Archive for December, 2009

Energy efficient home tips

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 10:00 pm  
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Though it is best to use the services of a professional and follow due process starting from a home energy audit to make your home energy efficient you can take up simple modifications that will improve the energy efficiency of your home.

As you read further you will realize that a lot of this is simple and obvious, it is just that we never get round to actually doing it. Therefore if after reading this you feel a tip is a good one do try and implement it if it is feasible to do so. You can then enjoy living in your more energy efficient home.

You can check if your exterior doors, including the garage door are insulated well enough. With higher energy costs better level of insulation is now available because the extra cost is now justified. You now get insulated fiber glass doors that look like wooden ones but are much better at insulating your house.

You should also check and make sure air is not leaking from gaps between the door and the door frame. You can correct any flaw you find with the help of vinyl or rubber gaskets. For the bottom of the door you can use a sweep.

Similarly you should check if there are any leaks from the windows. Once you have identified a leak you can look to plug it. You can plug leaks at the bottom of the door or a window with a simple tube filled with sand. Or you can come up with other more decorative ideas.

If you are using a water heater remember a tankless water heater is better for conserving energy. This is because it doesn’t store hot water so there is possibility of loss of heat as the hot water cools down. All the hot water is utilized immediately.

Implementing the above may cost you some money but the savings will more than make up for it. Your energy efficient home will give you great savings for the rest of your life. It will not only save you money it will also help you lead a more sustainable lifestyle. You can know more at www.advancedhomeenergy.com.


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Getting a Patent for a New Hot Water System – get link rapidshare

Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 7:10 pm  
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I filed for a new patent a few days ago. The patent is for an improved hot water delivery system for residential and commercial buildings. The new hot water delivery system is capable of providing faster than normal hot water delivery to any fixture in a home or building, and only to that fixture where the hot water is needed.

The basic idea is to place a pump at the water heater which when running will create a pressure difference between the hot and cold water lines with the hot water lines having the larger pressure.

At each fixture a cross-over valve connects the hot and cold water lines. The valve has a controller which has a temperature sensor in contact with the water in the valve. Each valve controller also has a communications get link rapidshare with the pump.

When you want hot water at any particular fixture you activate the valve by pressing a button that is either hard wired to the valve or uses a radio frequency transmitter to activate the valve. The valves can get their power from either the house current or batteries. Batteries would be great for retro-fit installations. We estimate the battery life to be a minimum of two years using four AA cells per valve.

When you press the button activating the valve, it checks the temperature of the water at the fixture, and if the water is not already hot, the valve controller sends a signal to the pump to begin pumping. The valve controller also at the same time opens the valve between the hot and cold water lines. Thus hot water begins flowing from the water heater with the cooled off hot water in the hot water piping being sent back towards the water heater through the cold water line which hooks to the inlet of the water heater somewhere.

So basically that is the new invention. Let’s examine the steps I’ve taken for protection so far.

After my partner and I decided we had a good idea for a new product we knew we needed to get patent protection. My partner found a patent attorney through a relative, a lawyer working for a very large and expensive firm. But what the heck, hopefully we would be able to obtain a good solid patent that could be enforced in the market place.

Foreign patent protection is complex and expensive. Very expensive. We decided to stick to just he US and Canada. Canada adds about $1,500 to the cost of filing.

Our patent lawyer explained to us that the least expensive way to get some form of patent protection on our new idea was to do what she called a “document dump”. We gave her documents that explained the invention in detail, and she did the “document dump” which serves as proof in a court of law of when we first thought of the idea. Of course we could have thought of it 10 years before that, but this is absolute proof that you had thought of if by at least the day of the dump.

The reason we went with that was we had no money to pursue a patent, and this was the least expensive way to obtain some protection.

The year expired a couple of weeks ago, so we went ahead an filed a provisional patent which provides us with a filing date and the ability to make further patentable improvements if we come up with some while we finish development of the product. The only downside is the patent still expires for all protection even if we come up with new patentable features later on.

Now that the patent is filed I can discuss the new invention online without risking screwing up my patent rights.


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