beausoleil architects

Now we’re cooking with … not gas!

In many parts of the world, for instance sub-Saharan Africa, rural India, the desert parts of latin America and even in China, there is a push to use solar cooking to reduce the amount of wood and charcoal burning, to reduce local environmental air pollution and to increase public safety. Wood gatherers, often children and women, are more prone to attack as they range further from their home base in search of scarce resources. Large stretches of the world are being deforested, in part, by people needing fuel for cooking.

My daughter is going to Senegal in West Africa this summer, on a service trip with her school to help build a rural school.  I thought it might be useful to bring a prototype solar cooker to gauge its social acceptability and to test it in the local environmental conditions. I decided the cooker would have to be:

• Useful for local culinary customs, which involve cooking grain porridges, boiling vegetables, roasting meat, possibly baking bread.
•  Made of cheap (for my budget and theirs), easily repairable, replaceable, and sustainable materials.
•  Effective during the long, hot dry season (roughly eight months of the year)
•  Easily transportable, i.e., light in weight, foldable, durable
•  Hopefully, capable of being mass produced cheaply, if found to be useful and effective.

Solar cooking is simple from a scientific point of view, and also quite intuitive, as anyone knows who has gotten into a hot car on a sunny day. Incoming solar radiation at sea level embodies as much as 100 Watts of power per square foot, mostly in the form of visible light. If the light is absorbed by a dark surface, the surface will heat up, and the heat will tend to be radiated away as thermal radiation. If the surface is surrounded by glass, however, which is largely transparent to light but largely opaque to thermal radiation, then the heat is trapped – this is known as the greenhouse effect.  Using mirrors or lenses, more solar energy can be focused on a small area, increasing the temperature.  Increase the heat enough, and you have a cooker.

My design was based in part from what materials I found readily, and what my tools and crafting abilities were capable of. The design also evolved with step-by-step experimentation. I determined early on that the cooker needed to incorporate a glass shell so as to use the greenhouse effect.  I was able to find an inexpensive, cylindrical glass vase to use as my shell; it’s shape determined that I would create an oven rather than a ‘stovetop’ style cooker.

The design I settled upon had a parabolic reflector wrapped around the cylinder, held in place with a structural frame made of thin sheets that could be knocked down for ease of transportation. The prototype used cardboard, with Masonite or a similar artificial wood panel in mind for a final version. The pieces knock down to a (mostly) flat bundle, small enough to fit within the length and width of a typical suitcase.

The absorber plate which lined the inside of the glass cyliner was galvanized sheet metal with barbecue grade flat black paint as the finish. Some hemp rope, scavenged from the garage, was used for gaskets. Some quick experimentation with aluminum foil and cookie sheets as reflectors convinced me to use real mirrors – true specular reflectors seemed to be called for.

The first test of the prototype reached a temperature of 235 degrees – not great but good enough to bake cookies.  Then disaster: I was showing the cooker off on Earthday and the wind blew it over and broke it into shards…Oh, well, scientific progress goes boink. It was only a prototype, and proved to be less effective than desired, besides being too fragile, and probably too expensive.  It was lovely piece of design, but back to the drawing board!
 
My Challenge to my readers:

Create your own solar cooker – an oven or a boiler
Research local conditions, cooking practices and culture in your target area
Study the science of visible and thermal energy, absorption, transmission, radiation, insulation, and cooking
Design a beautiful cooker
Make a prototype
Test your ideas and your design
Do it again until you get it right
Take it out and try it in the real life
Manufacture it locally, and help transform the economy

Have Fun and Change the World

From outer space to a neighborhood near you

I recently accompanied a sustainable energy class from my daughter’s high school on a visit to the headquarters of Bloom Energy.  The son of the founder and CEO, Dr. K.R. Sridhar, is one of my daughter’s classmates and Dr. Sridhar was kind enough to open up his manufacturing facility to us and have his chief engineer give the class a tour.

Bloom Energy makes high performance, high capacity fuel cells – similar to the systems that were invented in the sixties to provide power for spacecraft. Bloom Energy’s version was actually developed by NASA to help power proposed visits to Mars, specifically to be part of a system to convert the Mars atmosphere and solar energy to oxygen and hydrogen fuel. Along the way Dr. Sridhar realized that the technology could be used effectively on Earth to create electricity from fuel – ideally hydrogen but also methane (natural gas), alcohol and bio-fuels.  The fuel isn’t combusted, in the ordinary sense of burning at high temperature (not a practical idea in outer space), but is chemically converted using catalysts and ionic filters.  Very high tech devises, fuel cells use some of the same manufacturing techniques used to make computer chips and employ metals and ceramics that are on the cutting edge of material science.

 Ten years of development and a good deal of venture capital later, Bloom is manufacturing ‘Bloom Boxes’, modularized units, roughly the size of a large freezer, which ganged together in groups of six generate 200 kilowatts of power, enough for about 100 homes. Although internal temperatures within the units are well in excess of 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, there is very little waste heat. The exhaust is mostly carbon dioxide and water. When losses from transmission are taken into account, their efficiency is higher than even modern natural gas fired power plants.

The installations are remotely monitored by Bloom on a 24/7 basis. Their modular nature makes it relatively easy to switch out a poorly functioning unit without shutting down the entire array.  Bloom gained quick acceptance from customers who need very reliable power (think server farms and wholesale refrigeration facilities).  The operations manager who showed us the monitoring control room was very proud that the eye of Hurricane Sandy passed directly over one of their big installations on the East coast – and the power output never even blinked.

Fuel cells aren’t exactly ‘green’ in that they typically use fossil fuels as their energy source. Dr. Sridhar ultimate vision, however, is to develop bio-fuel generators, fed by agricultural waste or low environmental impact crops (such as switchgrass) that when linked to his Bloom boxes will give both reliable and environmentally sustainable power. He is especially intent on doing this in third world settings, where such systems, distributing power locally instead of through centralized grids, will have the best efficiency while giving the owners control over their power sources. He would like to vault the third world right over the industrial era into post-industrial civilization, bypassing coal, oil, and, hopefully, global warming.

Maybe it's time to start thinking inside the Box.

While we’re on the subject, there is another local company making fuel cells, perhaps more directly pertinent to architecture. ClearEdge Power makes smaller capacity residential units with as little as 5 kilowatt generating capacity (enough for a single large house).  Running on natural gas, their ClearEdge 5 unit is quite efficient, acts as a de-facto back-up generator, and uses its waste energy to heat domestic water.  Thus electricity, hot water, and emergency power in one package the size of a refrigerator. They are expensive, but well within the budget of a typical McMansion. With current subsidies, and with cheap natural gas for at least the near future, they are actually cheaper than public utility power.  I can’t wait for them to come out with a unit half that size – maybe even one that converts yard waste into biofuels -- then we’re talking about a serious game changer.

Please vote for our middle school robotics team's invention

Voting is now open for the FLL Global Innovation Award, where middle school youth post ideas for their inventions, this year related to the theme of helping seniors stay independent, connected and engaged. The team we have been coaching for the past 6 months, the Awkward Turtles, has submitted their idea for the Turtle Tablet and Beach Band. You can find out more and  VOTE  here.   More information about our team and our amazing experience follows. Please vote early and often.  Voting ends March 1. Thanks!

 

Our family decided last summer to sponsor a F.L.L. robotics team for our 12 year old son, some of his classmates at West Portal Lutheran School, his friends, and kids from AimHigh, a San Francisco program which tutors low income youth. My wife Christine and I and several other parents were the coaches. Usually these teams are sponsored by schools or for-profit enterprises, so this was quite an operation for our household, which was crowded with lego parts, computers, and a four foot by eight foot game table for ten weeks. The team has an unusual background, coming from five schools and speaking about six languages between them, and it was interesting watching them come together to form a team.

F.L.L. (First Lego League) is the middle school league of the FIRST robotics group, which was devised by Dean Kaman (the inventor of the Segway) as a way to make science, technology, engineering and mathematics and as interesting and 'cool' for students as is sports and entertainment. The high school league was featured in the best selling book, The New Cool, by Neal Bascomb. The F.L.L. competition includes three facets: building and programming an autonomous robot to perform missions on a game table, inventing and presenting a device or technology to solve a real world problem, and demonstrating the team’s core values, including teamwork, gracious professionalism and having fun. Over 200,000 kids competed in this years league, whose theme was Senior Solutions -- making seniors more independent, engaged and connected.

Amazingly enough, our team, the Awkward Turtles, was declared Champion at the local tournament held at Notre Dame des Victoires school late last year, beating out fifteen other teams from all over the Bay Area. We scored second in the robot games (just five points behind the leader) and scored high in the other robot design, core values, and project categories. We were considered the best overall team and got an automatic pass-through to the regional tournament to be held early next year.

The project our young engineers conceived involves a 'simple' computer for seniors to use, essentially an iPad type tablet with an accessory wristband, controlled by a voice recognition system and software specifically designed for a senior's skill sets.  The wristband monitors vital health signs, accommodates verbal interface including reminders, allows for emergency signaling with GPS, and syncs with the tablet.

One of the requirements of the competition is that the kids have to interact with real engineers. We've already met with and gotten feedback from an industrial designer, a software engineer from Adobe, a nurse, and a mechanical engineer who works on medical devices, and had a field trip to the Google headquarters.  

There is also a related international competition where the kid's projects are judged for real-life feasibility, called the FLL Global Innovation Award. The three top finalists travel to the DC area to the US Patent Office and are awarded prizes to further develop their design invention with engineers and patent attorneys. Last year the theme involved food safety; one of the winning teams, for instance, devised a product bar code that erased itself when subject to high temperatures for a certain period of time -- a very useful invention to stop sale of spoiled prepackaged products.

If you are interested in looking at the FIRST programs, see http://www.usfirst.org/.

The Wind of History

The restored Murphy's Winmill, Golden Gate Park

If you haven’t been out to Golden Gate park recently, there is a grand new attraction. The 106 year old Murphy’s windmill at the Southwest corner of the park has been restored to operation. The sweep of the sails, the largest in the world of traditional Dutch design, takes one breath away. It’s a wonderful work of mobile art, craft and technology; history and the future wrapped in a slate and copper skin. Modern wind turbines may be more efficient, but this clipper ship of the windmill world is far more beautiful.

I was fortunate to get a personal tour last October from Lucas Verbij, of Verbij Windmill Design and Construction BV, the Dutch consultant who restored the cap, sails and mechanical workings of the windmill while the base (the ‘smock’) of the structure was being re-built by local contractors. He and his rigger – who climbs onto the wood ‘stock’ frames to set the cloth sails – were here to test the operation before handing the project off to the city.

The 64 ton cap (the top of the tower which holds the axis of the sails and which spins to face the wind) was reinstalled last September, after an almost ten year restoration process in Lucas’ workshop in Holland. The cap supports the sails, holds the main shaft and brake and gearing mechanisms. One of its more intricate parts is the fantail, a small windmill at the back, whose purpose is to drive the cap around so that the main windmill faces the wind. Any shift of the wind direction, left or right, and the small fantail mill turns and rotates the cap in the right direction. It’s an intricate dance. The main sails – the propeller blades – rotate at around 15 revolutions per minute under a strong wind. The blades are a work of art in themselves - heavy wood beams tapering to a narrow end, pierced with angled wood framing to creating a delicate winglike structure.

I was surprised to hear that, so far at least, there is nothing for the windmill to do. The original purpose, when it was built in 1905, was pumping irrigation water for the park. Murphy’s windmill and its slightly older cousin at the northwest end of the park could together pump 1,500,000 gallons of water per day from the freshwater aquifer that underlies the west end of the park. Lucas described the original pump and gearing as having a perfect design, with a kind of pre-Detroit syncromesh transmission. All of that was lost in the decades following its installation, as electrical pumps replaced the fickle wind and the structure was left to rust and decay. So at the moment, the system is running with the brakes on. Lucas said there was enough potential power to move 10 cubit meters of water a minute, 75 kilowatts of electrical generating capacity. That's about enough power to electrify about thirty homes.  Hopefully this will be put to use. Why not power the park’s waterfalls or lighting with this sustainable resource? 

Inside the Cap

Phil Ginsberg, the Rec and Park General Manager, says there is a plan afoot to have the windmill pump a small amount of water to irrigate a produce garden which will be used in connection with a food concessionaire in Millwright's Cottage. We can only hope this plan is brought to fruition and is able to keep the sails spinning.

See http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist/wmill.html for more history of the windmill
.

Architectural Magic II

   

 

The video that was attached to Beausoleil Architects latest blog, titled Architectural Magic, recently received the attention of over two and a half million viewers on YouTube. The ‘inside’ story can be seen in their new video, Architectural Magic II, which shows the garage doors from the inside.

Working off of the concept design from Robert Boles of Beausoleil, Rick Dentoni, of Automatic Gate Installations designed and fabricated the steel structural space frame which supports the original wood framed bay window facade and allows it to operate as a door.  He also designed and installed the control and safety systems that operate the door safely.  Rick’s controls coordinate the timing of the two sides of the door, which have to operate in succession in order to clear each other.

Since the door’s completion earlier this year, the owner, Corey McMills of McMills Construction reports a number of curious and, in some cases angry, passersby.  A few people have been upset about not being able to park in front of what looks like a bay window, and ask why there is a curb cut and a no parking sign. Quite a few slack jawed individuals have been noticed as the facade opens up and cars exit onto the road. Since the video went viral, there have even been a few tourists who stop on busy Oak Street to take their own photos in front of the famous façade!

Thank you for all the attention and great feedback! We hope it leads leads to more opportunities for creative architectural solutions that maintain the historical fabric and resources, while allowing buildings to be modernized to the needs of the present.

Demolition - the sad alternative to deconstruction

In stark contrast to the house deconstruction photos and blog posted earlier this month, this photo shows two nearby homes being demolished. 

Granted the materials will need to be recycled per the laws of the local municipality, but it seems so sad to see all that wonderful framing lumber shredded, when it could have been reused by artisans creating handmade furniture or people building new homes for the needy.  Was the price difference really analyzed, or was this route chosen just because it is the "normal" and expedient way to take down a house?  We don't know, but we encourage you to take the extra step to give John Morrow of the ReUse People a call to see if you too can't actually save money as well as reduce energy consumption through reuse by selecting deconstruction instead of demolition.

Rags to Riches

This is hopefully the first installment of a rags to riches story: how discarded water from your laundry (that’s the rags part) can turn into edible riches.

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is launching a new Laundry to Landscape pilot program, the object of which is to install greywater systems that utilize laundry wastewater for irrigating landscaping, thus reducing water and sewer use. The program is aimed at single and duplex home owners, and includes a short training class and subsidised sale of the necessary piping equipment.

For those not familiar with Greywater systems, they involve the use of wastewater from bathroom sinks, showers, bathtubs and laundries to irrigate landscaping (and in some cases for toilet flushing).  Wastewater from toilets, utility sinks and kitchen sinks are not included, as they contain much more bacterial and chemical components and need more sophisticated treatment.  Bathroom sinks, laundries, showers and tubs, given the use of appropriate cleansers, are considered safe for use in landscaping, as long as some basic precautions are taken with how the water is distributed.  The state has even legalized ‘simple’ systems, involving water from a laundry, without needing a permit. More complex systems are also possible, however.  Check out the Greywater Alliance or Greywater Action for general information.

The program is being run by the Urban Farmer Store of San Francisco, and they are looking for 150 volunteers for the pilot.  The benefits include a $95.00 subsidy on parts and training by experts. This will cover most of the costs for many people.

We intend to irrigate edible plants -- a small fruit orchard and blueberry bushes – with our system. It may take a few years for things to mature (growing edible plants in San Francisco’s climate is always a challenge!) but we have hopes for a cornucopia. 

A new code for the new decade - the California Residential Code (CRC)

As if we didn’t have enough code books taking up valuable space on our bookshelves, the powers that be have adopted a new residential building code for California, to take effect on January 1, 2011.  I just went to an all day class on this new code, the California Residential Code, 2010 edition (henceforth known as the CRC), and thought I would share some of the information while my head is still spinning. The revisions to current standards promise to be variously useful and annoying. Along with the new 'CalGreen' code, also to take effect in January, we are in for a bit of a learning curve (more about CalGreen in the next blog).  

The new CRC does not supercede the current California Building Code (2007 edition), but rather supplements it, sandwiching a new Part 2.5 into the existing structure of the CBC.  The CRC will govern most residential construction, including single and duplex residential structures, live work units (when built as houses), semi-attached townhouses, and certain kinds of group care facilities.  It does not cover other residential projects such as apartments, condos, hotels, and so forth, which will still be covered by the larger CBC. Incidentally, the CRC is based on the International Residential Code (as the CBC is now based on the International Building Code). Most of the U.S. is using some version of these codes now, so we are gradually creeping towards a national standard. San Francisco, wouldn’t you know, seems to be the one locality that has not adopted the new CRC, so none of these changes are pertinent here.

The new CRC is a sort of one-stop-shop, containing most of the pertinent code information for the most typical kinds of residential construction – up to two story wood frame structures, plus basements and habitable attics, on concrete foundations. In general, if there are conflicts between the overall code and the new CRC provisions, the more detailed CRC rules apply.  On the other hand, the CRC only covers very basic, standard kinds of structural designs, so one can defer back to the CBC for more more specific structural engineering problems.

Some of the more significant changes are as follows:

- Accessory structures up to 120 square feet are exempt from needing a permit (though they are expected to meet code requirements) and don’t need to meet fire separations for windows to property lines and other buildings.

- Requirements for fire resistance of walls and size of windows based on separation from property lines have been somewhat relaxed. Likewise, requirements for fire resistance inside structures and from garages to houses have been reduced.

- Requirements for fire blocking – construction elements that stop the spread of fire within structures – have generally been made stronger.

- Habitable attics are no longer considered a ‘story’ for code purposes. Converting an attic to habitable space does not therefore constitute adding a floor to a building – so one doesn’t necessarily need to upgrade the seismic strength of the entire building.  This will make it easier to build, and retrofit, attics as useable spaces.

- Minimum ceiling height for habitable rooms has been reduced to 7’-0”. This is quite important for those who have existing basements and attics with low head clearance.  Suddenly, thousands of dollars in structural remodeling may not be necessary to get that rec room or home gym that you wanted.

- Fire sprinklers are now required on all new residential projects; remodels and additions may need sprinklers depending on local ordinances.  This is a huge change, very controversial apparently because of its cost. On the other hand, most municipalities in the Bay Area already require this, so possibly not a big deal locally.

- Carbon monoxide alarms will be required in most dwellings, and the rules for smoke detectors are more stringent. Systems in new construction need to be interconnected, powered by building electricity (with battery back-up).

- Handrails on stairs may have the traditional wider shape, not just the cylindrical type required by the CBC.

- Guardrails are required not just when the adjacent ground surface directly below an edge is more than 30” lower, but if the ground surface within 3 feet of the edge horizontally is more than 30” lower. 

- Un-vented roofs and (minimally) un-vented crawlspaces are allowed if certain measures are taken regarding vapor transmission.

There are literally hundreds of very detailed changes, so contractors and design professionals will need to carefully review the pertinent sections of the new code.  So call us up! (or take a class). The particular class I took was taught by the incredibly knowledgeable Douglas Hanson, who is responsible for the “Code Check” series of books which makes all this information easily accessible. Copies of the new codes are available locally from the sponsor of the class, the wonderful Builder’s Booksource in Berkeley .  A visit there is more than likely to fill up any spare bookshelf space with even more interesting tomes.

Check the California Building Standards Commission website for other information. 

New French chateau in the Bay Area? Oui, s.v.p.!

Here is our newest custom home going in for permit review tomorrow! The developer loves French Chateaus (he used to own one) and wanted to bring that feel to the Bay Area.  A true estate size project, this house has six bedrooms, a study, six and one half baths, home theater, exercise room, game room, and formal and family living spaces.  Ooh la la!

 

1040 Hermosa Way, Menlo Park

 

Check out the recenty completed home we designed for Quinta Properties, now on sale in Menlo Park.  The inspiration for the design was the classical, and classy, homes in St. Francis Wood in San Francisco.  The home features both formal living spaces and a modern open kitchen and family room. The site is within walking distance of downtown Menlo Park and close to Stanford.

Open house this Sunday November 14 from 1:30 - 4pm.

 

See the Real Estate Listing for more images and detailed information.