Great Energy Efficient Lighting Article

There was a fine article in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle Home and Garden section on Experts illuminate the future of lighting, wherein Jeannie Matteucci, a great journalist who specializes in home-related articles, interviews my mentor in lighting design, Randall Whitehead, of Randall Whitehead Lighting, Inc.

Randall is a trail blazer extraordinaire and I thank him for sharing his expertise with thousands of designers like me over the years.

Now we are moving into LEDs and, as before, Randall blazed the way. I was right with him too.

There will soon, very soon, be other new kinds of lighting to excite our senses and save our planet. Randall told me a few months ago about one that he has been watching:

Vu1 is a Seattle-based company creating a new kind of light bulb based upon an entirely new lighting concept:

Introducing: Electron Stimulated Luminescence™ Lighting TechnologyElectron Stimulated Luminescence (ESL™) Lighting Technology is an entirely new, energy efficient lighting technology. It is neither incandescent, fluorescent nor LED. 
To contrast: 

• Incandescent bulbs heat a filament to generate light. 
• Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFL) send a current through a mercury vapor that emits UV light to excite a phosphor. 
• Light Emitting Diodes (LED) create light by electrically stimulating a semiconductor material

ESL Lighting Technology uses accelerated electrons to stimulate phosphor to create light, making the surface of the bulb “glow”.  ESL Technology creates the same light quality as an incandescent but is more energy conserving. There is no use of the neurotoxin Mercury (Hg) in the lighting process.

Vu1's first offering, an R30 light bulb made to fit in recessed ceiling light fixtures, is nearing production. UL approval is due soon.

Here's a video released in July 2010:



This is so exciting! I can hardly wait to get my hands on one. I wonder too what other lighting innovations are just over the horizon?

What's next Randall?

Peggy

Do You Need a Sewer Line Replacement?

The last thing any homeowner wants to deal with is a backed up main sewer line. But sewer line replacement is costly, and the repair process can be invasive. The key to avoiding a disaster is properly diagnosing the cause of your home’s drainage problems.

Slow-moving drains or a toilet that takes forever to flush are pretty good indications that something is not quite right with your home’s drainage system. Still, it’s important to figure out if the issue is simply a blockage at the fixture or a more serious problem.

Because toilets send such a large volume of water into the sewer line so suddenly, this is the most obvious place to start if you suspect your sewer line has been compromised. If your toilet is slow to flush or the bowl fills up upon flushing rather them emptying, try plunging the toilet with a handheld plunger. If that doesn’t seem to help, check the other drains throughout the house.

Does the kitchen sink fill with water when the tap is turned on? Does your shower or tub drain seem to back up when the water is running? Is there standing water in your dishwasher or washing machine following a cycle? Affirmative answers to any of these questions strongly suggest that your home’s sewer line is in need of repair.

If every drain in your house is slow to empty, you should consult a reputable sewer line repair and replacement service for further diagnostics. As long as there’s no waste or standing water build-up in your yard or around your septic tank, a sewer line specialist will likely examine pipe couplings inside your house to check for blockages in the pipes. By opening the drain line inside the house, the sewer line specialist can determine if the blockage is close to your home or further out into the sewer line. This can also help reveal how serious the blockage is—if water spills from the open coupling then it’s safe to say the problem is substantial, as standing water in the drain line nearest the house indicates that waste water has been backing up from the sewer or septic tank all the way into the home for some time.

Your sewer line specialist will also conduct a visual inspection of drain pipes inside your home, looking for evidence of leaks and overflowing water that likely indicate a sewer line blockage. In most cases, this will require a special sewer line camera that can be fed through the entire length of the sewer line.

Once it’s been determined that your sewer line is blocked or damaged, a sewer line professional can judge how far along the line the problem is. The sewer line technician will follow the piping and take into account the position of the septic tank or sewer to figure out the most likely spot of the damage.

If the issue is not in your home but further down the line toward the sewer or septic system, chances are root infiltration, aging pipes, a broken pipe, or some other physical damage has caused the line to malfunction. Repair or replacing may involve tearing up your lawn surrounding the pipe, replacing the damaged portion, reburying the site, and re-seeding the yard. Some sewer line specialists, like Horizon Services, employ a trenchless system which can repair or replace the sewer line without tearing your yard up.



Related Information from Horizon Services...

• Horizon Sewer & Water Line Replacement Services

Chakka Varatti ~ Jackfruit Jam

Last few posts have been more of jack fruit and mango. I have some more posts lined up on jack fruit. During my childhood days, I have spent most of my summer vacation at my maternal home. Then, only my grand parents were there. Two months of vacation was full of fun. We spent the whole day playing in the back yard with children from the neighborhood. We were never bored. Those days, mangoes and jack fruit ruled the day.. in both raw and ripe forms. My grandma used to prepare chakka varatti from a minimum of 3 jack fruits in one go. Me and my sister used to help is separating the jack fruit bulbs. In the process, we would eat few also. Coming to the present, i have at most prepared chakka varatty from one jack fruit. Though the recipe is simple, the process is very laborious, it call for great shoulder strength for continuous stirring for a long time. Most of the times, I end making chakka poornam, which is used as filling for ela adai , since it calls for less work. When making the chakkavaratti with few jack fruit bulbs doesn't take much time. I'm sure my grandma  could never imagine making in such small quantity.  Here is how I make it

  

You need

•  Jack fruit segments - 20 nos
• 
  
  Jaggery - 1 cup heaped
• 
  
  Ghee - a tablespoon

  

Method

  

Chop the jack fruit into bite sized pieces. Cook in microwave or stop top till it changes it color. If cooking on stove top, sprinkle some water so that it doesn't stick to the pan.

Cool and puree the cooked fruit.

Take a thick bottomed kadai or pan. Mix the pureed fruit and jaggery. Cook till it is flaky like jam. Finally add a tablespoon of ghee. It will stay good for a year with out any refrigeration. The shelf life increases according to the consistency of the chakkavaratty. I haven't gone to that extent since I knew I would use it in a week.