May 2007

There were 53 posts published in May 2007 (this is page 2 of 6).

Heat Transfer Foiled Again!

A few weeks ago when it was warm outside, I stepped from the house to the garage and was surprised at how cool it was. Our garage was cooler than the house. Granted, the air conditioner was off inside and the windows were open, but the temperature was markedly cooler. Monday afternoon, I walked in front of our garage and was hit with a wave of heat. It felt like I was standing in front of a heat lamp!

The reason for this is the radiant barrier I placed on the garage door last summer. It literally reflects the sun’s heat right back into space, keeping it from getting trapped in the garage. This radiant barrier is essentially a roll of bubble wrap with aluminum-foil backing. It cost $25 for a roll that nearly covers my garage door. I am still amazed at how well it works!

Monday morning I ventured into my attic to retrieve the broken attic fan I put up the year before (you remember, the one that almost claimed my finger). Rather than replace it, I’m considering buying more foil and stapling it to the rafters in the attic.

It is so much easier to cool a house if you can keep the heat out of it to begin with.

Are Solar Panels On The Way To Your Neighborhood?

Remember when I wrote this about homeowner’s rules getting in the way of energy efficiency? It seems that Janet Cowell in the N.C. Senate and Susan Fisher and Pricy Harrison in the N.C. House have the same idea. They have a bill moving through the General Assembly to allow this to happen.

S.670 and H.1187 would make local restrictions on solar panels, clotheslines, or other “energy devices based on renewable resources” null and void. While some may think that solar panels or clotheslines might hurt home values, I think they would benefit a neighborhood. After all, who wouldn’t want to live in a smart neighborhood?

People can talk all they want about ending this country’s energy dependence. Eventually you have to actually do something. This bill gives North Carolinians the freedom to act.

Cary To Enforce …Uniqueness?

Back when we lived in Garner our neighbor, mayor Don Rohrbaugh, tapped me to sit on Garner’s land-use rewrite committee. Over the ensuing months I learned more than my fair share about zoning rules and planning. While educational, the whole process made me question the value of zoning and appearance laws. How does one even measure their success?

Raleigh’s neighbor Cary is known for strict appearance rules. The stores that populate Cary’s strip malls all must look the same. The many neighborhood homeowners’ associations mindlessly dictate mailbox dimensions. Even a shiny diner can put the city into a snit. With this in mind, I found Cary’s latest push to be highly amusing. Cary has finally decided that more of the same isn’t necessarily good. While most people can see the wisdom in that, the way Cary is going about it is what I find amusing: they’re going making more rules! Town planners are actually drawing up anti-monotony rules.

I’ve got two questions about this whole process. Number one, did it ever occur to Cary’s leaders that maybe the reason the whole city (er, I mean town, though this “town” happens to be the third largest in the state) looks the same is because of its stuffy planning rules? Might a better approach to be … oh, I don’t know … maybe to get rid of some rules, rather than create ones that contradict the previous ones?

Number two, are there really people in Cary who are just now figuring this out? Cary’s been this way for years and a lot of Caryites seem to like it this way. If you don’t want a cookie-cutter house complete with an approved mailbox, why in the world did you move to Cary? What did you expect?

Now there are some cool neighborhoods in Cary where houses don’t all look the same. Its the newer neighborhoods that give it a bad name: large subdivisions with each house looking the next in a cul-de-sac hell. Its going to take more than more silly rules to fix that.

Seven Years Of Compact Fluorescent Bulbs

I went up to our bedroom last night to find it unexpectedly dark: my bedside lamp wouldn’t turn on. After a moment of troubleshooting, I determined that its compact fluorescent (CFL) bulb had finally given up the ghost.

Thinking back a bit, I figured that the bulb was over 7 years old. In fact, having been purchased in 1999, it was nearly as old as my marriage! When it first fired up, there was no Sept 11 attacks, no Iraq war, no such thing as the dot-bomb bust. That’s a lot for a bulb to live through.

I became interested in CFLs because I got annoyed at all the heat that incandescent bulbs produced. Our old home’s thermostat was right next to a floor lamp, so its bulb would frequently throw off the temperature readings. Once I’d begun with one bulb, the rest were soon to follow.

I have to say the technology has improved considerably in 7 years, notably the quality of light CFLs, produce. When the box says 3000 Kelvin that’s what you get: a nice warm light. Add in the electricity savings and you have a deal.

CFLs still face hurdles to their adoption, such as a press sometimes hostile to them. This Washington Post article that ran last month is one example.

The article states:

The current market share of CFL bulbs in the United States is about 6 percent, up from less than 1 percent before 2001.

…and then follows it up with this:

The relatively glacial adoption rate of CFLs in most of the United States suggests continued stiff resistance on the home front, despite dramatically lower prices for the bulbs and impressive improvements in their quality.

Another way of describing CFLs growth would be to trumpet their 600% growth in the past six years, yet the reporter calls 600% growth “glacial?”

As for the “dramatically lower prices” the article mentioned, the accompanying sidebar listed the price of a single CFL bulb to be eleven dollars! Maybe CFL bulbs were $11 back in, oh, 1992 or something. In modern times, one can buy a CFL bulb for less than two bucks.

CFLs do wonders for the environment, beginning with your own indoor one. They don’t create excess heat for your air conditioner to battle. They also last incredibly long, as my seven year bulb attests. Sure they have mercury in them but the amount is miniscule and no cause for alarm. A trip to the landfill’s special handling section is not a burden if the trip happens only once every 7 years.

The wife in the WaPo story complained that the light from CFLs wasn’t as bright. Its been my experience that the opposite is true. I’ve replaced four, 60-watt incandescent bulbs in our bathroom with just two CFLs – because four CFLs made the room blindingly bright! Because of their lower heat output, you can place CFL bulbs with higher light equivalents in sockets designed for lower light incandescents. For instance, a lamp designed for a 60-watt maximum incandescent can handle a 23-watt CFL that produces the equivalent light of a 90-watt incandescent. You save energy and get more light!

What’s slow to catch on is the hip nature of CFLs, but they’re getting there. My friends are catching on. My relatives are catching on. Pretty soon CFLs will be the norm rather than the exception. Then the 1870s-era incandescent bulb can take its rightful place: in a museum!

First Sail Of The Summer

We spent most of the weekend tooling around Lake Gaston in our sailboat, Whimsy. Hallie had soccer at 11 Saturday morning, so we drove separate cars to the lake, with me leaving a little after they left for soccer. I got to the boat and began putting things together, all the while dodging the neighbor’s overly-friendly labrador retriever. Kelly and the kids joined me around 1:15 PM and we had the boat in the water about 2:15.

Winds were blowing out of the west the whole weekend, though at first they weren’t very strong. Kelly took the helm to begin with, reacquainting herself to the whole process. Hallie took a turn after she did: the first time she’s piloted on her own. I took a turn after that once the winds picked up a bit more.

We sailed in a direction different than we usually do. Typically we go east to Eaton’s Ferry and return. Saturday we went west, sailing all the way down to the I-85 bridge. That end of the lake seems much bigger than the eastern side. We saw a lot that we don’t normally see, including a platform of some type right in the middle of the lake, complete with scraggly pines surrounding it and some sort of large bird guarding a nest on top. After a few pictures of the platform, we turned around.

Normally sailors like to have the wind at their backs. It can be much less work. In our case, though, we were unequipped to properly take advantage of it. With wind behind you, the sail that gives you the fastest ride is the spinnaker: a giant rocket of a sail that balloons up like a parachute. We had the spinnaker but no clue how to rig it (and possibly a part missing to do so), so we made do with the sails spread like wings. This worked fine until the wind shifted a bit, at which point one of the sails would go flying in the opposite direction and the careful balance would be disturbed.

I hoped to put the boat in Saturday without cranking the engine but we ran out of wind short of the harbor. It was getting late so we had to move along. Hallie, who was having the time of her life, helpfully suggested we drop anchor and spend the night on the boat. That will have to wait until another time!

We parked the boat at the dock for the night and had the kids in bed by 8:30 last night.

This morning we enjoyed a nice breakfast before heading back for Day Two of sailing. We arrived at the lake around 10:30. With the boat already partially rigged it was easy to get going again. I took the time to connect the engine’s alternator leads to the boat’s battery so that we could put a charge into it while the engine ran. It was the first time I have tried charging the battery this way and it appeared successful. I don’t like having to twist the bare wires together, however, so I’m still looking for a suitable plug arrangement to add to it.

We went our typical direction today: east, towards Eaton’s Ferry. Kelly took the helm the whole trip out, making use of a strong wind to get us out there in record time. She seemed much more comfortable at the helm, and I felt comfortable going below to read stories to the kids. Occasionally, she would ask me to come topside to help with something but generally she skippered the boat herself. I am very proud of her!

The wind had picked up quite a bit by the time we made it to Eaton’s Ferry. I finagled the helm away from Kelly at that point and began the first of a long series of tacks upwind to get us back to the lakehouse.

The problem now was facing a wind blowing exactly from the direction we wished to go. One cannot sail directly upwind, so one sails as close as practicable and tacks when one must. Several times I would set a course to bring us past a point, only to be thwarted by changing wind into tacking again. There were several “last tacks” on the way home.

Kelly looked at me near the end of one and asked how I was doing.

“Tired,” I replied. “I’m ready to get out of here!” As I said it I realized I’d never said that before anytime I was sailing. Truth is, in spite of our fun I had a headache all day long and the sun was making me cranky. Still, to paraphrase the saying: a bad day sailing is better than a good day at the office.

We got back to the lakehouse just about the time we hoped we would. We packed up our stuff and soon headed back home. The kids are now bathed and safely in their beds. Kelly and I are at our desks, wondering why they seem to be bobbing up and down. In a few minutes, we’ll crank up our Netflix movie to top off the weekend.

It was a fine start to our sailing season.

Time For A Little Fun On The Water

My friend Brown (what can he do for you?) just dropped off a replacement turnbuckle for our sailboat’s lifeline. That will come in handy this weekend as we hope to get two days of sailing in at Lake Gaston. This will be our first sail of the year and the first in seven months. The weather is shaping up to be perfect, too: sunny with winds around 10 MPH and gusts to 25 MPH on Sunday.

Nothing keeps my head on straight like sailing does. Now if I could only get paid to do it…

Job Search Dilemma

I realized today that I’m in a dilemma about finding my next job. While I am in no hurry financially to find my next job, I am in a hurry mentally. I want my next employer to be the place I stay for many, many years, so I don’t want to take just any offer for the sake of a paycheck. Still, though, I am motivated to be working right now. I’m not the kind of guy who enjoys being on the sidelines.

One thing I loved about my former employer is that it had a lot of room for me to grow. I could see myself being happy there for many more years. It was (and is) a wonderful place to work. Even today I have to fight the urge to pass along to them the great ideas I’m still dreaming up.

The perfect job for me is out there, I’m sure of it. The question is: do I have the patience to find it?