With the temperature finally dropping, it’s time for residents of Interior Alaska who burn wood to clean their chimneys and check the condition of their pipes.

Every fall, this newspaper writes about homes destroyed by chimney fires. Cleaning and inspecting a chimney can eliminate the problem, but people often put off the chore until it’s too late.

Slow burning fires produce a lot of smoke, especially if the wood is wet. As the smoke cools, material in it condenses into creosote on the inside of chimneys. Since smoldering fires often are all that is needed to keep a home warm in the spring and fall, those seasons typically see above-normal creosote deposition.

When the temperature falls, hotter fires are needed to keep a home warm. If those fires are hot enough to ignite the creosote that has built up in the chimney during the past spring and fall, a dangerous fire can result.

More at source: News Miner

Find a chimney cleaning service here. 

The beautiful fall foliage is nice to look at -- but a pain in the neck for many homeowners like Jeremy Mitchell.

"It's a pretty wooded lot so basically we have a lot of leaves, stuff falls off the trees, limbs that fall off," Mitchell said. "So that over time has damaged the gutters to the point where they actually started to sag."

Mitchell's home suffered water damage as a result of overflowing gutters.

"We get large branches falling on the house all the time," he said. "I think a combination of that and irregular maintenance to the gutters as far as cleaning them out. I mean cleaning is probably the biggest thing we don't, we 

More at source: WaayTV

Find a gutter cleaning service here. 

Dozens of protesters swirled outside of PNC Bank Downtown during the lunch hour today, banging pots and waving signs as the battle swells between local janitors and national janitorial contractor ABM. 

Inside the bank, Columbus police calmly arrested 12 protesters who sat on the lobby floor and chanted: “ABM, you’re no good. Treat your workers like you should.”

Ten people were arrested during a similar protest earlier this month in in the Fifth Third Center Downtown.

More at source:  Dispatch

Find a janitorial service for your business here. 

The County Board's budget committee clashed with County Executive Chris Abele on two fronts Thursday, calling for rejection of a long-delayed contract with a private vendor for janitorial services at the courthouse and refusing to pay part of a bill for a $125-an-hour consultant.

The board's finance committee also called for an audit of county procurement over the past year.

Supervisor David Cullen said botched work by Abele's administration on the janitorial contract, on hiring a vendor to run the Milwaukee County Transit System and other moves were behind his call for the audit.

The committee approved the audit request and indefinite delay on the janitorial pact on an 8-0 vote.

A decision on whether to conduct the audit is under consideration, said county Comptroller Scott Manske.

The county executive said he would welcome an audit of procurement and called the delay on the janitorial contract unfortunate.

"We wouldn't have recommended something if we didn't feel it was better value for the tax dollar," Abele said.

Supervisors have had great difficulty getting information on the janitorial services pact, which Abele's administration had recommended for CleanPower, a private firm, and other procurements, Cullen said.

CleanPower already cleans several county buildings, including the Coggs Human Services Center at 1220 W. Vliet St. It would get $3.4 million next year for expanded duties cleaning more than 4 million square feet of county office space, under the proposed contract.

CADILLAC — Seventeen years ago, Larry Haines was hired as the janitor at the Cadillac Wexford Public Library.

He loved his job and was happy to work days after years of night shifts stocking store shelves.

Because he was also the library fix-it guy, it was natural that people asked him for help when computers started being added for public use.

Slowly, Haines became indispensable on the computers and spent less time cleaning bathrooms and mopping floors.

Now he’s the technology director, maintaining 70 computers and three servers for the main library and four branch libraries.

His boss, Cathy Tacoma, calls Haines a “visionary.”

More at source: Cadillac News

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 A 32-year-old junior scientist, identified as D. Babu, working at the National Academy of Agricultural Research Management, died after he accidentally consumed toilet cleaner at his house in Rajendranagar.

Babu had got married in May this year and used to live with his wife. The scientist consumed the toilet cleaner on October 13 and was shifted to the hospital, where he died on Wednesday.

Babu, a native of Salem district in Tamil Nadu, had been living in Rajendranagar since 2009. A police case has been registered. 

More at source: Deccan Chronicle

Horror movies often use blood, gore and violence to shock and scare filmgoers.

However, filmmakers tend to ignore the most frightening element: Cleaning up all the cartilage, plasma and guts that get splattered during the mayhem.

Aftermath, a company that specializes in trauma cleaning and biohazard removal, is adding a bit of realism to horror films with an infographic that explains what it would take to clean up the crime scenes in some of the most classic gore films in history.

More at source: Huffington Post

Find a Bio Hazard Cleaning Service Near You

• If you have a high risk of developing serious complications if you get the flu.
• If you have medical conditions like asthma, diabetes, and chronic lung disease.
• If you are younger than 5 and older than 65.

The company will be servicing one floor of the Pentagon, and about 75 employees will be doing the work, Rowe said. The company employs around 125 people at various sites around the country and in London.

Rowe describes itself as a building maintenance contractor for the federal government and commercial businesses requiring security clearnances. Most of the company’s federal work is done for the Department of Defense.

More at source: The Advocate

Find a cleaning or janitorial service near you here.