The Talk House

Raining - In The Bathroom

October 17, 2005 @ 2:19 pm · Filed under Architectural Products, Plumbing Fixtures · Edit

Before I saw this product I had never had a gripe about my shower head. A shower head’s a shower head - right? Oh, sure there are nicer shower heads. When we remodeded our bathroom, we saw really lovely shower heads at Expo - some of them carrying a pretty heavy price tag of $1000+ (decidedly out of our budget at the time). But, the Dornbracht RainSky product line makes all of those wall mounted heads look a little, well - out of place.

Pictured to the right is the RainSky E fixture. Dornbracht also does three other fixtures that are similar to this one: The RainSky M, Big Rain and Just Rain. I think they’re all equally interesting.

I simply love the look of this plumbing fixture. So, much so that I was gutted to learn that it doesn’t meet US or Canadian building codes as a plumbing device. I’m planning to write Dornbracht to find out what all of that is about. I don’t, off the top of my head know why it wouldn’t meet code. Codes are normally written to protect public safety, but I’m at loss to explain why this product might be unsafe.

For now, suffice it to say, that I think the fact that it doesn’t meet code as a shower device is really too bad for the American home building public. I think this is a lovely product.

Going Green in the Garden | Part 2
Organic Gardening and Aeration

October 17, 2005 @ 9:35 am · Filed under Going Green, Articles, Garden · Edit

In the previous post about “green gardening” I had mentioned that we would be investigating environmentally friendly gardening in terms of two ideas: organic gardening and sustainable design in the garden. This article will focus on principles of organic gardening and aeration in particular.

I will be using Howard
Garrett’s seven steps to gardening in an organic manner to talk about organic gardening. Although his book “Plants For Texas” is written for Texas in particular, I believe his seven steps are sound advice for any gardener. His seven steps include:

1. Stop using artificial fertilizers and pesticides.
2. Increase the air in the soil or aeration.
3. Increase the organic matter in the soil.
4. Increase the rock minerals in the soil.
5. Mulch the bare ground.
6. Increase the biodiversity of plants, animals, insects, and soil life.
7. Select adapted plants.

Garrett argues that point 7, selecting adapted plants is the most important rule to follow and that if this point is not adhered to, none of the other points matter.

Aeration:

Increasing the amount of air in the soil is good for both plant growth and for microorganisms that exist naturally in the soil. Well aerated soil helps with elongation of the plant roots as it provides essential elements required plant growth, it provides a greening effect to the plants by providing them with essential nutrients and it helps to maintain healthy microorganism populations within the soil.

Air contains not only oxygen, but other essential nutrients required for healthy soil and plant growth. Specifically, air contains large quantities of carbon dioxide and nitrogen which are both essential for healthy plants. Additionally, air also contains (in smaller quantities): copper, boron, iron and sulfur.

Aeration encourages plant growth by encouraging root development Also, regular aeration can help transmission of water from the soil surface into the plant root zone - thereby potentially decreasing the amount of water that is lost to evaporation and potentially lowering one’s water bill.

Ryan and Bluebird are just a couple of the many manufacturers that make mechanical aerators.

Read Part 1 in this series at:
Going Green In The Garden | Part 1 | Introduction
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My Looter, My Friend

September 25, 2005 @ 3:14 pm

In Houston, the name "Montrose" is synonymous with a squealy kind of funk. Sometimes it's more fun. And sometimes it's more skunk. It's a lot of gay man this and that. Tattoo parlors, Democrats, restaurants, second hand clothing, meth smokers. You get the idea. A fair number of dogs and cats too. It's become relatively expensive to live there, in what is a relatively inexpensive city. There's a lot of hi and lo of just about everything.

Usually an equilibrium exists in the neighborhood between business hours and disco hours. So when the great exodus drained the bulk of the population, business hours shut down. Although as we know, disco hours never do.

If you were still in town, it seemed like you were doing one of two things: stocking up, gassing up and boarding yourself in, or you were checking out the real estate and thinking about moving up in the felony world...

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