Posted on

Pile Driving

The pile driving for our new foundation starts tomorrow.  In the last few weeks they’ve been preparing by finishing the demolition of the old interior walls, putting up support structures like in the picture below and cutting holes in the concrete floor.

I’ve posted before a number of times about this foundation repair that’s been dragging out for years now.

The picture below is another example in a series of skeletons in the closet the contractor found.  In my last post I talked about the center load bearing wall that was listing, and this is the wall beyond that one.  This wall is not only listing, but it’s buckling too.  You can see it has a definite concave shape with respect to the wooden supports.  Since it’s also an outer wall, it can’t just be removed like the other load bearing wall, so after the foundation repair I will build a new wall in front of this one, and fill the space between the two walls with concrete, in order to harden the wall and provide enough support for the house.

In the bottom of the picture you can see some of the holes that have been cut into the concrete floor.

Here’s another example of the wall supports they are using to stabilize the house for the pile driving and foundation repair.  The support will change in the course of the work.  Once the piles are in place, they will be more stable than the house, so the support structure will change in order to take advantage of this extra support.  Notice how they had to support the window here too?  This whole setup seems a little dodgy to me, but in fact it represents weeks of work by the contractor and construction engineer, and was approved by the city as part of my building permit.  It’s all been very carefully mathematically calculated and worked out.

I had to include this picture below, because there is so much going on.  The ceiling beam that was burned by the flu (I mentioned this in my previous post) was cut away to make space for the support on the left.  On the wall you see a number of generations of brick work, starting with the 350 year old original wall.  The ceiling beams are different heights here, and you see the intersecting steel beams.

This wall below was another skeleton, and was the source of quite some consternation for the contractor.  This is supposed to be a load bearing wall, and is very important for the support of the house.  The problem is at some point someone took it out and replaced it with a non-load bearing wall.  In other words the cinder blocks you see are not sufficient to support the house.

Well my house hasn’t collapsed yet.  The contractor and building engineer know how to deal with a load bearing wall, even one that’s in bad shape.  They know what to do when a wall is not load bearing.  The problem is what to do when a wall is supposed to be load bearing, but isn’t…

This wall will be replaced by a steel support beam.

Of course the workers have a chance to get in on the action too.  This is what’s left of my utility cabinet and electric meter after the demolition work.  When you need to have electricity for music, there’s always a place and time for a little creative electrical wiring…

Holes need to be cut in the concrete floor, instead of just removing it, because the pile driving machinery has to have a hard surface to work on.  This is what the holes looked like right after they cut them.

My house sits right about at sea level, and you can see the water level in this hole.

My house is actually made op of two houses joined together by breaking through the middle wall.  You can tell the previous owners had different ideas on how to build a floor.  On one side there was nothing but sand under the concrete floor.

On the other side, they found another concrete floor under the first one, and had to use a special drill to go through the second floor.  Under the second concrete floor was a wooden floor…

The picture below is what it looked like after they finished drilling (together with my shoe).

Posted on

Betty’s Restaurant Amsterdam

This is one of the few vegetarian restaurants Steph and I had never been to before, so we decided to give it a try a few nights ago.  It was a really pleasant surprise, so I thought I would write a short review here.

Be sure to call first for a reservation.  They often fill up, sometimes a week or more in advance.  It’s a small place with limited capacity, and they offer very personal service.

Also, don’t plan dinner too late, because while there’s nothing wrong with the service, it all takes a long time.  Our dinner took a little more than 2 hours.

I’m not sure who Betty is.  The restaurant run by a very friendly gentleman, and one of the high points of the meal was the time he took to explain everything we were eating.

I have to say that we spoke to him in Dutch and got a far better explanation than the table next to us where he spoke English.  While his English was okay, if at all possible you should go with someone who speaks Dutch who can translate.  His English was a dramatic simplification of his Dutch.  If you’re stuck with English, be sure to press him for a fuller explanation and don’t let him get away with the quick summary.

For example, we had soup made from celeriac or celery root.  He explained this to us in Dutch, but told the English speaking table it was celery, which was not completely true.

In fact he’s proud of the food he serves, likes to talk about it, and responded well to the questions I had.  Don’t be afraid to point to things on the plate and ask questions.

Regional and Organic

You don’t choose your meal from a menu, but rather they have a daily set menu.  You can choose if you just want a main course, or if you want a starter and/or dessert in addition.  All of their food is organic and vegetarian, and can generally be made vegan on request.  Our meal was vaguely European, but mostly made of local seasonal vegetables with some Mediterranean foods as well.

I have read some reviews on the Internet where they’ve apparently served some Mexican food, but I think mostly they offer European and northern European foods.

The quality of the ingredients was very high, and it was cooked to a very high standard.  Both these things are almost unheard of in Amsterdam.

Different parts of the meal had different themes, for example one dish was made of all things bitter tasting.  Other dishes emphasized other flavors.  There were so many different dishes, that if you didn’t care for 1 or 2 of them, there was lots of other things to eat.  Dinner was very filling, and we were served plenty to eat.

Unusual Spices

I’m not sure if this is a regular feature in the restaurant, but one of the important parts of our meal were some very special spices.

If they had just been added to our meal we probably wouldn’t have noticed them.  So what he did was come to our table with various bottles of spices, blended in France by someone who specializes in this, and let us smell them first.  He then explained what each one contained, then added it to our food.  They were really fresh and interesting tasting.  Some were a little unusual, but mostly they were relatively ordinary spices blended in a creative and unexpected way.

Organic Wine

I’m used to organic wine sort of being what it is.  Usually nice, but in general lacking anything interesting.  We had some wine with our meal, and it was really very good.  This too came with an explanation, and it was possible to pick out all the flavors our waiter identified in advance.

Dessert

Dessert was well worth having.  It was hand made with high quality ingredients.

Sticker Shock

Be prepared to pay for the quality of food received.  For the 2 of us, with starters, main course and desserts, together with drinks and tip, our bill was nearly €100 or about US$140.  This is about as much as I have ever paid in a restaurant in Amsterdam, and I did find it a little steep.

I’m glad we went, and I think we’ll go back again.  If you’re looking for a vegetarian foodie experience in Amsterdam, it’s the only real place to go.

Posted on

The Big Light Bulb Ripoff

I’ve posted before on The Truth About Energy-Saving Light Bulbs.  It’s clear the battle lines between the manufactures and consumers are being drawn and the situation is changing a bit, so I thought it was time for another post.

Being Lied To

Do you notice how this has changed?  Before we were told CFLs were 80% more efficient than ordinary incandescent bulbs.  In my earlier post I explained how, even based solely on electricity consumption, this figure was an outright lie.  By the time you took into account things like manufacturing and transportation costs, as unlike standard bulbs CFLs are pretty much only made in China, and disposal costs because these bulbs need special handling and transportation due to the toxic materials they contain, it’s unlikely there was any energy savings at all with these bulbs.

Not to mention being told by the manufacturers that it was safe to have mercury in our homes!  Can you imagine that, someone else telling us this?  Who wants toxic heavy metals in their home in any amount?  And for what reason exactly?

Can you believe this, they almost got away with putting toxic materials in nearly every home worldwide?  Are people gullible or what?!  But this is okay, isn’t it — now we know CFLs are a piece of crap, we can throw them all away and buy the next round of consumer products.

Do you notice they’ve stopped with all the propaganda?  At least in the shops here in Amsterdam, they’ve quietly moved the bulbs made from toxic materials to the side in favor of other technologies.  They’ve also stopped telling us in such a deceitful way the newer bulbs are so extremely efficient like they used to.

Now it’s more like, here, buy this bulb because it’s the law.

They’ve also quietly stopped telling us the newer bulbs last longer.  What they’re now doing is making standard light bulbs that burn out much faster than they did a few years ago.  We just discarded a bulb purchased 15 years ago, and have been using daily in a floor lamp for about the last 5 years.  How long has it been since we could buy a standard light bulb that lasted 5 years?  There’s no reason standard incandescent bulbs can’t be made for a longer life, in fact if you search the Internet with Google you will see a number of places selling these bulbs in countries like China where they’re still legal.

To be very clear on this, there is absolutely no evidence beyond wild claims from from manufacturers that expensive bulbs pay themselves back in energy savings.  Remember when cigarette companies used to claim their products were safe and not addicting?  As long as no one can come up with absolute proof to the contrary, they can claim whatever they want.

The Demise of the 15w Bulb

Supposedly they started with the phasing out of 100w and 75w bulbs, as well as all frosted bulbs.  They also assured us stores would continue to be able to stock older bulbs, and they would continue to be available for a while.

Boy, I haven’t seen any stores stocking older bulbs, have you?  If you ran a store, would you want to keep low value stock like that laying around?

It’s this frosted bulb bit that’s the hidden detail.  This seems to have a number of unexpected consequences.  The first is 15w bulbs have totally disappeared from the stores, apparently because they can’t be made unfrosted.

Well we can all understand, at least from an emotional point of view, why they would ban 100w and 75w bulbs, right?  Because they use so much electricity?  Why do they need to ban the one incandescent bulb logical for someone who needs a small energy efficient light for a small space?  After all, for someone who does want to lower their electric bill, and wants to replace a higher wattage bulb with a more efficient cheap one, a 15w bulb would be the logical way to do it.  Is this too much competition for other supposedly energy saving light bulbs?

The Big Consumer Ripoff

Ten years ago light bulbs could be had for 10 or 20 cents, purchased in a package of 20 or so bulbs from a discount retailer.

Especially as the price of oil is going up, the true manufacturing and transportation costs of these new bulbs is really showing itself!  These days it’s hard to find a light bulb for less than about €1 (around US$1.35), about a 500% mark-up from a few years ago.  These prices are only going to go up if the manufacturers of the newer technologies are given a monopoly on the market.

It’s not acceptable to just lower the price a bit now, and take a loss, maybe put them on sale.  Maybe a government subsidy here and there to distribute free or discounted bulbs.  As consumers we have the right to access to cheaper technologies, as protection against future prices rises or market manipulations.  If the new lighting technologies are so great, let them stand the test of time!

It’s not just incandescent bulbs that are becoming unavailable, it’s fixtures and devices like timers, switches and motion detectors.  These are now becoming packaged with newer bulbs and fittings, forcing you to use a particular brand or type of bulb.