Ask This Old House

Kevin

Today on "Ask This Old House"...

Roger

Orchids can be easy-to-grow houseplants if you know how to take care of them.

Ross

This is the Sonoran Desert. It is hot, and it is dry. In Future House, I'll show you how to get clean drinking water from the sun.

Tom

Take a look at the side of the window right here. You can actually see daylight. And that gap is letting cold air in. But the fix is pretty easy.

Mark

Unfortunately, all this ash and all this soot that you see and general dirt can actually get sucked into the brick by its pores. So we're going to have to use something that's actually going to extract that right out of the brick.

Kevin

Oh!

Mark

There you go! Cleaning brick can be messy and dangerous. I'll show you how to do it safely.

Kevin

Good morning,

Roger. -Roger

Good morning.

Kevin

Look at you with your houseplants! These are gorgeous!

Roger

Everyone thinks of me as an outdoor guy, but I like my flowers inside, too. These are beautiful phalaenopsis orchids.

Kevin

Well, they are beautiful. But, you know, for me, I think orchids are very delicate -- finicky. I'm afraid that if I get one, I'm going to kill it within a week. Right? These things are tough to deal with.

Roger

No. There's five things you need to remember -- water, fertilizer, ventilation, light, and temperature.

Kevin

Whew. Okay.

Roger

So let's start with water. These guys come from the rainforest where it pours and then it dries out, pours and dries out. So they want to be watered the same way. Let them dry out well. And if you have any question, wait another day. But if you're ready to water them, bring them over to the sink and just let the water pour on it. When it starts coming out the bottom, count to 10, take them out, and set them back where they were before.

Kevin

So, how frequently are you doing that?

Roger

It all depends on the environment and the medium, but it could be as much as weekly.

Kevin

Wow! So just water them once a week?

Once a week. -Kevin

Okay.

Roger

Now, the other thing to think about is fertilizer. I worked with an orchid expert and she told me weekly, weakly. And I says, "What's that"?

Kevin

What is that? She says, "Fertilize weekly and fertilize very weakly". Oh, so meaning, like a weak dose just once a week?

Yeah. There you go. -Kevin

Got it. The other thing is, if it's dry, don't fertilize 'cause it can burn those roots on the plant.

Kevin

Fertilize after you water them?

Roger

Right. And the other thing these guys love is ventilation. In the rainforest, there's always a breeze moving the air around. These guys like that, too. So anyplace you can get them where there's circulation.

Kevin

So don't stick them in a corner.

Roger

Don't stick them in a corner. No, no. Light's very important for these guys. They like little bit of light -- not full sunlight. So put them in a south, southeast window -- far away from the window. Not tucked right up.

Kevin

Direct sunlight's not for them?

Roger

Right. Now, when you have a plant that has a dark green like that --

that's not enough sunlight. -Kevin

Hmm.

Roger

Okay, when you get a plant that looks like this -- a little yellow on it -- that's a happy orchid right there.

Kevin

Almost counter-intuitive. All right.

Roger

Now, the last thing to think about is temperature. In the rainforest, it gets nice and warm during the day and then it cools off at night. Well, you want to do this for these orchids. If you can drop the temperature 10 or 15 degrees, that'll really help them grow and flower.

Kevin

All right, so you're saying that there's hope that I might be able to keep my orchids alive for more than a week?

Roger

Even you can grow orchids.

Kevin

Well, the payoff is great because these things are beautiful. Thank you,

Roger. -Roger

You're welcome, Kevin.

Tom

All right, whenever I install a window into an opening, the first thing you want to do is make sure that the window is centered into the rough opening. Next thing is I want to check the window for level. Once I make the window level, I tack the two top corners. I then check the window for plumb. All right, so now this window is level and it's plumb, so I know it's square. So now I can tack the bottom in the four corners holding it into position. Now, before I nail off the rest of the flange, I have to check one more important thing. And that is to make sure the window is parallel to itself. So I take a measurement at the top, the middle, and the bottom. Once I'm sure that all three measurements are exactly the same, I can then nail the window off. Now, the window is installed square and parallel on the outside, but it doesn't mean that it's parallel on the inside. So what I like to do is check the space between the sash and the jamb to see that it's equal all the way down. If it isn't, I simply put a shim in between the rough opening and the jamb and move the jamb over, making it parallel with the sash. Now, all of these steps are important, and a lot easier to do it now than fix it later. Boy, Dan, it's quite an entryway. It's really nice.

Thanks. -Tom

How long you been here?

Dan

About six months.

Tom

Wow, that's a big room. Six months? So you were here for the cold winter with all the breezes. Did you find any drafts?

Dan

We did, actually. The window over here in the corner we noticed was howling during a windstorm. And we found air coming through as well.

Tom

Really? I guess my first question is, a lot of people forget to lock the windows. Did you lock the window?

Yeah. -Tom

Okay. In fact, over on this side is where we felt the air coming through.

Tom

Well, I look at the gap down here at the bottom where the sash meets the jamb. And as I come up, it gets really wider in the middle, and I actually see light through the sash and the weather-stripping. And same thing on this side -- tight in the bottom, it gets wider. So if I take a measurement inside the jamb -- and I measure across the bottom -- it's 30 inches. If I measure right here in the center, it's 30 5/16 -- that's over a quarter of an inch difference.

Wow. -Tom

That's a lot. Okay, so what I'm going to do is -- if you want to remove this curtain -- I'll go to the truck, get some tools, and we can pull this window back together.

Dan

All right,

sounds great. -Tom

Be right back. All right, so what I want to do is I want to remove the casing from the wall. And I want to take my utility knife and score right along the edge of the casing where it meets the wall and where the casing meets the jamb of the window. Then, I want to pry the casing away from the wall so I can reuse it. All right, now that we've removed the casing on each side of the window, we can see how the wallboard and skim coat plaster come into the jamb of the window. But what I need to see is the rough opening between the jamb and the stud. So I'm going to cut away a little bit of the wallboard with my utility knife. Okay, so now you can actually see the edge of the rough opening. There's actually about a quarter of an inch gap there, which doesn't give a lot of room to put insulation in there. What we need to do now is get some shims and push it in there between the rough opening and the jamb, pushing the jamb over, tightening up the weather-stripping. You want to pass those shims to me?

Sure. -Tom

I'll slide them in. All right, I think I'm going to put another one right down here. Cut away a little more of this wallboard. All right, let's have another shim there. Okay, that gap is already a little better. Okay, now I'm going to take a second one, and put the skinny side in first. That way, the wedge will stay parallel with the inside of the jamb. There, you can see that gap tightened right up. All right, again, the thin side in first. Slide it in. And you can actually see the jamb move over.

Dan

Wow!

Tom

And that's slid the jamb over to the sash making that space equal all the way down, but also you don't see any more light through the weather-stripping.

Dan

It's quite the difference.

Tom

So that's going to make a big difference in the wintertime. But I have to check how the window operates now. I want to make sure that I have some resistance -- which I do -- when I move it up or down. You really don't want the window to slide up and down, okay?

Dan

Okay.

Tom

Let's check one more thing. Let's see if the window is parallel. Check the bottom, which is still 30 because we haven't moved that. In the middle, is 30 -- right on the button.

Dan

Nice.

Tom

Now, I just take my utility knife and cut the shims flush. Okay, so now we need to fill this gap right here on either side of the shim. I can see that there's fiberglass insulation up here and down below. But we're going to use foam insulation that's designed to go between the window jamb and the rough opening, but it doesn't expand a lot. So it won't push it tight. All right, Dan, a little bit of touch-up to do on the painting, fill some holes, but look at that gap.

Awesome. -Tom

No more light. You'll be a little more comfortable now.

Dan

It's looks great, Tommy. Thanks for coming out.

Tom

My pleasure. Thanks for your help.

Kevin

Mark, looks like you are ready for all of those questions and e-mails we've been getting about cleaning brick, right? You got the brick surround that the fireplace -- the soot comes up, it gets discolored. And you just can't seem to get it cleaned.

Mark

That's right. This is where traditional cleaners in the house will not work. Unfortunately, this brick -- all this ash and all this soot that you see and general dirt, it actually gets sucked into the brick by its pores.

Kevin

Yep.

Mark

So we're going to have to use something that's actually going to extract that right out of the brick.

Kevin

Are we talking...acid?

Mark

Well, muriatic acid is what you're going to find if you go to your home-center stores or a hardware store.

Kevin

That's very aggressive stuff, though.

Mark

It's very aggressive. Again, you know, the acid will burn your skin. So not only do you have to protect your work area, but you're going to have to protect yourself.

Kevin

Right. Is that what we're using, muriatic acid?

Mark

Well, we're not using muriatic acid, but we're using a detergent which is acidic.

Okay. -Mark

So it's got a minor -- it has small amount of acid in it that, again, is going to help us get that chemical reaction that we need to pull the dirt out of the brick.

Kevin

So talk to me about what you've got down here in preparation?

Mark

So, the way I prepped -- first, I put down a cloth tarp, okay? That's just going to protect anything -- the hearth that you have is usually a marble or a masonry stone. We want to protect that. On top of that, we use this blue tarp, which is going to protect us from the water.

Kevin

Mm-hmm.

Mark

And this right here is what we call a containment sock. If you can't find one at your home-center store or your hardware store, just roll some old towels up and use it as such.

Kevin

All right, so we've got protection for the surfaces, and for personal protection, you have got some very cool-looking gloves.

Mark

Yeah, yeah. These are cool-looking gloves, but, again, the acid that's in this detergent we're about to use -- it will burn your skin. So you're going to want to use these gloves that go all the way up to your elbows.

Kevin

And you've got us goggles -- not glasses. 'Cause this is gonna give us full protection all the way around.

Mark

Again, these goggles are going to make a tight fit all the way around our eyes and our face.

Kevin

Okay, I'm suited up. Where do we start?

Mark

So, what we're going to do first is we're just going to take a dry brush, and then just anything that we have sitting on that wall -- we're just going to knock off before we really get going with it. So, Kevin, why don't you grab a brush, and you can really soak down this wall.

Kevin

Just with plain-old water?

Mark

Just with the plain-old water. That is clean, cold water.

Kevin

What am I doing this for?

Mark

You're just trying to get that brick wet. You can see that it's sucking up the water right now.

Kevin

Oh, porous, right?

Mark

It's very porous. So we want to kind of dilute the brick as much as possible. Yes, you're doing a good job.

Kevin

Boy, you can see, even after one pass, it's just soaking in the water, right?

Mark

That's right. If you don't wet down this wall, Kevin, and I just go right direct with the material, we're going to get a burn effect. So that's why you really want to wet that wall down as much as possible.

Kevin

All right.

Mark

All right? While, you do that last pass, I'm going to put the material into the bucket. And, Kevin, just as you know, I'm going to go with the material into the water. You never do the reverse -- you never go water into acid. If anything bounces back, you'll get a nice burn.

Kevin

Okay, 'cause if that water splashes, you'd rather get that on you than if the acid were to splash.

Mark

That's right. So now, I'm going to go up...

Kevin

Oh!

Mark

There you go!

Kevin

Look at that! I mean, it is reacting with the dirty soot more than it is with the clean brick.

Mark

That's right, that's right. So what I'm doing right now is I'm applying more than I am scrubbing. All right. So I think I have just about enough material on the wall right now. But now we have a curation time of probably three to five minutes. Sometimes it's a little more, sometimes it's a little less, depending on the porosity of the brick. We have very porous brick, so the curation time might go a little quicker than normal. Okay, Kevin, so you can see how this is drying up pretty well right now. What we're going to want to do is get a brush, and get that clean water right on everything. See if we can just wash that wall down. And, again, you can see that it's already cleaner than when we started. Exactly.

Kevin

Well, I tell you what. That dark soot mark that was up here on the top course is already gone. It's gone.

Mark

I see a little remnant, so we're going to give it one more pass, but that was a good first pass for sure.

Okay. Mark

All right. So I'm just going to come up top. And now, I'm going to use a little bit of elbow grease just because that spot was a little worse than most.

Kevin

Now, if we didn't get the result we wanted, could we up the acid-to-water formula?

Mark

That would be the next step. Just continue to add the acidic material to the water, make it stronger, and then attack spots. But like I said, we kind of got a nice, even clean on that one. So, we're just going to let it cure a little bit. And then, once we start to see it dry here and there, that's when you're going to hit it again with the water on the brush.

Kevin

All right, Mark, messy, but effective. I mean, what a difference just right there on that brick. All the soot is gone.

Mark

Yeah, so you can see that it works great. The only problem is, again, it's a product that has to be reckoned with, so protect yourself. Protect your environment. And it's a great product.

Good information. -Mark

Thank you.

Kevin

Thank you.

Ross

This is the Sonoran Desert in Phoenix, Arizona. It is hot and it is dry. Believe it or not, there is water all around us. Do you see it? It's over there. It's over there. It's actually water vapor, or moisture in the air. How cool would it be if you could take that moisture, and turn it into clean drinking water? Well, I've found a company here in Phoenix that claims that they can do exactly that. Hey,

Cody. -Cody

How you doing, Ross?

Ross

Hey,

good to see you. -Cody

You, too.

Ross

So, I'm super intrigued by this product that you've come up with that takes solar energy and converts it into clean drinking water. How do you guys do it?

Cody

The first thing you have to understand is dew point. That's the temperature below which water starts to condense out of the atmosphere.

Ross

I'm most familiar with the window air-conditioning unit. You take warm, moist air from the house, put it across a cold coil -- and when you do that you get, you know, condensation forming. It drips right off the coil, and drips on your head as you walk by.

Cody

Right. And if we were to try to make water that way, it takes a lot of electricity, it's really inefficient, and you need high humidity to make that work. So inside of our panels, what we do is we actually use a special material, and a handful of other technologies to raise the dew point up so that water naturally condenses inside those panels and makes a lot of water very efficiently.

Ross

Very cool. So are we installing a system here?

We are. -Ross

All right. Can I see it?

Cody

Yeah, absolutely.

Let's go. -Ross

Let's do it.

Ross

All right.

Cody

All right, so here's the panel we're going to be installing today. And here's one that we already installed. And as you can see, there's a solar-thermal panel, and there's an integrated solar photovoltaic

for electricity. -Ross

Got it. So this generates electricity -- this generates the hot air.

That's right. -Ross

Got it. And what a perfect application for solar. You got a flat roof, southern exposure, no shading, and you're on the backside of the house. So aesthetics doesn't play a role because you're obstructed from the street.

Cody

And so we take all that power -- both electric and thermal --

and we integrate it back here. -Ross

Got it.

Cody

So underneath the panels where all the magic happens, so we actually pull air up through his assembly here. And inside of that is a bunch of this material, which is a special material that acts like a sponge. It takes water vapor out of the air, and then very efficiently releases that if we wanted to.

Ross

Mm-hmm. Okay.

Cody

To make that actually make water, we have a 32-bit microprocessor that's taking information about relative humidity and the power that we have and so on, and optimizing to maximize the elevation of that dew point.

Ross

So you have a solar photovoltaic panel that's generating electricity for the whole system -- there's no utility power here connecting up whatsoever. You have a solar-thermal panel that's generating hot air -- that's what's elevating the dew point of that sponge-like material you talked about, right?

To release that water. -Cody

Yeah, you got it.

Ross

Very cool, very cool. So it generates that water, and where does it feed from there?

Cody

Yeah, into this 8 1/2-gallon reservoir -- that actually has an integrated pump. So that actually allows the homeowner to have water pressure from the panel.

Ross

Got it. So from this, it's being pumped, and it's actually going into the house. So we've got two units up here -- this one's about to be installed. When it's all said and done, this unit's going to feed this unit, and then this unit feeds the house?

Cody

That's right. So this is the hub,

and that's the spoke. -Ross

Got it.

Cody

And so if we have 2 or 10, it's sort of the hub and spokes associated with that installation.

Ross

Got it. All right, I'm excited to install it.

Cody

You want to make sure that our panels are mounted to the building structure. And so, we put down this redwood with lagbolts. Then we'll mount our faceplate to that redwood. Once we've mounted the baseplate, we can then bring in the panel and put it on the support.

Ross

And your pitching the solar collectors to the optimum angle, right?

Cody

That's right. Once the panel is actually mounted, we'll then connect these lines, and bring them back to the hub. The hub reservoir then pumps the water through this 3/8 inch line into the house to a tap. In this case, we're going to tap to the back of a refrigerator.

Ross

All right. Get that into place.

Cody

All right, Ross. So now we've run that line down from the roof. And now all the water for this fridge -- both for ice and for drinking water -- is plumbed.

Ross

All right, can we give it a try?

Fill it up. -Ross

Yeah. Well, Cody, I've got to say, that is some really good water. I mean, it tastes like a high-end bottle of water.

Cody

Yeah, the panels actually produce absolutely pure water, which wouldn't taste great if you just drank it like that. So we actually engineered a mineral block that brings the minerals up in the water

that make it taste great. -Ross

Wow, awesome. So, a roof like this, historically, who've only had two options. The first option was generate electricity with solar, electric, or photovoltaic. The second option was solar-thermal, generating hot water -- domestic hot water -- for showers and dishwashers. But now you guys are introducing a third technology to generate clean, safe drinking water. So what type of homeowner should consider this type of a technology?

Cody

There's lots of places in this country where there municipal supply is actually safe, but it doesn't taste great. And so people that are in those places buy filters or buy bottled water. And which, obviously, is wasteful and very expensive. Then of course you have places like Flint, Michigan, where, you know, there's all that lead in the water.

Ross

I also see this in the emerging markets, places that don't have access to clean, safe drinking water, and also places that don't have electricity. The fact that you're self-contained, and you can generate that clean water with some sunlight is very impressive.

Cody

Yeah, the fact that it's infrastructure-free means that we've already installed in six countries. And we're going to be doing a lot more.

Ross

Very exciting. Well, thank you, Cody, for the tour. I love seeing your panels, and I'm taking the water with me.

Cody

Yeah,

perfect. -Ross

Thanks.

Kevin

Tell you what. You bring us some cool stuff. I'll give you that. So it seems to me that understanding this whole process requires that you understand condensation 'cause that's where the water's coming from.

Ross

That's right. So, generally, we talk about air-conditioning, where we have hot air coming across a cold coil. And we have that hot air crossing cold coil with a big differential in temperature, you create that condensation. And it's the same thing with the dehumidifier, right? 'Cause it's a less-cold coil, but we're still making it cold coil. That's right, but it takes a lot of energy. And you're putting all that energy making that coil cold, right?

Kevin

Mm-hmm. So these guys did things a little bit differently. What they did is they said, "Hey, we'll make the air hotter." So to get the differential, they're actually using the solar panel to general the heat to get more of a differential hot. So no cold coil, but they do have that differential. And it's big enough to give them condensation.

Ross

That's right. And so here's the million-dollar question, which is, what does that thing cost? How much water does it make? And is it really practical? Right. So their system is about a couple thousand dollars, and it generates a couple gallons of water a day.

Hmm. -Ross

So not a ton of water. But as you get into areas where clean, safe drinking water doesn't exist -- or it's scarce -- it makes a lot more sense.

Kevin

So in Arizona, maybe not your first choice -- certainly not your first choice there because we've got great municipal water. But as you go into the developing world, maybe it starts to make more sense there.

Ross

Absolutely, yeah. And so this is Future House, right? So this is a technology that caught my attention. The fact that you can get clean, safe drinking water out of the air -- self-contained, no infrastructure. I mean, it grabbed my attention. And who knows, 10 or 20 years down the road, as the technology gets better, price-point comes down, might be used more often.

Kevin

Yeah. Well, like I said, a good story. Thank you. So until next time, I'm Kevin O'Connor.

Ross

I'm Ross Trethewey.

Kevin

For "Ask This Old House." Can you go get me a cup of water?

It's up on the roof. -Ross

I got you!

Kevin

Next time on "Ask This Old House"...

Tom

This floor has a few chips in it. And I'll show you how to fix them. Luckily, you save some of the flooring that was leftover in the basement.

Woman

That might be the best thing I see all day.

Tom

Yeah. And you'll never guess what damaged this paver walkway. I brought my apprentice along to show you how to fix it. You really got to pack that down. You don't want it settling out again.