Excellent science geekery
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Garage plans approved
The county turned around the final update immediately and I got a letter in the mail today! Now I just need to visit them to get the actual permit document.
I'm getting started with the first step next week...
I'm getting started with the first step next week...
Solar Power - Spring Equinox Update
Spring is here, and we just had a few clear days, shown below. The sunrise and sunset are about 12 hours apart. We installed the system just before the fall equinox, so we now have a good calibration of the output levels through the least sunny part of the year, from now on it will be interesting to track the output as we go to the longest day.
Actual average output over the last 200 or so days is about 14.3 KWh/day. Yesterday was 22.5 KWh, and at the winter solstice low point it was 16 KWh on a clear day as previously blogged.
Actual average output over the last 200 or so days is about 14.3 KWh/day. Yesterday was 22.5 KWh, and at the winter solstice low point it was 16 KWh on a clear day as previously blogged.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Garage Plan Resubmitted
This morning I took the requested clarifications on the building design into the county offices. We should hear back in a week or two, it's minor stuff so I hope this is the last step. We already have our permit for the leach field repair, so I'm starting on that work. We got the septic tank pumped and inspected (it was in good condition) this week, and filed the inspection results with the county, so the next step is to put in a new re-routed pipe and diversion valve between the tank and the leach field.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Garage Plan Detail
To get everything approved we had to survey the land and get a detailed plan drawn up by a Civil Engineer - we used Terry Szewczyk and he was helpful, competent and kept the costs to a minimum. The picture below is a detail from one of the drawings, which were produced at 1inch to 20ft scale, and shows the important part where the garage goes. For some reason the contour lines altitude is shown based around 2000ft, whereas the real altitude is about 2400ft, but no-one seems to care if that aspect of it is accurate.
Our first step is to replace the pipe that goes from the septic tank to the diversion valve and the remaining leach field, so we start by getting the tank emptied (which needs to be done every few years anyway). The pipe has to dive down a bit then go across under the concrete "apron" that will lead up to the garage, and it won't be buried very deep, so we will be putting down a 4" pipe that is placed inside a 6" pipe for the part that goes under the driveway, to give it extra protection from being crushed.
The final detailed changes we need on the building design plan are now in hand (the layout plan shown above is already approved), so I'm back to the county office again next week to resubmit them and hopefully get the permit.
The other details you can see on the plan are the electrical connection, which will be a 220V -200Amp dedicated circuit capable of charging electric cars one day. The propane tank will be relocated, and hooked up to a generator and the house. There is also a water connection to a fire sprinkler system.
Our first step is to replace the pipe that goes from the septic tank to the diversion valve and the remaining leach field, so we start by getting the tank emptied (which needs to be done every few years anyway). The pipe has to dive down a bit then go across under the concrete "apron" that will lead up to the garage, and it won't be buried very deep, so we will be putting down a 4" pipe that is placed inside a 6" pipe for the part that goes under the driveway, to give it extra protection from being crushed.
The final detailed changes we need on the building design plan are now in hand (the layout plan shown above is already approved), so I'm back to the county office again next week to resubmit them and hopefully get the permit.
The other details you can see on the plan are the electrical connection, which will be a 220V -200Amp dedicated circuit capable of charging electric cars one day. The propane tank will be relocated, and hooked up to a generator and the house. There is also a water connection to a fire sprinkler system.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
WiFi upgrade
My five year old wifi hardware got flaky and slow, so I looked around and decided to go with the D-Link DIR-825 as my central node and a DAP-1522 to bridge to my TV etc.
They are both N spec dual frequency systems. Arrived today from Amazon for $225 for the pair.
They are both N spec dual frequency systems. Arrived today from Amazon for $225 for the pair.
[Update: they are working fine, I have a 130Mbit/s link speed reported on the 5GHz link between the DIR-825 and the DAP-1522, and I've shut down all the old WiFi networks].
Friday, February 26, 2010
sketching the new garage
While figuring out what we wanted to build, I used Google Sketchup (the free version) to create a 3D model of the house and garage. Working with 3D takes a bit of getting used to, but it's very similar to the solid modeling I was doing to make custom 3D printed parts for my homebrew phone, and Sketchup is very good at getting these kind of artists-impression images created.
The house really is a box, and the full width deck with steps going back down the side doesn't exist yet, but I was able to get the relative position and size of the garage about right so we could see if it fitted in. We then went to TuffShed and got them to draw up plans for our oversized garage. If you get a garage custom "stick built" at the site, the cost is quite high, mostly labor. Tuffshed pre-fabricate the parts, ship them in, and put up the entire building in about three days. The cost (not including foundations) is about $30K for an 1150 square foot triple wide garage (32ft wide, 36ft deep), with a 16ft wide double door, 8ft wide single door, and 10ft high ceilings. The basic cost is more like $20K, but it cost extra to go from 8ft to 10ft ceilings, and we added a bunch of other extra options.
So far, we have had a few minor issues getting the Tuffshed plans approved by the county planning department. Really just clarifications of materials and codes on the drawings, but the first two tries have failed. Everything is now approved apart from the final tweaks to the drawings of the garage, so I'm hoping to get it taken care of next week.
The house really is a box, and the full width deck with steps going back down the side doesn't exist yet, but I was able to get the relative position and size of the garage about right so we could see if it fitted in. We then went to TuffShed and got them to draw up plans for our oversized garage. If you get a garage custom "stick built" at the site, the cost is quite high, mostly labor. Tuffshed pre-fabricate the parts, ship them in, and put up the entire building in about three days. The cost (not including foundations) is about $30K for an 1150 square foot triple wide garage (32ft wide, 36ft deep), with a 16ft wide double door, 8ft wide single door, and 10ft high ceilings. The basic cost is more like $20K, but it cost extra to go from 8ft to 10ft ceilings, and we added a bunch of other extra options.
So far, we have had a few minor issues getting the Tuffshed plans approved by the county planning department. Really just clarifications of materials and codes on the drawings, but the first two tries have failed. Everything is now approved apart from the final tweaks to the drawings of the garage, so I'm hoping to get it taken care of next week.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
the garage saga, it gets complicated
We live out of town, on top of the Santa Cruz mountains. This makes a few things easier, we only have Santa Clara County to deal with, no city rules. We also have more space. The downside is that it can be hard to find people to work on the house, and it can cost more to deliver heavy stuff like gravel than it costs to buy it.
The complications start with a scenic highway. We can't build anything within 100ft of the road, Then there is a well, we can't do things within a 100ft radius of that. Then there is a septic tank and leach field. The leach field is two banks of 250ft long buried perforated pipes which occupies a lot of space, including the space that we want to put a garage on. Then a driveway has to find it's way through and have a turn around area big enough to take a fire engine. All of a sudden, a few acres of land is full.
A few years ago we got a plan drawn up for a modified leach field layout. This removed the upper 250ft field so that we could put the garage there, and added a new 250ft field below. To comply with planning rules we had to show that we could on theory add another 500ft of leach field if the first one failed. So that took up almost all the space.
After all that the biggest possible garage we could fit is a free standing building 32ft wide and 36ft deep. It will have one single and one double door and sit alongside the house about 20ft away and slightly downhill.
To prove that the space existed I got my local ground moving specialist Bob Whalen to use an excavator to dig holes and locate the leach field pipes, and made a big flat area in the right place. Along the way we destroyed the upper leach field before I got permission, we got told off but since the rest of the plan made sense we got away with it and were able to move forward.
At some point the county realized that the plan they had for my driveway bore no relation to what had been put in by the people who built the house, this raised the spectre of a grading violation and possible grading permit, which would be needed if we had to move more than 150 cubic yards to get a driveway that conformed to code.
With a lot of help from Terry and crew at TS Civil Engineering we ended up with a plan for the driveway and leach field that met code, didnt raise a violation and didn't need over 100 cubic yards of grading. With a few tweaks the county finally approved the plan.
The complications start with a scenic highway. We can't build anything within 100ft of the road, Then there is a well, we can't do things within a 100ft radius of that. Then there is a septic tank and leach field. The leach field is two banks of 250ft long buried perforated pipes which occupies a lot of space, including the space that we want to put a garage on. Then a driveway has to find it's way through and have a turn around area big enough to take a fire engine. All of a sudden, a few acres of land is full.
A few years ago we got a plan drawn up for a modified leach field layout. This removed the upper 250ft field so that we could put the garage there, and added a new 250ft field below. To comply with planning rules we had to show that we could on theory add another 500ft of leach field if the first one failed. So that took up almost all the space.
After all that the biggest possible garage we could fit is a free standing building 32ft wide and 36ft deep. It will have one single and one double door and sit alongside the house about 20ft away and slightly downhill.
To prove that the space existed I got my local ground moving specialist Bob Whalen to use an excavator to dig holes and locate the leach field pipes, and made a big flat area in the right place. Along the way we destroyed the upper leach field before I got permission, we got told off but since the rest of the plan made sense we got away with it and were able to move forward.
At some point the county realized that the plan they had for my driveway bore no relation to what had been put in by the people who built the house, this raised the spectre of a grading violation and possible grading permit, which would be needed if we had to move more than 150 cubic yards to get a driveway that conformed to code.
With a lot of help from Terry and crew at TS Civil Engineering we ended up with a plan for the driveway and leach field that met code, didnt raise a violation and didn't need over 100 cubic yards of grading. With a few tweaks the county finally approved the plan.
cars and a place to keep them...
I'm going to blog about cars over the coming months, partly because I'm about to start building a big garage to keep them in and I want to document the process.
We bought a house about 5 years ago that had a wooden shed as it's single garage. We had five cars at the time and there seemed to be enough space to build a big garage. However other priorities intervened and it wasn't until the middle of 2009 we finally got serious.
The first action was to make a large flat space, to see how big it could be, then we got bogged down in the planning process and this week we finally have the key approvals in place!
More details to come....
We bought a house about 5 years ago that had a wooden shed as it's single garage. We had five cars at the time and there seemed to be enough space to build a big garage. However other priorities intervened and it wasn't until the middle of 2009 we finally got serious.
The first action was to make a large flat space, to see how big it could be, then we got bogged down in the planning process and this week we finally have the key approvals in place!
More details to come....
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Netflix Free Trial link
If you were thinking of joining Netflix, click this link to get a two week free trial - it's a new affiliate program that Netflix is starting via the Google Advertiser Network. I will update the free trial link in my iPhone app in the next version.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Bil2010 Millicomputing - The Future In Your Pocket
Here are my slides for BIL tomorrow, predictions for 2010 and 2011:
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Book: Release It! Design and Deploy Production Ready Software by Michael Nygard
Essential reading for anyone architecting web sites. It contains clear explanations and real-life anecdotes of many of the patterns and anti-patterns that I've run into over the years, and I'm learning some new ones. Now I just have to get all the engineers on my team to read it... Here it is on Amazon.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
My iPhone apps 2009
the apps that I use most frequently: Echofon, Skype, Newsstand, Instant Queue Add for Netflix, Amazon, Kindle, Pandora, WootWatch, CoPilot.
In particular I get most of my news via rss feeds using Newsstand, which synchronizes very well with Google Reader on my laptop. I don't own a kindle, but whenever possible I buy books to read on my iPhone using the kindle app.
In particular I get most of my news via rss feeds using Newsstand, which synchronizes very well with Google Reader on my laptop. I don't own a kindle, but whenever possible I buy books to read on my iPhone using the kindle app.
My Music 2009
an eclectic list of the CDs that I played most: by Amanda Palmer, The Duckworth Lewis Method, Fractal, Japonize Elephants, Zoe Keating, Tony Levin, Mirthkon, Muse, Queens of the Stone Age, Neil Young.
Some of it was released in 2009, some of it was new to me in 2009, here are links to the albums.
Amanda Palmer - Who Killed Amanda Palmer
Neil Hannon - The Duckworth Lewis Method
Fractal - Sequitur
Japonize Elephants - 40 Years of our Family
Zoe Keating - One Cello x 16: Natoma
Tony Levin - Stick Man
Mirthkon - Vehicle
Muse - The Resistance
Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris
Neil Young - Fork in the Road
Some of it was released in 2009, some of it was new to me in 2009, here are links to the albums.
Amanda Palmer - Who Killed Amanda Palmer
Neil Hannon - The Duckworth Lewis Method
Fractal - Sequitur
Japonize Elephants - 40 Years of our Family
Zoe Keating - One Cello x 16: Natoma
Tony Levin - Stick Man
Mirthkon - Vehicle
Muse - The Resistance
Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris
Neil Young - Fork in the Road
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Solar Power - Winter Solstice and New Ducting Update
I've previously shared the first few months of output from our solar system, we turned it on at the start of September, and on a clear day we were getting around 24KWh. As the days got shorter and the Sun got lower in the sky, the clear day output dropped off, and earlier this week we hit the winter solstice, the shortest day. Wednesday was a clear day, and we generated about 16KWh, as shown in the plot below.
We have also seen the benefit of our E6-time of use rate plan. We generate electricity during the week while we are mostly out of the house at the highest rate, and use it at the cheapest rate. So we continue to be net consumers of electricity, generating between 50% and 70% of what we use, but our electricity bill is basically zero at this point. In addition, PG&E just gave us a rebate of $67 due to lower energy costs, so the standing charge of $11.50/month is zeroed out for almost six months.
We converted our gas appliances to electric, for heating water, drying clothes and cooking, and currently only use gas for the furnace that heats the house. We looked into replacing the furnace with a ground source heat pump (GSHP) but got wildly varying designs and costs from everyone we talked to so have postponed that idea. The one thing everyone agreed on was that our ducting was sub-standard, with insufficient flow for A/C and barely enough for the furnace, and it was poorly constructed using the lowest quality materials.
So we have just replaced the ducts throughout the house, changing the configuration to include separate zones for upstairs and downstairs, adding a new return path from upstairs and one extra outlet. The ducts are insulated to R8, rather than R4.2, so they don't lose heat, and they have fewer leaks and a properly designed balance of air flow into each room. This is done using something called a Manual-J calculation, and there is also an independent analysis service that verifies that everything is working correctly. The main effect of this is that we will use less propane, and have much better control over temperature upstairs. We often want to heat the bedrooms without wanting to heat downstairs to the same level, and we now have a thermostat in the main bedroom for upstairs, as well as one downstairs.
I'm planning to blog some more about GSHP options, its quite complicated....
We have also seen the benefit of our E6-time of use rate plan. We generate electricity during the week while we are mostly out of the house at the highest rate, and use it at the cheapest rate. So we continue to be net consumers of electricity, generating between 50% and 70% of what we use, but our electricity bill is basically zero at this point. In addition, PG&E just gave us a rebate of $67 due to lower energy costs, so the standing charge of $11.50/month is zeroed out for almost six months.
We converted our gas appliances to electric, for heating water, drying clothes and cooking, and currently only use gas for the furnace that heats the house. We looked into replacing the furnace with a ground source heat pump (GSHP) but got wildly varying designs and costs from everyone we talked to so have postponed that idea. The one thing everyone agreed on was that our ducting was sub-standard, with insufficient flow for A/C and barely enough for the furnace, and it was poorly constructed using the lowest quality materials.
So we have just replaced the ducts throughout the house, changing the configuration to include separate zones for upstairs and downstairs, adding a new return path from upstairs and one extra outlet. The ducts are insulated to R8, rather than R4.2, so they don't lose heat, and they have fewer leaks and a properly designed balance of air flow into each room. This is done using something called a Manual-J calculation, and there is also an independent analysis service that verifies that everything is working correctly. The main effect of this is that we will use less propane, and have much better control over temperature upstairs. We often want to heat the bedrooms without wanting to heat downstairs to the same level, and we now have a thermostat in the main bedroom for upstairs, as well as one downstairs.
I'm planning to blog some more about GSHP options, its quite complicated....
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Global Warming
Two essential books to read: Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming by James Hoggan - how the oil and coal industries are behind the denialist spin doctors - will make you angry. Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity by James Hansen - will make you scared.
James Hansen is the NASA scientist who is probably the worlds top climate expert. Industry and politicians don't want to hear the message he has been trying to get through for years, that the situation is much worse than the IPCC projections already. He provides the research background for the safe limit of 350ppm of CO2 that is being promoted by some at Copenhagen at the moment. We are already at 387ppm, and increasing rapidly, and we are seeing irreversible changes in climate as the ice melts. James is calling for a worldwide moratorium on building coal fired power plants as a first step. The oil and coal has to be left underground.
Human civilization has occurred during a time of very stable sea levels, over the last 7000 years. Before that sea levels have changed more rapidly and over a range of hundreds of feet. Human induced global warming is forcing change an order of magnitude stronger than the natural changes in climate, and is still accelerating. With very unstable sea levels, ports and coastal areas are going to flood, and it will not be possible to establish new ports on a permanent basis, as they will be flooded in turn within the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. The huge numbers of refugees is an even bigger problem.
What can we do?
Read those two books.
Sell coastal property while there are still people who will buy it.
Don't invest in oil, coal and insurance companies.
Put up solar panels and switch from gas to electric appliances.
Sign up at the 350.org web site, join the 350org facebook group.
I get books via the Kindle service and read them on my iPhone, instant delivery, and always with me to read.
Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity
A good summary of the arguments is at Skeptical Science
I have read everything I can find on this subject over the last year or two, I have an Applied Physics degree and enough science and statistics that I can tell who and what makes sense and who doesn't. Every single denier and contrarian that I have heard of is backed by the coal and oil industries, often through opaque organizations and astroturf groups with innocent sounding names. They have been exposed as liars and cherry pickers, but really they are spin doctors sowing confusion. If you listen to them you are deluding yourself, and you should be investing in real estate in Florida...
James Hansen is the NASA scientist who is probably the worlds top climate expert. Industry and politicians don't want to hear the message he has been trying to get through for years, that the situation is much worse than the IPCC projections already. He provides the research background for the safe limit of 350ppm of CO2 that is being promoted by some at Copenhagen at the moment. We are already at 387ppm, and increasing rapidly, and we are seeing irreversible changes in climate as the ice melts. James is calling for a worldwide moratorium on building coal fired power plants as a first step. The oil and coal has to be left underground.
Human civilization has occurred during a time of very stable sea levels, over the last 7000 years. Before that sea levels have changed more rapidly and over a range of hundreds of feet. Human induced global warming is forcing change an order of magnitude stronger than the natural changes in climate, and is still accelerating. With very unstable sea levels, ports and coastal areas are going to flood, and it will not be possible to establish new ports on a permanent basis, as they will be flooded in turn within the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. The huge numbers of refugees is an even bigger problem.
What can we do?
Read those two books.
Sell coastal property while there are still people who will buy it.
Don't invest in oil, coal and insurance companies.
Put up solar panels and switch from gas to electric appliances.
Sign up at the 350.org web site, join the 350org facebook group.
I get books via the Kindle service and read them on my iPhone, instant delivery, and always with me to read.
Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity
A good summary of the arguments is at Skeptical Science
I have read everything I can find on this subject over the last year or two, I have an Applied Physics degree and enough science and statistics that I can tell who and what makes sense and who doesn't. Every single denier and contrarian that I have heard of is backed by the coal and oil industries, often through opaque organizations and astroturf groups with innocent sounding names. They have been exposed as liars and cherry pickers, but really they are spin doctors sowing confusion. If you listen to them you are deluding yourself, and you should be investing in real estate in Florida...
Saturday, December 12, 2009
CMG09 - Last Time Attendee
I presented a half day training class and a paper at CMG09 in Dallas last week. I won't be at CMG10. The conference has shrunk to a few hundred attendees, mostly mainframe oriented, a few vendors, and a bunch of independent consultants. Its main value for me was to maintain and extend my social network of capacity planning and performance people. There were some useful and interesting papers, but not enough to justify a full week long conference in a very expensive hotel. CMG10 is in Orlando FL, and I can't justify traveling to the east coast for more of the same.
A few years ago I discussed with the CMG board members what was needed to keep CMG from shrinking into irrelevancy, at the time I was at eBay, and early December is the peak business level for retail industry, so very few capacity/performance experts from retail can get away at that time of year, and I suggested they move the date. The dominant industries attending CMG have been banking, insurance and finance, which have been hit hard in the recession. The other change I advocated was that CMG should be held in the Bay Area, so that it could attract a lot more people from the major Web companies and computer hardware and software companies that are based here. Unfortunately CMG is locked into a long series of Hotel commitments for several years, and can't change its plans.
So my position now, is that I will attend CMG again when it comes to me. In the meantime, I will encourage the people I met every year at CMG to attend the Velocity Conference in San Jose next June. http://en.oreilly.com/velocity2010 - the call for papers closes in January, so we have a few weeks to come up with abstracts.
A few years ago I discussed with the CMG board members what was needed to keep CMG from shrinking into irrelevancy, at the time I was at eBay, and early December is the peak business level for retail industry, so very few capacity/performance experts from retail can get away at that time of year, and I suggested they move the date. The dominant industries attending CMG have been banking, insurance and finance, which have been hit hard in the recession. The other change I advocated was that CMG should be held in the Bay Area, so that it could attract a lot more people from the major Web companies and computer hardware and software companies that are based here. Unfortunately CMG is locked into a long series of Hotel commitments for several years, and can't change its plans.
So my position now, is that I will attend CMG again when it comes to me. In the meantime, I will encourage the people I met every year at CMG to attend the Velocity Conference in San Jose next June. http://en.oreilly.com/velocity2010 - the call for papers closes in January, so we have a few weeks to come up with abstracts.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Heading to CMG09 in Dallas today
various talks on capacity planning in the cloud on Wed, then I'm presenting on Thurs. My slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/adrianco - this is probably my last visit to CMG, its been shrinking for a while, we will see how it looks on the ground.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
HPTS at Asilomar
I'm attending the High Performance Transaction Systems workshop http;//hpts,ws over the next few days. I'm chairing a session on moving to the cloud. Quality crowd - Bechtolsheim, Stonebraker, Patterson, and so on, see the Agenda... Second time for me, it's an honor to be invited back.
Friday, October 23, 2009
FREE this weekend, iPhone Instant Queue Add for Netflix
The latest version 5 of IQ+ was released this week, and it is currently Free until Monday morning.
You get your queue, recently watched, and up to 100 movies per list for new releases, new TV, the 12 top level genres, movies you'll love, and seven highly personalized sub-genre and similars lists. All the lists are personally optimized for you by Netflix and will be the same as the lists currently shown on Xbox 360 or Media Center if you have one.
It's a free update for existing users (the app has been out for over a year now) and normally 99c for new users. The app also provides searching the instant catalog and sorting the lists by title, rating, maturity, ending soon etc. Sorting the queue doesn't (yet) change it at Netflix, but helps you find titles that you can then pop to the front or back of the queue with one click.
http://itunes.apple.com/
Please review/rate the latest release. So far thousands of existing users have upgraded, iPhone OS 3.0 or later is required.
You get your queue, recently watched, and up to 100 movies per list for new releases, new TV, the 12 top level genres, movies you'll love, and seven highly personalized sub-genre and similars lists. All the lists are personally optimized for you by Netflix and will be the same as the lists currently shown on Xbox 360 or Media Center if you have one.
It's a free update for existing users (the app has been out for over a year now) and normally 99c for new users. The app also provides searching the instant catalog and sorting the lists by title, rating, maturity, ending soon etc. Sorting the queue doesn't (yet) change it at Netflix, but helps you find titles that you can then pop to the front or back of the queue with one click.
http://itunes.apple.com/
Please review/rate the latest release. So far thousands of existing users have upgraded, iPhone OS 3.0 or later is required.
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