The Bissell carpet machine plus model 1630C is a very versatile vacuum that can be used in a multitude of ways. We purchased this machine for cleaning our carpets, but have since learned that it can vacuum up water spills, clean upholstery, clean spots and stains and we even use it to close our pool in the fall.

There are a few things you should know before using the Bissell carpet machine plus, however it is really quite easy to use and much more economical than renting a carpet cleaner from a store. We used to rent a carpet cleaner once per year from a local grocery store and clean our carpets. It cost about $40 per day and did a good job, however when you had a small job such as a spot that needed to be removed, it really was not worth renting the carpet cleaner. I am not even sure you can rent these machines any more, unless you go to an equipment rental agency. Read the rest of this entry »

We just bought an Egg Genie to cook hard boiled eggs and it is one of the best products we have purchased in the last while. We used to hard boil eggs the old way or the standard way depending on how you look at it. A pot of boiling water, put some eggs in and hope they don’t crack while they are cooking and hope they are fully cooked when it was time to take them out.

Almost every time we cooked eggs this way, one or more of the eggs would crack and there would be white egg material all over the pot floating on top of the water. It was almost gross to look at. Basically what would happen is that the eggs would be moving around in the water bumping into each other and if the water was boiling too hard, they would crack and create a mess. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ll be making our first product review this week for 2009. It will be regarding Wind Generators and Wind Turbines.

We will discover data on Helix Wind Turbines and other Residential Turbines. This is written the day that Barack Obama took the Oath of Office. As it is well know that Obama will be promoting alternative energy such as solar, wind, and geothermal.

Residential Wind Generators are an exciting new method for by we can help reduce our load on the electrical grid.

 Coffee Grinders

My wife and I have been looking for a cheap coffee grinder that works, and it’s been a real challenge. We’ve tried many different types of cheap coffee grinders that one would buy at your average department store.  We’ve tried cheap coffee grinders from Wal-Mart, JCPenney, Zellers, Kmart, Sears, etc.

These cheap coffee grinders never last long, or they just don’t work at all.  Often you have to stand over the coffee grinder depressing a button, and it’s painfully slow.  But even worse is the coffee grinders that are built into coffee makers. 

Now you have a real problem, because the steam and the moisture inherent to the coffee maker causes the coffee grinder to gum up, and you end up taking apart the coffee grinder portion of the coffee maker and cleaning it thoroughly before you can use it again.  Not only must you clean it after every use, it seems, before you reassemble the coffee grinder you must make sure every little part is perfectly dry.  In short, a serious pain in the butt.

Now the good news.  While shopping in the United States again, my wife tried yet another cheap coffee grinder, which she purchased at JCPenney.  She had discovered that the only way to use a cheap coffee grinder is to make sure that it is a standalone unit (what ever you do don’t buy a cheap coffee grinder/maker due to the reasons described above).

This little coffee grinder is cheap, and believe it or not, it works.  It’s never failed in the last four months of use.  It has a timer built in so you can just leave the coffee grinder running until it’s made enough coffee for your chosen pot size. You can set the coffee grinder to make enough coffee for anywhere between 2 to 12 cups.  You can just walk away and come back to see all of your coffee beans ground and ready.

We were pretty cynical by now and fully expected this grinder to last perhaps a week at the most.  We were pleasantly surprised to see that it not only worked well, it kept on working. We just didn’t want to spend allot of money on a high quality coffee grinder like a KitchenAid Pro Line Burr model for instance.

So….we certainly recommend checking out the Cooks coffee grinders at your local JCPenney.  We’re not sure if this particular model, which you can see in the inset photo (click to a enlarge), is even available anymore, but if they can sell a cheap coffee maker that works, they can certainly make another.  Maybe the new ones will be even better.