This week I'm tying up the electrical on the space I'm working on.  One of the challenges has been the vast number of three and four way switches involved.  I've got a staircase with a landing that leads to a door, so code requires a switch at the top and bottom of the staircase and one on the landing.  Robb had asked about these switches a while back and I provided a link on how they work.  http://www.wfu.edu/~matthew... They are a really handy, simple system, but require a lot of wire for a single light.  :) My camera is still out of commission and I haven't picked up a new one or I'd have some pictures for you folks.

One of the big green power stories this week is the ongoing install of tidal turbines in New York's East River.  Tidal power has been around for a long time, but usually the power is generated by damming up an area and letting the water flow back and forth across the turbines.  This new project uses propellers and doesn't interfere with the tidal flow.  Another plus of tidal power is that it is predictable (unlike wind) and generates power 24 hours a day (unlike solar).  Currently, New York gets a small amount of power from the tides.  The company, Verdant Power, has plans to add 100 turbines to the existing 6 once the environmental impact reports are in.  http://www.technologyreview...

Last for today is the closure of the Japanese company Kongo Gumi, a temple building company that had been owned by the same family for 1428 years.  It was the oldest continuously operating family owned business.  The assets have been purchased by Takamatsu.  Businessweek hedged that statement a bit, but I was unable to discover if it was the oldest continuously operating business in the world or just the oldest family owned.  The real trivia question is who is the oldest business now?

http://www.businessweek.com...

Busy week this week.  First of all, after many times around the loop, PG&E is replacing my gas meter tomorrow.  I'm very excited to get back to where I was three weeks ago.  When they took the meter, it seems they also deleted the "point of service" in their computer, so when the city emailed them the notice that the gas line had been inspected, they didn't have a field to enter the data into.  I'm planning on writing the whole thing up and taking to a city counsel member so they can "review the process".  My problem is solved, but it's important to make sure that those who come after you have an easier road to travel.

On Saturday, a buddy of mine from high school who lives out near Sacramento called me up because he wanted to install a second door in his bathroom and turn it into a "Jack and Jill".  When he called, he'd already taken the sheetrock off the wall on one side and was having trouble figuring out what was going on, so I took a busman's holiday and went out to see him and we figured it out.  Turns out, that was how the bathroom was originally built and someone had come along and sheetrocked over the old door opening.  (BTW, if anyone here ever plans to do this, just pull the trim and rock right over the door.  Someone, someday, will thank you.)

For now, I'm just getting the electrical tied together and finishing up the sheetrock.

Anyone else working on projects this week or have any questions?  This is the place for'em.

You'll have to forgive me for going back to this topic.  I was all ready to do an in depth how-to on hooking up a tankless water heater with pictures of the unit I installed this week.  I even wore my B.com shirt for the day.  Then the memory stick in my camera went out so it was a no go.

On Monday night, I was in the Walgreen's though and saw something I hadn't seen before: colored CFLs and a CFL blacklight.  Too cool.  For the regular readers, you'll know I'm a huge fan of CFL technology (the little twisty bulbs) and have talked about them before.  Now there's another great bit of news. 

From one of my favorite sites (which has been nominated again for a Webby), Treehugger:

For those whiners who still think compact fluorescents are not good enough for them, perhaps you just don't have the right bulb, or perhaps its all in your head. Popular Mechanics Magazine tested seven CFLs against a 75 watt incandescent for the usual brightness and efficiency, but also did subjective quality testing. "Our subjective data came from a double-blind test with three PM staffers and Jesse Smith, a lighting expert from Parsons The New School for Design, in Manhattan. We put our participants in a color-neutral room and asked them to examine colorful objects, faces and reading material, then rate the bulbs’ performance."

The results were surprising; in a blind controlled test, "Even though the incandescent bulb measured slightly brighter than the equivalent CFLs, our subjects didn’t see any dramatic difference in brightness. And here was the real shocker: When it came to the overall quality of the light, all the CFLs scored higher than our incandescent control bulb. In other words, the new fluorescent bulbs aren’t just better for both your wallet and the environment, they produce better light." Read the whole thing by the light of your CFL at ::Popular Mechanics, via ::Groovy Green

The Popular Mechanics website also gives a good overview of the ontological measurements of light, including lumens and color temperature along with their review of the best bulbs.

This also brings up the issues surrounding lighting a home, since everything we see is simply a reflection of available light.  Modern homes are doing more with landscape lighting, task vs. general lighting, and other kinds of light.  A bakery opened half a block from where I work and the guy who owns it is a friend of mine from Santa Maria when I was in theater.  We worked in the prop shop.  As he was getting his place set up, he brought in some friends from the theater to design the lighting.  It made a world of difference in how the place looked and cut his power costs by a third.

This is your construction open thread.  The floor is open.  Any projects you're working on this week or questions?  Post'em here.

This isn't another David Blaine stunt.  A scientist named Lloyd Godson is going to seal himself inside a box and drop the box underwater to become part of a self-contained ecosystem for 2 weeks.  He'll be eating algae and using algae to process the air he breathes and using a stationary bike to get some exercise and create electricity.

I can only assume the electricity will be used in part to power the monitors he has set up to check on air quality etc.  While this doesn't exactly sound like a fun vacation, it goes to show some of the possibilities in our future when we begin to fully understand just what it takes to create a sustainable environment.

As a person who has spent a lot of time working on buildings, one thing that strikes me over and over is how little people think about how stuff gets to them, or what happens when it leaves.  In a building I managed, I had a tenant who had a crack in a brick wall.  They would push their cigarettes out through the crack and they would land on the building next door.  Of course, to the tenant, they were just pushing them "out" into the world, where apparently magical creatures would come along and make the butts disappear.

Here's another example:  Many of you may have heard about the possible link between schizophrenia and cats.  There is a book out now called Survival of the Sickest (I've included a link to their blog) that talks about the T gondii virus and how mice that are infected display some of the characteristics of schizophrenia, including lack of fear in dangerous situations.  So cats eat the mice that don't realize that cats will eat them.  However, now they are finding that sea otters are getting infected as well because people flush their cat litter down the toilet.  The infection (which is picked up from clams and other filter feeders) causes "mental impairment" in the otters.  Presumably making them easier prey for sharks.

All in all, I'm not sure how self contained Lloyd Godson's underwater box is, but we're all living in a bigger box where nothing is ever truly whisked away.  The more we think about where everything we touch will be in 5 minutes and 100 years, the more we can start to look at how we want to start managing the planet.