ONESHOT

Over the past 6 months, I have been helping develop a new car wax brand, Oneshot. It's a waterless wash and wax system. Pretty cool stuff, you can wash and wax your car in 10 minutes. Check it out, it's hot off the presses and ready for the mainstream.

Wash and wax in Oneshot.

www.autovitality.com

Order online and tell your local auto store or home center to stock it up! ! !

"Developed for professional detailers, Oneshot’s formulation contains synthetic wax technology combined with the brilliance of carnauba"

One man's trash

My local town waste disposal and recycling facility, albeit, pretty good, only takes plastics with a 1 or 2 recycling code.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code

What about plastics with 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7(others)? They too should be recycled. For instance, polystyrene foam cups can and should be recycled into more cups or insulation panels/fill.

If Dunkin Donuts recycled all their foam cups for a week, i bet you could insulate 100 homes. Just a guess, and probably a conservative one at that.

As I see it, much of our waste can be recycled or reused. Landfills should be a thing of the past. In this day and age, we can recycle anything, short of uranium. I mean, if you can recycle plastic bottles into fleece jackets and run cars on grease, come on.

In addition to being environmentally friendly, one man's trash can be one man's treasure $$$$. There is money in recycling, maybe not Bill Gates money, but newsprint is trading at $552. A ton.

Pallet stock

For about a week now, I have been dreaming up a use for excess pallets. Although there are pallet recycling facilities, millions of pallets are shredded, burned or just stacked up and left to waste away.
I think recycling pallets is a great solution, I recently noticed that Quikrete, the "King of the concrete jungle" adds in a $15 deposit for their pallets. I was building a small deck and needed to pouring some Sonotube concrete forms. When all the materials for the deck arrived, the driver mentioned to me that there was a $15 charge that was associated with the Quikrete pallet. At first, I was like, damn, I have to take this thing back? But then after thinking about it and checking out the sturdy, branded pallets I thought it was pretty neat. This way, Quikrete can both promote and protect.

Promote their brand with their logo and colors emblazoned on their rugged pallets, and protect their investment by keeping tabs on all their pallets.


Now that is a great model for businesses to follow, but for all the excess, i envision tool sheds, coal/wood bins and maybe even houses made of pallets.
I'm not the only person thinking of using recycling pallets to construct buildings, by no means. I just read an article about an ecovillage built it's floor system on sturdy pallets utilizing wood floor trusses to support their ends.

My idea is much simpler, but just as effective. I see using pallets for walls in tool sheds wood bins and small structures.

My idea is simple and pretty efficient.

Utilizing a standard three stringer 40x48 pallet is 40 inches wide and 48 inches tall (stringer axis). I would incorporate both conventional stick framing (2x4,2x6 etc) and post & beam framing to construct the walls. Pallets can be left out, or cut out to accommodate windows and doors. The beauty of this system to me is that the boards on top of the pallets could be used as sheathing, eliminating the need for plywood. The exterior can be finished with inexpensive ship lap siding or cedar shingles. The roof can be finished with the ubiquitous asphalt/composite shingle that graces most roofs around the country.

Lateral bracing (side to side) is my biggest concern, since that is one of plywood's main purposes. During my test project of a wood bin at my mother's house I will ascertain the bracing issue and address it on site. I have drawings of a prototype shed/cottage I have begun to draw up, but I can't switch them to a viewable format for the web. :(

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

A bit of a change from my usual, albeit sporadic posts. This story goes back to the 4th of July, a day of celebration, parades and fireworks. This day was like many other summer days for me, wake up and go surfing. I don't do the parades, but I do love the fireworks. Unlike me, a local pirate named Yellowbeard was full steam ahead at the Wellfleet 4th of July parade, with his merry crew in tow.
Later on that day, Caleb, Yellowbeard's given name, was involved in a serious skateboarding accident. He was in rough shape and had to be sent to Boston for treatment. He is still in serious condition, but is making strides every day.

A blog was started for Caleb: calebpotter.blogspot.com

This blog has been so inspirational to me. It has shown me how a whole community can rally behind one it's beloved. I can't stop thinking about the proverb: "it takes a (whole) village to raise a child". I have seen first hand that this old proverb still rings true.

I was repairing the nose on my old longboard about a month ago and I decided to tip my hat to ol Yellowbeard.

Rough rider

94 Mazda Navajo
I think this thing looked pimp, but it was too much to keep up. I wanted to soup it up and make it trail ready, but, time and $$$ weren't on either of our sides. This thing was bone stock. 5 speed stick shift, manual windows/locks and buckets up front. I liked the bare bone look though. I think it looks like a government rig. The thing has a few notable add-ons, a bull bar up front, wind and rain deflectors for the windows, pioneer CD deck.
I bought this thing on E-Bay, sight unseen for $1500, ironically the same price I paid for my new Volkswagen Golf. It had about 122,000 miles and was from Connecticut, so i drove down there and picked this baby up. The thing was clean and drove nice, but I noticed after hitting a pot hole that the suspension was much different than the Toyota Camry I was driving prior to this. The thing looked good, but the suspension and undercarriage looked like swiss cheese. I swear the guy I bought it off must have let the thing bathe in salt water.

my latest study

93 1/2 Volkswagen Golf III
This car was another good pick up from my man Pandula. Although there are quirky little things like the moonroof not working and the back passenger door missing it's pull piece. Oh and there's the radio, it turns on but nothing comes out of the speakers. Nada. I really need to check all the fuses and have a mech go through it. Other than the quirky little Bavarian kinks, the car is nice, a big relief after driving my poor little Mazda Navajo The VW is a rocket ship compared to that slug.
I've been getting between 30 and 35 mpg in all around driving. That's about double what the Navajo was producing, which was anywhere between 16-19 mpg. I remember never being able to crest the elusive 20 mpg mark.