SLC Green Building Center

Saturday we went down to Salt Lake city to go to "The Green Building Center" our local supply center for environmentally friendly and more natural building products. We came to look for alternatives to polyurethane finish for the hard wood flooring that we are preparing to put in.

In addition to replacing the carpeting in our home with hardwood flooring, we are painting all of the common areas. This is something that we had planned already, and since we are doing it primarily to improve the health of our living environment, we have taken time to research some alternative products to the standard ones available at Lowes/Home Depot.

The main product that I wanted to look into was OSMO's Polyx oil.

"Ingredients 50-60 % solids (High Solid) Base: natural vegetables oils and waxes (sunflower oil, soy- bean oil, thistle oil, - carnauba and candellila wax), paraffines. Additives: siccatives (drying agents) and water-repellent additives. Solvents: disaromatized white spirit (benzenefree - in compliance with purity demands of the European pharmacopoeia)."

This product from what I gather is sort of the cadillac of the natural penetrating sealers. It is a German product and passes the very rigorous German standards for water repelling and saliva fastness. (This last bit was an unusual one for me, but essentially it means that little ones drooling or biting on the product won't degrade it or harm the child. ) I like what I have read about the product but have a couple of issues. One is that it's a foreign product; I'd like to keep my dollars here if at all possible. The other is that it has a longer drying time. 18-24 hrs between coats, and is a little funky smelling. We will be living in the home while we area finishing the floors, this is one reason that we want to keep away from the high odor treatments also, and it will be hard to avoid our stair for 24 hours while it drys.

Another product that I was shown was one called "Tried and True".

"Tried & True Original Wood Finish is made from highly refined, highly Polymerized Linseed Oil and pure Beeswax. This product is 100% solids, and has no solvents or heavy metal driers. The recipe for this finish is adapted from a Shaker finish and an English Arts and Crafts technique."

This was the product that I came away likeing the most. I initally thought that it was not meant for wood flooring, after later looking into it further I found that their website had a complete separate section describing it's use and benefits as related to hardwood flooring. I liked this product for the simplicity of it's ingredients. Lindseed oil and beeswax. Also because one of the other things I have found was a recipe to make a DIY foor polish based on beeswax and I think they would be more compatible. It also takes about 24 hours to cure, but smells much more pleasant. This is also a USA product and is manufactured in NY. It covers about the same amount of space, but also costs considerably less ($59.00/gal compared to $94.00/2.5 L)

On another note. An added benefit to using this type of oil/wax sealants is that when the floor or even just the heavy traffic areas need refinishing, you don't need to strip and sand the entire floor to do it because otherwise the old and new wouldn't match. This type of finish allows you to merely burnish and clean the worn area, and apply locally a new coat of finish. Much less trouble and much less cost.

We also purchased our interior paint here; a product called American Pride.
This is a ZERO VOC paint. Yep, no chemical nasties here. Not low VOC. ZERO. We think we are going to be very happy with this product; not only is it much healthier (it has a slightly yeasty smell rather that the typical plastic bag smell of paint.) but we spot tested it when we got home to check the color and it covers very well. Oh yeah, and at $29.00/gal it's about the same or less than many conventional products out there.

I hope I've been able to give you a better idea of some options that are out there. I'll be doing some more research and possible calling some of the companies. When I know for sure I'll let you know and give a review of the performance.

The Green Building Center

Tried & True Wood Finishes

OSMO Polyx

American Pride zero VOC paint

Eat Local Salt Lake City

I have recently found a local food challenge group in Salt Lake City that is beginning a month long challenge to eat local foods and support local food producers tomorrow. From what I have read on their blog, I really appreciate that they are encouraging people to participate at whatever level they feel comfortable participating at. I am not decided yet on whether or not to participate actively. I have been working this year towards trying to incorporate more local foods into my daily routine. A lot of what I include comes from my yard, while a good portion also comes from neighbors and local farms. With us getting ready to tear up a lot of the house to redo the flooring I don't want to bite off more than I can chew (pun intended). I don't think that I have a lot, or any, local Utah readers, but I encourage any that may drop in to give this a look. There are some truly great vendors out there and Utah farms grow and produce a lot of delicious foods. While we are in Salt Lake tomorrow I hope to get to the Salt Lake Farmers Market and get some of the afore mentioned good foods.

Thought for Today

Health is not simply the absence of sickness.

~Hannah Green

Moving toward a healthier life

We have recently learned that our oldest son has allergies todust, dander, and mold. He also has what is known as asthmatic croup; in essence, he has asthma that manifests itself as a croupy cough and lasts sometimes for weeks at a time. It has gotten progressively worse over the last couple of years to where he has had to use inhalers regularly and at times steroids. We were finally recommended to go to an allergist to find out if he had any potential allergies that may be a trigger for his asthma. Low and behold, he does. Of course the doctor’s first suggestion was to get C~ on daily doses of prescription meds like Zyrtec or Allegra. My wife and I don’t have a problem with prescription medicines per se; they allow a great number of people to live much more satisfying lives than they would be able to without them. However, our belief has always been that we should try to do our best through healthy choices and environmental changes to try and remedy the problems first, and then move to medicines as a final alternative. It is a common belief among many health experts that because of our quickness to use and sometimes abuse both prescription and over the counter medicines has caused many common ailments such as colds and flu viruses to mutate into strains that are not affected by current medications. I also believe in allowing our bodies to have time to learn to adapt to and deal with it’s ailments on its own.

(DISCLAIMER: I would by no means ever deny anyone in my family, or anyone else for that matter, medicines that are required for their immediate care or well being. I do not advocate nor do I promote living life free from pharmaceuticals as the expense of ones health. C~’s asthma is not critical right now, but could progress to that point if not dealt with.)

His asthma was one of the main reasons that my wife and I began to research natural cleaners and more organic lifestyle options to begin with; he has no one on either side of his family with asthma, and we had learned that a potential cause for it may be the daily exposure to chemicals in cleaners, detergents and household furnishings that we all endure. It is a great concern of ours that his dependance on medications has been growing, and for all of the simpler changes that we have made previously it still seems to be progressing. When we learned about potential causes, or at least things that may be aggrivating it, we wanted to do what we we able to to create a healthier environment. Since we have been using organic cleaners he has not had a major “episode”, however his worst time of the year has always been in the fall – spring. (The times when you spend the most time indoors.)
The other main suggestion that our allergist had for us to try to control it, is to remove as much of the carpeting in our house as possible; particularly in the common areas. Since our position is that we want to try to control his asthma environmentally as much as possible before putting him on drugs we are actively pursuing this. I have done some reading on the VOC’s contained in your typical carpet and padding and we were going to try to take this step in the future anyway, removing the carpet that is, this just changed the timeline. So now we will spend the majority of September ripping out approx 750 sq ft of carpet and padding and replacing it with red oak flooring. I know this is not the most environmentally sustainable flooring option that we could have chosen, and were it not for the fact that we already have large portions of our home done in this material we probably would have chosen another, but it is a flooring that will not need to be replaced for the life of the home, and in such will greatly reduce both our contribution to the landfill, as well as future owners of the home, not to mention providing a much healthier place to live. We’re planning a trip to the green building center in Salt Lake City this weekend to look in to some finishing options that will not include us having to live with all the nasty fumes from Polyurethane or the like. I am leaning towards a penetrating sealant based on natural oils and waxes rather than a surface sealant, but need to educate myself further on durability issues.
Hopefully in by thanksgiving we should have a much healthier living environment for our family and can minimize our need to have our kids on prescription medications. Do any of you or your family members have to deal with this type of respiratory problems? Any advice or things I could take into consideration would be great.
P~

What compost you say??

Well, it seems that this is what happens when I multi-task during a really good documentary. I left out the compost part last night, but did put it into the title. DUH!

All I was going to do was remark that with all of the canning prep yesterday; there was a lot of goodies left over for the compost pile. I have been rolling my new tumbler around the yard every night, and opened it this Saturday to make sure it was moist enough; I think that I will break the 2.5 month mark on this batch. It is cooking away nicely. I am not going to continue adding new stuff to that batch until it is completed. Now having two tumblers, I can begin building a second batch while one is decomposing. I have noticed a boost in the garden also this week, after adding the finished and screened compost from the last batch, no wonder they call it “black gold”. Well, now at least I don’t feel so dumb, I didn’t want you to think I equated our canning with compost? Eeww. On the contrary, I am looking forward to enjoying all of it this winter.

Till later then.

P~

Canning and Compost

Came home today and my beautiful wife had been prepping cuc's, beans and the fixings for what she called "chow chow"; I later learned that chow chow is a kind of relish with green peppers, red peppers, cabbage, and onions. We cut, prepped and canned until the kids had gone to sleep.
Total for tonight:

• 3 quarts of pickles
• 4 pints of pickled beans
• 1 Quart and 1/2 pint of chow chow
• 1 Quart and 1 pint of salsa.

Everything that we canned tonight came from our local farmers or from our garden. It's not going to keep us over the winter, but more will come for sure.

P.S. I tried some of the chow chow, and it's delicious. I can only describe it as tasting similar to bread and butter pickles, but slightly different with a little spice.

Calling in the volunteers

Calling all Vounteers! Calling all Volunteers!

I like to think that it is a sign of a healthy yard and good biology going on in the ground that I am able to get healthy strong plants popping up with no planting or assistance from me. I guess I like to think of it this way so that I don't have to accept the fact that the yard is just a little chaotic and things are in a slight case of disorder at all times.

The first picture is a pumpkin plant with a bit of history. Two years ago, I tried to have a compost pile in that area. It was an open pile that got started a bit too late, and never really got "cooking" like I had wanted it to. Long story short; the next spring, after the pile had decomposed quite a bit over the winter, I tilled the whole lot into the ground to finish off and was going to leave it like that for a while. A couple of weeks after tilling it, I noticed a bunch of sprouts that seemed to look like some sort of squash. Turned out that the pumpkins that we had chopped and put into the C-pile were still viable and very robust. Last year we had a ton of pumpkins that grew wild in this area. Seems I still had some seed in the ground there. That with the fact that my compost tumbler is right above it and leaks a little has made this the best pumpkin plant in the yard.

Here's another volunteer. This little guy is growing quickly, despite having only partial sunlite. You see this tomato plant is under the overhang of my kitchen. facing east. It only gets direct morning sun. It is flowering though, so I have hopes for a 'mater, later. The strange thing is, this area has never really been used by me for anything. I certainly never planted seed there. I can only assume that a bird dropped a package for me with some fertilizer and seed together. Or perhaps my kids had a little too much fun cleaning up the garden with me last year.


Do you keep your volunteers? Have you had any luck with them? If I get good fruit from these, I am going to save some of the seed for next year I think. They earned it after all.

P~