If you like a little green in your lawn, consider a combination of low-water hybrid Bermuda sod and artificial turf.

You don’t have to give up your green lawn in your quest to conserve water.

The latest hybrid grasses tolerate extreme heat and constant sunshine with much less watering than you might think. And today’s artificial turf looks so natural that even my friends in the landscaping business say you can’t tell it’s not real grass until you touch it.

For some, a combination of decomposed granite, drought-tolerant ground-covering plants, low-water grass and artificial turf might make a yard that’s functional, attractive and keeps your conscience clear.

Want to hear more? Tune in to the Rosie on the House show on Saturday mornings from 8-11 on KNST. We talk about all kinds of home-improvement projects every week.

‘Til next time, pass yourself a dose of joie de vivre!

Have you noticed that your sprinklers “water” your driveway or patio, even though you set them to spray only the grass and not waste a drop by overspraying onto your hard surfaces? Or maybe your sprinkler has 30-foot heads, but your grassy area is only 25 feet wide, so they spray 10 feet of water on surfaces that don’t need watering.

 The reverse can happen, too: You’ll set your sprinkler to drop water on your 25-foot patch, but most of it is turning brown because only 10 feet of it is getting watered.

The solution: Adjust your sprinkler heads–every month. Sprinkler heads can be knocked out of alignment if playing children bump them, the soil they’re buried in moves or you brush against them with the lawnmower. Like anything with moving parts, sprinkler heads are bound to come out of alignment from time to time.

Tip: Set a few cans around the outer perimeter of the area you intend to water, and place some more a foot or two beyond the reach of the spray. If there’s no water in the cans within range after a sprinkler run, that means your sprinkler isn’t sending water as far out as you want it to. If the cans beyond the perimeter are full, it’s overspraying.

Sprinklers need ongoing maintenance, just like any other equipment. Adjusting yours regularly can prevent them from wasting water–or from skimping on it where it’s really needed.

Need help figuring it out? Here’s a list of my favorite Tucson contractors.    

Tune in to the Rosie on the House show every Saturday from 8 -11 a.m. on KNST. You can call me while I’m on the air and ask questions about any home-improvement project.

‘Till next time, pass yourself a dose of joie de vivre!

My son Romey is my co-host on the Rosie on the House show, and he blogs about home improvement, too.

My son Romey has a passon for home-improvement, and he blogs about it, too.

Check out his latest post about decorative concrete floors. If you have a chance, leave him a comment, and tell him his old dad sent you in his direction.

Romey is my co-host on the Rosie on the House show, which airs live every Saturday on radio station KNST from 8-11 a.m. Call us any Saturday at 888-ROSIE-4-U to say “hey” to Romey and me, or to ask us a question about any of your home-improvement projects.

‘Til next time, pass yourself a dose of joie de vivre!

A fire pit will keep you just as warm as a fireplace, and it could cost you less to install. Photo courtesy of Think Green Irrigation & Landscaping

Don’t scrap your plans for the neighborhood’s best patio. Find lower-cost alternatives for materials and features, and you can still have everything your patio needs. Some tips:

• Settle for shorter seat walls that will require less stone to build.
• Choose concrete pavers instead of natural stone for the patio floor. They’re popular and come in so many styles, patterns and colors that your floor will be just as interesting as a stone one.
• Opt for a pre-fab barbecue or fireplace instead of having one custom built. The pre-fab versions look custom made but are less expensive and take only about two hours to install. Harmony Outdoor Living sells its stone-look fireplaces—a base unit and chimney—in two modular pieces. Chicago Brick Oven has a fully finished, two-piece oven kit with a stone exterior that looks like custom-built masonry.
• Skip the built-in barbecue and use a store-bought model instead. You have hundreds of choices, from a traditional, charcoal-fired Weber Kettle for $90 to a top-of-the-line Viking gas grill with an infrared burner and double side burners for $4,200. Even if you scale back the number of cabinets, drawers and cooking options, you can buy a pretty nice portable model that fits your budget.
• Go with a gas fireplace instead of a built-in, wood-burning model to save money and get around no-burn restrictions on bad-air days. Tip: Hire a professional to hook your gas line up to your outdoor fireplace.
• Consider a fire pit instead of a fireplace. The in-ground pits use less material so the price tag is a little easier to take. (Thanks to Think Green Irrigatation & Landscaping for the photo.)

You’ll hear more about patios, landscaping and lawns on the Rosie on the House show every Saturday in March. Tune in to KNST from 8-11 a.m.

‘Til next time, pass yourself a dose of joie de vivre!

Cambridge Overlay Pavers by Belgard are just 1.5 inches thick, so you can lay them right over top of your old patio floor. Photo courtesy of Superlite Block

If your patio floor is scratched, cracked, stained and has just seen better days, you don’t necessarily have to replace it.

Consider covering up your old patio floor. It’ll be easier than you think if you use “overlay pavers,” which save you the trouble of ripping out your old floor.

Belgard has a new concrete paver that’s  just 1.5-inch thick—about an inch thinner than regular pavers. Like regular pavers, overlay pavers lie in an inch of sand applied directly over top of your old concrete, flagstone or other patio floor, and cost about $2 per square foot.

Give it a try, and let me know how it turned out (you can find help here). You can reach me any Saturday morning on radio station KNST, where I broadcast the Rosie on the House show live from 8-11 a.m. The call-in number is 888-ROSIE-4-U.

‘Til next time, pass yourself a dose of joie de vivre!

If you're running your pool pump 24 hours a day, dial it back--by two-thirds. Eight to 10 hours is plenty in summer; five hours is good in winter.

Most people run their pool pumps way longer than they need to for sparkling clean water. In fact, it’s never necessary to run your pump 24 hours a day.

Most manufacturers recommend running it between eight and 10 hours a day in the summer—and about half that in the winter.

Here’s a tip: Run your pump for 10 hours a day for a week or so and notice how clear and clean the water looks. Then, dial it back to nine hours, and notice if there’s any change in the appearance of the water.

If there’s not, shorten the run time to eight hours. After a few days, if the water still looks good, decrease the run time by half an hour every couple of days until you can see a difference.

Then you’ll know how long you should run your pump.

Also, you don’t have to run the pump during daylight hours. If you sign up for your utility’s “time of use” rate and run your pump late at night, you could see a substantial savings on your electric bill.

Don’t miss the Rosie on the House show on KNST on Saturday from 8-11 a.m. We’ll be talking about pools! Call 888-ROSIE-4-U during the show to ask a question.

’Til next time, pass yourself a dose of joie de vivre!

Put on an underwater light show with no moving parts with LEDs--and you may never have to change a bulb. Photo courtesy of Pentair Water Pool and Spa

Traditional underwater pool lights can use 400 or 500 watts of electricity. An energy-saving alternative is the LED (light-emitting diode), which uses up to 75 percent less energy than incandescent underwater lights. LEDs last for years and come in multiple colors as well as white.

LEDs cost quite a bit more to buy than standard light bulbs, but they last so long you might never need to replace them, and they use so little electricity that you’re likely to see a difference on your electric bill.

A bonus: You can program your LEDs to put on a multi-color light show without using a color wheel or any moving parts.

We’ll be talkin’ pools on this Saturday’s Rosie on the House show from 8-11 a.m. on KNST. Call us at 888-ROSIE-4-U during the show.

’Til next time, pass yourself a dose of joie de vivre!

Keep your pool sparkling clean--for about $300 less a year. Replace your single-speed pool pump with a variable-speed model. Photo courtesy of Pentair Water Pool and Spa

Your pool pump uses more electricity than any other appliance in your house except your air conditioner. Here’s why: Most pools are equipped with pumps that are too big and use way more energy than you need to keep the water sparkling clean.

The culprit: the single-speed pump. A small one is probably fine if all you want to do is circulate the water in the pool. But it might not have enough speed to run your pool cleaner, waterfall or other electrical extras that need an occasional, bigger blast of energy.

If that’s the case, your pool service probably installed a pump that’s large enough to handle the extras. But if it’s only got one speed, it’s running full-blast even when your pool cleaner and waterfall aren’t operating—with no option to dial back to a lower level of energy when all you need is to turn the water over, which is most of the time.

That’s a huge waste of energy, and it’s costing you about 80 percent more in electric bills than you should be paying.

Don’t let the high cost of running your pool outpace its value as your family’s go-to place for fun, relaxation and keeping cool this summer. Replace your single-speed pool pump with a variable-speed unit. New, high-performance models from manufacturers like Pentair Water Pool and Spa and Hayward Pool Products let you run them on low most of the time and crank them up bit by bit only when you need more power to run your accessories.

The manufacturers claim the pumps can cut energy use by up to 90 percent compared with single-speed pumps.

A variable-speed pump costs more than twice as much as a single-speed model, but you’ll recoup the extra cost in lower electric bills within two years. Plus, the pumps are quieter and last longer than older pumps.

As an alternative, two-speed pumps cost less than variable-speed models. And although they’re not as efficient as variable-speed pumps, they use far less energy than the single-speed unit that’s probably in your pool now.

Tune in to the Rosie on the House show on KNST on Saturday to hear more about how you can make your pool more energy efficient.

’Til next time, pass yourself a dose of joie de vivre!

If the baseboard molding, hardware and paint colors in every room of your house complement each other, your house will flow.

When friends visit your home, do they know at a glance what your style is?

Even at first glance, the “theme” of a house should be clear. Is it ultra-modern? Traditional? Southwestern? Country? You don’t have to go overboard with decorations or color; in fact, subtle architectural touches can tell your home’s story—without drawing attention to anything to in particular.

Simple consistency will help your house “flow” from room to room. Especially for rooms that are visible from other rooms, details like complementary paint colors and matching baseboards will tell the eye that one room is part of the same cohesive building as the next.

Even when you remodel, stay true to your home’s architecture. If you start going in too many different directions, your home will look confused.

Make these items match from room to room—in color, finish or shape—to help each one flow into the next:

• Hardware like door knobs, cabinet handles, towel racks and faucets.
• Bedroom, closet and other interior doors.
• Floors. They don’t all have to be the same material, but they should complement each other in texture and hue.
• Wall texture. If the walls in some rooms are textured and the others are smooth, it might appear that you just haven’t gotten around to changing some of them.
• Ceiling height. Raise the ceilings in rooms with low overhead space so all rooms have uniform ceiling heights. The exception, of course, is a room with a cathedral ceiling.
• Windows. When you start replacing your windows, buy models that match. If you can’t afford to replace all of your windows at once, change one side of the house at a time, so all windows in one glance will match.

I’ve got tons of home-improvement tips for you. Tune in to the Rosie on the House show every Saturday from 8-11 a.m. on KNST. And check out my encyclopedia of answers to frequently asked home-improvement questions at www.RosieOnTheHouse.com.

’Til next time, pass yourself a dose of joie de vivre!

Even if your house was built in the 1970s, 80s or earlier and has lots of small, separate and even secluded rooms, you can open it up so it’s as roomy and welcome as a newer home with a great room.

Don't be afraid to knock a wall down to make a room bigger. Just make sure it's a non-load-bearing wall.

The formal, separate dining room was more in style back a few years ago, and the kitchen was a room that stayed hidden from company.

Newer homes with great rooms featrue a combination of an eat-in kitchen and roomy family room, where friends and family can gather and the cook is part of the conversation because there’s no wall separating the kitchen from the room where company gathers.

You can convert your separate kitchen/living room/dining room to a great room by removing walls that are non-load-bearing—that is, walls that aren’t holding your ceiling up.

Lots of people think they can’t do this, especially if there’s a closet on the wall you want to remove. In fact, as long as the wall is non-load-bearing, you can remove it—along with the closet.

Visualize that space without the closet—and without the wall. Then contact a general contractor or an architect to help you come up with a plan for opening up the space that will keep your load-bearing walls intact and remove the ones you really don’t need.

Tune in to the Rosie on the House show every Saturday from 8-11 a.m. on KNST for tips and answers to all of your home-improvement questions.

’Til next time, pass yourself a does of joie de vivre!