Earth Hour

It's a little after the fact, but we spent Earth Hour hanging out with candles, poetry, and a little guitar music.

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.

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

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.