Use Your Appliances Efficiently

Cutting back on unnecessary energy is easy and can help keep your hard earned money. Run your dishwasher only when it is full. The same is true for your clothes washer. Using the cold water setting when washing clothes when possible can also help you save as it can reduce your washer's energy by seventy five percent! Before you throw those clean clothes in the dryer, make sure that the lint trap is clean and use the moisture-sensing automatic drying setting if your dryer has one.

Winter's Not Over Yet!

Pipes, gas lines, and electrical cables that enter your house often have gaps around them that have been haphazardly filled with some kind of caulk. But that caulk eventually cracks, peels, and falls off. These gaps let in cold outside air, plus they are ideal entry points for mice and insects. Keep the pests out and your warm air in, seal the gaps with expanding foam.

Do You Know Where Your Emergency Shut Off Is?

Save Yourself a BIG Headache, take a few minutes over the weekend to make sure everybody in the house knows exactly where the main water emergency shut off valve is located. This should be tagged so it's easy to located in an emergency. You could be in BIG trouble if you get a burst pipe that starts spraying everywhere and you’ve got no way to turn it off quickly! Make sure you’re always prepared! Russo Bros.& Co. has waterproof tags if you need them. Please email and we would be happy to send you some.

Prevent Toilet Clogs

While a shelf over the toilet or the top of the tank itself may seem like a handy place to store items such as deodorizers, soaps, ornaments or brushes and combs, they actually increase the risk of clogs. These items can be easily knocked into the bowl and fall down the drain without you noticing until it’s too late. By keeping the area around the bowl clear of items that might fall in and slip down the drain, you decrease the risk of a major clog or damage to your toilet.

Appreciating Your Water

The Earth has somewhere in the neighborhood of 326,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons of water on the planet! (Yes, that's 326 MILLION TRILLION!). Roughly 98% of our water’s in the oceans of the world, and therefore is unusable for drinking because of the salt content. So that leaves only around 2% of the planet’s water as fresh. But out of that 2% of water, 1.6% is locked up in ice caps and glaciers. Another 0.36% is found in very deep, underground sources. That means only about 0.036% of the planet’s total water supply is found in lakes and rivers (which are our main supplies of drinking water). Think about that the next time you pour yourself a tall glass of water!

Stay Warm This Winter

We had some brutally cold days last week and the last thing you want to do is lose heat in your home!

Keeping that in mind, did you know that worn and torn weatherstripping around doors and windows creates drafts and lets in cold air? Seven to 12 percent of a home's heat loss occurs around windows and doors.

Weatherstripping often needs to be replaced every few years because of wear. Replacing it is typically as simple as pulling off the old and tacking on the new. Remember, if you can see daylight under your front door, then you're losing the indoor air you've paid to heat.

It's COLD out there!

It's been brutally cold out there!

The Daily Record recently ran an article where they interviewed a wide variety of experts about the cold and how it effects many different aspects of our lives. Our very own Matt Russo was on hand to discuss cold weather and plumbing:



www.dailyrecord.com/article/20140106/NJNEWS/301060033/Time-chill-again-Morris-County