Inflatable Chimney Pillow Stops Drafts (and Santa) The Black & Decker Thermal Leak Detector (TLD100) shows you where there’s room for improvement in your home’s thermal insulation. If your chimney is a cold spot in your house, you’ll probably have felt the draft without needing the TLD f...

Rechargeable Batteries that Don’t Lose Their Charge – LSD cells NiCd rechargeable batteries have been around for decades, preventing tons of toxic battery waste, before the new NiMH (Nickel Metal Hydride) types were designed to cure the old NiCd’s “memory effect”. So far so good but, until...

Solar-Powered Bluetooth Headset – Infinite Standby Time What’s the advantage of Bluetooth headsets anyway? Admittedly, you don’t have a wire dangling around, but on the downside it’s yet another device that you need to charge. And now you have two batteries that can run out in the middle o...

Air Cooler PLUS – The Alternative to an Air Conditioner or Swamp Cooler If you can’t stand the heat but can’t physically install an air conditioner in your home, you have few options left. You can either use a compact, cheap but inefficient fan or the good old evaporative cooler or swamp coole...

Travel Light, Save Space and Replace Your Shaving Cream with Shaving Oil … or The Incredible Shrinking Shaving Foam Can When backpacking, every ounce counts, and – just in case you might want to shave from time to time – that 10 oz shaving foam can is not what you’re looking for. And on over...

USBCell from Moixa – Rechargeables that Plug Into any USB Port We just discussed the Rezap Battery Doctor, which recharges even alkaline batteries – a solution that I favor for most purposes. But it still requires you to take yet another charger with you on your travels, which is not ideal for v...

Make Compost Fast and Without Turning It Over Composting is good for the environment and great for your garden, but it’s not exactly fun. A large compost pile in your garden needs frequent turning to mix the material, it does not smell very nice (mind the neighbors) and it takes a long time to c...

Steam Cookers or Simpler, Cheaper, Less-Bulky Alternatives such as the Sleekstor™ VeggiSteam™? Steam cookers – do we need them? Of course we don’t: Mankind has been cooking vegetables in water for thousands of years. But, honestly, once you’ve tasted broccoli or green beans cooked in a s...

Combined Solar Garden Light and Bug Zapper Maybe you didn’t install accent lights in your garden because you didn’t want to pull wires or you had cold feet about the extra electricity bill? Or maybe you fancy an electric bug zapper on your terrace but you dislike fetching the cable reel each eve...

Charge all your Battery Types with the ReZap Battery Doctor – even Alkaline Batteries Given the overly high price of good alkaline batteries, I switched to rechargeable NiCd and NiMH batteries long ago. They work quite well, but the voltage is 1.2 volts instead of the 1.5 volts that some devices ...

Wireless Motion-Sensing Light Switches Do you often forget to switch off the lights in your garage, basement or laundry room? Did you ever consider installing an energy-saving motion detector to switch the lights on and off automatically, but didn't fancy the effort or want to spend your money ...

Caroma Water & Space-Saving Toilet with Integrated Hand Basin When I first saw this toilet by Caroma, with its integrated hand basin, I was astonished by the simplicity of the idea. Why did it take more than a century to come up with something like this? I still can't decide if I find it brilliant ...

Radiator Booster Increases Heating Efficiency and Speed Compared with “traditional” radiators, convector heaters warm up a room very quickly and don’t send half of the energy into the wall to which they are attached, but often they are built into the floor or they are mobile and work on elect...

Black & Decker Thermal Leak Detector TLD100 – Insulate Your Home Energy-saving has not exactly been a top priority in the past. But now that global warming and rising energy costs are making our priorities change, it's ti me to see where there is room for improvement. Most houses, excep...

No more clogged drain traps with the No Clog T-Trap, Safe-T-Trap, or PermaFlow Sooner or later, every drain trap gets clogged, causing frustration and making many of you waste your time and harm the environment with chemical drain decloggers. Well, they don't all get clogged, there are the No Clog...