Frontload Washer Energy Math

I wanted to check how much energy our new front-loading clothes washer uses. Finally, a chance to use all of that grade school math.

The washing machine has been plugged into a Kill a Watt meter for 1676 hours. Divide that by 24 hours in a day, and you get about 70 days, or ten weeks.

In that time, the machine used a total of 1.89 kilowatt hours, which is equivalent to using 1890 watts for one hour. We use about ten kilowatt hours of electricity every day, so the washing machine constitutes an incredibly tiny amount of our overall use.

The story would be much different if we used hot water instead of cold, and used the electric clothes dryer instead of air drying. Electricity is very efficient at running motors, like the motor that runs the washing machine, but is very inefficient at heating water for washing or heating air for drying.

Our electric dryer pulls almost 4000 watts, so in a half hour, it would use as much electricity as the washing machine does in two months!

If one kilowatt hour costs eleven cents, the cost for running the washing machine for more than two months is 20 cents, total. That seems incredibly low, but there it is.

A search of the New York Times archives pulled up some interesting articles reporting on the effectiveness of cold water washing. The most recent article is here.

Another one was from 1974, soon after President Gerald Ford, in an address to Congress, encouraged people to use cold water for washing. Imagine a Republican president, or in fact any president, encouraging people to conserve energy these days. Four years ago, when candidate Obama suggested that keeping car tires inflated would save as much oil as offshore drilling would yield, he was made the butt of jokes.

Kill a Watt meters of several varieties can be purchased on the web for about $25, and local hardware stores likely carry them or something similar. An older but still very useful version can be checked out of the Princeton Public Library, thanks to a contribution years back by the Princeton Environmental Commission.

Verizon FIOS and Energy Use

Something in the house began beeping recently, but only every ten minutes or so, making it very difficult to tell where it was coming from. I finally traced it to this box in the basement.
The box was telling me that the backup battery was probably dying and needed to be replaced. Why does my house have a battery in the basement?

If you switched to Verizon FIOS internet service at some point, you may have been surprised to find that your land line phone goes dead not long after your house loses power in storms. It has to do with the fiber optic line they strung from the street into your house. The old copper phone line carried its own electricity, separate from the electrical grid, to power your land line phone even during power outages. The fiber optic line doesn't. Instead, they put one of these boxes in the basement. It runs off your electrical power from the grid, but has a backup battery to keep the land line phone functioning for a few hours during power outages. If the power is out for days, you're out of luck.

I called Verizon, and they told me that I would have to pay for the backup battery if I'd had FIOS for more than a year, but that the system will still work without it. Fortunately, it turned out to simply be unplugged. How that happened is one of the basement's mysteries.

While I had the guy on the phone, I asked whether it's okay to unplug the Verizon set top box (for changing channels) when it's not in use. The installer had told me not to unplug it, because it's constantly being updated with new channel programming information. But the guy today recommended turning it off overnight. The electronics will last longer, and he said he was saving $30 a month by turning off computers and various entertainment electronics.

Using a kill-a-watt meter, I found that the set top box uses a constant 20 watts, while the router uses about 15. Add the box in the basement, which I think uses about 20 watts, and that's 55 watts the Verizon system is constantly using. Putting the set top box on a power strip and turning it off overnight, and the router too unless there's a nightowl using the internet, makes sense, particularly if it helps prolong the life of the electronics.

Razors--Why Is Reusing the Handle More Expensive?

Trying to cut back on trash? It seemed logical to reuse the handle on a razor, but the cost incentive leans the other direction. Eight new razor heads cost $24, which comes out to $3 each.

The alternative is to buy three full razors, including handles, for $2.66 each.

At another store, the math works out about the same,

after accounting for the discount promotion for the more wasteful product.

My guess at why there's a disincentive to reduce waste is that the package of 8 heads is more valuable and therefore more often stolen, requiring that staff put each one in a magnetized box to discourage theft. One's paying not only for the extra handling but also for the percentage that are stolen.

Garbage Gang Afoot?

This is really going too far. Our beloved trash can, which for years had stood proudly in the driveway in as pristine a condition as any trash can could long remain, has been defaced. Or should I say that it has been given a face, though a bit lacking in symmetry.

What neighborhood elements would target this modest, unassuming, yet as aforementioned proud, container that had served so well for so long? Now its shield from the elements lays scattered in bits on the pavement, spit out like watermelon seeds.

We immediately secured the services of an ace detective, who wasted no time in tracking down past acts of vandalism that bore an uncanny resemblance to this most recent act. The circular hole shifted leftward in a broad swath of gnawings, the scattered debris--clearly we were looking not at an isolated attack but instead the work of a repeat offender, for whom the type of material was immaterial.

A survey of neighborhood trash cans on collection day revealed that the problem went well beyond our driveway.

I began wondering not why we had been targeted, but how our trash can had eluded this perpetrator for so long. Could it be because we compost vegetable scraps, and thereby reduce the aromatic incentives for breakins?

As with any research, questions proliferated faster than we could answer them. Is this the work of one individual, a gang marking its territory, or might there be a broad mammalian alliance extending across Princeton and beyond, dedicated to saving landfill space by shining light on all the useful stuff we throw away?

Can any can withstand the demands of this brand of animal? One remained untouched, perhaps because its diminutive stature conveys to all its owner's strong waste-reduction ethic, and teeth are as yet no match for metal.  

The Generator Generation

It's the two racketeers, in a photo taken a few weeks ago at the local hardware store. These are the items that are increasingly being used to keep houses warm and food cold through power outages like the one following Hurricane Sandy. They also added a considerable din to the post-storm atmosphere, and keep their owners running to the local gas station to (hopefully) get more gas to feed the little beasties. Last year, a neighbor almost died from carbon monoxide poisoning when he made the mistake of running one indoors to keep the sump pump going.

That many people see no option but to buy one speaks to the failed policies of the past thirty years, marked by a grievous underfunding of renewable energy production and storage which would otherwise by now have made our homes much more self-sufficient and resilient when the grid breaks down.

Though a generator such as these has a significant upside, it's counterweighted by a significant downside. As stated in an opinion piece in the NY Times, co-written by David Crane of the Princeton-based NRG energy company , "these dirty, noisy and expensive devices have no value outside of a power failure. And they’re not much help during a failure if gasoline is impossible to procure."

For several thousand dollars more, one can get a natural gas generator installed next to the house, which is quieter and will automatically kick on if the power goes out. Their power can be shared among neighbors, but they simply shift dependence on the electrical grid to dependence on the natural gas grid.

Both of these options, though rational for some households, represent a collectively irrational approach to solving the energy problem. When the uber-problem is dependence on climate-changing fossil fuels, generators just provide one more way to incrementally destabilize the climate. They represent an emergency room approach. Even for those who can afford them, they provide power, but no empowerment to change the world for the better.

Crane's oped calls for every home to have solar panels that could be used to provide power when the grid is down. (Most solar arrays automatically shut down during power outages, but there's apparently a switch that can be installed to feed power directly to the house in these situations.) Solar panels, unlike generators, would produce power not only during grid failures but year-round. What's missing from the equation, though, is batteries that can sustain power through the night and cloudy days.

My ideal is an approach in which one brings one's home energy needs down while developing enough home energy generation (some solar panels, plus battery storage in the house and/or electric car) to shift away from dependence on the grid. Thus far, in this friend-assisted search, the closest I've come to finding anything in the real world similar to this concept is a WholesaleSolar website, which looks worth exploring.

Solar panel prices have dropped dramatically in recent years, but battery improvements are coming much more slowly. That's why any shift away from our grid dependency--our seemingly perpetual state of arrested energy development--requires bringing energy consumption down to better match the generative and storing powers of solar panels and batteries.

Civilization's holy grail is getting energy right. We are offered endless, deceptively cheap ways to consume it, but no easy way to generate our own. How extraordinary, how earth-changing, to ween ourselves of star-crossed fuels from the underground, and segue as soon as possible from a generation of generator owners to the Generation Generation.

Climate Forum with James Florio

Update: If you missed this showing of Cape Spin, you'll be able to see it at the Princeton Library's Environmental Film Festival during three weekends in January and February, 2013.
      I wasn't able to see the movie at this event, but arrived in time for the panel discussion. In discussing the lack of progress on switching to renewable energy, James Florio emphasized that the real impediment has been getting the financing in place.
       This is where government and a unified, long term commitment to shifting away from climate-changing fuels can really help, but that hasn't been happening in recent years in NJ, where even the funds previously set aside for renewable energy have been raided for other purposes.

Clean Energy Leaders and Climate Advocates Join for Hurricane Sandy Relief

Call on Governor Christie to Move Offshore Wind Forward 

Princeton, NJ – On Wednesday, December 12th, New Jersey residents, scientists and clean energy leaders will join the Sierra Club for a climate forum with former Governor James Florio to benefit Hurricane Sandy relief.  New Jersey residents will call on Governor Christie to help avoid more extreme storms like Sandy by reducing dangerous carbon pollution from fossil fuels and instead advancing offshore wind in the state.
Superstorm Sandy is a tragic example of the more extreme weather events and hazards of sea level rise caused by climate change.  Switching to renewable energy reduces the carbon pollution that causes climate disruption and puts our weather on steroids.  New Jersey is in a unique position to lead the nation on climate action by developing its offshore wind resources.  Governor Christie signed the Offshore Wind Economic Development Act into law nearly two years ago, but since then offshore wind has been at a standstill in New Jersey making our families even more vulnerable to rising seas and extreme weather.

What: Cape Spin Film Screening and Climate Change Forum

Who:  New Jersey residents, academics and clean energy leaders

·         Governor James Florio
·         Research Meteorologist, Tom Knutson
·         Offshore MW CEO, Peter Giller
·         Former Sierra Club President, Robin Mann
·         Cape Spin Filmmaker, Robbie Gemmel

When: Wednesday, December 12^th

            Film Screening – 6:30pm

            Climate Forum – 8pm

Where: Princeton University, McCosh Hall Room 46 (directions)

Dog Sense

What does a dog see when a truck goes by? In the documentary My Life as a Turkey, naturalist Joe Hutto describes turkeys as 20 million year old birds that don't have a blueprint for cars or trucks. My dog's instincts must have similar roots in a pre-wheeling era. Despite a highly refined intelligence unmistakable to all who meet him, our dog Leo is clueless about cars and trucks. There are innumerable times when, if not for a leash, he would have launched obliviously into the fray. Surely, if a herd of bison were thundering by, he would instinctively understand the risks and hold back.

Other times, especially when he has extra energy from having been cooped up in the house, his part-terrierness will interpret the low growl of a passing vehicle as a challenge that must be responded to.

This can all be considered irrational behavior, a hole in his capacity to perceive danger. But sometimes I wonder if we see the dangers of cars and trucks any more clearly. We too, as a culture, remain stubbornly blind to the profound danger these wheeled machines pose, as they pump more and more climate changing gases skyward. As the racket and the consequences continue their steady crescendo, the impulse to bark makes more and more sense.

Hiker Regains Strut

In a nation awash in deferred maintenance and decaying infrastructure, one citizen resists the rising tide of consumerism, neglect and disposal, and dares to repair. It is a struggle fraught with setbacks and unforeseen challenges, but surrender is not an option. To understand what we're up against, consider what is entailed in even a minor repair of a minor, rather wooden character who dates back to a family trip to Europe in 1964.

This character lives ostensibly to blow smoke, an occupation not unlike some in the political realm, but this is a highly aromatic smoke generated by incense burning deep within. In other words, this pipe-smoking Pinocchio has soul. When not standing on our bookshelf, he appears to live a highly sustainable life, foraging in the Alps for firewood, which he carries down a steep mountain path to his chalet. The pleasures of the pipe may compensate in some way for a lack of electricity.

Here, in the first segment of our ongoing "Don't try this at home" home repair series, are detailed instructions on how to approach this deceptively simple-looking fix.

1. Note that Entropy has wrested a support strut loose from the pipe-smoking, wood collector's backpack. 
2. Place man and loose piece somewhere where they won't be disturbed or lost.
3. Wait a month or two (further procrastination optional), for the right time and mood to present themselves.
4. Wait several more months.
5. Finally, when that special moment arrives, seek glue in basement.
6. On the way to get glue, note that clothes need washing.
7. Start load of clothes.
8. Return upstairs having completely forgotten about repair.
9. Begin sweeping floor.
10. Happen to see figure while sweeping.
11. Return to basement for glue.
12. Find glue and attempt to use. Notice blockage in spout.
13. Note with gratitude that not all glue in container has hardened.
14. Find toothpick and poke inside spout. No result.
15. Find stronger prying implement--a small screwdriver, perhaps.
16. Unscrew glue top and remove plug of hardened glue. Screw top back on.
17. Still no flow of glue.
18. Unscrew top again and remove other plug of hardened glue higher up in spout. Screw back on.
19. At long last, apply glue. 
20. Put wooden piece in place on figure's backpack. Allow to dry.

That's a mere 20 steps required to place a dinky piece of wood back on the pipe-smoking, wood-carrying hiker in the Alps. As bonuses, some clothes got washed and the bottle of glue should be all set for its next use a year or two hence.

Time to light up the pipe and celebrate.
Ah, the sweet smell of success.

Yardwaste Baggage

If neighbors on opposing sides of the street each put out yardwaste bags for pickup, it would take just a little chalk and paint to turn them into chess characters, draw a chessboard grid on the street, and have at it.

Why not? It makes about as much sense as trying to stuff leaves in a bag and then try to make them stand up straight along the curb.

Another neighbor has figured it out, though. Line them up horizontally and push the bottom of one against the top of the other, thereby preventing premature opening, tipping and spillage.

There are also plastic sleeves you can buy to hold the bag upright while you stuff the leaves in. The bags look small, but a friend raved about how many leaves he could stuff in there.

Though this service was previously only available in the township, borough residents can now participate. According to a borough staff member, borough residents can pick up 20 free bags over at the township (more info here). The bags are picked up every two weeks, and are particularly useful if one wants to preserve the parking place in front of one's house. Info for township residents is here.

My impression was that leaves can also be stuffed in trash cans adapted to the purpose and left out for pickup, but the borough staffer thought not.

Of course, I've never understood why homeowners would want to part with something as useful and rich in nutrients as leaves, especially when they can just be mulch-mowed right back into the lawn. For more info on alternatives to putting leaves on the curb, the Princeton Environmental Commission's leaf management brochure is still on the web.

Food Waste Recycling at the Public Library?

A few years back, we had a small victory when the Princeton Public Library changed the top on its recycling bin in the cafe to make a dramatic contrast with the trash container. This change, along with a consistent pairing of the two containers, has led to excellent separation of trash from recyclables.

This success, however, has made more clear another issue, which is that the trash can is overflowing with paper products that could be combined with kitchen scraps and composted, further reducing the amount of the library's cafe trash going to the landfill.

A third container is needed, along with an arrangement to have the library added to the route with other downtown entities (I think Teresa's restaurant is an example) that already have compostibles picked up by a commercial hauler.

Though these receptacles don't win any awards for looks--I saw them at a Johns Hopkins University cafe during a visit--they show that such a setup is appropriate for a cafe.

The concept here is to take advantage of a public setting to show that composting should be the norm. It could also be used to promote Princeton's curbside compostibles program.

The Radio Washed My Dishes

I would like to thank Marty Moss-Coane of WHYY's Radio Times for this clean sink. She didn't actually come to our house and clean all the dishes last night, but her program, rebroadcast in the evening, was so interesting that I hung in there and cleaned every last dish.

Her guest, Collin O'Mara, Delaware's Secretary of Environment and Energy, spoke about the problems of climate and coastal flooding with such a fine mix of pragmatism and idealism, using words cleansed of polluting partisan rancor, that I began to believe again in the future where, as the web description reads, "economic growth and environmental sustainability are inextricably linked."

Regardless of what was on the radio, the practice of engaging the mind while what I call "the second self" does physical work is itself a small victory for a more sustainable way of life. As long as machines feed off energy that does lasting environmental damage, then the idea is to engage the second self to serve as many of those machine functions as possible until cleaner energy comes on line. We are well adapted for this, given that we can perform physical labor while our minds are preoccupied with other things. In fact, if I had delegated the task to our older, noisy dishwasher, I might not have turned on the radio, and would have missed the program altogether.

Though some approaches to handwashing dishes use a lot of energy by wasting lots of hot water, I use cold water, and in bursts rather than a steady stream. The cold water feels good during the summer, and I must have adapted because even in winter I don't mind it. That sort of adaptability, too, like all the cultivated habits that comprise the "second self" (as in, "it's second nature to me now"), are all tools readily available for easing our transition into a more sustainable lifestyle.

Jadwin Blowout

As the Princeton women's team jumped to a very lopsided lead, some in the audience didn't know what to do. Fans who take pleasure in hurling insults at the opposition found no sport in it when the other team proved so hapless. I was hurling mild insults at myself for having botched my pre-game research, which was aimed at avoiding blowouts. The Princeton University women's team is so good there aren't many teams that will pose a challenge.

My daughter having found her friends and headed for the highest seats, there to ignore the game in favor of junk food and cell phone diversions, I explored what else Jadwin Gym has to offer.

The Princeton marching band showed up, featuring a shrink-wrapped sousaphone and drum major with motorcycle helmet who translated the pep music into writhing, reptilian dance steps.

The band accommodates examples of divergent musical evolution, such as this pink flamingo percussionist.

Wandering into the front lobby, one can puzzle over the dysfunctional recycling arrangement. This is one of the rec department's many trash cans confusingly ornamented with a recycling insignia--evidence of a recycling program that long ago gave up the ghost.

The one remaining recycling bin (blue top, left) stands tucked in a corner where no one will notice it. Seeing the same problem last year, I offered a peppy guide to a winning recycling season and alerted the sustainability department at the university, all to no avail. This is not the first recycling program to break down for lack of vigilance.

More pleasing than the trash can arrangement is the statuary. I plan to take a photo of myself in this pose one of these days, with a catcher's mitt on the left hand and a soccer ball in the other.

This soulful tiger should have a slot where people could contribute to saving real tigers' habitat. Just an idea.

The sculptor of a "Princeton student", Daniel Chester French, also sculpted Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial.

Returning to the game, the Princeton women almost made it to 100, with several of their second string players showing a knack for sinking 3 pointers.

Entry is $5 for adults, $3 for kids. The schedule is here. If your internet research chops, like mine, can't meet the challenge of figuring out which opponents are contenders, Jadwin offers a diverting atmosphere even if the scores are lopsided, and you can be confident that there will be at least one good team on the court.

Princeton Boys Soccer Team is State Co-Champion

Nice teeth, but will it keep the squirrels from eating all of our tomatoes and squash next year? The Princeton High School's mascot got a brief tryout for the role of backyard scarecrow prior to tonight's Group 3 state soccer championship at College of New Jersey.

Though Princeton High School's boys team was ranked 11th, it dominated play against top-ranked Ramapo, holding their powerful offence to just three shots on goal while pressing Ramapo's first-rate goalie to the limit. Both the boys and girls teams at Princeton High are known for their accurate passing and ball control, and when the capacity to finish is added to that, the results are exciting.

Princeton finally beat Ramapo's goalie with a brilliantly executed cross and header, and nearly took the lead with a wickedly sinking shot from out front by Scott Bechler. A flagrant push in front of the Ramapo's goal by a defender with two minutes left in the second overtime went unnoticed by the ref, and time ran out with the teams still tied 1-1. Rules preclude a shootout in the state finals. Hats off to coach Wayne Sutcliffe and the extraordinary play of his Group 3 co-champions.

And by the way, could I borrow that mascot this coming summer for my backyard garden?

Coverage of the game here and here.

My Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day began with a morning cleanup of the house that extended well into the afternoon. The beneficial effect of guests takes hold well before their arrival, as the powerful host-reflex snaps us out of our laissez faire policies towards dust and debris and transforms us into cleaning machines. Once the necessary implements and liquids were located, that free-loader Entropy was sent packing, out the door and well beyond the boundaries of the driveway, to hang out among the fallen storm debris in the backyard until our diminished state of vigilance in coming days allows it back in.

I experience the host reflex as such a powerful motivator that it is tempting to promote its use for wider applications, such as improving the efficiency of government agencies that might otherwise tend to lose vigor with time. They should throw dinner parties in remote departments of obscure agencies and invite the people in for hors d'oeuvrs and a look around.

As the home interior began to shine, the air became suffused with a marvelous aroma of my daughter's home-baked pies. Still, I was so caught up in the satisfying momentum of restoring order that I could not lure myself into starting the turkey. Truth be told, I have long been intimidated by the prospect of cooking the great bird. The youngest of a largish family, I had traditionally positioned myself during holidays somewhere distant from dinner preparations, immersing myself in arguably constructive activities, perhaps composing at the piano or chopping wood, while others did what they have always done so well in the kitchen.

The downside of this highly successful evasion confronts me now every holiday, as I stand before a 14 pounder with a feeling of dread, helpless to escape. (The turkey, of course, must have felt something similar and all the more keenly just a few days prior.) If the bird, through some form of luck, emerges from the oven in edible or even highly edible condition, there is still the gravy to make--a task I had decided must be exceeding complex. I would read the many contradictory descriptions in various cookbooks, and feel all the more lost.

Over the past couple years, however, it has dawned on me that this sense of intimidation is unwarranted. Last year I cracked the gravy conundrum, realizing that it's basically just a matter of heating some fat, mixing in some flour, and then adding stock to get the right consistency, essentially how I've been making creamed chicken for decades.

The bird this year, however, still looked worrisomely pale and vulnerable to mishap. Should we cook the stuffing in the bird or separately? Why hadn't I taken it out of the frig sooner to warm to room temperature? And would the guests, their arrival surprisingly imminent, still be awake when it's done? I reread the reassuringly brief passages in cookbooks by Bittman and Alice Waters, decided to half stuff the turkey, rub it with butter, cover it with foil for the first hour or two, and hope for the best. Rather than wait for the button on top to pop up, I managed to find a meat thermometer and follow directions. Meanwhile, a collective effort, lubricated by wine, was underway by others to prepare all the bird's accompaniments.

It was at this point that I remembered a third component--beyond bird and gravy--that once again had been overlooked. It would have been easy to take our knives to the local hardware store for sharpening, but in family tradition this is a home-grown art, maintained in mind but, unfortunately for this occasion, not in act. Carving the bird, in my family growing up, was an honor given to a different family member each year, and done at the head of the dinner table with all assembled, the better to admire the skill of the carver. Special knives, ornate and well-honed, were brought out for the purpose. This year, with childhood long gone and the bird miraculously done, I cut the meat in seclusion, with a knife so dull I might as well have used my fingernails to claw off chunks of flesh.

Despite all of this, the food we gathered at the table to eat proved better than any of us could remember. I could use less of the fretting and uncertainty, but for the time being they seem to be necessary ingredients, like herbs and a bit of salt, that heighten the flavor and make me, with family, friends and good food harmoniously converged, supremely thankful.

Leaves and What's Left Behind

A big pile of leaves always brings back memories: the colorful dance of dry crisp leaves before us as we raked them off the yard and into a pile at the edge of the woods, the joy of jumping in said pile, of fluffing the pile back up and jumping in again. Sometimes we'd burn a small pile of leaves where the fire couldn't spread, and watch the flames in all their complex beauty, curling upward or exploring inward depths of red and orange. We'd throw acorns into the flames and wait for them to explode. Smoke was not pollution back then, but a fragrance that would scent the fall air of our small town, as much a part of life as Halloween and homecoming parades.

Later, in my 20s, needing organic matter to loosen some clay soil for a tomato patch, I found it in the deep, black, improbably rich "leaf mold" at the bottom of a leaf pile that the owner had topped with new leaves year after year.

All this was a celebration of endings and beginnings in the endless cycling of life, one few children will experience today.

Now, this joyous process is left to machines, beginning with landscape crews wielding leaf blowers to insure the ignominious leaves never disgrace their owner's property again. The leaves await their fate on cold asphalt until The Claw arrives to lift them into another machine, which will carry them into extended exile at a remote location outside of town, where still larger machines line them up in windrows and hasten their march back to a form society will find more presentable.

I doubt that leaf burning will return any time soon. Just yesterday, sirens screamed after a fire spread from cigarette to leaves to house on Moore Street. If machines are available and gas is affordable, people will use them. The machines do a good job, it must be said. The giant Claw is an uncanny merging of brute strength and delicacy as it heaves great gobs of thick branches into a waiting dump truck, or pauses to pluck a discarded geranium blossom from the curb.

Maybe I should look upon leaves and feel discontent and fear, and wish my childhood memories not be so persistent. But in time the machines as currently powered will prove the ultimate naivety. Subsidized ease will bring future hardship. And we'll wonder why we spurned and outsourced the wealth, beauty, exercise and meaning nature offers every fall.

Nature Walk This Sunday, Nov. 25, 1:30pm

(Also posted at PrincetonNatureNotes.org) All are welcome to join a post-Sandy "Turkey Trek" I'll be leading this Sunday at 1:30pm, along trails in Community Park North and Mountain Lakes Preserve, cleared by FOPOS trail committee volunteers. We'll survey the changes in the woods brought about by the storm, and also visit the dams in all their restored glory. The walk will be accompanied by a TV30 film crew who are putting together a feature on Mountain Lakes. No need to arrive in finest feather. Just look natural.

Meet at Community Park North parking lot, on Mountain Ave. just off 206. Entry to the parking lot is right next to the 57 Mountain Ave driveway that leads up to the Mountain Lakes House. Wear some good walking shoes, and in the meantime, happy thanksgiving to all.

Frugaline, Climate and Energy

Relevant to the post Hurricane Sandy realities, I've compiled some older posts on climate change and ways to make one's home less energy-dependent at the whimsically entitled frugaline.org. 

A distillate of space and time, Frugaline is the energy of the past, present and future, available in vast deposits anywhere and everywhere. Unlike other renewable sources of energy, which require considerable mining, manufacture and transport of various contraptions for their capture, frugaline is harvest-ready, within us and all around us. 

Princeton's Mountain Lakes Dam Restoration Story

Quite a story will be told this Thursday, Nov. 15, 7pm, at the Princeton Library community room, about the reservoirs that once provided Princeton with ice in pre-refrigeration days. Engineers identified the need for restoration of the dams as far back as the 1970s, but only when an anonymous donor came forward with several million dollars was the project able to move forward, in 2010.

Here's a description of Thursday's event:

"Created as an ice pond in 1884, Mountain Lake gradually filled in with sediment and the severe deterioration of its dams threatened to drain it altogether. Princeton Township engineering staff and consultants review Mountain Lake's ice harvesting history, archaeological discoveries, and the careful rehabilitation over the last two years that has restored the beauty of this National Register site and has preserved it for future generations."

The Mountain Lakes Preserve is one of Princeton's best-kept open secrets. Despite being in the middle of Princeton geographically, Mountain Lakes feels tucked away, accessed down a long driveway at 57 Mountain Ave, not far from town hall, across 206 from the Community Park fields.

You can access a pictorial and descriptive history of the restoration project at this link (scroll to the bottom and work your way up chronologically), but I'll show a few photos here.

The small wooden posts in the foreground of the above photo show where a ramp once conveyed big blocks of ice out of the lake and up into barns that once stood three stories high just below the dam. The barns, insulated with straw, could store ice for up to two years. The ice, of course, was delivered to people's homes to cool their ice boxes, in those more sustainable days before refrigeration became widespread in the 1930s or so.

Mountain Lakes House, built around 1950 and now used for weddings and other events, has a beautiful view of the upper lake and dam.

Dredging of the thick sediment during restoration apparently uncovered a rich seedbank of native wetland rushes, sedges and wildflowers that carpeted the lakebeds while the lakes remained drained. Friends of Princeton Open Space board member Tim Patrick-Miller led efforts to rescue some of these plants prior to refilling the lakes. They now make a fine native border along the upper lake.

Native woodland asters flourish along a lakeside trail in an area we cleared of invasive shrubs. All trails are open to the public.

Archeologists used metal detectors to find some century-old tools buried in mud in the lower lake, left over from the ice cutting era.

Though the restoration was primarily the work of Princeton township engineers, consultants and the very capable contractor who did the elaborate stonework and concrete reinforcement needed to restore the original beauty while bringing the dams up to current standards, I was able to contribute to the project in various ways.

As resource manager for Friends of Princeton Open Space, I was able to give some input. Using some pre-20th century technology--a kayak and a bamboo pole--I helped determine the lakes' original depths, correcting misperceptions caused by malfunctioning 20th century instruments. I also was able to get great cooperation from the township engineers to protect areas near the dams with rare native plants. The restoration team also came to agreement on the importance of restoring not only the two main dams, but also the smaller dams just upstream that had served to capture stream sediment before it could reach the two lakes.

Restoration of one of these upstream dams, built in 1950, was made possible by additional funds from the anonymous donor. Now cleaned of seven feet of sediment accumulated in its first 60 years, it should substantially increase the life of the two main lakes.

I also encouraged the township to dig several vernal pools nearby to serve the local frog population that had previously thrived in the muddy shallows of the silted-in ponds. State regulations may have bogged down those plans.

If you haven't been to Mountain Lakes, take a walk out there some day to see the award-winning dam restorations, an occasional great blue heron, "Devil's Cave" at the top of the boulder-strewn slopes of Witherspoon Woods, and maybe even hear the call of a pileated woodpecker. It's one of the finer meetings of nature and culture, wild and tamed, natural and man-made beauty.

Hurricane Hair

A web search shows hurricane hair to be a fad hair style for young men. But older people can be afflicted as well. Here's an alternative definition.

hur-ri-cane hair

noun     1. A condition in which hair sticks out in all directions, typically following ill-advised backyard reconnaissance during a violent windstorm. Can be exacerbated by oily conditions due to unavailability of hot showers during power outages. Recent breakthroughs in medical research show a higher incidence of hurricane hair among geniuses, rendering Princeton particularly vulnerable.

Here, a typical backyard scene in Princeton, NJ, following Hurricane Sandy, in which a homeowner not yet recovered from hurricane hair inspects a partially blown down tree, wondering what farm the exotic fowl might have blown in from. Could this be the new normal?

The Hurricane Next Time

With each power outage, most spectacularly by the cain raised by two hurricanes in two years, we learn a little more about our house, and how incredibly vulnerable our domestic lifestyle is to disruption. Routine life literally hangs by a wire. Here are a few things we're considering for future power outages:

Emergency Radio
           We unfortunately ignored advice to get a battery-powered radio. A friend showed me an impressive-looking American Red Cross emergency radio, which has built-in LED flashlight, a solar panel and handcrank as backups to keep the radio and light going if the batteries run low, and several emergency weather channels in addition to regular AM/FM. The version I saw appears to be this FR360, but many different versions can be found on the internet. This Eton product supposedly gives 15 minutes of radio time for one minute of cranking, and can be used to recharge a cell phone.

Backup Lighting
         My daughter loves bringing out the candles during a power outage. For a bit more light, word has it that the local Rite-Aid pharmacy sells very inexpensive oil lamps (I haven't confirmed this, so it's worth calling ahead), which look attractive and actually put out a good light. A post I found on the internet points out, however, that a slender glass oil lamp can be easily knocked over, and that a less elegant but more stable version is the Dietz #90 lantern. Here are some images.

Land Line Phone
          Some insight here, but no particular solutions. Anyone with Verizon's FIOS internet and phone service will have by now discovered that, when Verizon replaces the old copper phone line with fiber-optics, more will change than the speed of your internet. The old copper line carried a little bit of energy with it to keep your land line phone working even when your power goes out. Fiber optics doesn't carry that energy, so instead they put a box in your basement with a backup battery that keeps your land line phone working for a day or two, after which your phone stops working. That box also draws a steady 20 watts of energy year-round adding a little bit to your baseline energy use. Fortunately, our ATT cellphones continued to work, though I hear some other wireless providers lost power.

Water Use
         During the massive power outage after Hurricane Sandy, both the water plant and the wastewater plant that serve Princeton struggled to keep going. The wastewater plant had to truck in 9000 gallons of fuel oil every day to run its backup generators, at a time when fallen trees were blocking roads and damaged transfer stations were squeezing fuel supplies.
         The best thing homeowners and businesses can do at such a time is to draw less water from the tap and send less wastewater down the sewers. Because so much energy is required to clean water (Princeton's annual production of wastewater takes well over a million dollars in electricity and natural gas to treat), higher efficiency toilets, shower nozzles, and faucet aerators can be thought of as energy-saving devices.
        It's also important to direct sump pump water to the yard (preferably a raingarden), or to the street, but not into the sanitary sewer.

Heating the House

        Just as everyone learned how gas stations can't pump gas without electricity, most gas appliances in the house were also rendered useless. It can come as a surprise just how much electricity a gas furnace or oven consumes. As they cycle on and off, some 600 watts of electricity is needed to heat up the little metal element that then ignites the natural gas. The furnace fan that circulates air through the house can take 500 watts. Though a typical water heater has a pilot light that allows it to function without electricity, I hear some models have fans that make them dependent on electrical power.
       During four days without power, and not wanting to plague the neighborhood with another noisy gas generator, I kept wondering whether there's some way to take advantage of the car's power. One option I've been told about, and plan to look into, is to buy something like the Duracel Powerpack 600, which is left plugged in so that it is well charged when a power outage comes along. It's essentially a big battery that can be adapted to plug into the furnace and run it for a half hour, after which the battery must be recharged via the cigarette lighter in the car. It doesn't have enough power to start a refrigerator and other appliances with a high start-up load.
          It's possible to hook the powerpack up to a solar panel, as in this product. Sounds like a first step, but there really should be some sort of backup system--a scaled up version of that Red Cross radio--with a sizable battery fed by a few solar panels, a bicycle-driven generator in the basement, and some way to tap the car's energy, that could keep critical home functions going during a power outage and even reduce our dependency on the grid year-round.
       Until the future arrives, we were fortunate to have a wood stove that puts out a great deal of heat, keeping the house warm and also serving to heat water, cook popcorn, etc. Old technologies can be positively civilizing. Its radiant heat travels surprisingly well from room to room. Modern wood stoves have primary, secondary and tertiary combustion chambers, burning very cleanly if the wood is dry and well seasoned. Wood pellet stoves are even better, I hear, and lead to the thought of converting all those downed trees into pellets for wood stoves, so that we become less dependent on these troubled and troubling legacy energies--the underground sources that are feeding nature's fury above ground.

Note: A friend told me his next door neighbor helped him out with electricity from a natural gas generator that automatically starts up during power outages. It's a smaller version of what public schools and other institutions have. A NY Times article puts their base price at $4500. Nice, for a price, but still is just one more way to burn more of the fuels that are getting us into trouble.

Snowman Survives Transfer To Hard Drive

Nor'easter + young boys = neighborhood snowman. Math is such a fine thing. Blame a doctor's appointment for the delay in photographing this fellow, which means it must now live forever in something less than the optimal health I had found it in earlier in the morning. Still, it sports two woodchip eyes, a nose and two arms, one with particularly impressive reach--all of which will stand it in good stead for as long as the distant hard drive where this blog resides may continue to prosper.

Sports Analogies and Climate Change

How much can human-caused climate change be blamed for Hurricane Sandy? Sports analogies to the rescue! One useful analogy is the use of steroids in baseball. No individual home run can be attributed to steroids, but their use was clearly linked to an increase in home runs. You can find that analogy frequently used on ClimateProgress.com, and also by the president-elect of the American Meterological Society yesterday on the radio program Science Friday. Instead of steriods, of course, it's all that harmless-seeming carbon dioxide and other climate-affecting gases our machines have been collectively injecting into the atmosphere for the past couple centuries--increasing concentrations in the air by an improbable 40%. (It seems entirely unfair that our collective power to unintentionally mess things up is so great, but on the other hand, it suggests that if we actually put our collective heads together, we might be able to achieve extraordinary change in a positive direction.) Relevant links showing graphs are here and here.

To better understand the impact of rising sea levels on the likelihood of flooding, consider that raising a basketball floor will increase the number of slam dunks--the slam dunks here representing massive flooding of coastal cities like New York. That metaphor I heard for the first time on Science Friday yesterday.

In an opinion piece I had published in the Star-Ledger this past Sunday (Hurricane Sandy supported my premise while thoroughly distracting all potential readers), entitled "Why government regulators matter: a sports analogy", I contrast the acceptance of strict regulation and enforcement in sports with the anti-regulatory ideology common in politics, and compare the NFL's reality-based response to the danger of concussions with the nation's irrational non-response to the dangers of climate change. (If the Star-Ledger link is no longer open, the piece can be found here.)

A Post-Hurricane Run On Gas

Two nights after Hurricane Sandy swept through, I was riding my bike down Nassau Street when I came upon a line of cars. Someone holding up traffic while waiting to turn left?

It turned out to be a line for gas, 12 cars long, with another line extending down Murray Place on the other side of the Gulf Station. Many stations in the area have gas, but no power to pump it, making Princeton's gasoline alley the place to be for far flung storm refugees.

There is at least some good fortune for locals in living in a small town where, despite the deprivations of the storm's aftermath, it is possible to stay off the gasoline treadmill for a few days, and get where one needs to go under one's own power.