“To model how flames turn buildings into ashes, the nation’s leading fire researchers don’t play with matches over the sink. Instead they burn down entire homes, cubicles and warehouses.

“At the National Institutes of Standards and Technologies, researchers set huge fires under a 40-foot-long by 30-foot-wide exhaust hood that is connected to an $8 million control unit.

Link to Article

“After crossing the short hallway to the master suite, she shows off her bedroom, the beautiful master bathroom, the seethrough gas fireplace and connected patio space. Then she leads her guest up a short flight of stairs to the exercise room, with gorgeous views of the Red Mountains. Coming back down the stairs she pulls from her pocket what looks like a car door remote. She stands back, presses one of the buttons and says, ‘And this is the secret room.’

“The stair case begins to raise and below it is a another set of stairs, this one leading down to a small dark room the same size and shape as the exercise room above it.

“‘Watch your head,’ says Kircher as she crouchees slightly and makes her way down the stairs.”

Link to Creative Home Engineering website, Link to Creative Home Engineering Gallery, East Valley Tribune article, Link to CNBC video, from Gizmodo

Ernest Svenson, an attorney in New Orleans at the forefront of using technology in the legal industry, recently taught a CLE for Louisiana attorneys on the concept of Digital Workflow. As part of the reference materials for his talk, he used the above clip that highlights the perils of new technology, from the perspective of folks from a long time back.

Link to Article (with links to his materials for the presentation)

“TranslucentConcrete is a combination of optical fibres and fine concrete. Thousands of fibres run side by side transmitting light between the two surfaces of each element. Because of their small size the fibres blend into concrete becoming a component of the material like small pieces of ballast. In this manner, the result is not only having the two materials mixed – glass in concrete – but a third, new material, which is homogeneous in its inner structure and on its main surfaces as well.”

Link to Article, from Gizmodo

These are posts from a special 43 Folders series looking at the skills, tools, and attitude needed to empty your email inbox — and then keep it that way. You can visit each of the posts by clicking the title.

Link to Slides on Slideshare.net
Link to Inbox Zero Series

Update: Another productive individual, Michael Hyatt – President and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, provides some additional insight into the processing of email. A self-described “recovering email addict”, Hyatt recently took the advice of Tim Feriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, and took a radical, if not controversial approach to handling email. He only checks email twice per day. Read more about the success he has had with the experiment.

The UK has unveiled its first zero emission home that will set the environmental standard for all new homes in the future.
The two-bedroom house is insulated to lose 60% less heat than a normal home.

It also features solar panels, a biomass boiler and water efficiency devices such as rainwater harvesting.

The design, unveiled at the Offsite 2007 exhibition in Watford, meets rules to be applied in 2016 that aim to make UK homes more energy-efficient.

The Kingspan Off-Site’s Lighthouse design is the first to achieve level six of the Code for Sustainable Homes – which means the house is carbon neutral.

Link to Article

For millions of people, Google is an indispensable search tool that they use every day, in all facets of their lives. From work or school, research, to looking up movies and celebrities to news and gossip, Google is the go-to search engine.

But instead of just typing in a phrase and wading through page after page of results, there are a number of ways to make your searches more efficient.

Some of these are obvious ones, that you probably know about. But others are lesser-known, and others are known but not often used. Use this guide to learn more about, or be reminded of, some of the best ways to get exactly what you’re looking for, and quickly

In the litigation and consulting segments of the construction industry, access to information is essential. This article aims to help improve efficient access to one of the largest repositories of information through a series of smart and not always obvious tips.

Link to Article

StructuredRisk, Inc. was honored as the recipient of the Risk and Insurance Management Society, Inc. (RIMS) Arthur Quern Quality Award at RIMS 2007 Annual Conference & Exhibition in New Orleans on April 30.

“This year, StructuredRisk, Inc. stood out among the pool of nominees for developing risk management software designed to refine and improve construction best practices and reduce litigation,” says Karen Beier, ARM, RIMS member of the board of directors and vice president of risk management at Shaklee Corporation. “The Arthur Quern Quality Award is given to an organization that showcases an initiative within the risk management industry that has contributed to increased quality in products, services and enterprise risk management. It is with great pleasure that RIMS presents this prestigious honor to StructuredRisk, Inc.”

Link to Article

“The growth we’ve seen in the hidden fastener market has been excellent,” said David Hartmann, president of Tiger Claw Inc. “Not only are hidden deck fasteners available in the country’s largest retail home improvement stores, but they’re also distributed by some of the world’s top building suppliers. The fact that major decking material manufacturers are opting to offer their own lines of fasteners validates the industry’s growing acceptance and consumers’ growing demand.”

TimberTech offers CONCEALoc fasteners, which were designed exclusively to install Earthwood® Grooved Planks. CONCEALoc fasteners are also used with all solid TimberTech planks, including TwinFinish®, 5/4 and DockSider™. Fiber Composites offers its Phantom™ fastener for grooved fiberon® Tropics and Professional deck boards. Procell Decking Systems offers Proclip, designed for solid-core, cellular vinyl decking.

“The popularity of composite and alternative decking materials has increased ten to twenty percent in the last three years,” said Pat Maher, Procell. “The higher-cost deck boards are an investment for many homeowners, and they want a seamless, nail-free surface. Hidden deck fasteners make sense. When combined with composite and alternative decking materials, hidden deck fasteners deliver a better value.”

“More and more consumers are requesting a fastener-free surface for their decks and don’t want the look of screws or nails,” said Jeff Burr, TimberTech. “Composites are creating the demand for hidden deck fasteners, mainly to preserve the beauty of the decking material. Homeowners want the decking to be the focus, not the fastener.”

“Previously, hidden deck fasteners have been time-consuming and difficult to install,” continued Hartmann. “Traditional nails and screws produce wood rot, board splitting, and a less-than-attractive appearance. Hidden deck fasteners do not. We believe the availability of hidden deck fasteners will change the way professional contractors and do-it-yourselfers build decks.”

To learn more, visit www.deckfastener.com, www.timbertech.com, www.fiberondecking.com and www.procelldeck.com.

Link to Article

One of the biggest targets by environmentalists is the construction industry as the amount of lumber used by that segment is seemingly unending. Ironically, the Enertia home relies upon solid wood from real trees. The key to the green aspect of the design is the use of yellow pine which is quickly and easily grown, making it a sustainable and renewable resource.

In the Enertia® Building System, solid Energy-Engineered(tm) wood walls replace siding, framing, insulation, and paneling. An air flow and access channel, or Envelope, runs around the building, just inside the walls – creating a miniature biosphere. Here solar heated air circulates, pumping and boosting geothermal energy from beneath the house, storing it in the massive wood walls. Thermal inertia causes the house to “float” between the cycles of night and day, and even between the seasons.
Many aspects of the Enertia® House are unusual and innovative – but backed up by science, common-sense, and prototype homes across America. In fact, each aspect listed below increases the energy efficiency of the building. The effect is Synergistic – equal to more than the sum of the parts. The Enertia® House can make more energy than it uses!
 In 1981 the National Institute of Standards and Technology constructed six test buildings in Gaithersburg, Maryland and tested them for energy efficiency. Much to their surprise, Building 5, with walls made of solid wood, was the most energy efficient. This was attributed to “thermal inertia,” a phenomenon where the solid wood walls stored energy during the day, and released it during the night. Actually the energy efficiency of solid wood is well known in the Scandinavian countries where it is the prevalent method of building. (Its long life is well known too. When interviewed during the 1994 Winter Olympics, a Lillehammer couple casually remarked that their solid wood home had been built in 1406!)

Link to “How it Works”, Link to Main Site

If you’ve seen a particularly eye-popping, out-of-this-world night photograph of a city skyline, or a particularly apocalyptic cloudscape with cartoonish color saturation making the rounds on blogs lately, there’s a good chance it was made using high-dynamic-range imaging, or HDR software. And while these images may look like the work of a pro photographer, or at least a seasoned digital-imaging or special-effects expert, the tools to easily make your own amazing HDR images are widely (and in some cases freely) available.
So what exactly comprises an HDR image? Basically, more information per pixel. When you take a photo with your digital camera, the colors are converted to accommodate the limited palette of your display or a piece of photo paper. The human eye, however, is capable of taking in far more color and light information at any given time. This is why it’s necessary to take a photo with the correct exposure settings—what your eye sees as a uniform scene with a balanced brightness and color range needs to be regulated to fit within the more limited range of your camera’s sensor, or else the image will appear under- or overexposed (too dark or too light).

HDR provides a way to combine a range of exposures of the same scene into one image, adding significantly to the amount of data held per pixel (most digital images hold 8 bits of color information per pixel; an HDR image has 32). The result is an image with more “dynamic range”—in other words, the brights are brighter, the darks darker, and there’s much more variance in between.

Link to Article

Click To Play

There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don’t. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don’t know where to start.

While it’s often said that consumer products—from electronic devices to Ikea furniture—are “made to break,” a little over a year ago I started wondering about buildings. Do real estate interests, I wondered, plan for obsolescence in the same way product designers do?

Carrie McLaren, at Stay Free!, posted a fascinating interview recently with Robert Zagaroli III, Associate Professor of Architectural Technology at New York City College of Technology. The interview was inspired by the author’s house-hunting experience in NYC, which was reflected the all-too common choice of buying new for convenience and modern appointments vs. buying used for longevity insured by the blood, sweat and tears of the now-rare skilled labor force that built this country. (The author ended up in a century-old brownstone, in case you’re wondering.) The interview touches upon several key points including construction materials and practices, economics of skilled labor, consumer demand, building codes and environmental consciousness. Equally pertinent are the comments following the article that provide some insight into an issue that certainly affects more than New York City.

Link to Article

Apple’s “Mac @ Work” site regularly showcases different companies that rely upon Apple technology for their business needs. In the most recent feature, one of our own is highlighted – a construction attorney, Renée Mancino, Esq.

In Las Vegas, high-stakes showdowns don’t just take place on the gaming tables — they also happen across the tables in conference rooms every time lawyers go head-to-head.

Attorney Renée Mancino recently prevailed in a $2.5 million dollar Las Vegas construction dispute by keeping a poker face and a confident low-key cool. She claims that the winning hand she held wasn’t due to luck, but to the way she organizes her cases — and her entire home-based law practice — using Macs.

The article focuses on how this successful attorney has forged her own path working from a home office. She relies on the help of three paralegals, a high-speed wireless internet connection, document scanners, some specialized software, and the good graces of the e-filing system at Clark County.

Link to Article

When a major earthquake strikes, deep, sandy soils can turn to liquid, with disastrous consequences for buildings sitting on them. Currently, civil engineers can inject chemicals into the soil to bind loose grains together. But these epoxy chemicals may have toxic effects on soil and water, said Jason DeJong, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis.

The new process, so far tested only at a laboratory scale, takes advantage of a natural soil bacterium, Bacillus pasteurii. The microbe causes calcite (calcium carbonate) to be deposited around sand grains, cementing them together. By injecting bacterial cultures, additional nutrients and oxygen, DeJong and his colleagues found that they could turn loose, liquefiable sand into a solid cylinder.

“Starting from a sand pile, you turn it back into sandstone,” DeJong said. Similar techniques have been used on a smaller scale, for example, to repair cracks in statues, but not to reinforce soil.

The new method has several advantages, DeJong said. There are no toxicity problems, compared with chemical methods. The treatment could be done after construction or on an existing building, and the structure of the soil is not changed — some of the void spaces between grains are just filled in.

DeJong and his collaborators are working on scaling the method up to a practical size, and applying for funds to test the method in the earthquake-simulating centrifuge at UC Davis’ Center for Geotechnical Modeling. The centrifuge is part of the national Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, funded by the National Science Foundation.

Link to Press Release from Digg

Link to Calif. Energy Commission FAQs

• “Does your office environment get you down? Then you might want to consider working with Tom Hicks. In buildings that receive USGBC’s “platinum” certification, its highest rating, natural light permeates the entire floor. Sometimes, cubicles have their own thermostats, so employees can control the temperature. The roof of Hicks’ building, at 1800 Pennsylvania Avenue, has a garden so workers can take a relaxing break at lunch. Oh, and by the way, the urinals don’t flush.”
  

  Link to Article (from Digg)

• Swinerton Builders, a leading general contractor throughout the Western U.S., and a leader in environmentally sustainable building practices, has announced a renewed company-wide initiative toward ‘green’ construction practices throughout their operations. A major San Diego site tops the list of green building in progress under the Swinerton banner. Located in Kearny Mesa, the Sunroad Enterprises’ Centrum 12 building is the first Pre-Certified LEED Core and Shell project in the San Diego region. The Class “A” 12-story
  office tower is within easy walking distance of homes, restaurants, banks and other neighborhood services. During construction, 50% of all construction-generated waste is being recycled. The site features low-water consumption landscaping and light-colored hardscaping to reduce daytime temperatures, while the interior provides natural daylight, non-toxic adhesives, paints and coatings. Water-conserving fixtures are all specified in the design, resulting in savings of over 38%, compared to standard fixtures. Through this project, Sunroad Enterprises is participating in the EPA’s Green Power Partnership.

  Link to SwinertonGreen.com

• “Energy startup The Citizenrē Corporation’s haiku-like Google ad says it all. ‘Solar for free,’ it headlines. ‘No initial investment needed. Just monthly payments for power.’ Instead of making you spring for $25,000 or more in gear, Citizenrē says it will loan you a complete rooftop solar power system, install it for free and sell you back the power it generates at a fixed rate below what your utility charges. The company hopes to make back its investment with those monthly payments, augmented by federal tax credits and rebates.”
  

  Link to Wired Article

“Early one Saturday morning in January, Kevin Rowell dumped a bucket of dark mud on the floor of his big south-facing bedroom. It landed with a plop, spreading out and merging with a blanket of wet earth that already extended across much of the room. On his knees, Mr. Rowell took a trowel to the pile, nudging it this way and that until the mud was roughly level and about an inch and a half deep.

As Mr. Rowell finished smoothing that section, his wife, Marisha Farnsworth, appeared at the door and handed him another bucket of mud. A moment later, another plop, and the process continued. The mud was expanding, and would soon cover the entire floor .

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Mr. Rowell, 28, as he stood back to take in the whole room. ‘It’s just what we wanted.’”

These innovative so-called natural builders are using mud mixed with lime and sand as a floor covering that is not only energy efficient, but is ecologically sound as well. The earthen floors are excellent at retaining passive solar energy and provide a very unique look to any room. The obvious question is, “but doesn’t that make your feet dirty?” By sealing the floors after drying (the curing takes a few weeks) with linseed oil and beeswax, the flooring is resilient and easy to clean. The biggest obstacles to overcome with this ground-breaking (sorry) material is cracking and damage from high impact distress caused by table legs and high heels. But then something about a dirt floor doesn’t exactly scream high heels.

Link to Article (via treehugger and digg)

Planned over nearly 20 years by Black Mountain Ranch LLC, Del Sur faced multiple obstacles and opposition, leading Fred Maas, BMR president, to forge innovative alliances with community and civic groups to pursue his vision for responsible, sustainable design. Del Sur is now heralded as an exemplary product of smart-growth planning.

The community meets or exceeds stringent local and state environmental requirements. Del Sur also has won important environmental awards, and the property’s Ranch House — open to all as an education and resource center — is in line for Platinum certification by the U.S. Green Building Council for LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design), and recognition as one of the world’s most environmentally progressive buildings.

Recycling and resource conservation are central to the Del Sur philosophy, but established programs were not readily available. Maas developed a landmark community-wide program to coordinate recycling efforts that has successfully diverted over 92 percent of construction waste since September 2005, and saved builder costs and truck trips. It is a new model for future communities.

BMR also mandated that at least 20 percent of the community’s homes incorporate solar energy systems. Some neighborhoods exceed the minimum, installing photovoltaic technology in as many as 40 percent of homes or more. When completed, Del Sur will be one of the largest solar-powered communities in California. Homeowners annually will save more than $58,000 collectively, which also translates into saving 35,000 barrels of oil.

Significant water savings are achieved through mandatory tank-less water heaters and weather-based satellite irrigation systems in most homes. These water-saving systems can potentially save up to 40,000 gallons per home per year. The community also requires at least half of all landscaping be drought-resistant, and reclaimed water is used in community landscaping.

The Ranch House showcases ultra-progressive sustainable design technologies. Recycled and rapidly renewable materials include stones reused from the site; recycled beams from an old pier; reclaimed floorboards harvested from a barn; blue jeans cotton for insulation; cork flooring; countertops of compressed sunflower husks; and cabinets and ceilings made from wheatboard.

Del Sur (via Market Wire)

Alex Steffen has an in-depth look at Architecture for Humanity over at WorldChanging.

Link to Article

Presentation Zen is a site that anyone involved in public presentation of information should visit on a regular basis. (For more insight into graphical presentation of information and reports, see Edward Tufte.) Reynolds’ website couldn’t have a more appropriate name as he truly espouses a “Zen”-like approach to presenting. In the defect industry, many cases are mediated and ultimately settled based upon the information and evidence that is presented by the experts. In the situation of a mediation, the more effectively an expert can present his evidence to the experts representing opposing parties, the easier it is to discuss the valid points of the case. The easier it is to discuss the actual matters at hand, the more likely that settlement will occur. But no matter how effective or snazzy an expert’s presentation is, if there is no mutual respect, the mediation process will go nowhere. Publicly questioning the credibility of another expert or attacking their opinions is no way to gain support.

“If one bad mouths a competitor in Japan they shame not only themselves but the group to which they belong. One who speaks poorly of others is not to be trusted…. When one remembers that there is no end to mastery — that one can and must be better the next day and the day after that (and the day after that) — then it is foolish indeed to ever look down one’s nose to anyone, especially our rivals. Ultimately, the real rival is within us anyway.”

Link to Article

HDR, or high dynamic range imagery is a relatively new concept that is taking the photography world by storm. These hyper-realistic images are actually composites of multiple photos or images that are combined in digital imaging software to extend the dynamic range of the subject in a manner that is similar to the way a human eye sees. The shadows, midtones and highlights all show breathtaking detail.

The techniques used to produce these images have been around for some time, but advances in software, hardware and some heavy-hitting plugs from leading tech resources have turned HDR into quite the fad in the last year. The image above is a picture of the Tokyo nightscape taken using multiple exposures from a high end digital SLR camera and composed using image editing software. The actual process involves something called tone-mapping which converts the image into a file that can be displayed on something less dynamic, such as a computer monitor.

• Link via Digg
• Link to How-to Article
• Link to HDR Flickr Pool

First some background on the bit about Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison is a household name as one of the most gifted and prolific inventors of all time. One of Edison’s greatest struggles was trying to determine the best material to be used as filament in the incandescent light bulb. Statistically, the light bulb was a flop – out of thousands of materials he tried, only one really worked very well. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” So maybe that didn’t turn out so bad after all. Unfortunately some of Edison’s ideas really didn’t fly. And no, we’re not talking about elephants. In August of 1906, Thomas Alva Edison proclaimed to the world that he was going into the construction business. He was going to change America and the rest of the world by producing concrete home. Concrete homes cast from a mold in one truly monolithic pour. Bathtubs, beds, who knows, maybe he even had an idea for concrete windows. It didn’t work. But, he did come up with some novel ideas that have become more commonplace as a result: modern production housing, aerated concrete, and even concrete houses – just not necessarily the way he envisioned it.

Link to Article

But wait – there’s more!

Inspired by 3D printing technology – more appropriately called rapid prototyping, some enterprising folks at USC are gearing up for a test of a robot that will “produce” the shell of a 2-story home here in Southern California without a single builder on site.

How does it work? The robot sprays liquid concrete and gypsum to form the structure creating an allegedly watertight shell all within 24 hours. But this team is not alone – a competing team in the UK is going to unveil a similar robot that takes slightly longer (a week), but will include mechanical and electrical. And it doesn’t stop there! There is even talk of a modified gypsum material that will replace window glazing.

What we want to know is how this will affect the construction defect industry? How would you allocate responsibility to a software programmer?

Links:

• Original Story from Times Online
• Contour Crafting website
• Animations of the robot in action
• Slashdot coverage
• Engadget coverage
• digg coverage

Cool Hunting, a website devoted to all manners of design excellence, has a feature on some amazing “out-of-the-hearth” fireplace designs.

Link to Article

Don’t feel bad if you aren’t prepared, because you aren’t alone. According to a recent survey in Computerworld Networking, “About 32% of 170 IT managers and staffers surveyed said they aren’t prepared to meet the requirements of the federal edict, 11% said they are somewhat prepared, while 42% said they don’t know the status of their companies’ preparation.”

Link to Article

[update 10 Jan 2007] Could you produce old e-mails and IMs in the event of a lawsuit? – detailed article from Computerworld regarding the issue.

“Fed up with rising labor costs, a new generation of entrepreneurs is launching millions of tiny companies differing from business in the past: They don’t want employees.

“The trend, building since the late 1990s, hit a milestone this year when the number of these microbusinesses reached 20 million — one for every six private-sector workers, a new analysis of government data shows.

“In place of paid employees, owners harness new technologies to outsource work, often linking up with other like-minded entrepreneurs to get jobs done in a virtual assembly line spanning the globe.”

Any guess as why an article like this might show up on this website?

SHCC, Inc. is a one-man show. Everything not done in-house it outsourced. Lean and mean. Well, maybe more like “lean and courteous/professional/thorough” – but whatever. It seems other people are finding the benefits of doing business this way also.

Link to Article

Link to Article

Two articles explore this myth of the paperless office from the perspective of the attorneys. The comments following both posts are quite informative as well:

• T. Evan Schaeffer (Schaeffer & Lamere – MO, IL) says for him the paperless office remains a myth. [Link to Article]
• Ernest Svenson (host of one of our favorite law-related blogs – Ernie the Attorney) has given the issue some serious consideration following Hurricane Katrina, which had a significant impact on both his professional and personal life. [Link to Article, Link to PDF with much more detail]

Metadata is bits of information that describe or define the file. Or as defined on Wikipedia, “Metadata is data about data.” OK, so maybe that doesn’t help much either. In Microsoft Word (both the Windows version and the Mac version), there is something found in the menu called “document properties.” This gives fields for each file that allow one to input extra information such as who the author of the document is, keywords, etc. The metadata also includes information about when the file was first created and when it was last saved, as well as information about versions and lots of other more esoteric data that most people do not use.

But here’s the rub – just because one does not specifically enter any information into the “document properties” for a file, doesn’t mean that metadata isn’t created automatically for the file. The creator of the file, the date created and other metadata is always added to a Microsoft Word document. Therefore, if you send a “.doc” file to someone via email or through other electronic means, that additional information is accessible to others. This has proved to be quite a problem in more than one lawsuit and has been (at least) a little embarrassing for others.

The Chronicle for Higher Education recently published an article on this very topic. The article focuses upon the ramifications of Microsoft Word metadata in the publishing world. However this is perhaps even more of a hot issue in litigation. A slightly older article in the New York Times, illustrated two examples in particular where this issue has come up. One of these was a situation in which the CA Attorney General circulated a memo condemning “peer-to-peer” file sharing. The memo was sent as a Microsoft Word file and a quick look at the “document properties” revealed that the file was actually written by someone from the MPAA. Not exactly a favorable situation.

The Chronicle’s article mentions some tips for avoiding this metadata issue in Microsoft Word. One further step that could be taken is to not send Microsoft Word documents at all. Instead, send non-[easily]editable PDF files such as those created by Adobe’s Acrobat software or the built-in capabilities found in Mac OS X.

Link to Article