Protect your home if heading south this winter

Orangeville, ON (Harold Doan & Sons Ltd.)
With winter just around the corner, many Canadians are starting to pack up for their annual trip down south. Taking an extended winter vacation is a welcome escape from cold weather, but before hitting the road, there are a few steps snowbirds should take to protect their homes while they’re away.

“No one wants to come home from vacation to an unwelcome surprise,” says Henry Blumenthal, vice president and chief underwriter for TD Insurance. “Whether you’re going away for a week or several months, taking a few precautions before you leave can help save you from potential headaches.”

TD Insurance offers the following advice for snowbirds leaving their homes this winter:

Invest in an alarm system: The best deterrent for burglars is an alarm system. Although alarms require an upfront investment, you can often take advantage of lower home insurance premiums if your home is equipped with one.

Get the lived-in look: An obvious sign that nobody is home is a full mailbox and a snow-covered walk. Ask a friend or hire a young person in the neighbourhood to pick up your mail and shovel your driveway so that it looks like someone is home.

Shut down and unplug: Before you lock up, shut off the main water supply to your home and remember to drain the pipes to ensure that water pipes don’t freeze. You should also unplug electrical appliances and computers so that they are not damaged if there is a power surge.

“It’s also important to keep an updated inventory of your valuables so that it’s easier to identify what has been lost if you do have to make a claim,” adds Blumenthal. “The easiest way to do this is to take pictures of everything and send them to your insurer for safe keeping.”

Additional tips and information about home insurance are available online at www.tdinsurance.com or toll-free at 1-888-788-0839.

credit: www.newscanada.com

Create enthusiasm

Great retailers love what they do. They can create enthusiasm not only in themselves but also in their staff and in their customers.

Tips for model windows

Polishing kits can remove slight blemishes or scratches in a kit supplied windshield. An alternative is gentle polishing with toothpaste followed by a thin application of Crisco.

Artist’s acetate, found in most art supply stores, makes great scale windows. It has the correct scale thickness and can be bent to most window shapes.

Exposed and processed black and white film is useful for making tinted windows for slammers with no interiors. Use the existing windows as a pattern for cutting out the proper shapes.

Use white glue or clear enamel to install clear-plastic windows. Unlike super glue or styrene model cement, enamel or white glue will not fog the clear plastic.

Scale sunvisors can be drawn on, and cut from, thin sheet plastic.

Tinting windshields
To give your scale windshield a top tint, use Clear Blue acrylic, slightly thinned. Carefully fog the paint over the top quarter of the windshield. Apply light coats to avoid runs and consequent dark spots. Several thin coats work better than one or two heavier coats.

Once you are comfortable with the shade of blue, let the paint dry overnight. Acrylic dries as hard as lacquer if left alone for a bit, so give the paint time to dry completely.

When dry, use some metal polish to smooth the surface and eliminate overspray. Follow up with plastic polish and a soft cloth to shine up the windshield surface.

Easy wiring detail for your model car

A metal-nibbed, extra-fine, disposable artist’s pen (available from most art supply stores) makes drawing the wires on your model’s firewall easy.

New National Locksmith Registry announced for 2010

Downsview, ON (Institutional Locksmiths Organization of Canada)
Beginning in January, the ILOC will launch their National Locksmith Registry. Intended to provide the public, corporate, institutional and private sectors with an effective means to perform safety and due diligence checks of contractors and installers of security and door hardware.

The registry will be open to ALL locksmiths, not only institutional, as well as security personnel regardless of their membership in other organizations. The National Locksmith Registry will be an accurate database of Locksmiths and Security Personnel from across Canada who have completed and passed an RCMP criminal background check (form C216-C).

The registry is not intended to replace any province’s existing Locksmith legislation. Along with proper training for Locksmiths, the registry will help to provide the industry with the best Locksmiths and security personnel possible for their clients.

For more information, visit the website, www.iloc.ca