If you have an above ground pool in your backyard, you have a choice of two different kinds of filter to keep the water clean as it goes through the pump. Some systems use a sand filter; others use a filter made of diatomaceous earth. Now with both kinds of filter, backwashing is a proper DIY option. Depending on the kind of filter you use, you'll have to perform different steps to get the job done.
Let's start with the diatomaceous earth filter though. To start with, turn the filter off, and find the switch on the filter somewhere that lets you change the filter to backwash mode. You should be ready to switch the pump back on now once that's done. When water starts running out of the pump now, depending on how long it's been since your last time cleaning the filter, the water should be somewhat dirty. When you leave it running for long enough, the water coming out of the pump begins to clear up. That indicates to you that your pump is now clean and ready for service again.
All you need to do then is to turn your pump off, and set the dial back to the way it was. You'll need to check the pressure gauge to see that everything looks okay. And then you should be ready to fill the filter back up with the diatomaceous earth. The amount you need of course will depend on how large a filter you have. You'll need to check with the owner's manual to your filter, before you scoop diatomaceous earth into it. Make sure that it fills in evenly, and close everything back up. You're done now with a job well done.
If your above ground pool has a sand filter, backwashing it follows somewhat the same kinds of steps. The pressure gauge on the sand filter usually shows you when the filter needs to be cleaned. If the pressure gauge shows higher pressure than normal, or if the water flow indicator is up to a third lower than normal, these are your signs that your filter is ready for a good cleaning. All you need to do is to turn off the pump, reverse the valve setting for a thorough backwash, open a different valve in some models for water to flow in the other direction, and turn it on. Once everything is rinsed clean, you shut it down, turn off all the valves and you are done with it.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Travel Tips - the Top 5 Travel Scams
Here we are in the middle of the summer holiday travel rush season - a time when everyone is understandably desperate for openings on crowded flights and in booked-up hotels for wonderful holiday destinations all over. In their anxiety trying to snag the last ticket and that at a bargain, people understandably dispense with a little bit of their regular sense of caution . When people are in a rush for something and feel entitled to a little lost caution, you can be sure that there will be scam artists waiting to take advantage of the situation. Here are some travel tips on the kinds of scams that operates around the holiday travel season. You see, you aren't the only one around this hopes for a holiday bargain - its bargain season for the crooks too.
1. You receive an e-mail or regular mail flyer that promotes a special travel deal. The sender claims to be a major travel agency, and offers you a special way to snag a special deal. They ask you to become a kind of home-based travel agent for them; they offer to take care of all the messy details at the backend. For a modest thousand-dollar fee, they'll train you in the art of being a travel agent, and give you your travel agent ID card. Once you have that card, you'll find yourself eligible for any number of the special deals that are open only to travel agents. Now this is a scam; the ID card they gave you is a complete scam too. And every hotel or airline you might approach knowsall about them. And if it were a legitimate ID card, you would still not have any better a time with your reservations.
2. How about the one where some person advertises on Craigslist and claims to have a timeshare somewhere that he doesn't want anymore. He'll try to charge you a hefty sum for it. They'll take your money, and you'll never see your timeshare. Never accept a timeshare sale where you have to actually pay anything more than a couple of dollars. It's always enough if you just take over their timeshare commitment and relieve them of the contract they are stucl in that requires them to keep paying the company.
3. People try to sell you insurance to cover your losses should you ever need to cancel a trip you had reservations for. It sounds pretty good; except that it is funny insurance, and you'll never see any money. Of course there are real licensed insurance deals for this kind of thing; go to a proper insurance website; or try InsureMyTrip.com to check for travel tips around for the best travel insurance companies.
4. There are travel services that operate around that don't accept credit cards; they only accept direct funds transfers. They usually offer you travel deals that are too good to be true; mostly because they are. Who in this day and age would buy a ticket that offered them no proof for what they spent? They wouldn't have any proof of payment to claim as a deduction on their IRS forms. The bottom line is, asw any article on travel tips avoid scams will tell you, never deal with a merchant who will not accept credit cards.
5. Here's something you won't read about it in most articles on travel tips - it's the new future travel timeshare-like system. They ask you to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a permanent spot on their lists for free travel and stay around the world to the end of time. People go and sign right up, and then wait forever for travel arrangements that never occur. Why would anyone believe this? Those people have nothing. Stay away from future travel clubs like this; unless you actually know someone who knows by experience .
Find more articles by Zachary K. Stenger here.
1. You receive an e-mail or regular mail flyer that promotes a special travel deal. The sender claims to be a major travel agency, and offers you a special way to snag a special deal. They ask you to become a kind of home-based travel agent for them; they offer to take care of all the messy details at the backend. For a modest thousand-dollar fee, they'll train you in the art of being a travel agent, and give you your travel agent ID card. Once you have that card, you'll find yourself eligible for any number of the special deals that are open only to travel agents. Now this is a scam; the ID card they gave you is a complete scam too. And every hotel or airline you might approach knowsall about them. And if it were a legitimate ID card, you would still not have any better a time with your reservations.
2. How about the one where some person advertises on Craigslist and claims to have a timeshare somewhere that he doesn't want anymore. He'll try to charge you a hefty sum for it. They'll take your money, and you'll never see your timeshare. Never accept a timeshare sale where you have to actually pay anything more than a couple of dollars. It's always enough if you just take over their timeshare commitment and relieve them of the contract they are stucl in that requires them to keep paying the company.
3. People try to sell you insurance to cover your losses should you ever need to cancel a trip you had reservations for. It sounds pretty good; except that it is funny insurance, and you'll never see any money. Of course there are real licensed insurance deals for this kind of thing; go to a proper insurance website; or try InsureMyTrip.com to check for travel tips around for the best travel insurance companies.
4. There are travel services that operate around that don't accept credit cards; they only accept direct funds transfers. They usually offer you travel deals that are too good to be true; mostly because they are. Who in this day and age would buy a ticket that offered them no proof for what they spent? They wouldn't have any proof of payment to claim as a deduction on their IRS forms. The bottom line is, asw any article on travel tips avoid scams will tell you, never deal with a merchant who will not accept credit cards.
5. Here's something you won't read about it in most articles on travel tips - it's the new future travel timeshare-like system. They ask you to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a permanent spot on their lists for free travel and stay around the world to the end of time. People go and sign right up, and then wait forever for travel arrangements that never occur. Why would anyone believe this? Those people have nothing. Stay away from future travel clubs like this; unless you actually know someone who knows by experience .
Find more articles by Zachary K. Stenger here.
What is Identity Theft and how do you know how Safe you Are?
If you have been reading the technology columns lately and you wonder about what is identity theft , it's possible your wandering mind might at some point wonder if you could already be a victim. There is a website that helps you find out if you are: MyIDScore. This online tool has been around for about a year now. Once you get to the website, you just fill in your personal information - name, date of birth, address and phone number, and your Social Security information. The site then attempts to place you and asks you a number of questions about who you are; it goes through every digitized financial transaction record it has and finds out if anyone else appears to be using your personal information. This technology has been in use for a while now, and it helps banks find out how far to believe the personal information that clients bring in when they apply for a new credit card.
MyIDScore calculates your ID security by using the identity database that belongs to ID Analytics. The database holds millions of pieces of personal identity data - people's names, their contact information, their Social Security numbers - information they glean from change of address forms and other sources. You'll know that there's been fraud done, if it finds it there has been an application made for a loan or credit card, and the address listed is yours. Almost all people get the safe low score of around 300. Anyone who gets a higher score than that, will be asked to get in touch with a nonprofit organization called the Identity Theft Resource Center for a free investigation. This could be a lot of help if this is the first time you're venturing in this direction wondering what is identity theft and how it can affect you. But for anything more heavy-duty than that, there are more established ways of checking. You could check your credit report from time to time, for instance.
Of course being able to check your identity score on demand can possibly turn you a bit complacent, and have you lower your guard, which isn't a good thing. But are other ways too in which such an identity theft notification service may be less than useful. For instance, MyIDScore isn't as comprehensive a search as it should be. It doesn't look at all the credit card issuers or pay any particular attention to direct deposit account information. And medical identity theft doesn't show up either. There have been a few cases where people have had MyIDScore give them a free pass, and still discovered that they've had instances of what is identity theft show up. Nothing is perfect though; even credit reports from the major credit bureaus are well known to go out with missing details. What you have here still is a very useful tool; ite gives you a free snapshot of how much you have to worry about.
Click for more articles by Zachary K Stenger.
MyIDScore calculates your ID security by using the identity database that belongs to ID Analytics. The database holds millions of pieces of personal identity data - people's names, their contact information, their Social Security numbers - information they glean from change of address forms and other sources. You'll know that there's been fraud done, if it finds it there has been an application made for a loan or credit card, and the address listed is yours. Almost all people get the safe low score of around 300. Anyone who gets a higher score than that, will be asked to get in touch with a nonprofit organization called the Identity Theft Resource Center for a free investigation. This could be a lot of help if this is the first time you're venturing in this direction wondering what is identity theft and how it can affect you. But for anything more heavy-duty than that, there are more established ways of checking. You could check your credit report from time to time, for instance.
Of course being able to check your identity score on demand can possibly turn you a bit complacent, and have you lower your guard, which isn't a good thing. But are other ways too in which such an identity theft notification service may be less than useful. For instance, MyIDScore isn't as comprehensive a search as it should be. It doesn't look at all the credit card issuers or pay any particular attention to direct deposit account information. And medical identity theft doesn't show up either. There have been a few cases where people have had MyIDScore give them a free pass, and still discovered that they've had instances of what is identity theft show up. Nothing is perfect though; even credit reports from the major credit bureaus are well known to go out with missing details. What you have here still is a very useful tool; ite gives you a free snapshot of how much you have to worry about.
Click for more articles by Zachary K Stenger.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Taking a Consumer Complaint to Small Claims Court, and Winning
When the nice new major brand flatscreen TV you buy goes kaput in three months and they endlessly try without success to fix it, when your cable service seems to dip into your credit card for no reason and won't answer your calls, when the airline you bought a ticket on kicks you off the flight because they overbooked and theyrefuse to get you an alternative flight for another 16 hours, how is it that you react? Do you rush and tell all your friends about how terrible the company is and then make sure you never give them your business again? Or do you do more? There are a few among us who have the patience and the spirit to launch a consumer complaint and to take it to small claims court.
That's what happened to my friend Ruth who took Chevrolet to small claims court because they weren't fixing her old truck properly. Certainly she was mad and wanted to see a little justice done; but she was also unhappy about how hard it was for her to get to work every day and what she was losing in real money to repair the car every time it malfunctioned. Her consumer complaint actually won; they offered her a refurbished transmission and only charged her $1400 - a third of what they would charge otherwise. She was ecstatic that she had stuck it to corporate America, and made them see that it wasn't okay when they were careless with their customers.
For the ordinary person who doesn't have contacts and who isn't a big shot, small claims court is an inexpensive last resort when every attempt at a reasonable approach has failed. To people like my friend who have been through the process, the experience makes them feel empowered. The costs can be really low, the forms are simple, and there are almost no court delays or unnecessary adjournments. If you have been long been ignored by the major corporation, to have your consumer complaint run through the legal process feel like a wonderful salve.
You would think that with the way indignities are handed to you nonstop dealing with large corporations, small claims courts would be choked up and made nearly useless; but that isn't really true. If anything, the process that a consumer complaint passes through appears tthese days to have been made even smoother than before. You can bring $15,000 claims to small claims court. There are all kinds of easy-to-read help guides on the Internet on how to go about mounting a consumer complaint, and they are really flexible on what kind of cases they will hear - even cases against spammers and telemarketers, recently.
Not that consumer complaints are easy to deal with. To be successful, you need to free up hours and days of your life to look into the law, collect proof, find witnesses and practice how best to mount your defense. The way you mount your defense often comes to matter more than the technical merits of the case too. The judge has a lot more latitude in interpreting the law in small claims courts than in real courts. If you do your job well the day you get heard, you could actually win officially and extract your damages; otherwise things could go in any one of several ways - you could go along with the company and settle in private so that the company won't see its reputation sullied in the press; or your opponents could just fail to show up and you could win by default.
Since it is a good deal of trouble dealing with consumer complaints, no one must bring one on willy-nilly. You need to make sure that you have a case, that you can prove everything you charge, that you can actually place the blame squarely on someone, and that you have tried every other way possible. If you're interested in bringing on a consumer complaint, you need to read up at the library about small claims court and consumer complaints (try Nolo Press' Everybody's Guide to Small Claims Court). You'll have to make sure you know which district court you have to approach, and you need to follow all the rules. Most times, it's the consumer that wins.
Click here for more articles by Zachary K Stenger.
That's what happened to my friend Ruth who took Chevrolet to small claims court because they weren't fixing her old truck properly. Certainly she was mad and wanted to see a little justice done; but she was also unhappy about how hard it was for her to get to work every day and what she was losing in real money to repair the car every time it malfunctioned. Her consumer complaint actually won; they offered her a refurbished transmission and only charged her $1400 - a third of what they would charge otherwise. She was ecstatic that she had stuck it to corporate America, and made them see that it wasn't okay when they were careless with their customers.
For the ordinary person who doesn't have contacts and who isn't a big shot, small claims court is an inexpensive last resort when every attempt at a reasonable approach has failed. To people like my friend who have been through the process, the experience makes them feel empowered. The costs can be really low, the forms are simple, and there are almost no court delays or unnecessary adjournments. If you have been long been ignored by the major corporation, to have your consumer complaint run through the legal process feel like a wonderful salve.
You would think that with the way indignities are handed to you nonstop dealing with large corporations, small claims courts would be choked up and made nearly useless; but that isn't really true. If anything, the process that a consumer complaint passes through appears tthese days to have been made even smoother than before. You can bring $15,000 claims to small claims court. There are all kinds of easy-to-read help guides on the Internet on how to go about mounting a consumer complaint, and they are really flexible on what kind of cases they will hear - even cases against spammers and telemarketers, recently.
Not that consumer complaints are easy to deal with. To be successful, you need to free up hours and days of your life to look into the law, collect proof, find witnesses and practice how best to mount your defense. The way you mount your defense often comes to matter more than the technical merits of the case too. The judge has a lot more latitude in interpreting the law in small claims courts than in real courts. If you do your job well the day you get heard, you could actually win officially and extract your damages; otherwise things could go in any one of several ways - you could go along with the company and settle in private so that the company won't see its reputation sullied in the press; or your opponents could just fail to show up and you could win by default.
Since it is a good deal of trouble dealing with consumer complaints, no one must bring one on willy-nilly. You need to make sure that you have a case, that you can prove everything you charge, that you can actually place the blame squarely on someone, and that you have tried every other way possible. If you're interested in bringing on a consumer complaint, you need to read up at the library about small claims court and consumer complaints (try Nolo Press' Everybody's Guide to Small Claims Court). You'll have to make sure you know which district court you have to approach, and you need to follow all the rules. Most times, it's the consumer that wins.
Click here for more articles by Zachary K Stenger.
How to Trim the Waste, How to Save Money
When my friends got together once, I started a little topic of discussion - how to save money, and what the stupidest mistakes were that any of us ever made that had undone all we had done for quite some time to save a little. Here are some of the mistakes I heard everyone talking about; it helped me learn how to save money, listening to them. Maybe it could help you.
One of the best ways to put yourself in a financial hole is to invest in personal exercise equipment. One friend said she had invested $2500 in a home treadmill. It was in pursuit of keeping her commitments to a New Year's resolution to lose weight. After about two years with no use, the treadmill began to look really silly in her rec. room, and she gave it away. She then resolved that her next resolution would involve not buying silly home gym equipment. It turned out this was a very popular way in which to waste money. Every one of my friends had a really embarrassing gym equipment story. For one of my friends, her treadmill was a great way to entertain her sister's kids who came home to visit, nothing more. Whatever people may not know about how to save money, they amply make up for with creative insight into how to waste money. It turns out that with our problem with our weight, what we lack is not a way to lose weight; we lack the commitment. No amount of money is going to fix that. There were lots of friends who had wasted untold thousands of dollars on gym memberships they never used too.
Getting a car on lease was another big bummer. If you are thinking of how to save money, be sure to not take on a lease, they said. Lease contracts usually have specific mileages built into the arrangement. If you drive any longer than the agreement says, you pay them for each mile. Here's the thing that's supposed to tip you off that a lease isn't a good arrangement: if you see that you couldn't really afford the car if you had to pay for it to own outright, it is too much car for you. A friend of mine bought a lease, bled himself white paying for the mileage overages, and then got so fed up with it that he borrowed money to buy the car and get out of the lease. He ended up paying far more than he ever would have had he bought it outright in the first place. If you want to know how to save money, according to my friends, one of the best ways is to buy your car outright, and then to run it for at least 15 years.
Every one of my friends, and I too, have a cupboard full of clothes we no longer use because we don't like them. And yet, shopping for new clothes always seems like a good idea. If you wish to learn how to save money, try placing a moratorium on clothing shopping. You don't go out grocery shopping without a list, do you? Clothes are supposed to be utilitarian more or less, and we need to shop for them in just such a way. The clothes we buy for no reason and then discard a couple of years later usually end up clothing millions of people in the Third World though. And seen that way, this may be a good idea after all.
Owning a pet happens to be one of the most expensive things you can do; a large dog will usually cost you about $1500 a year to own. One friend of mine brought in a kitten that seems to be helpless on the street. There was furniture she ruined, treatment she needed for things she swallowed and so on. Of course, animal companionship can be a wonderful thing; but when you're thinking of how to save money, you might want to take a look at this as an activity to cut out.
One of the most emotional areas to deal with when it comes to saving money is lending to friends and family. Nearly every friend of mine noted how they had lent money to a cousin, a boyfriend, and never seen the money come back. And there wasn't any gratitude for added closeness either.
More articles from Zachary K Stenger.
One of the best ways to put yourself in a financial hole is to invest in personal exercise equipment. One friend said she had invested $2500 in a home treadmill. It was in pursuit of keeping her commitments to a New Year's resolution to lose weight. After about two years with no use, the treadmill began to look really silly in her rec. room, and she gave it away. She then resolved that her next resolution would involve not buying silly home gym equipment. It turned out this was a very popular way in which to waste money. Every one of my friends had a really embarrassing gym equipment story. For one of my friends, her treadmill was a great way to entertain her sister's kids who came home to visit, nothing more. Whatever people may not know about how to save money, they amply make up for with creative insight into how to waste money. It turns out that with our problem with our weight, what we lack is not a way to lose weight; we lack the commitment. No amount of money is going to fix that. There were lots of friends who had wasted untold thousands of dollars on gym memberships they never used too.
Getting a car on lease was another big bummer. If you are thinking of how to save money, be sure to not take on a lease, they said. Lease contracts usually have specific mileages built into the arrangement. If you drive any longer than the agreement says, you pay them for each mile. Here's the thing that's supposed to tip you off that a lease isn't a good arrangement: if you see that you couldn't really afford the car if you had to pay for it to own outright, it is too much car for you. A friend of mine bought a lease, bled himself white paying for the mileage overages, and then got so fed up with it that he borrowed money to buy the car and get out of the lease. He ended up paying far more than he ever would have had he bought it outright in the first place. If you want to know how to save money, according to my friends, one of the best ways is to buy your car outright, and then to run it for at least 15 years.
Every one of my friends, and I too, have a cupboard full of clothes we no longer use because we don't like them. And yet, shopping for new clothes always seems like a good idea. If you wish to learn how to save money, try placing a moratorium on clothing shopping. You don't go out grocery shopping without a list, do you? Clothes are supposed to be utilitarian more or less, and we need to shop for them in just such a way. The clothes we buy for no reason and then discard a couple of years later usually end up clothing millions of people in the Third World though. And seen that way, this may be a good idea after all.
Owning a pet happens to be one of the most expensive things you can do; a large dog will usually cost you about $1500 a year to own. One friend of mine brought in a kitten that seems to be helpless on the street. There was furniture she ruined, treatment she needed for things she swallowed and so on. Of course, animal companionship can be a wonderful thing; but when you're thinking of how to save money, you might want to take a look at this as an activity to cut out.
One of the most emotional areas to deal with when it comes to saving money is lending to friends and family. Nearly every friend of mine noted how they had lent money to a cousin, a boyfriend, and never seen the money come back. And there wasn't any gratitude for added closeness either.
More articles from Zachary K Stenger.
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