Semicolin's Blog

Some people thought the plain, white clogs that I got for $1.80 at a discount store were boring, so I "personalized" them! I used permanent markers and paint pens that I had in my house.

Click here for more images.

Or, click here for a 180-deg video view.

I have a good friend serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Africa. She has written and is directing a play to benefit people of the the !Xun tribe. She is looking to spread the word and raise funds to complete the project and produce the play. Click below to read more and see the websites:

http://www.sasi.org.za/sonofthewind.html
http://www.sasi.org.za/
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I recently learned that Superbowl Sunday has an estimated 500-ton carbon footprint. So, I started thinking about what could be done to offset the Super-carbon footprint during that weekend. Two things that seem extremely abundant in the desert surrounding my home town are sunlight and rocks. How could I combine the two to maximize fun and efficiency? I had a new mission for Saturday, Jan 31st.
The Mission: Gather with friends to build solar ovens and take our cooking apparati with us to Box Canyon to Boulder while we Bake.

Methods: I had quite a few responses to the message I sent out, but in the end Bob and Cort were the most inspired (or bored? or curious to watch my follies?). I decided to build a box-style solar oven using cardboard, aluminum foil, and a pane of glass that I found near a dumpster. Most of my design ideas came from the internet (my design followed this website mostly, but with significant variations that I learned from this other website).

Results:
Out at Box Canyon, from right to left: Bob still working on his parabolic roaster, my solar box oven, Cort toasting the occasion, and Cort's trash scraps-to-oven box cooker. Oh yeah, and Cort's white Prius. Since when did computer scientists become hippies? Cort got his oven to 180F in the afternoon light. Enough to get his cinnamon rolls warm and gooey.





Bob attempting to roast a weenie in the last rays of the day. Yes, we ran out of daylight and didn't get to fully test our newly built eco-pliances. And, strangely, solar ovens don't work well at night.


However, there was time for some Box-style cranking where the sun was shining down the canyon.




Trial #2 was much more successful. Back at the house I set the oven up at 8:45AM on Feb 6th. By 10:00 I was over 280F and melted the plastic off my cheap-o instant-read thermometer. After a trip to the store to buy a real oven thermometer, I put my vegetarian "pigs-in-a-blanket" in the oven to bake while I cleaned out the fuel tank of my truck, also vegetarian (there were marble-sized fried kibbles plugging the fuel line intake). The oven got up to 325deg F by 11:30am. Not bad for a winter day with a 39.1 degree sun altitude! The ambient temperature was 64 in the shade.

Here's a picture of the "soy-pigs-in-a-blanket" turning golden brown at 325F in the solar oven.

Conclusion: For most days of the year in New Mexico, this oven will work really well. With it's ability to maintain at least 325F, I can bake chicken and brownies! During the summer, with ambient temperatures reaching >100F, I'm going to try breaking 400F. I can see pizzas, chicken pot pies, fresh baked bread in the future... Mmmmm can't wait to try out more sun-cuisine!

Geez. My Dad bought a Prius about 5 years ago. Then I started burning waste vegetable oil in a diesel F250 (also known as "Chip"). Now my brother & his family have 2 more hybrid cars and are producing enough solar energy on their roof that his electricity meter runs backwards on sunny days. Is the Lee Family contributing to the dangerous "Smug Alerts" now looming in South Park's America? It could be. However, I offer another explanation: For my brother & I, I believe it's a reaction to ward off a childhood of harassment. We were often the recipients of an onslaught of "Turn off the lights because you're wasting electricity!" and "Don't waste paper!" by my dad. As a kid, I replaced "electricity" and "paper" with "money" and it all made sense why he was badgering us. Afterall, another favorite saying of his was "Money doesn't grow on trees, you know." However, when my dad bought his Prius, I had to do the math: at $4/gal for unleaded and 15,000 miles per year of driving, it would take about 7-8 years to make up the $5,000 price difference between a hybrid and non-hybrid car. It didn't make economic sense. So, that means he really cares about the environment? My Dad had turned us into granola hippies not through smugness, but through pestering.

And now, I'm happy to show off my brother & family's green improvements to their house in Palo Alto. Hopefully not through smugness, but rather a celebration that each person can humbly do what (s)he can because (s)he cares.

Nolan & Sandi's first move was to replace all their toilets with dual-flush varieties. You press the low-volume flush button of it's yellow & mellow. The other button for brown to make it all go down. A pretty humble beginning, huh?

A year later, as I mentioned above, they replaced their two family cars with a Toyote Prius and hybrid Highlander out of the need to replace their aging vehicles and for the growing family. The blue Prius in the driveway belongs to dad.

The solar water heater came next. Out of all their improvements, this one Nolan says "Didn't make sense to not buy" because the Federal and State incentives will help them pay off and begin saving money in just a few years. This solar unit heats coolant which is pumped through pipes to his furnace-less hot water tank.

Here's their hot water tank and on-demand water heater. On nice, sunny days the solar panels heat water to a scalding point, requiring an automatic mixing valve to engage which cools the hot water before it reaches the taps in the house. When it's less sunny, warm water from the solar water tank is routed through the box mounted on the left wall which heats the water to their designated 120F temperature. Heating only the water you need saves gas and money compared to maintaining a whole tank at 120F.

Here's Nolan with their 4.1KWHdc-rated photovoltaic solar panels. Actually, the inverter converts from DC to AC and results in something like 3.1 KWHac, which meets about 80% of his household use. In 2008 federal and California incentives reduced the price of this system by a decent $9,000. In 2009 additional federal incentives would have saved him an additional $3,000 had he waited to buy it then. Nolan's also standing on their new roof- outfitted with 3M's heat-reflecting shingles which reduces cooling costs and energy consumption in the summer.

Here's Owen pointing to the utility meter. The box mounted just above and to the right integrates the solar energy production stats to Regrid's website. The image below shows that during the month of September they were producing about 20kWh of energy per day. Peak energy production was between noon-3pm, although the small dip at 1pm is caused by shade from a tree partially blocks some panels at that time.



The Regrid website proclaims that in the past 4 months, "This system has produced 1,932 kWh of clean, renewable energy!" OK, so a little smugness never hurt anyone, unless you happen to live in the town of South Park. Neat Stuff, Nolan and Sandi! Thanks for your pestering, Mom & Dad!

5. Google some random climbing thing that's posted here.
4. Google some strange thing about "WVO"
3. Google "semi colin use"
2. Google "Experiments on Caffeine and the brain"
1. Google "digestive and colin problems"!

Through a service Opera is offering, I discovered that people searched for the above topics and came to my site. In total, about 11% (3 of 27) of the traffic to my site are accidents ("semi colin use" & "digestive and colin problems"). Actually, this doesn't include the caffeine/brain experiment search and another search for "REI Adventures blogs" that led someone here. I'm not sure how to classify those. I didn't know colins could be such a problem and cause digestive disgruntledness.

The image above from Hitslink shows where visitors live who visited my site in the past week+ (Nov 20-Dec 2, 2007). I'm also trying out Sitemeter and Statcounter just out of curiosity.

Even if you came here by accident, thanks for your visits! Be sure to say "hi" & let me know what you think.

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