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Ask TOH | Future House, Offerman
02/09/17 | 23m 43s | Rating: TV-G
Kevin heads to Los Angeles to meet up with Nick Offerman and get a firsthand look at the comedian’s woodworking shop. Home technology expert Ross Trethewey looks at a new device to track home energy usage in Future House. And Richard shows what happens when you use the wrong soap in the dishwasher.
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Ask TOH | Future House, Offerman
Kevin
Today on "Ask This Old House"...
Richard
I'll show you what happens when you use the wrong kind of soap in your kitchen.
Look at that. Kevin
Oh, wow. Yeah. It's everywhere, huh?
Richard
So my buddy came down and saw this foam just completely cover the entire kitchen.
Ross
We'll look at a future house device that can track energy usage and save you money.
Kevin
We head to Los Angeles to get an exclusive tour of Nick Offerman's woodshop.
Nick
Wood is something we're able to shape with sharpened steel, yet it's sturdy enough to, you know, you can -- you can park a pickup truck on one of our tables.
Kevin
That's next on "Ask This Old House." Hi, there. I'm Kevin O'Connor. And welcome back to "Ask This Old House," where we have got a lot going on for you today. In a little bit, I am headed to the West Coast to say hello to comedian and woodworker Nick Offerman. And we've also got a plumbing story for you that is either on the kitchen sink or possibly dishwasher. I'm not sure. Oh, hey,
Richard. Richard
Hey, how you doing?
Kevin
Good. How are you?
Richard
Just finishing up a little demo. I'm going to talk about dishwashers. You'll have to check back in with me.
Kevin
I will, but you're actually not the Trethewey I was looking for. I was looking for the good Trethewey. Oh, hey,
Ross. Ross
Hey, Kev. So today, we have the second installment of Future House. So this is going to be technologies that may one day be used in your future house.
Kevin
Cool. And what's this segment on?
Ross
So this is a device that measures household electricity consumption.
Kevin
I think we've already got that. I think it's electrical meter.
Ross
So this standard meter -- Not so much, right? So standard meter's going to give you a cumulative, like, running totals of electricity use, right? It gives you month-by-month or year-by-year snapshots.
Kevin
Right.
Ross
The device I'm talking about will give you real-time second-by-second, device-by-device for your home.
Kevin
So every appliance, every electrical device can be measured individually?
Ross
Yep.
Kevin
Wow. Now that's pretty cool.
Ross
Really cool. Do you know that your house has a heartbeat? Well, not just one heartbeat, many heartbeats from each and every electrical appliance. If you could measure all the heartbeats from all the appliances in your house, you would have a better understanding of the overall energy health. You might even be able to tell what appliances are getting sick. The key to the smart future house is good data, but that might be harder to capture than you think. Hey,
Mike. Mike
Hey, Ross.
Good to meet you. Ross
Nice to meet you, as well. So you're trained as an electrical engineer, but your background is in speech-recognition software, right?
Mike
That's right. Myself and a lot of the members of our team spent many years working on speech recognition, which means we take acoustic signals, which are wave forms, and apply machine-learning algorithms to figure out what people are saying.
Ross
And now you're doing that inside the home?
Mike
That's right. We wanted to see, could we take that same kind of technology and apply it to the power signals coming in your house. Could we do an analysis of signals and figure out what things are happening in your house to give users feedback about energy consumption around patterns of usage and stuff like this.
Ross
It seems like a simple task, but I know many companies that have come before that have failed, that have been unsuccessful. And you don't have many options. You've got the smart outlet that you plug a device in, gives you that device only, then you have the -- the whole cabinet with CT clamps on every circuit breaker, but you're still only getting what each circuit uses.
Mike
Yeah, we looked at all those solutions before we started the company and then realized that there would be an easier way, that if we measure the power coming into the house in this very detailed way and then apply signal processing to it, we can figure out what's on and off and how it's being used.
Ross
So simple installation and device by device, the data?
Mike
That's right, that's right.
Ross
Wow.
Mike
I tell you what, we got one installed in this house, so why don't we take a look and see what it does?
Ross
Sure. I'd love to.
Mike
Okay, Ross, let me show you how this connects in.
Ross
Okay.
Mike
What you see here is an electrical panel. We had an electrician open up the front of this so we can see inside. This is all live electricity in here, so there should be an electrician doing
any work in here. Ross
Yep.
Mike
But you see that these two -- they're called CT clamps, just clamp around the two main wires
coming into the house. Ross
Okay.
Mike
And they just clamp around the wire. They don't even have to touch the wire, really, just clamp around the outside of the wire. And these are what's measuring the power coming into the house. Now this house has solar, so we have another set of CTs that are down here measuring the solar input, so you can see that separately.
Ross
So wait, so in a typical house, you might just only have the two CT clamps on the main power feed, and only if you have solar do you add the additional two?
That's exactly right. Ross
Okay. Got it.
Mike
Now we also have to power the box and also measure the voltage coming into the house and that's done with two wires hooked into a --
into a breaker. Ross
Okay.
Mike
But then all those wires feed over here to this little box, which is essentially a little computer that is measuring the power in this very, very detailed way and then figuring out what things are on and off in your house just by looking at the power signals.
Ross
And then how does that get to the outside world?
Mike
It uses the Wi-Fi of the house, so you see this little Wi-Fi antenna here, it's connecting up to your router and connecting up to the servers in the -- in the cloud.
Ross
Got it, got it.
Mike
Okay, so let me show you how this looks in the application then. You can see this on a phone, you can see it on a tablet.
Ross
Okay.
Mike
And what you're seeing here is a bunch of different bubbles. For example, there's a solar bubble that shows how much solar is being produced right now.
Ross
So this is solar production for this house right now.
Mike
That's right. So most of these bubbles are how much something is consuming, but, of course, solar is producing, so we actually show it as --
Ross
So the orange one is for solar production and then some red ones. What are those all about?
Mike
So the red one here right now is called "always on." These are things that are just always on in your house, like the TV that's not in a power-saving mode,
or your DVR. Ross
Wi-Fi router.
Exactly. Ross
Cable modem.
So those are the phantom loads. Mike
That's right. And it's good for the homeowners to know that, 'cause they can see how much power they're wasting on this stuff that's just on all the time.
Ross
No, that's great. That information is very key. And what about this "unknown" bubble here? Scale-wise, that's much bigger than the other two. What's going on with that?
Mike
Yeah, so, "unknown" shows the things that the system hasn't yet figured out in your house and usually, that goes down over time. It's very big here.
Ross
So you're telling me that that's our TV crew, the lights, the battery chargers, and everything else?
Mike
Yeah, that's probably why it's so large right now.
Ross
Sorry, Mike, sorry.
Mike
Then for something it does know about, for example, let me go turn the over on and show you what happens.
Ross
Whoa! Instantaneous.
Mike
Yeah. Yeah, so suddenly, yeah, it's measuring those very high rates. Suddenly, a bubble pops up that shows you what the oven --
Ross
Electric resistance, oven. It comes on right away, tells me it's the oven.
That's right. Ross
That is really key.
Mike
And you can see how much wattage it's using.
Ross
Wow. Okay. So what do we have down here?
Mike
Yeah, so this down here is a history of different things that have been found in the house. So, for example, you see when the oven just turned on recently, but you can also see when the garage door opened or when the -- the toaster was on or the garbage disposal and so on.
Ross
The information of your house. That is very cool. And what about over time?
Mike
Yeah, so, in fact, we have a way to look at a very detailed view of this.
Ross
So there's the daily.
Mike
So this is all the way down to the half-second level. So you see actually power coming in and you see when the oven turned on.
Ross
So this is my solar production right here on a half-second scale.
Mike
That's right, that's right.
Ross
And this is the actual consumption of the electrical appliances in this house.
Mike
That's right. And, in fact, you can scroll way out and you can see this for the last hours
and even days and weeks. Ross
That's really cool. All right, so this is all, you know, constant loads right now, instantaneous. What about variable loads?
Mike
Let's go take a look. I think there's a front-loading washing machine downstairs.
Ross
All right.
Mike
Yeah, so I just turned on the washer, so you should be able to see it.
Ross
Look at that, it's on.
Mike
Yeah. There it is in the application.
Ross
So when it's doing power, right now, we can see it, the washer's on. We can see the relative scale. Look, it went away.
Mike
That's right. You can see that this runs for a little while, then it takes a break as the clothes slosh around.
And then it's back. Mike
That's right. So not only are we showing that the washer's on, we're showing exactly what it's doing at that moment in time.
Ross
That is very cool. So the relative scale I can see, relative to the solar production, the unknowns, the always-on loads. I can see it disappear. But you're telling me you get all that data from the two CT clamps that we saw earlier?
Mike
That's right. There's no sensor that we have on this washing machine. It's just from the power coming in the house.
Ross
How do you do it?
Mike
Well, tell you what. Let's go to our lab and talk to some engineers. We'll show you how it works. Okay, Ross, I wanted to bring you to our office and have you meet a couple of our data scientists and engineers. This is Caleb, this is Emily here also. And Ghinwa's going to show you some data.
Ross. Okay. Ghinwa
Hey, Ross. How are you?
Ross
Doing great.
Ghinwa
So we're looking here at the two-phase data
recorded by the CT clamps. Ross
Okay.
Ghinwa
And over here, I'm going to show you the power signal for a front-loader washing machine.
Ross
Okay, so is the top graph, the first phase of auditory volts and the second graph is the other phase of auditory volts?
Correct. Ross
Gotcha. Okay.
Ghinwa
So the system is able to record the data at such a high level of detail that we can grasp the particular electrical signatures for that washing machine. So I'm going to zoom in here on a section of the wash cycle and show you the motor that is rotating the drum. So right here, we have the motor rotating for 10 seconds in one direction and then pausing for around 6 seconds. And the data is so detailed, we can see the fluctuations in the motor due to the clothes sloshing in the drum.
Ross
So the -- like, literally, the little abruptions up and down, that is the agitation going on in the drum.
Ghinwa
Exactly. Yes.
Ross
Wow. Okay. Cool.
Mike
And by the way, it's these kind of patterns that the engineers here are learning about and then programming into the system to make the system learn, then, for your house when the washing machine is on, when the dryer is on, and so on.
Ross
So you are creating a library or a catalog of basically every appliance within the home?
Mike
Yeah, it's based on both an understanding of the device itself and observing the data and I think Ghinwa has some more data here that we've been seeing.
Ghinwa
Yeah, actually, guys, check this out. I wonder if you can -- can you guess what it is, Ross?
Ross
I have no idea.
Ghinwa
I'm going to zoom in. Perhaps that would help. So we're looking actually here at a furnace, so this is the electrical signature of a furnace. Here, the furnace starts with an inducer motor turning on and that blows the gas in the direction of the flame. This furnace is a spark-ignitor furnace and right here is the spark ignitor
turning on. Ross
Gotcha.
Ghinwa
And people who own spark-ignitor furnaces can also hear it ticking.
Ross
So that's that tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick
as it starts up. Ghinwa
Yeah. Exactly.
Mike
If you zoom out on this one, we see one later on that actually has a really interesting pattern that we learned later, which is whether these things might fail or not. So far, we haven't worked on this, but in the future, we will use this kind of technology to determine is your furnace even working correctly? So you see here, in this example, you see it actually took three times before it started. So obviously, the spark ignition was failing, and it had to keep trying.
Ross
So normally, it would just take one ignition cycle for it to start, in this case, it took two additional times, which is significant of maybe some kind of issue with the furnace.
Mike
Yeah, in fact, this is a known sort of problem with furnaces, and normally, you'd have to have someone come to your house and diagnose it, and here, we just see it in the data.
Ross
So we're taking an emergency call in the dead of winter and actually just making a routine service call?
That's the plan. Ross
I like that. All right, cool. Thank you very much, Ghinwa.
Ghinwa
You're welcome, Ross.
Ross
Well, Mike, you've got a very unique system. The fact that you can get two CT clamps on an electric panel and get that much data, very impressive.
Mike
Yeah, thanks. Thanks a lot. And, yeah, and we're actually measuring the power at a million times a second. We didn't show you all that down there, but the amount of data we have now,
it just amazing. Ross
Wow. And so what does the next 5 to 10 years hold for you guys?
Mike
Well, in the near term, what we're focusing on is just expanding that library that you talked about down there, both to determine when things are on and off in your house and how much power they're using and then eventually, doing the kind of fault diagnostics of the furnace, for example, and other things that might go bad in your house.
Ross
And do you think one day, this will be part of the common home, you know, the average home, new construction?
Mike
Yeah, we certainly hope so. I mean, you know, we're focused on the software part of this and look, eventually, we think that the hardware part of what we do becomes part of like the breaker or the electric meter that's on the side of your house.
Ross
That's amazing. So I can't wait to see what happens in the next 5 to 10 years for you guys. Very excited. Thank you for your time today.
Mike
Thanks a lot, Ross. See ya.
Ross
Thanks, Mike.
Kevin
Hey, Richard, I cleaned up the dishes last time. It's not my turn.
Richard
I got a call from a buddy of mine that was uncharacteristically
doing the dishes. Kevin
Ouch.
Richard
And he had a little catastrophe. So I thought it would give us reason to talk about some of the soaps you might find around a kitchen.
Kevin
Okay.
Richard
So we all know this. This is dish liquid. It's what you'd use to put on a sponge and wash the dishes in the sink.
Kevin
Yeah.
Richard
And it's highly concentrated.
Kevin
Okay. I've got one of those that lives right next to my sink.
Richard
Right. Okay. So there's that.
Kevin
Frothy, lots of bubbles. Richard. Right. They also make this, dishwasher detergent gel. Now this is not dish soap, this is made for the dishwasher itself and it's a lot less concentrated.
You do that -- Kevin
So you're saying that that stuff goes into your dishwasher?
Richard
Yeah, that's supposed to be
what you put in the dishwasher. Kevin
Okay.
Richard
And you can see...
Kevin
Oh, wow. Boy, you don't get any bubbles at all with that.
Richard
Hardly any buildup, okay.
Kevin
So that's a pretty big difference.
Richard
Okay, see the difference. So you could actually make a mistake and instead of using what you're supposed to use, this, you use the dishwashing liquid.
Kevin
Wait. So you're saying that all dish soaps aren't the same?
Richard
They are not created equal.
Kevin
So in a pinch or in an oversight,
I can't pour the -- Richard
You could put some, but you cannot put a full load, 'cause it's -- it's got so much more power to it.
Kevin
And this is what your buddy did?
Richard
Yeah. And then he just put it on and then he just hit the button and you think it's all good, I'll come back when they're dry.
Kevin
Wait, I mean, is something terrible going to happen?
Richard
Well, let's turn it on and find out. Right, so you have two little cameras inside, now watch what's going to happen. Let me give you a little foreshadowing.
Kevin
Oh, no. What -- what's this? Uh-oh.
Richard
So the basin is full of water and now the wash cycle begins with a pre-rinse.
Kevin
We've already got a lot of bubbles and well, the soap door hasn't opened yet.
Richard
Yeah, a little soap may have leaked out of the door that's already caused that much mess. And now the soap door's been released for the wash cycle. Look out. It's not just in the basin, Kevin, look at this. It's also dripping down here. That would all come onto the floor. You can see how the soap is clogging that wash arm, it's getting bogged down by all the suds. So my buddy came down and saw this foam just completely cover the entire kitchen. All right, let's check this baby.
Kevin
Look out. What are we going to see? Look at all the foam, the suds.
Richard
So what you got to do is you got to go in and get this all out of here with a wet vac and mop it out and everything else, 'cause it's just going to keep doing this forever. That concentrate just lays in the bottom of the thing.
Kevin
Those are good tips, but don't tell me. You should tell your friend.
Richard
Well, I did, because I have a confession.
It was me. Kevin
No?
Richard
I didn't have my glasses on.
Kevin
What?
Richard
I put the wrong stuff in. I came down and, but the kitchen floor's clean, too.
Plumber gone rogue. Richard
That's right.
Kevin
Nick, good to see you again.
Nick
Hello, Kevin. Welcome.
Kevin
Thank you very much. So you have been to our shop, and that was a great pleasure for us and now we're at yours, which is a real pleasure.
That's generous. Kevin
This is the real deal. Yeah. You've been in here for awhile.
Nick
I've been in here about 16 years.
Kevin
Wow. All right, big space. We can get a look around, maybe?
Nick
Sure. Before you can make furniture, you need a piece of wood, so why don't we start with my wood stock?
Kevin
This is a surprise. Look at all of this wood.
Nick
Yeah, it's -- We have a bit of -- a bit of stock.
Kevin
Where did this all come from?
Nick
A lot of it came from Northern California. I know a few different guys who only take felled trees or trees that come down for construction. There's something incredibly magical about having a slab of a table, where you can, you know, if you know your tree, you can -- you can look at the end grain and count the rings. And so while you're having dinner, you have this -- this cross section of history, you know? Like, oh, this tree is 140 years old, so right about here was the -- you know, the invention of the automobile.
Kevin
Right. So you have got the stock, the inventory is all here. Care showing me where you guys do your magic?
Nick
Sure, yeah. There's a little more work to be done. So once we've picked our wood out, then we bring it in here and, depending on what we're making with it, we begin to make it smaller and shorter and flatter. Those big slabs, you know, if we're going to make just a table, then it's all about making it flat and stable. But sometimes we -- For example, if we want to make a big round table, like this is going to be, then we need to create planks to laminate together and the way we do that is first you knock off the natural edges on a band saw, and then you use the jointer and planer and table saw to carefully flatten and make square edges and surface them.
Kevin
I've seen a lot of older tools right here. Is this by necessity or this by choice that you've picked this eclectic mix?
Nick
I always try to find as old as I can. Because you've got the most cast-iron parts and they're just kind of bulletproof. I mean, I've got this drill press from 1943 and it's never required a lick of maintenance. It's absolutely incredible.
Kevin
Okay. And what lumber are you using here for this project?
Nick
This is live oak. This came down here in Los Angeles and our friends milled it up.
Kevin
Yeah.
Nick
And live oak was -- was a very popular naval wood, because it grows in crooked ways that were actually ready-made
for ship parts. Kevin
Sure.
Nick
So there's a lot of work to get that flat and ready to be a table again.
Kevin
Which sort of begs the question, why wood?
Nick
Wood is something we're able to shape with sharpened steel, yet it's still -- it's sturdy enough to, you know, you can -- you can park a pickup truck on one of our tables. And so, rather than stone or glass, for my money, wood is so friendly to work with.
Kevin
How does somebody get started? Like, what do you suggest if they want to get into woodworking and get into their garage to do this?
Nick
Well, it's quite easy. It's really just a -- a dialed-down version of all these machines, you know, these -- This is going to be a 7-foot diameter, massive dining table with a -- with an inlaid Lazy Susan. So that's a massive, thick project. But if you dial that all the way back to say, a tray or a cutting board that you would use to serve on this table, that's where you start and it's the same set of steps you need to make your wood flat and square and friendly with hand tools, which I can show you a little bit about. So as I mentioned, you know, you take a look at a chisel and it's just this beautiful, sharpened wedge of steel. And with a chisel, you can -- you can use it in a couple of directions to have different effects. You know, you can pare and you can kind of carve. And every -- every woodworking tool, you know, you take a -- then you look at a plane, the plane blade is just a wide chisel that's encased in this clever housing so that it does something much more specific. It takes a regular shave, then.
Kevin
Every time.
Nick
And that's -- that's what really every hand tool is. You know, a saw is just a bunch of tiny chisels lined up so that they'll cut the wood fibers.
Kevin
Right.
Nick
So when I get people started, I -- I always suggest that the less electricity you can use, the more pleasurable your woodworking will be, because you don't have the noise and you don't have the dust and you don't have the expense of any power tools.
Kevin
So forgo the power tools and stick with the hand tools.
Nick
As much as possible. So I -- I tell people to go to the lumberyard and talk -- find somebody who knows the wood. You know, talk to them about their wood and these are -- these are some pieces of big-leaf maple from Oregon from a guy that I know. And they're some planks that I used in a workshop and I just have my students cut off what looks like a nice-size cutting board. And a cutting board's a great place to start because, look, you've made one cut and you're almost done. You strike -- strike a line, it doesn't even have to be straight, but you can use it to teach yourself to cut a straight line. And I'm telling you, if you get -- you get a Japanese pull saw, which cuts on the pull, or a classic Western cross-cut saw, if you get one of these, these days, from the hardware store, they're nice and sharp, they last a long time, and you'll be amazed at how easy, if you take your time and slowly begin to use it,
you can make a cut. Kevin
Yeah.
Nick
That alone will feel like a superpower. And then I just have people, there's different sanding accessories you can get. This is a little wedge that takes hook-and-loop sanding discs. And this is like a little Nerf-handled circle and these are great for our natural-edge stuff, because it not flat, it allows you to get into all these contours. And then I just have 'em go to town and they usually work up a sweat 'cause they get into it. And you make all the edges nice, you clean it up as nice as you want, and then once you oil that, all this figure, all this color comes out, and they say I'm a genius. You know, that's just making a rectangle. Now, then you make four of those and you start by putting them together, maybe with dowels by drilling, you know, but then you go from a rectangle to a box, you go from a box to a set of drawers.
Kevin
Right.
Nick
And then you build a piano.
Kevin
And I guess, I mean, you tell the story of your humble beginnings of things when you were a little kid. You weren't doing anything on band saws and jointers.
Nick
No. I mean, that's something I love to -- to -- something I love to communicate about woodworking, is that if you take a bucket of nails and slap together a bunch of planks into a doghouse, congratulations, you're a woodworker. And if you enjoyed it, or your dog enjoys it, then maybe you make a better doghouse or you move on up to a horsehouse or a cowhouse and eventually, a person-house. And then you find a mate and you have children and you teach them to sand.
Kevin
And you're off to the races.
Nick
Hakuna matata. You're part of the circle of life.
Kevin
Okay. Well, we very much appreciate the tour of the Offerman Woodshop and your words of wisdom and getting people into the trade.
Nick
My pleasure.
Kevin
Thank you, Nick. Next time on "Ask This Old House"...
Woman
We'll use this room a lot. Right now, we have this chair rail, but we really want to dress up the room. Maybe some wainscoting or paneling.
Kevin
We'll meet with a NASA astronaut to see some of the tools that he uses in space.
Richard
And this homeowner is spending a ton of money to get a very small amount of hot water out of his faucets. I'm installing a solution that'll give him plenty hot water and save him a lot.
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