Where did the time go! It’s draining away, just like many of our fresh water sources and now you can visualize that maddening time leak with this online clock. Watch the seconds, minutes and hours drain away as you think about what you should be doing or meant to get done. Stressful, depressing and entertaining, all at the same time!
Spotted on The Presurfer, via Grow-A-Brain
Hey, they don’t make ’em like this anymore! Thank heavens! This is my hideous 1980s-vintage gold toilet. For a variety of reasons, I’m not in a position to get rid of the 3.5-gallon flusher just now. I have, however, modded it “under the hood” to use less water. (I don’t know the total amount of water these add-ons save; does anyone know how I would determine this?)
Anyway…first, I’ve replaced the constantly-kinking flush chain with a piece of rubbery cord that I pulled off of a retail pants hangers. Try this freebie hack if, like me, you get leaking water due to the flapper not seating firmly when the chain tangles. (Look for a hanger like this one.)
Next: see that blue thing attached to the fill tube? This is a clever little device that saves water by equalizing the bowl/tank fill rate. Most toilet bowls are finished filling long before the tank is full. While the fill valve continues filling the tank, it also continues overfilling the bowl, and the excess bowl water goes over the siphon trap and down the drain, wasted. With this adjustable gizmo the tank and bowl both finish filling at exactly the same time. (I got mine from eBay, but here’s a similar one.)
Next…Julie O’Fee, a friend from the UK, sent me a Thames Water giveaway Save-a-Flush which saves up to one litre per flush, according to their website. It’s a bag of crystals made from a harmless silicone gel. Once you place it into your “cistern” within hours it swells up firmly against the sides of the tank.
With a little more room in the tank, I added the 20 oz. glass; it just sits there in the tank and when it’s flushed the water stays in the glass and the whole deal displaces that additional amount of water.
So this will suffice as I continue to dream of my future Euro-styled dual flush. Now if only I could do something about the color…
Stock-up time! We heard it through the grapevine… there’s a wine glut in Australia to the point that wine prices have been driven lower than some bottled waters. Where are we headed here? Maybe the 21st-century religious miracle will be changing wine into water! (Last fall, we posted here about cheaper-than-water alcohol in the UK.) According to www.news.com.au,
Major wine retailer Dan Murphy’s is currently selling cleanskins for $1.99 a bottle – cheaper than some bottled water – due to the oversupply crisis that has led to some vineyard owners leaving grapes to wither on the vine.
Strong export sales led to over-optimistic outlooks for Australia’s wine industry and a doubling of vine-producing areas over the past decade. But forecasts of more than $3 billion in export sales by next year have been dashed by overseas competition, an excess of cheaper wines and the global financial crisis.
If you’re pondering the wonders of the deep from a ground-level vantage, you’re missing the real action, or so we are reminded by this crazy-clever Sanyo campaign for an underwater camera to “see what’s under the sea.” (Created by Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand via adsoftheworld.com)
Thankfully, many great campaigns are underway to get clean water to those who desperately need it.
But what about getting water to those who need it in a chic, well-designed container? Isn’t design-lifestyle snobbery one of the factors that’s spurred the rise of premium bottled waters?
Perhaps a good strategy is to “fight fire with fire.” The 2008 London On Tap competition teamed London’s mayor with Thames Water to draw designers into the tap water vs. bottled water struggle via a contest to create the ultimate water carafe. The winning design, “Tap Top,” (created by Islington industrial designer Neil Barron) went on sale last week for £10. (£1 of each sale will be donated to the charity WaterAid.) The goal is to get every London restaurant to serve tap water in this beautiful, chic carafe.
To kick the campaign off, at least 1,000 restaurants are receiving a carafe; the campaign hopes to ride the coat-tails of a previously successful campaign that convinced thousands of restaurants and bars to actively offer free tap water. (Did you notice that the Tap Top’s top mimics the shape of a old-school tap handle?)
Tap Top edged out some truly worthy entires, including these two shortlisted designs:
“Connected Pipe” by East End designer Nina Tolstrup
“Tap” by Adam White of London’s Factory Design Ltd.
Looking for something unique and entertaining for today’s holiday family fun-day? We’re not convinced that this will be the newest hot trend in water sports, but it does look like fun. Gather up the kids, grab some fat bamboo poles and head out to the lake.
From Chinatoday, some photos of odd-sports enthusiasts performing “bamboo balance.”
For those who like the concept but seek more competitive thrills, how about “Bamboo Boat Racing, ” which involves racing a “boat” that’s a single cane of bamboo with a thin bamboo oar.
Villagers from Chishui, near Zuiyi city, came up with the idea, reports News Express. They make the boats out of locally grown bamboo and hold races on the Pinzhou River.
“Participants can sit or stand on the piece of bamboo, and with a thin bamboo oar, they race and compete at other tasks,” explained one villager.
Today we shew a glimpse into the brainstorms of 18th century water engineers as they struggle with the same-old age-old dilemma of raifing water, courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Gallery. This 1701 book is “A Work both Ufeful, Profitable and Delightful for all forts of People.” (Put aside any pressing work you really should do, and instead peruse all the new and rare inventions from this text; Neptune, horses and birds, yea!)
Plate IX. To raise a standing water, by means of the sun.
Plate V. To make a dyal with the course of a natural fountain, the which shall move very true, without being subjec to …
Plate XII. An engine of great service to bore elms or other trees to make pipes to conveigh water, and for other uses.
Plate XXVI. Force-pump, which is one of the best inventions. They can force the water with great violence to 50 or 60 feet…
“BEHIND THE SHOWER CURTAIN” SURVEY: America’s Steamy Secrets Reveal What Men and Women Really Think About in the Shower
Who could resist that headline, Water Pik? We were roped right into this promising press release, purporting to take “a peek at what really goes on behind the bathroom’s closed doors.” Water Pik, Inc., released the findings of a survey that asked 1,000 Americans how they spend their time in the bathroom, including some not-at-all-surprising differences in male and female shower behavior.
SURVEY SAYS….. |
Women |
Men |
| Think about “to do” lists in shower |
64% |
48% |
| Average minutes in shower |
14 |
12 |
| Admit to showering with another adult for “intimacy” |
55% |
66% |
Now, I could have told you this without asking 1000 people, but “Women use shower time to contemplate chores, problems and weight. Men spend their shower time thinking about work, sex and day dreams.” So, women spend about 2 minutes longer in the shower, but that’s just because we’re reviewing our long, arduous list of chores! (I’m not sure how men cover sex and work in a brisk 12 minutes!)
Men and women did agree that low water pressure is the No. 1 bathroom pet peeve, and also agreed that they would rather pay bills than clean the shower.
More fabulous shower facts:
25% |
People who sing in the shower |
89% |
Take more showers than baths |
50% Moms28% Dads |
Use the shower as a time to escape |
53% Moms27% Dads |
Rush out of shower to take care of their family |
60% |
Turn off water while brushing teeth |
46% |
Reduce shower time to save water |
I for one applaud Water Pik for doing some research that matters! This will allow them to develop useful products to enhance our shower experience. Like, how about a waterproof shower pen tablet, so we gals could jot down all those chores and “to do” lists?
And, now that you know that 25% of us are using the shower spray as a pseudo-microphone, would it be a huge leap to have it function as a real, working mic? That way the entire family could enjoy our wet rendition of “Moon River!”
An out-of-the-box engineering idea from the October, 1951 issue of Modern Mechanix, via blog.modernmechanix.com,
CALIFORNIA’S BIG SQUIRT
THE parched deserts of Southern California need water to transform their barren soil into fertile farmlands and tourist Meccas such as those existing elsewhere in the state. So far the problem has remained unsolved. But Sidney Cornell, a Los Angeles construction engineer, thinks he has a solution. He wants to construct a series of geyser-like power plants one mile apart to shoot water from the mouth of one into the funnel of the next, as depicted here by MI artist Frank Tinsley. The water would arc over hilly sections, have a flat trajectory over plains. Its velocity would approach 400 mph. These stations— 400 in all—would cost about $300,000 each.
I can’t imagine what I can add to that, except to say that Sidney Cornell has certainly never used a garden hose in the wind!
Thanks for the tip, Angela & Diane, I just wish I’d known of this trick years ago before losing untold numbers of earrings, coins and other stuff down the drain. I fear, though, that in my house this operation might bring up some nasty and undesirable matter along with the object being retrieved!
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