Ask This Old House

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.