Is Your Refrigerator Wasting Energy?

A lot of families think of the hulking metal box in the kitchen as "the Amana gallery" or a message center for Post-Its®, but in reality the refrigerator is one of your home's biggest consumers of electricity. The U.S. Department of Energy says that an average 16-cubic foot frost-free refrigerator, a medium-sized model, draws about 725 watts of electricity 24/7. That's about six times the power draw of a flat-screen TV, or seventy-two times the energy consumption of a clock radio. It should be clear that your refrigerator has the potential to be wasting energy -- a lot of energy. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce your fridge's appetite for power.

Plagued by Slow Flush? How to Revive a Sluggish Toilet

Do you have a sluggish toilet? Do you find yourself standing, hand poised on the lever, while the contents make a few leisurely circuits of the bowl before slowing to a halt? Does it take two, three, even four flushes to finish each trip to the porcelain facility? If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions, you may have a sluggish toilet. The good news is that if you're reasonably handy, you may not need to call a plumber to get things working right.

Diagnosing a Slow-Flushing Toilet The key to recognizing a sluggish commode is that the condition usually develops slowly instead of overnight. Even if that's the case, before diving into this project run a simple test. Fill a bucket or large pan with about a gallon of water. Dump the water into the bowl: don't do this gently, just upend the bucket to get the water in as fast as possible. If your toilet still doesn't flush, you probably have a blockage that requires cleaning out the sewer line. If flushing looks normal, your toilet is just sluggish.

How to Calculate the Area of an Irregular Shape

Most of us can remember the arithmetic classes where we learned how to calculate the area of simple polygons like squares and triangles. While some of the things we encounter every day are those simple shapes – a dollar bill or a Dorito® – many have shapes that at first glance would seem to make it impossible to calculate their area.

Some shapes can be broken down into groups of simple shapes, and the areas of all pieces summed to a single number. Consider an L shape – one vertical and one horizontal rectangle – or an H; two vertical and one horizontal rectangle. Even a block A can be broken down to rectangles and triangles – three rectangles and six triangles. The more complex the shape, though, the more difficult it becomes to chop it into those simple polygons.

Fortunately, the mathematicians have developed a formula you can use to calculate the area of a polygon whether it’s irregular or not and independent of the number of sides. To use this formula, however, you must use the X-Y coordinates of all of the vertices. Depending on the size of the area in question, there are a couple of methods for getting those numbers.

How to Adapt Look Shoes to SPD Pedals for Spin Bikes

Most dedicated cyclists are aware that there are two standards for mounting cleats to the soles of cycling shoes – face facts: if you don’t know what “cleats” are, you probably aren’t a dedicated cyclist. All snarkiness aside, the Look® standard attaches with three bolts in an equilateral triangle and the Shimano SPD® (SPD stands for Shimano Pedaling Dynamics) standard attaches with two bolts in a line. Some shoes accept both styles, some accept only one (usually Look).  Cleats from other manufacturers, like Crank Brothers and Time, are compatible with one  standard or the other – as a general rule (but not hard and fast), SPD cleats are used with MTB shoe/pedal combinations and Look cleats are found on road bikes.