Green Rascal Design

I went to go see the Canstruction projects in Philly today. They will be taken down tomorrow, and a dear friend was involved with one this year. The event supports a good cause, and it's always nice to see what people can make with everyday items. In this case, cans of food are used to build whatever - kinda like a sand sculpting competition - then they are donated to Philabundance, "the region's major food bank."

Here's a picture from the second floor there. My friend's project is the camera on the left hand side.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to next year's Canstruction event. Who knows, maybe we'll get involved!

Winter is wreaking havoc on us! I've seen countless people loading multiple bags of ice melt/salt/calcium chloride or whatever on their walks and drives, and I wonder how bad is this for the environment.

Without doing any research on this in particular, I can recall previous readings describing the massive problem of ground water and soil salinization. Salt kills things. You can use salt and water to sanitize your cutting board. Salt drives away pigments in watercolor painting. So what does it do in the ground after it melts our ice and washes away?

Lots of people are turning to calcium chloride. It is supposed to be better for your concrete walkways. It works faster, and at lower temperatures. But I wonder what calcium ions do in the ground and to vegetation.

This, plus the giant ice dam above my office, makes me think about proper design to protect against water. First off, if your sidewalk wasn't installed properly it has probably settled unevenly. Flat sidewalks require less ice melt as the precipitation disperses more evenly. My sidewalk is a disaster! Then there are stairs. We have old fashioned brick steps in the front, and they have a slight projection at each tread. I noticed that very little salt is required to make these steps safe. It could also be that they are not hollow. The thermal mass seems to help melt precipitation better than the hollow steps out back. If you're in the market for a new sidewalk or set of stairs in the future, keep these things in mind.

The opposite is true for my ice dam. The roof is a fairly low pitch, and I bet there is no insulation in this ceiling. A lot of buildings in the area seem to be under-insulated. You can tell after a snowfall because well-insulated homes will have more snow on the roof. Uninsulated roofs/attics let the heat from your home up, and that melts the snow, but only over your heated spaces. The two feet of roof overhang is still cold so it refreezes the water, which then starts to build up. In my case it is painfully obvious because the addition was not well designed. The roof is sagging under the weight of the ice dam, and since there is a very short header over the door, the screen door is now hitting the bottom of the gutter. Try getting your groceries in when the door won't open more than half way!

Someday we will have to rebuild this addition properly. Again, if you ever have work done on your home or office, periodically take a minute to think about winter. We don't all keep snow and ice in mind during a spring or summer remodeling project.

Take care, and stay dry.

I'm planning on building something like these shelves from the Brick House. My version is going to be somewhat less interesting, and much more utilitarian, but I'm still really excited. They're going in the kitchen, which is a huge mess right now. I'll be very happy to get some of the junk up off the floor/table/counter top and onto some real storage. It's going to be tight, and I'll have to clip off one corner of all the shelves on the west side of the room to minimize the risk of getting bruises by the door.

At the same time I'm building my network this week. I was sad that the AEC meetup scheduled for last night was postponed for 2 weeks. However, other things continue. My friend started his teaching career at Philly U this week - all because I needed a guest critic for my class's final presentations. I'm also rockin' the Power Lunch Project this week. I got all kinds of pointers and ideas for business resources today, too!

What are you building right now?

Lets build up the end of January and keep the momentum going!

This blog article about Potential Futures for Design Practice has been sitting open in my firefox since yesterday... BLDG BLOG featured it some days ago, and while I was attempting to cull through my backlog of reading something about it piqued my interest. This merits saving and sharing with students at some point, and I figured I'd also post a link here for anybody like myself, who has been living under a rock during the holidays. Enjoy.

Where do even begin? There are tons of things to do, but not a lot of $$$ attached to the items on the list. I feel like its mostly okay because the projects I'm working on now will help in the future. Of course, that's not going to pay the mortgage in January!

Anywhoo, it's Friday. I built a little shelf for the cat to sit on in the window this morning. And he ignores it. It's just a little bit of wood with some brackets, and carpet is stapled to the whole thing. I think the cat got so freaked out by the stapling procedure that he won't go near the thing for days. sigh! Guess I should not have used the hammer type stapler, haha.

I stopped by a local CSA today. (It's the one on my route home from PhilaU) Now I'm all excited for spring. I can just imagine coming up with a little drawing for their future farm stand out on Henry Ave. They really need one, too. And it's not like it would be difficult to build... Whatever the case is, I hope they stay there for a good long time since they just got started.

And I was looking into the No Impact Project. I think it'd be really great to go and try to be even more of an environmental nut than we currently are. Seriously! I was looking at filling out the application earlier. The only thing I think we'd have a problem with is the transportation. It is very hilly around here, and I couldn't possibly bike my groceries home!

And of course there are more competitions to enter. Seems like I need somebody to go do all my networking for me, because I haven't gotten a single competition started! sad :( If I had any money to pay somebody to do it I would.

Oh, and I had a nice chat with an artist friend about websites the other day. I really hope she gets hers up and running so I can share her work with everyone. She really got the message of what I'm trying to accomplish with this little thing. Thank the Universe! Somebody understands! Although I'm still afraid to show her my painting I did for the living room. For some reason criticism on my architecture is fine, but on my art not so much. I guess its because I'm not really an artist.

When I get a little device to plug my camera's memory card into the new beast computer, I'll put a picture up so everybody can rip my painting to shreds. That'll make me feel better. hahaha.

For the rest of the evening though, we're going to a swanky party. So THERE!

I was at the dentist this morning, and this particular dentist lets patients watch tv while they're waiting to be drilled. So there I am in the dentist chair when this report comes on the Today show about how fetuses are affected by the environments their mothers are in. I think this would be a great focus for us here. What better way to start healing the environment, than to also prevent future diseases in the unborn.

Interesting how my environment at the time made me comfortable enough to comprehend the story on tv and remember it. It's a nice dentist office!

Also, the chickens got a partial new roof on their cage yesterday. Speaking of environments, it has been really windy here lately, and their retractable canvas roof I had up there was falling apart. The ropes were ripped off the wooden roller. And the thing was flapping so badly the chickens were nervous. So I headed to JoAnn Fabrics and got some "jacketing." I sewed it up so that the ropes go through pockets instead of just lying on top of the fabric. It keeps the sun off sufficiently, however I need more fabric because they didn't have enough of what I chose. Too bad it's a Sunday project and I don't have time to finish until then.

Anyway, I think I'm going to develop a pitch for design for newborns or something. Since that story on tv I haven't been able to get it off my mind.

put the dining room back together again. Yes, I finished the floor refinishing project in one room the other day, and it looks spectacular. Well, okay it looks lots better than it did before. There is a dark rectangle in the middle of the room where there must have been rugs its whole life. I was planning on putting another rug there eventually anyway. But for now we are rugless, and that is fine because I can show off the new floor to all the guests we'll be having over later tomorrow. Anywhoo, I dusted most things in there and put most of them back sorta where they were before. I'm adjusting some items for feng shui purposes. And there was a lot of dust on the walls. We'll have to dust all the walls in the house in the morning I think.

That's all for now. It's Friday, so I'm laxing on my business stuff. Yes, I know. I should have contacted those new people I met last night at the Business Over Dinner event, but there isn't enough time today so it'll have to wait till Wednesday. Speaking of the Business Over Dinner event, it was pretty great. I didn't feel good about all the bad manners I've been exhibiting my whole life, but  oh well. I went to learn, right? Learning business etiquette, or any etiquette, over dinner was a great thing for me to do, and it was fun. Ms. Stokley forced us to dine Continental style, and I realized I actually quite liked it. So I'll be practicing that during the party tomorrow.

Anyway, I've gotta get back to work putting the place together. I've been working in somewhat of a war zone for the past couple of weeks, and it'll be nice to get things straightened out.

I should also go see how the fluffies are doing because they seemed anxious for attention earlier when I walked past to get my new software for the new beast computer. So much to do!