Bring on the residential urinal

I haven't gone off on one my my wise use of resources tirades in a while and I feel like I'm due. Check out this bathroom. It's kind of a school house meets family home vibe going on there and I like it. Maybe it's from having grown up in a household where six boys regularly ran amok, but I think a set up such as this would be a Godsend to any male-heavy home.

You can buy a urinal through any plumbing supplier and Kohler has a host of them available on their website. A typical urinal uses a gallon of water per flush and that's enough of a difference in water use than that of a toilet that it would result in a noticeable savings in your water bill. A step beyond the flush urinal are the new waterless urinals that are starting to show up in commercial settings. What a brilliant idea they are, but I don't know how suited they are for household use. Something tells me that they require a lot of volume to work efficiently. If I'm wrong about that I know I'll hear about it. 

Because they're new, plumbing companies like Kohler have spent a lot of time designing them and it shows. They're gorgeous, if I can use that word to describe a urinal.

So far, I have yet to convince anyone to install a home urinal but that hasn't stopped me. If you're thinking about a bath renovation and there's a man anywhere in your life, give the idea some serious thought.

What gives with the "Pickens Plan?"

I saw this video as an ad on TV Sunday night and it's an intriguing idea. Intriguing yes, but I'm not quite sure I trust this "Pickens Plan" or its backers. I believe that the US has to replace gasoline with every fiber of my being. Eight years of an administration that's allowed this country to be run by the interests of the gasoline producers of the world have made that abundantly clear. At the same time, I get it that a replacement for gasoline isn't going to come unless someone can make money off of the transition to and final replacement with whatever comes next. But who is T. Boone Pickens and what are his interests in all of this? His role as a shadowy figure in the Swiftboating of John Kerry give me pause to say the least. Is CNG the stepping stone to hydrogen he's claiming it to be? Or is CNG another dead end? Comb through their website and give it a think through. I'm genuinely on the fence. Think about it and leave a comment.

Calculate your roof's solar potential

View Larger Map

This is the satellite view of my block, thank you Google Maps.

With the help of a really cool website called Roof Ray, I was able to trace the shape of my roof from this image and then calculate its potential as a site for photovoltaic solar panels.
Once Roof Ray's web app figured out my roof's square feet, the degree of slope and the direction the different planes on my roof follow; it figured out how much it would cost to install photovoltaic solar panels on my roof.
It then figured out how much electricity I could expect to generate based on my location. It then figured out my current per kWh charge from the thieves at Progress Energy and how much money I'd save on electric bills on a month-by-month basis for the rest of my life. Finally, it figured out how many years it would take for my investment in solar to break even. A-Ma-Zing.
Check it out!

Composting toilets in paradise

When I was poking around the Cat Island Boathouse last weekend, I was surprised and happy to find that it uses a composting toilet in its bathroom. Ordinarily, someone in such a remote location would use a septic system and be done with it. However, The Cat Island Boathouse sits a few feet away from a pristine mangrove wetland and salt creek. No matter what anybody says, siting a septic tank anywhere near a wetland like that will have an adverse impact on both the wetland and the well that's the source for potable water at The Boathouse.

So the folks behind The Boathouse made a smart and efficient choice by installing a composting toilet. The model at The Boathouse is a Centrex 1000, made by Sun-Mar. Sun-Mar's Centrex 1000 system uses a one pint per flush flushing mechanism that's operated by a foot pedal. That it's a flush toilet makes it seem less strange to users. Compare that single pint of water with the 1.6 gallons flushed away by a supposedly efficient, standard flush toilet and do the math. Products like the Centrex 1000 are the future folks.

The Centrex 1000 is a model specifically designed to deal with the waste generated by a vacation home, but as you go through Sun-Mar's website, you'll see that they have a model for nearly any situation.

So hats off to The Cat Island Boathouse and three cheers for Sun-Mar.

Pepsico, clean up your act

I retrieved this from an otherwise pristine Bahamian coral reef last Saturday afternoon. Otherwise pristine, I said. The reefs of the Bahamian Out Islands are a treasure and the real wealth of that country sits just offshore --in a timeless realm that's very much uncharted, unseen and to the naked eye at least; untouched by disrespectful hands. Or so it seemed until I found this not-too-flattering advertisement for Pepsico's ugly spawn bobbing against a head of brain coral that had to be hundreds of years old.

A case could be made that some careless slob dropped this bottle of unneeded and and unwelcome consumerist flotsam overboard and failed to retrieve it. So, the fault lies with the user. And to an extent it does, but it goes deeper than that.

Bottled water is a joke, especially in The Bahamas. The well water in that country is some of the most sweet and pure available anywhere in the world. Companies like Pepsico, Coca Cola and Nestle have been working overtime for the last couple of years to convince the tourists who visit that country that there's something wrong with the water there. Worse still, those same companies spend a lot of time and energy trying to convince Bahamians that their water supplies are bad and that they can be more like people in the developed world by drinking overpriced, filtered American tap water out of an undegradeable and unsustainable plastic bottle.

The Bahamian people don't need to be told that there is something wrong with either their resources or their culture. That country and former colonies the world over have been crapped on by the west for four-hundred plus years and the assault of bottled water is a continuation of the same nonsense.

Bottled water is a bogus product sold to fulfill an entirely manufactured need. It degrades the public trust in public resources and clutters the landscape with detritus. Stop drinking it, stop buying it and Pepsico, take a look at the mess wrought by your hands. Unless of course, you're looking for a reeturn to this page in company history:

New product from Method

This is a new dishwashing detergent from the great folks at Method. Like every cleaning and grooming product these people make, Smarty is non-toxic. It's non-toxic, well-designed, cleverly advertised, priced appropriately and best of all, it works. Smarty is made without phosphates or chlorine, something new and lo-o-o-o-o-o-ng overdue in this product category.

The addition of phosphates to detergents has been going on for ages. Phosphates in your detergents are what feed the algae blooms that make the Bay murky and they turn the Gulf of Mexico green. Stop using phosphate-containing detergents and fertilizers already. The fertilizer thing is a topic for another day, but in the meantime, get thee to Target and pick up a tub 'o Smarty and give it a trial run.

Smarter choices, closer to home

My quest for Kirei Board and other, sustainable products that I am committed to using in my projects has led me to another supplier of green products and this one's even closer to home. Eco-Smart is a Sarasota-based resource and supplier that's turning into a real find. I am increasingly impressed by their commitment to the guiding principles of sustainability and they beat a price quote on Kirei that I got from another supplier. I am impressed. Here's how they describe themselves on their website:

Eco-$mart, Inc. was founded in 1993, in Sarasota, Florida, inspired by the creation of the Florida House Learning Center, a green living demonstration project jointly developed by Sarasota County Cooperative Extension service and the nonprofit Florida House Institute for Sustainable Development (I4SD). Eco-$mart's mission is to bridge the gap between understanding and applying sustainable development principals.

Eco-$mart, Inc. provides a number of services to facilitate sustainable living. We act as a distribution source for "green" construction materials, and offer free consultations to home owners, building owners, architects, developers and contractors. The nonprofit I4SD provides guidance regarding selection of these sustainable construction systems.

Eco-$mart, Inc. assists contractors and developers to take advantage of the free public relations and marketing power provided by programs such as EPA ENERGY STAR, SunBuilt and Engineered for Life, as well as promoting those businesses on Eco-$mart's affiliated media resources such as Earthzone TV and the Environmental News Network.

Eco-$mart, Inc. has also created ways for individuals and organizations to get personally involved and benefit from helping to spread the word, through our Agent and Referring Partner programs, as well as our Green Investment opportunities.

Our goal at Eco-$mart, Inc. is to help people to live and work in buildings that are healthy, efficient and cost effective. We firmly believe that once people understand what choices are really available and the impact of those choices, they will likely choose to design a better future for themselves, and for the planet.

If you are in the market for building supplies or if you are considering building a new home, please take that short drive across the Skyway Bridge and talk to my new pals at Eco-Smart.

Sol y sombra

The San Francisco Department of the Environment recently went on line with something they're calling the San Francisco Solar Map. Find it here. It's a pretty neat idea. The idea behind the map is to begin to get a sense of the sheer number of photovoltaic solar installations that are scattered throughout the city. And what it does too is allow someone to go see where a rooftop installation is in his or her neighborhood and then go see firsthand how unobtrusive a rooftop solar installation can be.

If you look at the map from pretty far back, you can get a feel for just how many solar installations there are.


Here it is a little more zoomed in.


And here's my friend Jim's street --one of his neighbors has a rooftop installation.



San Francisco has set a goal of being host to 10,000 solar rooftop installations by the year 2010. That's pretty amazing, but when I consider the source, it's not really surprising. However, about the last place on the planet I think of when it comes to sunshine is the great City by the Bay. San Franciscans will never admit it, but coastal northern California has some of the most overcast skies I've ever experienced. I'm talking weeks spent behind a veil of clouds and fog so dense it makes me lose my will to live. Don't get me wrong. San Francisco's a gorgeous city and I'm eternally grateful that I can make my weather-related generalizations from first-hand experience. But still, San Francisco's not the place to go if you're on a quest for endless summer. Yet, somehow, they make solar work.

In today's St. Petersburg Times, there's an article about Florida's Public Service Commission and their lackluster attempts to meet Governor Charlie Crist's ambitious alternative energy goals. To paraphrase the PSC:

Florida energy companies are resisting a more ambitious renewable portfolio standard, arguing that it would drive up costs for customers because the state does not have good potential for wind or solar power.

More from the Times article:

Among the new draft provisions: Any new renewable energy projects must not exceed a 1 percent increase in cost to consumers. Renewable energy advocates accused the PSC staff of adopting a double standard, pointing out recent requests by utilities to increase consumer charges by more than 20 percent for construction of new nuclear plants.

I'm confused. Why is it OK to jack up my rates to pay for a new nuclear power plant (and jack them up in advance of its eventual construction) but solar and wind projects have a 1% rate increase cap?

I'm confused too by the assertion that Florida doesn't have good potential for wind or solar power. I can sort of see the wind thing. Florida seems to lack prevailing winds --the winds change directions too much for a turbine to work efficiently. But the solar thing mystifies me. I've heard it before, that Florida's doesn't have good solar potential. But I've never heard that assertion made with any kind of evidence to back it up. It's almost as if its a forgone conclusion that solar won't work here and it makes no sense to me. Anyone? Anyone? Why won't it work here?

Mood Indigo

I've been writing a lot this week about sustainable building products, and with each mention I refer to a store in Gainesville called Indigo. Indigo opened in May of 2007 and their mission statement reads: "Responsibly providing communities with state of the art sustainable solutions. Impacting our world through an innovative multi-faceted business that places people and planet alongside growth and prosperity. " Indigo's vision is "Inspiring ourselves, the community and the world by sharing the secrets of a modern sustainable lifestyle."

Indigo offers classes on sustainable construction that are open to both the trades and the public. Indigo's website reads like a sustainability Christmas List. Dual flush toilets, sustainable lumber, formaldehyde-free plywood, low VOC paints, non-toxic cleaning supplies --it's all here and a lot of it is available for sale through their website.

These people are onto something, something big. I wonder what it would take to get them to open a location in Saint Pete? Hmmm. Never mind, but please look over their website. If you're planning a renovation, think about a trip to Gainesville to see this place for yourself.

On beyond zebra

Sandwiched between Chelsea, Union Square and Gramercy Park is the Manhattan Center for Kitchen and Bath. It is the Mecca of my profession and it defines what a kitchen and bath showroom should be. I walked through its hallowed doors for the first time about four years ago and thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Of the many beautiful things I saw there, one that stuck out more than anything was a counter top made from zebrawood. In fact, here's a photo of the MCKB's showroom and I'll give a quarter to whoever guesses where the zebrawood counter is.

Prior to that, all I knew was that zebrawood was an exotic hardwood and that it was really expensive. I assumed that it was expensive because it was rare and I didn't give it a whole lot more thought. After having made my pilgrimage to the MCKB and seeing how gorgeous a counter made from it is, I started talking up zebrawood like a mad man. At the time I worked at a ridiculously fancy schmancy design studio and I used to specify zebrawood just because I could.



Then I actually looked up what zebrawood was and I learned that zebrawood is expensive because it's rare all right. And it's rare because it's an endangered species. Zebrawood is actually Microberlinia brazzavillensis, a tropical hardwood from Gabon, Cameroon and the Congo. It is not harvested in anything close to a sustainable manner and its popularity is hastening its demise. Ever since I got the straight dope about zebrawood I got religion about it and it is now first on my verboten list.

But leave it up to the geniuses at Smith and Fong to come up with a replacement. Their product Plyboo Neopolitan is a dead ringer for zebrawood only it's made from bamboo. An untrained eye could never tell them apart, and this trained and discerning eye has a hard time. The stuff's great and it represents what the idea of sustainable building products is all about. It's not about doing without. It's about doing things smarter. I have another quarter for anybody who can guess where to buy Neopolitan. Can't think of it? Click here.

A house of straw

This is Kirei, a plywood product from the innovating geniuses at Smith and Fong. Kirei is made from the usually discarded stems of sorghum. That stuff is usually called straw when it has a use and waste when it doesn't have a use.

Sorghum is a grain and the seeds are made into a sweetener that's usually referred to as sorghum molasses. Sorghum molasses' popularity has waned significantly in the US, but it's still a widely cultivated crop in other parts of the world. When it's converted to ethanol, it has a higher yield per pound when compared than corn so there is a growing interested in sorghum cultivation in the US.

Anyhow, Smith and Fong figured out how to make a decorative and structural ply product with the straw that's left over from Sorghum processing and it's really neat-looking stuff. The desk below is made from Kirei and bamboo plywood. What results is a beautiful, functional and sustainable office desk. Neat!

Where is it available? Why, at Indigo of course.

Sustainable lumber that looks great

If you spend any time in art or craft galleries in Florida, you have no doubt run across bowls and vases made from palm wood. There's a detail shot here that shows palm wood's unique, "thready" grain pattern. The structure of a palm tree trunk is essentially a tightly packed bundle of fibers and when its cut and stained the effect is really stunning. I don't know how popular palm wood is outside of areas where palms grown, but in this part of the world it's pretty popular stuff. I love seeing it: it's an organic, local touch and I've always wondered why it doesn't get used outside of bowls and vases.



Enter Smith and Fong's Durapalm. Smith and Fong is a San Francisco-based building product innovator and their Durapalm product is made from culled coconut palms. A coconut palm has about a 100 year lifespan as a coconut producer before it's cut down. Until Durapalm, the spent coconut palm ended up as more agricultural waste. Durapalm takes the palm tree and makes it into laminate plywood, similar to how bamboo gets turned into flooring.

That laminate plywood ends up as a sheet good for use as paneling or cabinet doors, it gets cut into planks for use as flooring, or it gets cut into what are essentially tiles and then used as wall cladding. It's really wild stuff and certainly unlike anything else you're likely to come across in somebody else's house any time soon.

Pretty neat all around. It's unusual, beautiful and sustainable --a triple crown. But where to find it? Why Indigo of course. Hurray Indigo!

Moronic product of the week.

Meet the Love Bottle.


This is a product I saw being hawked on Treehugger last week and if there's a more glaring example of that site's being out to lunch I can't think of it. The Love Bottle is being peddled as a sustainable way to carry around your own water. The bottle's made from recycled glass, so I have to give them that. However, the idea behind the Love Bottle is this, "Did you know that words and pictures have energy and water is affected by that energy?" That's taken directly from their website. I had to read it a couple of times to make sure I had read properly. It's almost a treat to see that kind of jaw-dropping stupidity. Almost.

I nosed around on their site and sure enough, they are dedicated to the insane fiction that water can be imbued with an intention, and in this case the intention is "love." Apparently, the worker bees who make the bottles whisper sweet nothings while the bottles are in production. Then that love magic stays with the bottles for the rest of their useful lives. I don't know what bothers me more about that. That someone can make such a claim without a challenge or that stupid people will buy a product that makes such a claim.

On a deeper level, where did the idea that you have to lug around your own drinking water come from? This bottle-of-water-in-every-hand-phenomenon came out of nowhere over the last 20 years and seems to be the unholy result of American hypochondria, American self-indulgence and a bottled water industry all to willing to ride those less-than-admirable traits all the way to the bank. Prior to the popularization of water as a beverage, who carried around liquids? When you wanted a drink of water, you poured yourself a glass from the tap and that was that. Ahhh, cool clean water with the twist of a tap. Now there's some real magic for you. If you were at work or at the gym, you went to the water fountain and drank some water. Gee, water fountains. Remember them? But that's too simple I suppose and how can you make gobs of money from a public resource?

So I suppose my big beef with the Love Bottle is twofold. Few things go through me like non-scientific and soft-headed claims regarding the miraculous properties of anything, let alone water. The other thing about it that bothers me is that it further spreads the idea that you need to carry water with you at all times. If the Love Bottle people were interested in a sustainable practice, they wouldn't be adding to an already wasteful idea. Behind all of their fuzzy-headed claims of the paranormal, the Love Bottle's real intentions become obvious when you see the $20 price tag. Aha! The myth of altruism gets exposed again. $20 for a glass bottle. Please.



I have an idea. A billion people in the world don't have access to clean and safe drinking water of any kind let alone magic water in a Love Bottle. But there's a product called the Life Straw that's a solution to that problem. The Life Straw is a hand held water filter that works like a straw. To call it a life save for 1/6th of the world's population is an understatement. If you're tempted to buy a love bottle because you think you're doing something to "save the earth." Stop right there. You can sponsor a Life Straw for $15 through the Rotary Club of Fort Lauderdale and in so doing, you'll be saving a life. Several lives in fact. That will leave you with five dollars and with that, you can buy the nicest water glass you can get your hands on. Leave it on your desk and use it every time you want a drink of water.
Then, if you want to witness a real miracle and the only instance of a thought influencing an object try this. Hold up your right hand. Wiggle your index finger. Hey! That's all the miracle you need.

Cool, sustainable countertop materials and where to buy them

I was combing through my blog list over the weekend and shaking my head at all of the hoo-hah being made about granite lately. I specify granite all the time and whatever reservations I have about it, they are not based on bogus health claims. My only reservations about granite are a) it's pretty much everywhere any more and b) comes out of the ground in some less-than-ideal conditions. So what's out there that's unusual, resilient AND sustainable?

Well I came across a mention of Squak Mountain Stone on Apartment Therapy. Squak Mountain Stone is made by made by Tiger Mountain Innovations and is a counter top material that looks like a cross between limestone or soapstone and concrete. Squak Mountain Stone is a fibrous, cast material made from recycled glass, recycled paper, coal fly ash and concrete. Coal fly ash is what's left over after a power plant burns coal to make electricity. Squak Mountain Stone is an interesting alternative to other, non-sustainable counter top materials. Unlike the rest of its competitors, it's possible to buy this material and install it yourself in simpler applications. It's an interesting idea and the resulting counters look great!

The company behind Squak Mountain Stone also has a product called Trinity Glass, an alternative to quartz counters that's made with 75% recycled glass. Trinity Glass brings a whole different aesthetic to the table from its companion product, Squak Mountain Stone. Just as is the case with Squak Mountain, Trinity Glass is available with a do-it-yourself-er in mind.

Both of these products, and a slew of other sustainable building materials are available at Indigo, a green building products vendor in Gainesville. It's a bit of a haul, but worth the drive. Their website is extensive and you can buy samples and supplies through it.

Wanna know what's new in counter top land? You're looking at it.

What do I do with my old stuff?

I have an appointment this afternoon with a new client. We're getting together to put the final touches on a plan that will take her condominium at the beach from its existing state of mid-'90s builder chic to something more contemporary and a lot more her. However, she has an entire kitchen full of perfectly usable cabinets and appliances. She has furniture, window treatments, plumbing fixtures, etc.: all of which will being removed and never heard from again. The stuff's usable and clean, just old and outdated. My client's not alone in this. I mean, what do you do with your old stuff when it's major renovation time?

Throwing it away isn't the answer I'm looking for. Why not give that stuff to someone who can use it. The range still cooks, the fridge still refrigerates and that laminate cabinetry could last another 20 years in the right setting.


There are two ways of getting rid of old stuff that I recommend to people. The first is Habitat for Humanity's ReStore on 118th Avenue in Saint Pete. Habitat for Humanity operates a retail store as a way of raising money to build houses for people who need them. If you have appliances that are less than 10-years-old, furniture in good condition, building supplies, etc. They will take your donated stuff, sell it and then put that money to good use. What a great idea. Your old stuff ends up in the hands of someone who will continue to use it and the money raised will go to an important cause.

The ReStore on 118th is essentially a house-related thrift store, for lack of a better term. If you're considering undertaking a renovation project of your own some time soon and if you love a bargain, head over there. The directions are on their website. Also on that website is a call for volunteers to help run that store. If you have some hours you'd like to give to a good cause, consider them. Time spent outside of your life can be greatly rewarding. But in the meantime, give them your old stuff.

My second pick is something called Freecycle. Freecycle is a worldwide network of local chapters whose goal is to bring together people who have stuff with people who want stuff. Freecycle's local group is in Saint Pete and you can go to their website here. There are in excess of 6,000 members of the Freecycle network in Saint Pete alone, and someone among them wants your old range and cabinetry, trust me. Freecycle isn't intended to be a one-way street. It's members give and take in equal measure. So in getting connected with someone who wants your range, you may get connected with someone else who has coconut palms they want to get rid of. Who knows what you'll fins, the important thing is you'll find something. Even if it's nothing more than a new home for your old stuff.

Between Habitat for Humanity's ReStore and Freecycle, you are bound to find a place to put your old stuff that's not the landfill along 275 and that my friends is a great thing.

My last post about rainwater for a while, I promise

There is an online community dedicated to spreading information and awareness about sustainable water practices. They are called, fittingly enough, HarvestH2O.com and their website is worth spending some time on if any of this has struck a chord. From their website:

HarvestH2O.com is dedicated to the advancement of sustainable water management practices for individuals, families, communities, and businesses. We share knowledge and experiences in the following ways:

• advancing specific, common-sense recommendations for water conservation


• developing a best-practices repository in rainwater harvesting


• sharing stories, practical tips, cautions and notes of interest


• building on the experiences of community members who have already implemented water conservation solutions


• developing tools, templates and guidelines for building rainwater harvesting solutions educating individuals and organizations to shorten the learning process


• creating business justifications supporting water conservation as an economic investment providing a comprehensive list of vendors and products for residential and small-scale commerical water conservation projects

HarvestH2O is a great site for general research on the topic and they have an extensive, local directory of vendors who sell rainwater harvesting equipment, systems and training. Good job fellas, keep it up.

Kiss the rain

Back to my rainwater reclamation kick from Tuesday, I was rooting around on the website for Tampa Bay Water this morning. Tampa Bay Water supplies water to 2.5 million people in Pinellas County, Saint Petersburg, Tampa, Hillsborough County, Pasco County and New Port Richie. That's an odd-looking list, but apparently there are municipalities within the counties listed who don't fall under the jurisdiction of Tampa Bay Water.

Anyhow, I was looking on their site to see if anybody at that hallowed body has ever given any thought to rainwater harvesting. It turns out they have, click here, but it doesn't appear that they've thought about it on any kind of large scale. The same goes for Swiftmud, their website lists this link to a discussion about rain barrels. Thanks to Mike Molligan, their Communications Director, for pointing that out to me.

As I talk to clients and friends about rainwater harvesting, the question always comes up about how many household uses harvested rainwater has. I'm fast to point out that it's perfect for toilet flushing, irrigation and clothes washing. I'd always assumed that it was illegal to use it as a drinking water supply. I figured that it wasn't possible to opt out of a municipal water supply. Well, it turns out that I was wrong on all counts. To quote Tampa Bay Water:

Currently, there is no existing regulation or policy in the State of Florida regarding the use of cisterns for potable or non-potable use. This research was undertaken to find policies and permitting criteria that is used by other governments that could provide some rationale for understanding how and why
permitting and design specifications may be required in the Tampa Bay region.

So a rainwater harvesting system paired with a reverse-osmosis filter could allow anybody to supply his own drinking water. For now anyhow. Interesting. I am not suggesting that any one actually do this mind you, but it's an interesting thought.

On a related note, I came across this story about a High School a week ago on the great blog Metaefficient. The Langston Brown Community Center and High School in Arlington, Virginia captures and uses 280,000 gallons of rainwater every year. The facility uses that water for non-potable purposes exclusively. This is in an area of the country with 39 inches of rainfall a year, so it's not as if this building is sited in a part of the country that's particularly wet. Metaefficient also linked me to a case study on the USGBC's (the US Green Building Council) website that about knocked my socks off.

The 32,000 square foot headquarters of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Annapolis MD, is said to be the most energy efficient building ever built. It saves the foundation housed in it $33,000 in energy and utility costs when compared to a conventional office building of the same size. Saving $33,000 a year isn't just for granola-eaters kids. Sustainability makes sound, solid, economic sense and continuing to build things conventionally because "that's the way we've always done it" is madness.

Finally, a lawn I can live with

Check this out!


This is a lawn made by a company called SynLawn --a waterless, maintenance-free alternative to the Great Satan, St. Augustine Grass. Imagine having the great American lush, green lawn that you never have to water, fertilize or cut.



So long as you don't live in a deed-restricted community that bans their product, please take a look at what this company is offering. If, on the other hand, you find yourself in a deed-restricted community; what were you thinking? No really, if you live in a place that's short-sighted enough to require that you have a natural lawn, take some of this information to your next homeowner's association meeting.

SynLawn is made and headquartered in Dalton, GA and they don't seem to be a presence in Florida. Yet anyhow. This stuff looks great, really. Their website is loaded with information, instructions and prices. Check it out!

Even Dachshunds love SynLawn.

The best PSA I've seen in a while

There is a honey bee problem in the US if you're not aware of it. The video below is Haagen Dasz's, the ice cream people, hilarious PSA on a real biological mystery. This video shows something called the Bee Boys' homage to the dances honeybees perform to communicate to their hive mates. That I have no idea what a Bee Boy is tells me that this is a one-time skit and not some kind of a trend among the youth of today

Honey bees' pollination is responsible for something like a third of the foods we eat and their numbers are collapsing and no one can figure out why. Honey bee colonies across the US are experiencing something called Colony Collapse Disorder. For reasons so-far unknown to science, honey bees flee a colony spontaneously and then die.

The honey bees that pollinate American food crops are European bees that have been introduced and are trucked around the country in a state of near domestication. Without bees, we don't get apples, almonds, oranges, etc. Not to mention no honey and no Burt's Bees lip balm.

I took this photo in May. It's an actual European honeybee in Europe. Seriously though, Bee Boys aside, this honeybee thing is pretty pressing. Check out Hagen Dasz's site and read up on it.

Raindrops keep falling on my head, chapitre deux

Tampa, Florida gets an average of 46 inches of rain a year. Nearly all of that rainwater floods the streets and washes garbage and silt into the Bay. I have been wondering if there can be some good use for those 46 inches. So I set out to do some math to see what that means in gallons. A friend of mine is a fiercely proud Tampan and a math wiz. He lives in a typical Tampa ranch house and here's what he figured out for me.

His typical house has 2100 square feet of roof. Since rainfall is measured officially using the metric system, his roof measures 195 square meters As of last week, Tampa had received approximately 26 inches, or 660 mm of rain in 2008. 660 mm times 195 m² equals 128.8 m³. Since, as everybody knows, a cubic meter of water equals 264 gallons; this means that more than 34,000 gallons of rain water has fallen on my wise friend's roof since January 1, 2008.

Now, since we know the typical Tampa household uses 104 gallons of water a day for a total of 37,960 gallons a year, and we know that approximately 34,000 gallons of water have fallen on my atypical friend's typical roof so far in 2008; I think we can safely say that there's a way out of Florida's water mess. If it's not already obvious, that way out can't be found in the aquifer, in the Hillsborough River or in the new, gazillion-dollar desal plant in Apollo Beach.

Where is the serious discussion of rainwater harvesting? Don't ask because you won't hear it from the Southwest Florida Water Management District or from Tampa Bay Water. Capturing rainwater is too easy I suppose. Here's a diagram of a fully-integrated rainwater harvesting system. Mentioning one of these to a builder in these parts will get you a whole lot strange looks and that's as ridiculous as it is inexcusable. I blame the water authorities for their chronic shortsightedness and inability to plan for a livable future, never mind a sustainable one.

But you needn't wait for Swiftmud or the authority to find this obvious solution, you can get started on your own. Start with a small scale collector. Set a barrel under a downspout and cover it to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Attach a hose to the bottom of the barrel and wash your car with it. Or water your garden. Or give the dog a bath. Or God forbid, water the lawn.



Rainwater harvesting is a smart, efficient use of resources. Get in on it early kids because before too long your water bills will start to look like your electric bills.