About Me

Green Home Improvements .info is written by Charles Faust. Charles has been in the home improvement industry since the early 1990's and has owned his own company for a little over 10 years. This blog was created to show Charles' efforts in making his lifestyle more "Green" and how his product selections for his clients are becoming "Greener".

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Archive for the ‘General Information’ Category

Bio Diesel Soap

Written by green1 on Jun 29th, 2008 | Filed under: General Information, Go Green Baby Steps


Bio Diesel Soap, a third life for cooking oil!

As we all know, used cooking oil is collected by the many users of bio diesel and is used as a “green fuel”.  One of the byproducts of bio diesel is glycerin and it can be used to make soap.  If I felt the need to bore you with the details I could spend 30 minutes reading about the process and then writing about something that I find boring.  Instead, you can read all about making your own soap at http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com/node/535.

Under the assumption that you don’t want to make your own soap but you would like to try some cheap biodiesel soap here’s my new source for “green soap” http://antikanueva.com/antikablog/node/11 .  We met the soap makers at the Winslow Farm Sanctuary Renaissance Faire in Southern MA.  Looking at their show schedule on their website, it looks like they travel all over New England attending fairs in order to sell their soap and jewerly.  They will ship their products to your home if you don’t feel like attending one of the shows.

Biodiesel Soap

OK, now you get my bio diesel soap review!  I’m sure you are about to fall out of your chair waiting for a man’s review on an exciting product such as soap.  Here goes;

1.  A good portion of their soap comes with a basic wax paper type of wrapping and some of it comes with no packaging at all.  Since I hate products that over use packaging, their minimal packaging gets my thumbs up.

2.  Their bio diesel and lye soaps come in a wide variety of colors for the anal shoppers who want their soap to match their bathroom decor.  I could care less about the color however for some reason I always think of white colored soap as the stuff that leaves you with dry skin.

3.  Smell/stink, for some reason people go nuts over soap with perfumes that are added in.  I’m a guy who wants my soap to clean my filthy body so unless a bar of soap smells nasty I could care less if it has any smell at all.  Antika Nueva (the people who make the soap, I almost finished this without telling you their name!) does offer a bunch of scented soaps for the people who feel the need to have clean hands that smell good.

4.  At this point you must be wondering if the soap actually works, since this should be the only thing that matters I am happy to say that it works great!  Once we got home from the faire (odd spelling but that’s how they spell fair when it’s used with  “Renaissance”) remember the fair was at an animal sanctuary so our hands smelled like goats, sheep, horses and the soap removed all of the animal scents.  I also tried the soap after working in my backyard and it did a great job removing all sorts of dirt.

5.  I’ll have to set aside the fact that I am a man for this  one…….it makes my hands feel so soft!  I generally wash my hands with Dawn dish soap to remove the smell of my goats and the dirt from working in my garden.  I’ve always accepted the fact that my hands are dry, heck it’s just part of life?  On occasion I will use some of my kids lotion which ends up leaving my hands oily and causes my fingers to slip off of the keys while I am typing.  With my new soap from Antika Nueva my hands are clean and I don’t have to use lotion or live with dry hands

Bio-Diesel Soap

To sum it up, I give bio diesel soap and Antika Nueva both my thumbs up!  Being able to wash my hands with a green product while supporting normal people and not some big soap company just makes me feel good.  For any of my regular readers who are wondering if Charles is now doing paid reviews on products that are made for women, the answer is no!  I purchased two bars of soap at their full retail ($4.00 +/-) and then mentioned that I would review the product on my blog.  I was then provided with a third bar of soap for no charge.  In a way I’m blogging to keep my body clean?

Green Bio Diesel Soap



Greening Up My Replacement Window Company

Written by green1 on May 25th, 2008 | Filed under: General Information, Replacement Windows

Over the past year or so I’ve looked into several ways of “greening up” my company. Most of our changes so far have been in the office area and now we our focusing on the production side. As I find more ways to make my own company green I will share them so others can learn from our experiences.

Since we install doors and windows, we use a ton of caulking each year. With exterior caulking comes the need for a place to wipe off the extra caulking and rags to clean up any mess that we make. In the past we have tried the heavy duty paper towels and they tend to rip. We have also tried the cheap hand towels and shop rags that they sell at the home centers without any luck. Last year we switched over to recycled tee-shirts which we purchased from The Paint Store.

Recycled Tee Shirts

Another major change for us was switching over to an environmentally safe, low VOC caulking. Each replacement window that we install requires between 1/3-1/2 of a tube of caulking so over the course of a year it adds up. Now our challenge is to find a way to recycle all of our empty caulking tubes. One of the major rewards of switching over our caulking came from a price reduction, our cost went from $4.33 a tube down to $2.98 a tube! Going green and saving green ($$$) is real bonus. Our new caulking vendor is www.windowcomponent.com

Caulking Specs:

  • AAMA Certified
  • Non-Yellowing
  • Environmentally friendly
  • No Solvents, Very Low VOCs
  • Can Be Painted in 2 hours
  • Fast Cure at a wide range of temperatures
  • Aggressive Adhesion to common construction substrates
  • Compatible with SBS Flashing
  • Available in over 60 colors