Wonders of remodeling

While Bethany was at yoga tonight, Silas, Guthrie, and I took a stroll around Bloomfield. The Bloomfield Bridge Tavern has undergone some interesting renovation in its years. It is sad that the stained glass window no longer ever sees the light of day (in photo above).

The picture below shows a great faux-bricked in doorway as well as a brilliant retrofit set of windows. I wonder if the board was intended to keep the rain off the mailboxes or if it has some other purpose that's unclear to the casual observer.

Behind at this blogging thing

I've taking a pretty good hiatus from the interactive side of the world of the internet for the past month or so. I still don't have time to write now, but ended up writing a piece for my long-neglected HGTVpro blog about the solar conference I went to in Buffalo, NY, last month. That post is:

SOLAR 2009 conference

Since my last post, much has gone on that I am incapable of finding the time to write all about. On the fun side, I acquired a mountain bike and competed in my first adventure race this past weekend. More about that when I can sit down and write about it tonight because it isn't that stale and was a great time.

Lighting design post on my other blog

Yes, here we go again on my shameless promotion of my building science blog at HGTVPro...

I have been trying to apply some of my engineering tools to a field that sort of defies typical engineering methods much of the time, or at least the more academic side of it. I think it's changing as some of the big builders are looking into process mapping, lean busing models, and even manufacturing quality control strategies.

In the post, I put up a list of requirements that a lighting package in a house should satisfy and a list of all the entities that I consider 'customers' to said design (such as the homeowner, builder, architect, etc).

If you're not already asleep, maybe the actual article will finish you off. Go check it out if you wish: Lighting package desires and requirements.

Lighting questions on building science blog

Sorry for these cross-postings.

On my HGTVPro blog, I am asking for help from the community in compiling a comprehensive list of things people want in the lighting design of a house. If that strikes any of your fancies, please check it out and comment over on my Building Science blog post on lighting on HGTVPro.

Thanks.

Post on my official building science blog

I'm still trying to figure out how trackbacks work. On my HGTV blog, I put up a new post about strategies for conserving energy on miscellaneous electric loads. It's pretty dry, as it is more or less a cut and paste job from my work for our 2008 annual report to the Department of Energy. I've neglected that blog, so I felt it was fair to cheat. :)

Actual URL of the post: http://blogs.hgtvpro.com/hgtvpro/building_science/archive/2009/02/some_thoughts_of_energy_conser.html

Trackback URL: http://blogs.scrippsnetworks.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1848

Water heater or sci-fi bomb

Well, it's not nearly as cool as the Maker Faire in Austin this week, but this electric water heater was sure a looker. That turbine-looking device is the flow sensor. It provides the computer some idea of the flow rate of the water so it knows how hard to pulse the heating elements hidden in those sexy stainless steel tubes. Of course, the timer is there so you know how long you have to get off the ship before the core goes critical and you need to be at least two parsecs from the resultant thermonuclear explosion.

In Phoenix for a conference

I'm speaking at the EEBA conference tomorrow about energy saving strategies and modeling techniques for the wild west of the efficiency world: lighting, appliances, and miscellaneous electric loads. I'm co-presenting with one of the partners of our company, but really that means that I create the whole presentation, and he gets to present it with me. The part that is going to be fun to watch is how Brad is comfortable standing in front of 75 people and talking to them as if they were in the parlour at his house. I'm not that experienced of a presenter to be at that point. However, this presentation is about as unscripted as I've ever had it, as I probably know the material more than any other and have written much less than any other. It is going to be conversational no matter what, because I have gotten all wrapped up in modeling and the conundra involved in that side of things that I have very few slides actually prepared. It'll be interesting...

These photos are of the resort/conference center where it's being held, and where I'm staying. The top picture is of the resort from the restaurant looking over the water park toward the building where my room is (building on the left).

Each building has two pools in the courtyards. Here is the view from the door to my room at 8 this morning.
This is where I've spent most of my time here so far.

They even left me a teddy bear on the bed! Yay! Now I have something to cuddle up with and not miss my family as much. :)

I'm sure it'd show up as a $99 cost on my room bill if I were to take it with me. I accidentally broke the seal on the refrigerator not realizing it was sealed with a plastic device that breaks irreparably into several pieces when you open it. That way, they know to do an inventory and charge for the drinks in the fridge.

Here is the reception area. You drive in under these chandeliers and park to check in. The valet takes the car away, and they drive you to your building and room in a golf cart. Kinda silly. Anyway, these two fixtures have something like 50 lamps in them each. That's 100 bulbs! At least these are all compact fluorescent candleabra bulbs. So, 100 times 7 watts each is 700 watts of installed lighting. That's more than all the lighting in our house. If they were incandescent bulbs, it'd be around 2,800 watts! The electric water heater that Bethany uses to boil water for tea draws 1,500 watts.

Stuck up in the attic

Most of my time on this project in Las Vegas has been perched at the top of a ladder with my head in one of the six access hatches to the mini-split A/C units in the portion of the house we're monitoring. These six units only condition about 20% of the house. It's such a huge building, we're only looking at part of it for our research goals at this point. This image is pretty much what I can see from each access panel. The foam is sprayed-in insulation on the roof deck. It makes the envelope of the house much more airtight and provides good insulation. It's a little more expensive than fiberglass or other traditional methods, but has a lot of extra benefits.

Dave's OSHA compliance

This is Dave on the job yesterday. I wish I could say standing at the top of a ladder, working with our heads in a hole wasn't all that common... We've asked the builder for a taller ladder for when we get to the site today.

Project in Las Vegas

This is the monstrosity we're working on in Las Vegas. It's supposed to have something like a 30-40% energy reduction compared to what it could have been if it had been built to the bechmark standards. Of course, 30% of this house's usage is probably 97% of what my whole block uses in Pittsburgh. It's a neat house from an architectural standpoint, though. I'll post finished pictures when it's done in December.

In the top picture, the stucco is up to the scratch coat. They should have the finish coat on by the end of the week. The picture below is a shot toward the Strip from the third froor 0utdoor kitchen. The final picture is looking down the temporary stairs. The elevator hasn't been installed yet either (no, not joking).

$240 million project groundbreaking

Our sister company (EQA Landmark Communities) had their groundbreaking today for a large mixed-use development that will reclaim a brownfield (used to be a chemical plant). They're making a downtown retail area where the plant used to be and a residential development adjacent to it on the hill. It's supposed to be walkable between the retail and residential areas, but we've all seen the lazy Americans drive their car from Target to Old Navy to save about 50 feet of total walking. So, I'm a little skeptical.

Nonetheless, it's a great accomplishment for the EQA team. They are going to do a great job on the town square area and the housing will be first-rate for efficiency in southwestern Pennsylvania. My company (IBACOS) has been consulting on the home guidelines and will be doing quality control work and Building America program consulting along the way.

Here's an article about the project:
http://www.popcitymedia.com/developmentnews/nwbry0910.aspx

I missed getting a picture with the actual symbolic playing in the dirt with shovels spraypainted gold. :)

Building science blog posts

So, it's not likely to do much good, but I'm going to link to my recent posts on my work blog. The search browsers pick up when things are linked to in other websites... Sorry for the gratuitous advertisement of my own work. It sucks, and I'm lame, but it's the way it goes. :) Feel free to flame me in the comments section.

Tour de France power meter comparison
Back from the hiatus of Silas
Intelligent HVAC controls
Building Science, my complex friend
Bathrooms and Building Science
Home-Run Plumbing
Americans Love their DVRs!

All of this is on the HGTVPro blog pages, found here.

My other blog

I have had a hard time getting content flowing on my other blog (for HGTV Pro). I got another post put up today. It's been challenging to create new content that isn't just regurgitating other blog and news posts from the internet. It seems everything I read in a lot of the technology blogs is a repackaging of something they read in someone else's blog, which of course was lifted from a chain of other blogs repeating the same information in a weird, world-wide, inbred game of telephone.

Nonetheless, that blog is: Building Science

It's much easier to write about life and fun things in any given day and especially, the new little life we have with us than it is to write inside a box called "Building Science"...


As I don't understand trackbacks, this last part is an experiment, please ignore.
http://blogs.scrippsnetworks.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1551
http://blogs.hgtvpro.com/hgtvpro/building_science/archive/2008/08/intelligent_hvac_control.html

Bamboo is Hard

Holy crap! This is the result of my test of using a 16-gauge pneumatic nailer to face nail the stranded bamboo flooring for our bedroom. I suppose I'll break out the full face protection and put away my pathetically inadequate safety glasses when I go to start nailing with the new flooring nailer. I haven't tried that yet, as it wasn't shipped with the nipple to connect to the air hose. More as this story develops...

Bethany took the cool morning to add a coat to the trim for the bathroom. Don't forget that it goes best with Guthrie's supervision.

Post on my building science blog

I write posts for a blog about building science on the HGTVPro website. I got to relate the Tour de France to energy usage (actually power) today. I don't think the post is really all that well written, but it was fun to write and brings up some interesting comparisons, or at least interesting to me.

The main point is that it's really damn hard to generate a lot of power with your body. It's a huge privilege that is extremely underappreciated in this country that we can plug something into a hole in the wall and have enormous amounts of power at our fingertips. An average healthy human can produce 75 watts and keep it up for about 8 hours on a bike. That's not too impressive when you think that that's a single incandescent light bulb or 3-4 compact fluorescent bulbs with similar light output.

Read the whole post here.

Bathroom becoming useable!

Our contractor installed the toilet temporarily in the bathroom today. Bethany is leaping for joy. I just hope it doesn't push the baby out. I want him to hang in there another two weeks so he's as fully cooked as possible, and so contractor Bruce can get as much of the bathroom completed as possible.

We bought the toilet a couple of years ago, but the bathroom project stagnated until the impetus of the fetus brought us to the sensible decision of hiring a contractor. It's a dual flush toilet from Mansfield, made in Perrysville, OH (we think). The funny thing is that Mansfield isn't in Mansfield, Ohio. I was wrong all these years, evidently.

The decision for a dual flush toilet was a very straightforward one for us. We tend to practice the "if it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down," method of toilet etiquette. Of course, we modify it for when we have visitors that frown at such behaviors. The dual flush toilets use a lower flush volume in the "number one" mode. When you need the flushing power, they have the "number two" mode that flushes like a normal low-flow toilet. I haven't run the calculations to see how much water we have the capability of saving. As I mentioned, we're pretty sparing to begin with. This can only help us conserve this valuable resource. I can't remember the cost, but I don't think it cost any more than similar quality toilets we were considering that were not dual flush. We sourced it from Lowes, who had to special order it. It didn't take long to come in, but then again, as we had it for two years and today's the first time it's gotten wet, that didn't matter so much to us...

22 July 2008 - Lab Home Meeting

The Research group met to discuss our progress on the lab home we're building this year in Pittsburgh. It was the most productive meeting I've been to for this project ever! Everyone was engaged and kept to the topic, more or less. It was nice.

The lab home is being designed to be a 70% energy reduction as compared to a typical house defined by the Building America benchmark. This is the target laid out by the Department of Energy for conservation and efficiency. The remaining 30% will be met by PV (solar) electric energy generation. We've been working on this all year and hope to break ground before the end of the year on the house here in Pittsburgh.