I have become the de-facto architect for the houses that my family is building on Vancouver Island.
I have access to some really nice "Building Integrated Management" software; learning to use it took a few weeks but I've got the hang of it now - you can do stress analyses for structural requirements, nicely colored renderings to see what the final product will look like - I've even done some landscaping drawing with the software. The next stage is putting the plumbing and electrical diagrams in and getting the proper permitting. We plan to break ground on the new structure in March.
This first project is a really cool one. We're building a semi-underground, super energy-efficient house. The walls, floor, and ceiling will be steel-reinforced, poured fly-ash concrete, and the building will be recessed into a hill and then have two feet of soil put on top of the roof - the effect will be that three walls and the roof will be effectively underground. This creates a huge "thermal capacity," so that even without heating or cooling at all the house would be warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer than your average building - the same way caves and cellars maintain a fairly constant temperature year-round. The south-facing wall will be exposed (mostly made of super-efficient windows) for passive solar heating and to let light in so that it doesn't *feel* like a cave. It will be heated and cooled with a ground-sourced heat pump that will also supply hot water for washing. In fact, the heating and cooling will be accomplished by means of hot water circulated through pipes in the floor, thus eliminating the need for ducting, and heating capacity will, of course, be augmented with a wood stove.
Green Firewood, for the win!
I'm back in Raleigh after a few months of traveling shenanigans. In the autumn (especially after daylight savings kicks in), I spend as much time outside as I can trying to enjoy the last remaining warm days and get some sunlight on my face. Yesterday and today, I was back to lumberjacking. My father and I felled, split, and stacked one oak tree and one poplar, with another oak tree scheduled for tomorrow - but all this chopping got me wondering: is it environmentally friendly to cull dead trees and burn them as firewood? It's certainly nice to have a fire going in the hearth - a place to sit and chat with your family or friends over a beer, the reassuring pops and other noises associated with a fire, the charm of flickering flames. With trepidation I wondered: "Is this a selfish and environmentally atrocious indulgence?"
It turns out, I'm actually being Green! In my house, we have a relatively efficient wood-stove. In fact, if you buy a wood stove in the US now, it has to be of this new, EPA certified type. The major innovation is that all the wood gases (which leave the wood blocks in the primary burn) are ignited - in the past, wood-stoves and fireplaces did not achieve high enough temperatures to ignite these gases, and so they were simply pumped into the air through the chimney unharnessed. By contrast, new stoves that burn these gases in the firebox achieve heating efficiencies of 75% or better, sometimes as high as 85%! So ubiquitous is this truth, that there is even a tax incentive to buy one of these woodstoves: President Obama's oft-touted American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 actually provides for a 30% deduction against the total cost of a wood or pellet stove that achieves at least 75% efficiency. Apparently, it actually makes sense: Wood is a domestic, renewable, carbon neutral energy source!
Excited, I considered the alternatives - heating with electricity or natural gas. Natural Gas is quite good - it burns cleanly, and you can get efficiencies near 100% (all the potential energy in the gas goes into the house) - but this is not an option for me. My neighborhood doesn't have gas service and, even if it did, burning natural gas is still fossil fuel consumption; you have to harvest it, transport it, and it's not carbon neutral. Electrical heating is MUCH worse - electricity is largely generated by burning coal, and the conversion efficiencies of the best power plants are still only about 30%. If you then factor in electricity transmission losses, you're down to about 25% efficiency with an electric heater. Even if you use a heat pump (as we do, geothermal) the best that you can reasonably expect is a 3:1 advantage - meaning that you are getting 75% of the heat from the original coal (net) into your house.
My conclusion was inevitable - firewood is a green energy source! First, since exposed decay of wood in forests releases all the carbon from that wood, firewood is carbon neutral. In fact, by culling dead trees, you actually decrease the risk of forest fires and help new growth. Second, if you achieve 75% heating efficiency with your wood-stove, you can match or even beat a ground-sourced heat-pump for net efficiency - which is amazing. On that note, I leave you, my friends, with the following advice: Put on your flannel shirt, grab a maul and all the manliness you can muster, and burn, baby, burn!
It's time for another couple of months touring around North America. I'm in Baltimore again, helping my sister move back to the US from Italy after 10 years living in Rome - I picked her up at the airport and she is now fully installed in, as the locals say, "Balmer."
This is the first stage of another epic tale of travel, as I will fly up (sister in tow) to Buffalo, NY tomorrow to meet the balance of the Griffiths clan, and from there we will all head to Toronto for the ultimate filial aggregation - a family reunion. From there, I'm off to San Francisco, to link up with my Robot Heart friends and drive to Black Rock City, NV for the Burning Man Project )'(. Then it's back, through Reno for a day or two, to San Francisco and the bay area, from whence I'll do the rest of the whole thing in reverse until I'm back in Raleigh for a week. Then it's off to Vancouver Island (via Vancouver city by way of Seattle) - there to help my parents with the first stage of development in their new property.
The biggest drawback to traveling, I find, is the inconsistency of exercise. When you depend for exercise largely on combat training it is not so easy to maintain a competitive routine on the road. Practice becomes limited to isometric exercises while driving, calisthenics with runs and walks at your destinations, and the occasional hotel gym... not quite the 3 hour per day meat grinder of serious martial arts practice. I have persisted in abstemious eating and drinking practice, though, and the results are clearly visible. Nearly 8 lbs of body fat - I didn't know I even had that much - have sloughed off my frame in the past 3 weeks. (7 lbs of it in the first two, before I started traveling again). Despite these difficulties, with focused effort, I have no doubt I will be able to avoid atrophy in fitness levels. The exercise of such self discipline will no doubt be gratifying.
I went to Chicago this past weekend to visit some friends and take in the city. Getting off an airplane in an entirely new place or rather (since I'd had connecting flights in ORD before) getting off the *train* in an entirely new place is an inspiring feeling. A new city always looks, smells, tastes unique.
Just as we're all made up of organs, cells, DNA dictated by a single pair of chromosomes, cities strike me as living organisms - made up of neighborhoods, families, individuals, unified by some ineffable local themes. To simply call such a thing local culture is to refer to all trees simply as "plants," missing the distinctions that separate a weeping willow from a fern. Chicago, for all it's architectural pomp and ceremony, is a microcosm of the midwest. At once avant-garde and conservative, some of its most famous structures resemble corn cobs.
The joy of Chicago's architecture notwithstanding, I came away sluggish and sapped by stuffing myself with steaks and deep dish pizzas, sozzling myself with inebrious drink, and depriving myself of salubrious activity in general. On top of all this I had to contend with the unassailable propriety of mid-western ladies, whose utter resistance to my charms left me... well... flabbergasted.
But fear not for your brave hero! For what but such feelings could inspire a renewal of enthusiasm - for fitness, for temperance in love, for abstemiousness from that most notorious mothers' ruin? Indeed, I am happy to report, that my fitness is already soaring to new heights. A complete abstinence regime from alcohol, a rigorous exercise routine, and an uncharacteristic austerity in diet have me feeling rejuvenated and invigorated.
Exercise in copious quantity is second nature to me, but I so enjoy my food and drink that I have never before actively pursued limiting my intake. A fast day here and there, a week without drinking occasionally, sure - but a sustained restriction from carbohydrates and no drinks even on weekends!? I thought such undertakings in self denial to be wild folly. I am now genuinely shocked by the ease with which these things can be achieved, though, given a modicum of drive and intent.
For 10 days I've eaten only flax porridge and egg whites for breakfast. Only fish and chicken at main meals, and perhaps a bit of unadulterated salad with cheese or celery as snacks.
Luckily, I am still able to flex my culinary biceps somewhat on the barbecue, but I anticipate a return to a more balanced and sustainable diet (albeit with reduced caloric intake) shortly, and more time spent in the kitchen. While my will is strong, my palate cries out for fresh fruits and sautéed vegetables, for arribiata tomato sauces, yea, even for legumes and that finest of healthful nuts, the almond.
Flew in for another wedding in Tucson, AZ (congrats to Sandie & Jeremy), and I rented a little Nissan to drive to LA and then on to Northern California for yet *another* wedding (this time in Santa Cruz). That's three weddings in under four weeks - any excuse that gets me back to California for a while is fun.
The weather on the drive from Tucson to LA was simply unbelievable - in springtime the desert takes on a quality I'd never seen before - blooming cacti, and really quite temperate heat. I stopped in LA for two days to catch up with different friends, where I got a chance to go work out on Muscle Beach (which is always fun) and do some cycling along the coast. I also got in a little swim and bought some new sunglasses from a Chinese lady on the beach - conducted pretty much the whole exchange in Chinese, which was fun.
I took the PCH up to the bay and stopped in San Jose - beers and dinner with a good friend, a little snoozing, then on to Santa Cruz for the wedding. After Santa Cruz, I returned the car and borrowed my friend's Harley Road King - what a monster of a motorbike. I picked up another friend, and we did a day trip out to Yosemite National Park, where we hiked up to the top of Yosemite Falls - a "6-8 hour hike" that we summited in 2 hours, wearing woefully inadequate gear. We showed up to a blizzard on top of the mountain wearing underarmour tops, single layer pants, and no gloves or hats. Probably not safe, but certainly a bit intense and a lot of fun (after the numbness subsided). Now it's back to San Francisco for some meetings with renewable energy folks, some training at Fight & Fitness, and some cycling!
I've also been thinking about businesses to start, and I've got an idea to improve the kicking speed of Tae Kwon Do students by bringing some simple tech into the gym to record metrics. Since one of the core tenets of any good training regimen is measurement of goals, and because the number of TKD students is so huge, it's probably worth doing ~ I'll give it a go when I get back to Raleigh and field test at my old Do Jhang.
Just took a trip to Dallas for a friend's wedding (Indian/Pakistani - my first subcontinent wedding!). While I was there I checked out a few different areas - downtown, Greenville Avenue, McKinney, and a bar called the Ginger Man where I got to try a few different Texas beers. In the past I've only ever caught flight connections at DFW.
Didn't get out as much as I would normally in a new city, but I wasn't too enthused by Dallas and it was wicked fun to spend time with the other friends who came out for the celebration. The catering was top-notch pakistani food - chicken biryani, goat curry, lentil and chick pea dishes, roti and nan to beat the band, and of course great sweets - rice puddings, baklava, gulab jamun ... yum!
I had to do some acrobatics and singing at the Mehndi to earn my keep - a dive roll over someone, some synchronized dances, and an a'cappella rendition of Billy Joel's "For the Longest Time" - but it was easily worth it for the food and the fun that followed.
Congrats my newlywed friends!
A week ago I pulled a (mostly) dead poplar that was felled by one of the hurricanes that came through North Carolina a few years ago. It was a beautiful tree, probably 25 meters tall, and maybe 80 cm at its thickest point. My dad bought a monstrous Italian chainsaw about 6 months ago - I call it the Ferarri. It's super powerful, kinda finnicky... the thing even runs on high-test gas. It may sound a bit ridiculous, but it was great to spend the day chopping logs and yarding them out of the woods on a chain. I piled the stuff high in the trailer, and got most of it back to the house - left a few smaller branches and such behind.
Yesterday and today, I've been out and chopped the logs into more manageable sizes; I split about 2/3 of the total and stacked it in the woodshed. I even wore a flannel shirt and by the time i was finished I must have smelled terrible. There's something special about wielding chainsaws, mauls, axes and sledgehammers in a flannel shirt and smelling bad. After 3 years in metropolitan areas, it's fun to be woodsy for a while!
I've been spending a lot of time in the kitchen during the past week. Watching 'Beer Wars,' has re-invigorated a largely dormant enthusiasm to consume food and drink not made with shadowy practices by giant conglomerate food companies, so I've taken a few trips to the farmer's market.
First off, I was amazed by how much better locally-grown spinach tastes than the mass produced stuff you get in bags at the supermarket - and at good prices, too. I've been eating about 1 kilo of collard greens every day for the past week. Collard's are a North Carolina staple, and with a few capers and some balsamic vinegar you can make some super tasty greens. If you cook outside (dare we hope, with USA's CNG), you can even avoid making the house smell bad.
The limitations of eating local are obvious, because grocery stores do provide a tremendous variety of stuff you just can't get out of season at the farmers' market, but so far I've made a curry, a split-pea soup, a few burritos, huevos rancheros and some other stuff all from local NC farm produce. I have a few kilos of blueberries and some strawberries in the freezer (mum picked 'em last season) to mix in with my flaxseed porridge in the morning, and with a keg of "Seeing Double IPA" from North Carolina's own Foothills Brewery on tap at the house, I'm even drinking local beer!
Try it - you might enjoy a closer connection to your food; farmers markets let you meet the people who grow it, and limitations actually help encourage creativity in your kitchen. I've been having a lot of fun with local food and drink, and I really think the flavor of the stuff I'm eating is better than what I'd get from huge farming ops.
The Olympics are pretty great - and the Winter Olympics give me a chance to cheer for Canada with some hope that they'll win medals. Cheering for Canada is way more exciting than cheering for the US (though I do that too, especially during summer olympics) simply because Canada is such an underdog by virtue of its population. How is it possible that a country with less than half a percent of the world's population can take home between 10 and 20 percent of the total medals at the olympics!? I don't know, but it's awesome. This year it's particularly fun because the Games are being held in Vancouver - sports fans know to shout "woohoo! home court advantage!"
I'm generally not a sports fan - I do watch the World Cup, the Super Bowl, the NCAA championship game; the big stuff - but for some reason, whenever the Olympics come on I spend hours glued to the television. I even watched the marathon once. Seriously.
Why? The Olympics inspire me - athletes train and train and train, and when they compete they do it for the glory of their country, the glory of their sport. They don't do it for money, or for fame - they do it for the pursuit of mastery.
This year, on the first day of competition, Nodar Kumaritashvili died. It was an absolute tragedy - but he died in the pursuit of a worthy goal and should, I think, be honored as a hero of Georgia. Mr. Kumaritashvili - I salute you, and you inspire me.
Today I finished installing a set of 6" component speakers in my new (actually very old) Saturn. It was a tricky thing to do since the existing speakers (ripped to shreds) were 6.5" without standalone tweeters or crossovers - so I had to get a little tricky and discover hidden nooks behind door panels and such to stash the extra hardware. What with the obligatory wiring, soldering, bracket making, etc to fit the components in said nooks, a small job snowballed into a three day affair... but hark! the sweet sound of music now pours from the vehicle, and the reward of a job well done is realized.
This installation came on the heels of a repair job on the sunroof which, due to a blocked drain, has been leaking for years, and dribbling unceremoniously on my sister in Baltimore. It is a testament to her toughness that she tolerated it for so long. The car has too many problems to count, but it has somehow managed to survive well over 200,000 miles (though there is no proof of same as the odometer stopped advancing many moons ago), and I am loath to part with such a reliable automobile. Meanwhile, I'm also dismantling and parting out an old Ford that's languishing in the back yard - that's taken a backseat to indoor work; maybe I'll get back to that after the snow melts.
