Luxury Housing Trends & Home Improvement Ideas

As water conservation becomes more of a concern, high-efficiency sprinkler systems that minimize over-spraying and evaporation are becoming more popular. Micro sprinklers that are designed to work with drip irrigation systems (which are much better at conserving water than standard sprinkler systems) operate at a low-pressure range of 15-30 PSI. They have small-sized droplets and provide uniform coverage, allowing for a longer watering time with less runoff. Micro sprinklers still have enough kick to green up your grass, but they’re friendlier for the environment. They’re usually not any more expensive to install than standard automatic sprinkler systems.

http://www.dripirrigation.com/

Tired of looping your hose onto its holder yourself? It always seems like there’s a kink and the loops never line up just right. This wall-mounted hose reel from Hozelock is a smart alternative. It comes with a 65-foot hose (including tap connector and nozzle) and is designed so you only need to unwind as much hose as you need at one time. The best part is the reel has an internal spring system that automatically rewinds the hose for you when you’re done. The unit comes fully assembled, so no struggling with do-it-yourself instructions. The reviews at Amazon are quite favorable. You can buy the hose reel there for less than $100: Hozelock 2490 Auto-Rewind Wall-Mount Hose Reel

What do you do if you like to garden but you’ve got a tiny yard or maybe just a patio? Store your gardening tools under the bed? Sounds messy, so let’s hope not. Check out this ultra small garden shed, which is made for the urban gardener who likes to potter around with plants but doesn’t have a lot of room to spare. The Tudor Shed is made from natural cedar with a shingle roof and will hold full-sized rakes and shovels, and it also has a couple of cubbies for pots or whatever else you need to store.

http://www.cedarwoodfurniture.com/cedarshed.html

Automatic sprinklers are great… until you look outside and see your lawn watering itself at the same time as a torrential downpour is falling from the sky. Talk about a waste of power and water. The solution may be a gadget like this wireless rain sensor that detects precipitation and tells your sprinkler system to shut itself off. The sensor is solar powered, so it doesn’t require batteries or electricity to work, and it sends a wireless signal up to 200 feet to the receiver, so it doesn’t require any wires either. According to the company, this makes the device simple to install. You just mount the sensor and solar panel to your gutter, then attach the receiver to your sprinkler’s timer, and it’s ready to go.

The lawn gadget is available at SmartHome for $65: Solar-powered Wireless Rain Sensor

We’ve looked at LED light tiles before, but these are a little different. With these tiles from Neo-Neon, the LEDs are embedded in marble or granite. They’re sturdy enough to walk on, and they’re suitable for outdoor use, so if you’re looking for a snazzy way to lead people from the deck to your pool or garden at night, take a peek at the company’s web site. The tiles, which come in several different colors of stone, can be linked together, and each one only requires a few watts of energy. The lights aren’t just white; the tiles are connected to a DMX controller so you can program them to produce multicolor, static, flashing, or chasing effects.

http://led.neo-neon.com/soft/40.htm

LEDs are showing up in all sorts of home and garden products these days from lighted flooring tiles to fountains for the pool. Now, LEDs are hanging out beneath your potted plants too. Bloom’s innovative flower pot doubles as outdoor lighting for your yard. The company guarantees their pots will withstand the coldest winters, and the lights will continue working year around, protected by the high-grade recyclable plastic of the pots, which are available in red, white, lime, orange, pink, turquoise, and purple. Since LEDs have such a long life (50,000+ hours), you won’t have to worry about changing the bulbs very often either. The price is $199 for a 23″ high LED pot.

http://www.bloomusa.net/

It’s green, it’s pretty, and it’s… not real. I’ve seen this synthetic lawn–”SYNLawn”–mentioned on HGTV and in the Home & Garden section of the local paper, so it must be an up-and-coming trend in 2006. Designed to look and feel like the real thing, synthetic lawns require no maintenance–no watering, mowing, or fertilizing. The company touts it as environmentally friendly because you don’t need to waste water to keep it looking green, and you don’t need to add to pollution with gas-powered lawn mowers to keep it trimmed (it doesn’t grow, of course). Having lived in Arizona for a couple years, I can say it sounds like a nice alternative to the rock-and-cactus yards people in the southwest often use as an alternative to wasting water on lawn care. SYNLawn isn’t cheap (at $3-$5 per square foot it’s as expensive as many types of indoor flooring), but it has a 10- to 15-year lifespan, so it may be worth it if you’re not keen on yard maintenance but enjoy the look of a neatly trimmed, green lawn. My only question (and perhaps my mind goes here because I’m a pet owner) is what happens when Fido pees on it?

http://www.synlawn.com