Confessions of an Architecture Victim

Shortly after we moved into the weird modern home we'd just built for ourselves, the trash man showed up for the very first time. "So where's the house?" he asked genially.

"It's that building right behind me," I replied, trying not to sound testy. "The one I just came out of."

"No kidding!"

We get that a lot. In our semi-rural area—about equally divided between 200-year-old clapboard farmhouses and vinyl-clad Colonials that, except for being beige, wouldn't look out of place on a Monopoly board—we have the weirdest house around. It's kind of a gull-wing contraption covered in corrugated steel and divided into two main sections. We've taken to calling these the North Trailer and the South Trailer, because when we finally finished building the house, a trailer was about all we could afford to live in.

We decided to build modern because we didn't have the energy to tackle the older fixer-uppers that were available. Columns? Egg-and-dart moldings? We thought, Hah! We don't need no stinkin' egg-and-dart moldings! We're free! But we soon learned that building modern comes with its own obsessive demands. In our house, we treat plywood with the reverence other people reserve for antique chestnut flooring. We fret over where to find streamlined address numbers, or whether people will recognize that the green glowing object outside is actually a doorbell. Even the kids can't escape: When we built them a playset, it had to have a corrugated roof to go with the house.

Energy On, Energy Off: Conserving a Lifestyle

From the West Coast to the East Coast demands for energy within North America are increasing and methods for meeting these increases are certainly debatable. Having been raised in an environment where energy was considered in limitless supply, the reality that it may not always be available at an affordable price presents itself.

To sustain our existence on this earth, as we know it, we will "all" need to make a contribution individually and collectively as a society to reduce our consumption of energy wherever possible.

Listed below are many energy-savings tips to consider.

1. Turn off everything not in use.
2. Shift energy-intensive tasks to off-peak hours, nights or weekends.
3. Seal buildings against air leakage with weather-stripping.
4. Increase insulation in walls and attics to appropriate levels.
5. Insulate foundations when possible.
6. Install high-performance insulated doors and double-paned windows.
7. Install UV window film or screens, especially on southern exposures.
8. Use timers on lights and motion detector lighting on building exteriors and landscapes to provide lighting only when needed.
9. Activate sleep features on computers and other office equipment.
10. Maintain air conditioning equipment with a professional tune-up.
11. Utilize water conserving appliances and plumbing fixtures.
12. Install programmable thermostats on air conditioning systems.
13. Set thermostats to the highest comfort level possible.
14. Replace old appliances with Energy Star rated energy-efficient models.
15. Turn down water heater thermostat settings.
16. Clean and replace air conditioning filters on a monthly basis.
17. Clean refrigerator coils regularly.
18. Close doors and vents to rooms not in use.
19. Replace existing light bulbs with more energy-efficient bulbs.
20. Use candles.
21. Plant native plants and place tall shrubs or trees near buildings for shade.
22. Install passive solar panels to capture "free" energy thereby reducing utility bills.
23. Consider installing wind generators, when feasible, and earn money for excess energy created.

Considering the losses in productivity, wages, and security, along with lifestyle compromises necessary when power is not available, individuals and corporations must contribute and consider ways to become more self-sufficient.

For most of us it is not possible to become totally independent of the energy grid, therefore, we will need to conserve on a personal and business level in as many ways as possible. Many organizations are working to inform the public of ways to reduce our energy usage.

An Ancient Luxury Becomes a Modern Morning Necessity: A Look at the Cascading Evolution of the Shower

Count yourself lucky for living in the modern world. If you’re like most people, you begin every day by taking for granted something that was not even available to some of the most wealthy and powerful people throughout history -- a shower.

Today, going without a shower for even a day is out of the question for most people, and to not shower for a week or more would be unthinkable. But most of us have ancestors who probably shunned bathing to the greatest extent possible. Even the Romans, who loved to bathe, took their baths in stagnant pools of dirty water that they shared with hundreds of their fellow citizens. They had no concept of bacteria of course.

In ancient times, the best a rich or royal person could do was to have a servant dump cold water over them as they stood in a basin -- hardly a relaxing experience by modern standards.

Today, manufacturers spend millions finding ways to make water do magical things in order to make showering a luxurious, invigorating and revitalizing experience.

"The soothing massage of a specially engineered stream of hot water is what people seek in their showers today," says David Lingafelter, Moen Incorporated's vice president of product marketing. "We spend a lot of time figuring out how to make water create the sensation of a massage when designing shower fixtures,” he adds. “Our Revolution showerhead actually spins each drop of water that it puts out and then twirls the whole shower stream so that users feel enveloped in water. Making the water droplets larger makes them feel warmer and the increased speed and movement of each drop gives the sensation of higher flow and higher pressure.”

You don’t get that sort of feeling from your average ancient servant with a bucket. But, at various times throughout history, ancient cultures have embraced the notion of showering for cleansing. During excavation of the Egyptian city of Akhenaten at Tel-el-Amarna, which dates back to 1350 B.C., a small bathroom was found. Lawrence Wright's "Clean & Decent: The Fascinating History of the Bathroom and the Water-Closet" reports that it was determined from the design of the basin, complete with splashbacks, that it was a simple form of a shower. It is believed that the water was most likely poured on the bather from servants holding vases.

Babylon had a series of aqueducts (the earliest ones on record) laboriously maintained to provide the well-to-do with water for their bathrooms, according to "The History of Plumbing - Babylon" on PlumbingSupply.com. While the common people were bathing and washing clothes on the banks of canals or in cisterns, King Nebuchandnezzar (605 to 562 B.C.) bathed in a shower room where, you guessed it, slaves poured water over him as he washed with soap made of ashes and animal fat. The plumbing was advanced enough that a drainpipe took away the wastewater, something modern plumbers wouldn't accomplish until the 19th century.

In ancient Greece, citizens took outdoor showers by standing under a stream of water coming from spouts found on the sides of large fountains built in the cities, according to Penny Colman's, "Toilets, Bathtubs, Sinks, and Sewers." Grecian vases with paintings of people showering in this manner were found by archaeologists.

Unfortunately, the Western world’s showering advancements stopped when people began to think that bathing itself was not altogether necessary. Queen Isabella of Spain, who funded the voyage of Christopher Columbus, was proud of the fact she had taken only two showers in her lifetime, reported Colman. In fact, early Christians equated bathing with vanity and avoided it in order to be more holy. Colman wrote that St. Francis of Assisi listed dirtiness as one of the signs of a holy person, St. Catherine of Siena avoided washing, and St. Agnes, who died at the age of 13, had never taken a bath.

Eventually, cleanliness began to come into vogue again, but only long after a third of Europe had succumbed to the Plague. In 1598, Wright reports, bathing rooms were added to Windsor Castle in London. It was here that Queen Elizabeth took a bath once a month whether she needed to or not.

As recently as 1812, bathing was looked upon as frivolous. When the Lord Mayor of London requested a simple shower bath in the mansion house, he was turned down by the Common Council on the grounds that no one had ever wanted one before. It would take 20 more years before one would be installed.

Showers, as we know them today without the pouring servants, came into use in the late 18th century, according to Rebecca Weaver and Rodney Dale's, "Machines in the Home." The first patent for a shower was granted in 1767 and owned by William Feetham. The earliest showers usually had a hand pump and became popular because they required a smaller water supply.

Frank Muir's "An Irreverent and Almost Complete Social History of the Bathroom," reports that showers had other advantages over the commonplace bathtubs. They were smaller, taking up less room in already tight areas, and they were cheaper to install. With showers, servants had a wider area to clean, but they also had less wastewater to carry away. But by far the biggest drawback of the shower was the cold water shock that accompanied pulling the cord on the overhead tank. That reason alone kept many people in baths until the advent of piped hot water. They reasoned it was easier to slowly drop into a tub of cold water than to pull the cord and let it rain down upon them.

This shower Renaissance was brought on, in great part, by doctors prescribing water cures to their patients. The water was applied in a number of ways, including the Rain Bath -- simply a shower where the patient would walk in and the doctor would pull the cord on the nozzle to shower the patient.

Lawrence Wright includes this quote: ”It is no rare thing to see a subject who at this first shower betrays actual terror, shouts, struggles, runs away, experiences frightening suffocation and palpitation; and it is not rare to hear him say, after a moment, 'so that's all it is.'"

Shortly thereafter, showers started becoming commonplace. The plumbing industry responded with what some consider the first designer shower, the English Regency Shower. According to "The Stand-Up Bath" on theplumber.com this 12-foot-high luxury shower was made of metal painted to look like bamboo. At its base was a basin with a drain and above it was a tank. A hand pump forced water from the basin into the tank and then over the bather's head. The main drawback of this design was that the same water re-circulated over the bather.

In the 1830s, another unique showering device hit the market, the American Virginia Stool Shower. This all-wood device resembled a quality piano stool with a rotating seat. Placed in the bathtub, the Shower Stool had a hand-operated lever that pumped water from the tub and over the bather's head and back. A scrub brush, attached to a vertical pipe, could be worked up and down the user's body with the accompanying foot pedal.

Advances in plumbing in the mid-1800s led to advancements in showering capabilities. It was about this time that plumbers began making freestanding showers with both hot and cold water, according to theplumber.com.

In 1879, Warren Wasson and Charles Harris, of Carson City, Nev., patented a shower that required the bather to maintain a constant treading motion with the feet to operate a pump which recirculated water from the tub, according to Weaver and Dale.

They go on to report on William Luther's 1891 shower patent in which a pump compressed air in a reservoir to force water up to a showerhead. In 1882 was the first appearance of Ewart's Improved Spray Bath with no fewer than 10 controls that manipulated various body sprays.

In 1889, J. L. Mott Iron Works followed suit, offering a unit that could shower the bather from every angle. The company's catalog touted that the shower would provide for the bather "needle, shower, descending douche, liver spray and bidet" functions. Other manufacturers got in on the act and provided a variety of showering options like multiple heads, waterfall spouts and body sprays.

"The desires of the showering public really haven't changed much when you compare these antique showers with shower suites available today. We’ve just gotten better at delivering what the consumer wants," Lingafelter says. There are still waterfall spouts, rain-like showerheads and body sprays. For example, Moen's Vertical Spa is available with multiple body sprays to hit every part of the body.

The biggest difference between showers of the 19th and 21st centuries is that today, the pipes are behind the walls and the hot water is a little more reliable. For the hot water, we can thank Edwin Ruud, founder of the Ruud Manufacturing Company, who in 1898 invented the automatic storage water heater. No longer would it be necessary to begin boiling water well in advance of a bath, or stand under the shower awaiting the shock of frigid water.

In fact, today's showering technology has even been able to remove the dreaded shock that accompanies the untimely flushing of a toilet or running of the kitchen faucet when another household member is in the shower. Pressure-balancing thermostatic valves like Moen's ExactTemp are able to maintain a steady flow-rate and constant water temperature, even if someone decides to start the dishwasher or do a load of laundry while you're washing away the cares of the day.

Shortly after the shower renaissance in the late 19th century, showers moved back to being thought of as strictly utilitarian devices and the fancy designs disappeared until the 1980s when manufacturers began responding to the desires of their customers for more versatility in the shower.

"Today, manufacturers are continually coming up with advances in showering technology," Lingafelter says. "Manufacturers are constantly working on ways to deliver the optimal shower to keep the showering public clean as well as happy." Or, you could just get yourself a servant and a bucket!

Moen Incorporated is one of the world's largest producers of residential and commercial plumbing products. Moen is the number 1 brand of faucets in North America. The company manufactures a complete line of single and two-handle faucets in a wide assortment of styles and finishes. It is also a leading producer of residential and commercial sinks, a variety of shower accessories, bathroom accessories and a complete line of plumbing parts and accessories (sold under the brands Moen, Cleveland Faucet Group, Creative Specialties International, Dearborn Brass, Hoov-R-Line and Wrightway).

Courtesy of ARA Content

Bring Color & Inspiration to Your Favorite Rooms

(ARA) - The most lived-in rooms of the home are the perfect places to express your personal style and creativity.

"In the rooms where we begin and end each day, it's important to add decorative elements that refresh and relax, invigorate and inspire," says Jackie Jordan, director of color marketing for Sherwin-Williams. "Our vast selections of colors and 2009 Lifestyle Collection provide a rich palette to do just that; vibrant yellows and reds offer warmth and energy while earth-inspired neutrals bring a calm and cozy feel to our favorite spaces."

Whatever your inspiration, color is a great way to freshen up your favorite rooms. Consider one of these expert tips as you begin redecorating:

* Spice up your kitchen with globally influenced oranges and greens, and try mixing details such as traditional lighting fixtures with rustic vases and serving pieces for a one-of-a-kind look. Bold accent colors are now available in Sherwin-Williams designated GreenSure paints such as Duration Home Interior Latex -- a low-VOC product that offers exceptional durability and stain resistance.

* Even in the room you snooze, don't be afraid to add eye-opening, vivid blues and greens. Your bedroom can pop with an eclectic mix of vintage and modern touches, or add an unexpected animal print throw rug to complete the space.

* Create a luxurious, spa-like bath with cosmetic-inspired corals and pinks, or botanical tones. And don't forget the accents, like a new shower curtain, candles and fresh flowers to retreat in style.

To stir your imagination as you make color choices, collect larger paint chips to help coordinate with fabrics and other accessories. Or, test several color options with custom-tinted samples from a local paint store. You can even preview selections with an online color visualizer.

And share your love of color with others at a Web site like colorofinspiration.com, a forum dedicated to expressing creativity in color. There, you can upload your favorite colorful photos -- whether they are of a vacation sunset or backyard garden -- and see and comment on the hues that inspire others.

Incorporating a new color palette into your kitchen, bedroom or bathroom is a great way to brighten your daily routine. For more color ideas, visit sherwin-williams.com or your neighborhood Sherwin-Williams paint store.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

Lighting: Bright Idea

The next time you flick on a light switch, consider this: about one-fifth of the world's electricity is used for lighting, and most of it is squandered. Traditional 
 incandescent light bulbs invented more than a century ago remain the norm, but they are horribly inefficient. Only about 5%-10% of the energy they consume is used to produce light, while the rest is burned off as useless heat.

For Allard Bijlsma, that spells opportunity. Standing in a conference room in a suburb of Antwerp, he picks up an oblong silver object slightly smaller than a rugby ball, brandishes it triumphantly, and makes the sales pitch. "We will shape this market; we will change the rules of the game," he says.

Bijlsma runs the consumer luminaries business for Dutch company Royal Philips Electronics. He's feeling particularly upbeat these days because he's about to launch a new line of high-tech products that use only a fraction of the energy of traditional lighting. The oblong object he's holding is a table lamp. It's just one of 50-plus lighting fixtures (luminaries, in the industry jargon) in a new range based on the latest in digital light-emitting diode (LED) technology, which can produce a warm, white light that comes close to rivaling halogen lamps but uses only a fraction of the electricity. And, unlike traditional bulbs, there's no need to stock up on spares: Philips estimates the new lights will have a 20-year life.

Energy-efficient lamps have been around for more than two decades, but until recently they've had a mixed track record. The earliest fluorescent models were expensive and clunky, and that put many consumers off. "A lot of people still think that energy-saving light bulbs are too large and too dim," says James Russill, a lighting specialist at Energy Saving Trust, a British nonprofit consumer advisory group. That's finally starting to change, for three reasons. The first is that the technology has improved immeasurably thanks to LED, which consists essentially of semiconductors coated with phosphorus. Second, prices have come down to the point where a high-tech lamp doesn't need to be much more expensive than a traditional incandescent one. Perhaps most significantly, governments are now getting involved in energy-saving efforts. Last year, Australia became the first country to announce it is banning incandescent bulbs (from 2010). Britain is also moving to phase them out: from January, no incandescent bulbs of 100 W or more will be sold. In October, a meeting of European Union energy ministers supported calls for an E.U.-wide ban on these bulbs, but the exact timing has yet to be decided.

Business is starting to catch on, too, not least because of the potential long-term cost savings. While the initial investment in new digital lighting is steep, the long life of the lights means that it can be a smart one-time buy. In Britain this year, supermarket giants Tesco and Sainsbury have both announced plans to substitute fluorescent with LED lighting in their freezer sections. Hotel chains are also making the switch.

Lighting companies the world over are scurrying to capitalize on these shifts, including heavyweights Osram and GE. "The industry has been extremely proactive," says Russill of the Energy Saving Trust. Philips is making some of the biggest bets. Over the past two years, it has spent more than $4 billion on acquisitions aimed at positioning itself as a leader in digital, low-energy lighting. The plant outside Antwerp belonged to the consumer-lighting market leader Partners in Lighting, which Philips bought in 2006. The company followed that purchase a year later with the $2.7 billion acquisition of Genlyte, a big U.S. player that makes lights for offices, highways, factories and outdoor advertising. Those deals come on top of its own massive in-house research efforts in R&D labs from Silicon Valley to Eindhoven in the Netherlands.

There's a lot at stake. The worldwide lighting market is worth about $78 billion a year, and consumer luminaries alone — excluding the market for bulbs — is almost one-third of that. Philips is moving fast to expand from its traditional European base. Bijlsma reckons the firm's sales of LED and other low-energy lighting will double every year in emerging markets, and grow "at a fast pace" in mature markets. Philips is targeting Latin America, and also Asia, where it is planning branded showrooms in stores.

Will consumers go for it this time around? Yes, says Russill: "LED is here and it's moving very quickly." Back in Antwerp, Bijlsma and Philips are betting he's right.

Acoustical Considerations - An Introduction

As audio technology becomes more sophisticated and more prevalent throughout homes, consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the need for excellent sound quality and sound privacy. Manufacturers of audio equipment from compact disc players to loudspeakers constantly strive to provide their end-users with the highest sonic fidelity with minimal distortion of the original recorded program. Yet how many owners of this sophisticated audio equipment realize that the last device in the audio chain is not the loudspeaker, but the room in which they are listening to the material?

The listening room will severely affect the final quality of sound that is heard from an audio system by either absorbing, reflecting, diffusing (scattering) or transmitting sound waves that impact its boundaries. Just as you may choose a color of paint on a wall to achieve an aesthetic look or select a light fixture to provide the appropriate amount and coverage of light, one should also ensure that the surface materials on the walls, ceilings and floors of an audio listening room are carefully chosen to achieve a balanced sound level in the room throughout the entire frequency range of human hearing.

Because the knowledge base of acoustics is so limited in the architectural, interior design and audio/video design industry, audio-listening rooms and home theaters are often built with no real attention given to the natural sound of the room. Many times, the audio/video designer will even suggest to the architect or homeowner that they don't need to spend any money or effort on acoustical treatments, since they can simply compensate for the bad room acoustics with equalization. This approach is only marginally effective since it is essentially creating a deficient sound to compensate for a deficient room.

Yet where does a homeowner or a designer go to achieve a room design that will enhance the state-of-the-art audio system in every way possible without adding distortion to the sound that reaches the listeners' ears?

Acoustical consultants have been assisting architects, interior designers and building owners for decades in the design of performing arts theaters, concert halls, recording studios and many other types of commercial, industrial and, more recently, residential spaces. With the advent of multi-media theaters and critical audio listening rooms in residences, it has never been more appropriate to engage the services of a qualified acoustical consultant to, not only work with designers to achieve great natural-sounding spaces, but to also contain the tremendous levels of sound and vibration produced by modern full-surround audio systems. This is often very important with families where children want to invite their friends over to watch the latest action movie in the home theater, while the parents want to relax upstairs or do work in a home office.

Designing a Swimming Pool With Glass Mosaic Tile

Incorporating glass mosaics design into your swimming pool can be just the thing to make your pool come to life, it will keep your pool from being ordinary and suffering from the ho hum's.

Colored cementacious finish coatings that are pretty typical today. After some years they start to wear and fade. With solid colored glass tile you will never have to have your pool walls recoated again. This can save quite a bit of money in the long run.

Glass tile is forever, it will never change its look or loose it's vibrant color due to the wear of chlorine and sun. Maintenance is a snap as the glass tile is non-pourus and cannot be penetrated by staining from unwanted objects that can wind up in the pool such as leaves.

There are so many colors, sizes and styles available it is sometimes difficult to choose. Some have a reflective quality. They are manufactured using a mirror backing with a transparent colored glass overlay. While some glass mosaics are opaque and others semitransparent. They all have unique qualities that work for many different looks and effects.

There are even photo luminescent tiles that absorb ambient light during the day and then at night they give off that stored up light. Glass mosaics are fantastic for your waterline as opposed to the everyday tiles offered from most pool companies. Some pool tile suppliers have special software that allows you to design your own blend or design of pool tile mosaics.

One feature that colorful mosaics are great for in modern swimming pool design is the vanishing edge. This is usually one side of the pool that has no coping; instead the top of the swimming pool wall is flat and lower than the surrounding coping. The water flows over the top of the wall and down into a reservoir and is recirculated back into the pool, it looks as though the water just vanishes over the edge.

The beach is a really cool feature; there is no step down into the pool. It is just like walking out of the ocean or a pond. The pool bottom is constructed so that it gradually tapers up to the level of the pool deck . This can be wonderful for children and older folks. For wheel chair bound swimmers, the beach can be used as a ramp for the wheel chair as there is no step to contend with.

Sometimes the entire pool is clad with the glass mosaic and the glass color gradates from a blue or green into a gradation of dark to light beige as it meets the pool deck

My favorite pool enhancement is a swim up island bar. You can sit around it sipping your favorite beverage and chat with your friends and family while being submerged in the refreshing cool water.

The colorful mosaics also can help to avoid accidents from people jumping into the pool and hitting a step or swim out that cannot be seen because the step or swim out is the same color as the rest of the pool interior. This can be a spine-jarring hazard if you jump in and don't see the underwater object lurking below. The answer for this is to have your pool contractor install a row or two of the brightly colored tile along the outer edge and in the center of the underwater hazard. So when you are considering the different options in front of you when you are installing a new pool or remodeling your existing pool, remember the many benefits that glass mosaic tile can provide..

Backyard Landscaping: Transforming Your Backyard

Much like a living room is for public entertaining and a bedroom is your quiet and private domain, your frontyard and backyard will often serve different purposes of outdoor landscaping. The front of your house is more public. You want passers-by to stop, roll down their windows, and say to themselves, "That's the house I want." Your backyard is your personal outdoor oasis.

Backyard Landscaping Installations
You may hear about backyard installations that have better or worse value return. A costly gazebo or storage shed may not have the same installation cost-to-property value ratio as a moderately priced pond or swimming pool. Your first question when deciding what backyard landscaping project to undertake should always be your lifestyle.

If you long for afternoon barbecues, a deck is probably where you should start. If you prefer quiet, evening dining, a patio is probably the better bet. If you're an avid reader who finds the outdoors relaxing, a pond/waterfall combination may be ideal. A swimming pool can be a good installation that both you and your children can enjoy. Don't go for projects that seem trendy, unless you're sure it fits your lifestyle and/or you plan on selling your home in the next few years.

Planning for the future can mean more than just spending more on your installation project or getting the most bang for your buck. A common example of this is an above ground swimming pool installation. If you have children, they may bug you to put in a swimming pool. Spending more on this swimming pool may increase its lifetime by an extra ten years. It may seem like a good idea at the time, but once the kids leave the nest, your priorities may change.

You could invest that extra money and in ten years use that money to replace the swimming pool. An above ground swimming pool is one of the easiest installations to replace. Digging the foundation for the swimming pool is also natural ground preparation for a garden or patio.

Backyard Landscaping Care and Maintenance
General landscaping care and maintenance can be more about getting the most for your money. Planting or removing trees or other plants can provide many options and several of them can save you money and still achieve similar effects. Existing topsoil can often be revitalized in a relatively short amount of time at a significantly cheaper price. The most important thing is to ask a lot of questions before you make any actual plans. Talking to a landscaping professional about what you want for your backyard landscaping can be invaluable for both quality and cost. Be sure to ask what your options are and make sure you can justify each decision to yourself.

When hiring a lawn service company, it's important to find a reputable company, but it's also a good idea to get quotes from several companies. To save on operating costs, these companies tend to bundle their services into packages. Different companies may have different packages. Finding the right fit for your specific lawn needs can help you make the best choice.