Recently I started putting together a Star-plate shed. Here are a few photos.
Showing posts with label construction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label construction. Show all posts
11/3/24
10/17/24
If Leadership is Adaptive, Creative and Intelligent the American Dream Machine Works
Americans in the rather crowded demographics of the nation with 320 million people needs creative and adaptive leadership in the office of the President. The President of the United States cannot be just an apparatchik functionary operating a machine with a known and finite number of parts as it were. Democrat lawyer Presidents tend to act as if was that simple.
Americans in the rather crowded demographics of the nation with 320 million people needs creative and adaptive leadership in the office of the President. The President of the United States cannot be just an apparatchik functionary operating a machine with a known and finite number of parts as it were. Democrat lawyer Presidents tend to act as if was that simple.
Lawyers work with an existing legal framework made in the past. The law does adapt to challenges of course yet the legal. Democrat lawyer president tend to be less creative than some of those of the past such as F.D.R. Since Bill Clinton they have drifted toward being non-creative war mongers (maybe I should have included L.B.J.) and redistributionist, slopping the poor while enriching themselves and cutting taxes on the middle class. Democrat Presidents rely on deficit spending as an essential part of ordinary economic policy.
The problem of applying finite, known machine like paradigms to complex, vague and amorphous issues such as history, cosmology and religion is interesting. The Democrat party support for war with Russia over Ukraine is a case in point. Chop logic and incompetent historical data reasoning bring the world toward its first unlimited atomic and nuclear conflict.
The historian Arnold Toynbee showed that one of the main reasons for the failure of a civilization is it’s inability to change and adapt its economy to new paradigms especially with external challenges such as environmental decay compel a right response to the challenge. Redistributing some wealth with public debt will not solve such challenges.
If pie-in-the-galaxy solutions for near light speed travel could be found easily-perhaps mapping the gravitational fields of the Milky Way and calculating travel course for engines that can interact with gravity field currents, there would be less need for creative Presidential leadership. As it is a legalistic approach based with existing laws made in the past won’t provide any kind of creative change.
Most citizens prefer stable economic parameters, yet the economy is implicitly unstable these days because of quick technological challenges and the international scale of it. Kamala Harris may have an isolationist concept of the U.S. economy in that she might think it is a stand alone phenomenon and cutting off Russia and relying on China won’t affect it at all, yet obviously that is wrong.
Democrats support illegal immigration to have a ready source of cheap labor. The nation though is not experiencing an influx of intellectuals from abroad; it is receiving millions of under-educated new consumers that want plain physical jobs and experience life with naivety concerning national and global environmental resources. Because Democrats support illegal migration they are anti-environmental conservation necessarily as a contrapositive fact.
Americans in the rather crowded demographics of the nation with 320 million people needs creative and adaptive leadership in the office of the President. The President of the United States cannot be just an apparatchik functionary operating a machine with a known and finite number of parts as it were. Democrat lawyer Presidents tend to act as if was that simple.
Lawyers work with an existing legal framework made in the past. The law does adapt to challenges of course yet the legal. Democrat lawyer president tend to be less creative than some of those of the past such as F.D.R. Since Bill Clinton they have drifted toward being non-creative war mongers (maybe I should have included L.B.J.) and redistributionist, slopping the poor while enriching themselves and cutting taxes on the middle class. Democrat Presidents rely on deficit spending as an essential part of ordinary economic policy.
The problem of applying finite, known machine like paradigms to complex, vague and amorphous issues such as history, cosmology and religion is interesting. The Democrat party support for war with Russia over Ukraine is a case in point. Chop logic and incompetent historical data reasoning bring the world toward its first unlimited atomic and nuclear conflict.
The historian Arnold Toynbee showed that one of the main reasons for the failure of a civilization is it’s inability to change and adapt its economy to new paradigms especially with external challenges such as environmental decay compel a right response to the challenge. Redistributing some wealth with public debt will not solve such challenges.
If pie-in-the-galaxy solutions for near light speed travel could be found easily-perhaps mapping the gravitational fields of the Milky Way and calculating travel course for engines that can interact with gravity field currents, there would be less need for creative Presidential leadership. As it is a legalistic approach based with existing laws made in the past won’t provide any kind of creative change.
Most citizens prefer stable economic parameters, yet the economy is implicitly unstable these days because of quick technological challenges and the international scale of it. Kamala Harris may have an isolationist concept of the U.S. economy in that she might think it is a stand alone phenomenon and cutting off Russia and relying on China won’t affect it at all, yet obviously that is wrong. Democrats support illegal immigration to have a ready source of cheap labor. The nation though is not experiencing an influx of intellectuals from abroad; it is receiving millions of under-educated new consumers that want plain physical jobs and experience life with naivety concerning national and global environmental resources. Because Democrats support illegal migration they are anti-environmental conservation necessarily as a contrapositive fact.
Intellectuals can’t really work here illegally. They need to be on the clock legally. Every society has an average range of intellectuals and physical workers in regard to potential, even underdeveloped societies. A society needs to keep that balance for health rather than absorbing millions of uneducated people or losing’s it’s intellectuals abroad.
Lawyers work with an existing legal framework made in the past. The law does adapt to challenges of course yet the legal. Democrat lawyer president tend to be less creative than some of those of the past such as F.D.R. Since Bill Clinton they have drifted toward being non-creative war mongers (maybe I should have included L.B.J.) and redistributionist, slopping the poor while enriching themselves and cutting taxes on the middle class. Democrat Presidents rely on deficit spending as an essential part of ordinary economic policy.
The problem of applying finite, known machine like paradigms to complex, vague and amorphous issues such as history, cosmology and religion is interesting. The Democrat party support for war with Russia over Ukraine is a case in point. Chop logic and incompetent historical data reasoning bring the world toward its first unlimited atomic and nuclear conflict.
The historian Arnold Toynbee showed that one of the main reasons for the failure of a civilization is it’s inability to change and adapt its economy to new paradigms especially with external challenges such as environmental decay compel a right response to the challenge. Redistributing some wealth with public debt will not solve such challenges.
If pie-in-the-galaxy solutions for near light speed travel could be found easily-perhaps mapping the gravitational fields of the Milky Way and calculating travel course for engines that can interact with gravity field currents, there would be less need for creative Presidential leadership. As it is a legalistic approach based with existing laws made in the past won’t provide any kind of creative change.
Most citizens prefer stable economic parameters, yet the economy is implicitly unstable these days because of quick technological challenges and the international scale of it. Kamala Harris may have an isolationist concept of the U.S. economy in that she might think it is a stand alone phenomenon and cutting off Russia and relying on China won’t affect it at all, yet obviously that is wrong. Democrats support illegal immigration to have a ready source of cheap labor. The nation though is not experiencing an influx of intellectuals from abroad; it is receiving millions of under-educated new consumers that want plain physical jobs and experience life with naivety concerning national and global environmental resources. Because Democrats support illegal migration they are anti-environmental conservation necessarily as a contrapositive fact.
For Ecological Reasons New Homes Should Be Easy to Assemble and Disassemble
New home construction should have fasteners and other materials in design that make them easy to reassemble someplace else. That would prevent waste and permit more flexibility in future community environmental plans. It woul also let homes easily be sold and relocated.
Substantial tax breaks should be given to new home builders with high energy production, insulation and dismantle and reassembly efficiency ratings.
Concrete foundations for example might be pre cast or poured in short forms that could be fastened together and removed later for re-use; ie rectangle pieces a few feet in length a front loader could install.
Roofs could be entirely solar panels that could be upgraded after tech progress.
9/10/24
Proxima Centauri B nine years Distant with Electro-Mag Accelerator?
Proxima B is the nearest planet in another star system that might allow humans to live on it with appropriate adaptations. Primarily that would entail creating a way to filter out x-rays from the sun. With conventional chemical rocket space craft it would require 80,000 years to get to Proxima Centauri B, yet if travelling at half of the speed of light the time required for the journey would be somewhere around 8 or 9 years. That 4.26 light year distance would not seem so far with initial electro-magnetic acceleration.
It is possible to create a very vast electro-magnetic accelerator somewhere within the solar system that would be 100-300 million to a trillion miles in length capable of moving a charged module habitat inside to half light speed. The spacecraft would coast the rest of the way and use ion engines to begin slowing down with the help of gravity fields of stars on the far side. E-mag accelerators may be temporal and exist just when launches are required and could be built in a variety of ways using solar and/or nuclear power sources, perhaps with solar system planetary configurations at optimal configuration to host participating fields. Just a thought.
9/8/24
Why Destroy the I.S.S.?
Why destroy the Space Station instead of moving it to L-5 or L-3 for storage? Why did Biden-Harris give Space X a contract to destroy the I.S.S. by burning it up in the Earth’s atmosphere instead of lifting it up to L-5? Should N.A.S.A. have Boeing take up bodies for cremation on the station during its fiery descent in order to make a profit? At L-5 would the I.S.S. be useful as ballast for a tethered new station or for wreck ‘diving’ for future recreational astronauts? Is it as simple as putting up and taking down a pup tent? Does N.A.S.A. have so many places in space where people can live that they don’t mind destroying actual existing structure? What about sticking an ion engine on it for a slow boost upward to L-5?
N.A.S.A. seems to lack a high frontier psychology regarding camps and safe emergency places in case something went wrong and optimal plans didn’t develop without a hitch. Pioneers don’t treat frontier posts as disposable items to jettison as soon as they can build a new one somewhere else. Like old spare farmhouses of the west that were abandoned decades before when a new home was built, old forts and farm homes and space stations should remain in existence as just in case facilities.
The I.S.S. in safe storage at a Lagrange point might be used for some presently unforeseen purpose like being an anchor point for various kinds of telescopes or communications devices. Like an old English mansion in might have additions some day to give it a new use. One might set some housekeeping and construction robot to work in it and let out the atmosphere while new components are added. Just throwing away past projects is the mind set of urban consumers of a disposable culture rather than of those accustomed to frontier challenges. What would the first explorers of Antarctica have given for a safe, warm place with a food supply on their return from the South Pole?
Kamala Harris Wants a Soviet Approach to School Security
With another Democrat era school shooting in Georgia Vice President Harris has advocated for the Soviet state security apparatus of internal security including schools. That is to disarm the public and terrorize political opposition throwing them into the Gulag whenever possible. The late Soviet Union had great internal security because the public were too frightened to commit crimes. Democrats may admire the living in fear lifestyle with everyone effectively locked down. Plutonium was kept on shelves in an unguarded warehouse near Moscow with just a padlock on the door for security. With strict wage and price controls, being found with an unauthorized crust of bread in one’s coat pocket was enough to merit a five-year sentence.
One-party systems seek total control of the external social world as a way to enforce the absolute power of the state. Schools have great security with no violent crimes. Yet the approach is abhorrent to free people and one the U.S.A. should not follow. School security in the United States can be made emulating the way federal buildings across the nation developed security after the McVeigh bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City.
Democrats cannot be serious about school security with a King Canute approach to rolling back the tide of the Second Amendment with a command. Democrats are so myopic on their approach to politics that they fail to understand the consequences of their political acts when taking rash, short-term proplits. When the Soviet Union restored to national control all of the nations and properties it have taken after they came t power a half century after the end of the Second World War the only nation that was left out was Russia- President Bill Clinton arranged to wrest the Ukraine from Russia and deem it an independent nation, that it never before in history had been. That rash, importunate act was reinforced by following Democrat party U.S. Presidents unto the present day, compelling Russia to fight for its homeland when other nations including East Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Serbia etc had it given to them with the support of the West and N.A.T.O.
Perhaps Democrats sought to neutralize the nascent free enterprise based Russian state and turn it back toward communism by forcing it to defend itself against the encroachment and terrorism of the west. Russia had no choice besides renewing strongest possible relations with Socialist China and North Korea while Democrat Presidents in the United States were trying to rebuild union membership numbers and power. Democrat politicians have a Closer my atheist Utopian Soviet Union god draw I unto thee fatal attraction.
Vice-President Harris’ husband recently said, in so many words, that now is the time for Israel to surrender to the demands of Hamas to return to power and to have control of the Gaza-Egyptian border in order to reload with weapons for another round of war in a year or two in exchange for the return of 100 Israeli hostages. I believe that spouses of political leaders generally should not be unelected loose canons on deck weighing in on political matters. Yet the V.P’.s spouse did provide a window into the unreasoning of the Democrat presidential candidate for 2024 who probably shares the same opinion as her bigger spouse. Restoring terrorist hostage takers to political power must be the dumbest possible choice. The hostages unfortunately aren’t likely to be returned unless Hamas is beaten and they are returned in exchange for safe passage to a country without extradition. political opinions can have disastrous consequences for future Israel. Another Hamas administration probably would have more drones than it could find space for in its vast tunnel network to send in a while to blow up Jews in Israel. Iran is pretty good at manufacturing drones.
Ecologically Renewing Old Building Like the Former Wrangell Hospital
I have given some thought on what to do with the old Wrangell Hospital that is apparently costly for the city to keep in its inventory because of electrical and other costs. I ride a bike past the hospital sometimes when I am in town for shopping and hate to see the property’s neglect; it is aesthetically unsatisfying. It seems a fair item for a web blog. Sometimes repainting houses the exterior of the old building seems to be in pretty good shape considering that is might not have had any work on it since it was new. The fascia could be covered with marine plywood and some sort of metal because it seems to have worked like a drip edge ans is rusting away.
Environmentally speaking it is better to recondition and upgrade old buildings than build new ones generally. If a building is dangerous with unsound components it should be entirely replaced. Otherwise the manufacturing and transport costs of materials for something entirely new is greater than an upgrade. Refurbishing old buildings requires custom thought, innovation and design intelligence that isn’t necessary when building cookie cutter new units, so most people op for the later although it is environmentally and economically wasteful. The $50 per sheet. Building materials are quire expensive these days.
One can make old buildings very modern. The city might need to find some incentive for a party to become interested in investing in the old hospital when they presently haven’t a business revenue return model to do so. The Stikine River Wilderness, decline of fisheries and Old Growth forest might provide an incentive for some environmental non-profit to develop the property with ultra-modern green energy production and insulation technologies to convert the structure into a showpiece for green technology while providing a base for restoration of fishing and enhancement of forest and water quality. Maybe just getting someone like the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) of Amory Lovins to entirely convert the old hospital to green tech would require the property to be donated in exchange for fulfilling some contract to refurbish the structure.
The City need be cautious about selling the property at a discount to anyone that says if X then Y such as building N units for housing will follow Z conditions. Once the title is transferred, without some formal contract the owner needn’t do anything. For a city assembly the lure of dozens of new housing units could be an attractive bait. I Pink salmon are in the water presently.
Th 36,000 sq foot building out to have room for 15 apartments of a thousand sq feet each with ample leftover space for storage units. Maybe it could be the Jay Hammond Center for Environmental Research, or another Pioneer Home or a place to move Wrangell Law Enforcement, Fire Department and other government offices. The present Wrangell Police and Fire station is a better site for business or some kind of transportation hub and intermodal connectivity.
Vice President Harris said that if she were elected president she would build three million new homes to alleviate the ‘housing shortage’. That would employee hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens working as construction crews and drop quick proplits to Democrat party donors and building developers. Consider for a minute the environmental and economic consequences.
Rapid tract home expansion is an amazing thing to watch. While riding a bike 35,000 miles around the country looking for a job I repainted quite a few buildings. In a new suburb of Houston I rode each morning past a new home being built by a crew. After the concrete set it took just six days to put the building up, and it was a large home selling north of $300,000. From framing to setting down tresses with a cherry picker and roofing specialized crews completed a phase of construction. Its nothing like the way carpenters of old would build a home with an apprentice or two.
That style of housing is boom and bust. Refurbishing old homes is sustainable and done with local workers creating jobs in the U.S.A. to replace so many lost overseas. Millions of workers specializing in upgrading old homes is a different approach than expanding into near urban farmland with new housing tracts while leaving old homes to become new slums, ghettos and barrios closer toward urban cores.
Everything in an old home can be replaced by entirely new materials with the limit being the intelligence of the redesigner. Perfectly clear, transparent roofs could replace old ones and plug in to new support tresses wherein wiring for plug in solar voltaic roofing would go, Roofs could change color as if they were adaptive optics to let in or filter out light. Creating new materials that can upgrade old homes is a good way to sell environmentally rational materials for export to second and third world nations looking to upgrade to a western style quality of life. What cannot serve global interests at all well is the idea of using the old housing ways favored by the Biden-Harris people to clear-cut undeveloped foreign forests and build new tract homes with asphalt absorbing streets across Africa, South America and Asia.
It is important to put intention on present political actions toward present and future structural designs. Scaling up old housing patterns nationally and globally can have disastrous consequences environmentally as well as economically. Building new subdivisions requires substantial investment of public resources, probably with inefficient technologies such as flush toilets instead of solar-powered electric toilets installing miles of pipe, electrical wires, water flow management and so on. All of the new instant lawns placed by the square yard and the lawn mowers, weed eaters and chem lawn treatments are completely avoidable when old buildings are refurbished to better-than-new condition with advanced tech.
6/15/24
Vinyl Siding vs Repaints in S.E. Alaska Rainforest
The cost of maintaining an older home in the S.E. Alaska rain forest can be high. It is worse though to let water get to the wood. Plywood in a few years of water contact, unless it’s marine grade, can turn into something like soggy cardboard. Replacing rafters and studs costs even more. Let’s consider the options of using vinyl siding (or the costlier yet better choice of aluminum siding) against the cheaper painting. In either case the labor costs plus the recently inflated price of building materials make the selection meaningful and worth considering.
An average 4000 square foot exterior would require, nominally, about 10 gallons of self-priming, lifetime acrylic paint for coverage. With paint going for about $60 per gallon that would amount to $600. Vinyl siding to cover 4000 sq feet would run anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 or more.
Labor cost is the great unknown cost for repaints. Work installing vinyl siding before the recent inflation era ran about $4.00 per square foot. So about $16,000 for the nominal 4000 sq foot home. Painters per job have a vast range of prices and skill levels. Labor for a 4000 sq foot home could run from $3,000 to $15,000. The condition of the home is a factor in estimates. Painting has far more more subjective aspects than installing siding. For siding installation techniques are standard; not so for repainting buildings where contractor work experience and quality matter.
Installing vinyl siding produces a reliable product. True it can be difficult to repair broke siding down the road such as cable installers may precipitate. Some siding becomes discontinued and it won’t be possible to match the product installed on the home in the future.
Solar siding already exists so home owners with a sunny location would probably be better off paying a little more to produce electricity for their home. Considering the life of siding products those that produce free home power for two or three decades vs vinyl siding that is worthless for producing power is an easy choice. https://shop.mitrex.com/collections/solar-siding/products/solar-siding-350w-black-wood-tile-landscape-1
Painters on the other hand can produce great, high quality work or complete painting flops...one need look at the contractor’s prior work and references to have a clue what one would be buying. painting a home is far less expensive that installing vinyl or aluminum siding. It is also possible to cover portions of a home with solar power collecting siding as one elects. Tesla solar roofing should cover an entire roof while solar siding could be installed just on a sunny wall.
https://www.tesla.com/solarroof
The main problem with painting in the rain forest is the rain. One should think of it as if one were repainting a wood boat with all of the seams sealed with 20+ year caulking. If the building has water in the wood and one paints over that future bubbles and blisters in the paint will occur. Getting the building to be completely dry-especially after pressure washing, requires days in some case. Getting several days of good weather much less two weeks can be challenging. Paint contractors aren’t being paid for waiting for ideal weather so they can go out of business with not enough work done in the very short painting season in spring and summer.
If the homeowner does it themselves and accomplishes neat, tight lines the result may be satisfactory. Union labor produces acceptable quality although some of the prep work may be skimpy and the longevity of the job may be less with minor blistering that is an eyesore. Neither will unions necessarily use paint additives like EB (Emulsa Bind) that provides cohesion to chalky surfaces such as arise with undercoats of old paint exposed by pressure washing. Still they are the best best.
Contemporary acrylic paint is commonly of lifetime duration. There is a lot of resin in the paint. That means the paint if properly applied will last 15 or 20 years. Painting is a far better value for the homeowner if the work is well done. One cannot stress enough to know the contractor and not accept a pressure wash, some scraping, masking windows and quick spray job measuring the amount of paint applied in millimeters. That sort of work is common for new construction yet for repainting older exteriors great care is required.
There are fewer good home exterior repainters willing to take pride in producing a long-lasting paint job than there are vinyl siding installers willing to put on monkey proof product. If a painter uses EB in primer and in the body color as well as lots of mildew killer and takes great care in prep and finish work the paint job is a far better value than siding. The prosperous homeowner with deep pockets may opt for the siding however as it is less of a gamble. Fifty thousand plus or five thousand dollars; that is the question.
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