largest). When the University facing cutbacks, the whole town is substantially impacted. In a diverse economy, a downturn in one or even several segments can be offset with activity in others. That is not the case currently in Moscow.

The city has recognized this and is focusing on the necessity of widening the employment base. They have recently announced the hiring of Travis Cary as its new economic development specialist. He'll also be working with affordable housing issues and regional planning.

Best of luck to Mr. Cary and to Moscow.

One of the oddities of this region is that you can have a 10-15 degree temperature swing just by driving from Moscow, ID to Lewiston, ID. They are, quite literally, different micro-climates.

For those that think that the difference in temperature is important, try running in it. I'll be heading out the door in the next hour or so. The weather just outside my door is 26 degrees - cold by our standards.

Moscow is 10 degrees.

The difference for runners or any outdoor athlete is tremendous. Not only can I breathe better down here but I don't have to wear nearly as many layers. Add in the diminished wind (Moscow is frequently blustery) and this is just a more hospitable environment. And no snow on the ground means that I don't have to worry about falling. One of my friends in Moscow slipped on ice several weeks back - ended up with a concussion that took days to clear.

If I want to play in the snow (and I often do), I like driving to it rather than living in it.

Heating can be one of the greatest recurring costs associated with owning a home. The rising cost of fuel doesn't just hit you hard at the gas pumps - it can be a difficult pill to swallow when you get that monthly oil or natural gas bill too. And despite the current downturn in fuel costs, those expenses will rise again. This double whammy has caused many people to think outside of the box and look at options outside of traditional climate control systems.

Some people are a little wary of green heating and cooling systems because they worry that they might have to radically renovate their home in order to accommodate modern apparatus. This is especially in older homes that were built during an era where the fine point of technology was heat emanating from a central source such as a fireplace or woodstove. Fortunately, there are solutions for this type of application.

Ductless, mini-split heat pumps are devices which are sort of like air conditioners, except they also have the ability to move hot air into your home as well as cool, depending on your needs. Instead of sitting in your window like a normal air conditioning unit, this type of heat pump can be installed in place of a stove or a radiator in any room in your house. They can even be mounted flush with the wall or suspended from the ceiling, if that's the kind of look you are going for. Best of all from a renovation standpoint, these systems do not require any ductwork.

Mini-split heat pumps are small and it is usually possible to connect more than one to the exterior heat exchanger, meaning you can heat or cool multiple rooms with the same system. There's no need for any kind of ducting or opening up the walls for anything more than a 3 inch piece of tubing. Each interior unit is individually controlled so in effect you get zoned climate control for your home.

The unit on the outside of your home is a compressor and a condenser. The way it works is by removing hot air from a home in the summer via the evaporation coolant in the indoor unit's coils. This pulls heat out of the air and pumps it to the coils outside your home, where it is released harmlessly into the air. In colder weather, the process is reversed, and the heat that is sucked out of the exterior air is then sent into the home where it gets distributed into each room by the coils of the mini-split unit.

Mini-split ductless heat pumps use simple technology to consume up to 3 times less energy than a standard heating system. If you live in an area with hot summers but chilly winters such as Lewiston ID, then this type of heating system could be a good choice for you - particularly if you want to preserve the look of your home and your sanity by not having to spend months in the dusty world of renovating and contractors.

In addition to being a home inspector, I am also an infrared thermographer - the two don't always meet in the middle - and I have been keeping busy checking on wet basements for the last two weeks.

As many of you know, the Pacific Northwest has been getting hammered by snow. That has caused all sorts of hazards on the roads and roof collapses and several deaths - one when the snow on a roof slide off and buried an elderly lady on her sidewalk.

But what you may not know is that we also had a brief warming trend, leading to flooding in ours waterways and streets. Much of this water made it into homes as well with the usual results in wall and flooring damage, potential health hazards and additional expenses right when homeowners can least afford them.

After doing several houses, a theme emerged. Now I'm going to digress for a second: the Inland Northwest is much drier than the coastal regions. so much so, that when I did insurance inspections for Allstate, I actually received enormous criticism for writing up homes for a lack of gutters.

It seems that in dry regions, people consider gutters optional especially on older homes.

It is these same houses that are having major flooding issues. Normally there are many homes in Moscow and Pullman that have dampness in the basement. For years, I've encouraged homeowners to get a good drainage system installed.

Sometimes, they listen.

The problem is simple. The roof acts as a huge rain collector of several thousand square feet. When it leaves the edge of the roof, it consolidates into a ribbon several inches wide. In other words, an inch of rain on the roof could resemble a foot (or more) of rain flooding the foundational area of the home.

So when I have clients question the value of gutters (and keeping them clean - see Steven L Smith's post here), I take them through the process until they understand.

It's not a matter of how much rain hits our region; it's what happens when it does.