Everyone has to start somewhere, career-wise. Many times, that means internships for those who are trying to sort out possible paths. For decades, explorers who have come into an internship at an electric cooperative have found a “home away from home” — a family feeling with smaller staffs that allow for both learning opportunities and advancement. Electric co-ops are companies that care about their employees; they offer good pay, stellar benefits, and a friendly environment.
Power Lines
As summer approaches, it’s time to think about ways to make your home more comfortable when the sun beats down. Some of the solutions are low-cost, while others require a bigger investment, but in the end, you can be more comfortable and have lower energy bills.
The first step is to reduce your home’s solar gains — the heat energy it collects from the sun. Since most solar gains originate through your home’s windows, awnings are an effective solution. They can reduce solar heat gain by as much as 65 percent on south-facing windows and 77 percent on west-facing windows.
Last month, I offered tips on how to hire a good contractor, but it’s smart to realize that contractors need to be managed after the hiring is complete.
First, clear communication is critical, because a renovation that includes energy efficiency improvements comes with extra challenges. Identifying a single point of contact will help avoid confusion, conflicts, and cost overruns.
Renovations can be the perfect time to improve your home’s energy efficiency. To make sure you get those energy savings, it’s important to do some planning right from the beginning.
The first step is to educate yourself so you can be in control of your project. Helpful, easy-to-understand energy-efficiency information is available for virtually any area of your home and any renovation project.
If you still have an old dial thermostat controlling the temperature in your home, you might take note of new technology available that lets thermostats do things they never could before. That said, it’s worth asking if these new thermostats can save enough money to justify the extra cost.
There are three main types of thermostats: manual, programmable, or smart.
For most Ohioans, the first sign that something unusual was happening on that night 40 years ago was the shriek of a fierce, unrelenting wind.
In the late evening of Jan. 25, 1978, a low-pressure system from Canada met another low-pressure system from Texas. Such storms approach from opposite directions several times each winter, according to the National Weather Service. Usually they miss each other. This time they collided, causing what has come to be widely known as “the storm of the century.”
