tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19609362822203678132024-03-13T23:09:31.916-07:00QUAKETIPSQUAKETIPS: A blog companion to Matt Springer's recurring San Francisco-based presentationMatt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.comBlogger74125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-70000509080505180132024-01-11T00:09:00.000-08:002024-01-11T00:09:57.248-08:00Helping Hands: A Field Trip to Japan’s Earthquake Preparedness Store<div>Many countries that possess seismically active areas have some regions that are more prepared for earthquakes than others, such as San Francisco being far more earthquake-conscious than Miami in the USA. However, as a country that basically is one entire large quake zone and prepares/builds accordingly, it’s hard to beat Japan. </div><div><br /></div><div>While it might sound like I’m writing this article about the New Year’s Day <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Noto_earthquake" target="_blank">Noto Peninsula earthquake</a>, I had actually already started to work on it before the quake. In fact, I’m really surprised at how much damage there was because Japan is essentially the gold standard for seismic construction and personal preparedness and behavior. It still fared <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/06/style/japan-earthquake-architecture-dfi-hnk/index.html" target="_blank">quite a bit better than many other countries have in comparable or smaller quakes</a>, presumably because they take quake preparation so seriously at every level. At any rate, while this article is not about the recent earthquake there, I do send my best thoughts to people there including my friends and their families.</div><div><br /></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1vQzdjulE0gg0Tz9K2ejYJhJmrZuj-7CQ3NMGPb_o6uylF2LzDYiyzqKRrXJxw0jmIZqag5QdsQ6JT8J8YnErC-2DJREroFBFLxv3iyc-v8PAVdhbN_2lsMWXgzI5DsD5kC1WMyr-PNtIQjBxr0VshzadkcYDFP_3EjQye00y9zQaqP6SYaWvRcPWBRsg/s4032/store%20shelves.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1vQzdjulE0gg0Tz9K2ejYJhJmrZuj-7CQ3NMGPb_o6uylF2LzDYiyzqKRrXJxw0jmIZqag5QdsQ6JT8J8YnErC-2DJREroFBFLxv3iyc-v8PAVdhbN_2lsMWXgzI5DsD5kC1WMyr-PNtIQjBxr0VshzadkcYDFP_3EjQye00y9zQaqP6SYaWvRcPWBRsg/s320/store%20shelves.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><p class="p1" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><b style="font-size: 12px;">(Click to enlarge). </b><span style="font-size: 12px;">You can’t see it, but Matt’s eyes are</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">wide open and his jaw is on the floor. Shoppers probably </p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">assumed he was an artificial garden gnome statuette</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">that had been misplaced in the wrong section.</p></td></tr></tbody></table>I try to remain pretty up-to-date on what kinds of quake preparation devices are out there, at least that I know how to purchase. I keep running into impressive surprises though and they almost always are from Japan (such as the <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2018/08/earthquake-resistant-cabinet-latches.html" target="_blank">Murakoshi cabinet latch</a>, and the <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-i-braced-monster-wardrobe-and.html" target="_blank">ceiling bracing stilts for tops of tall furniture</a>, about which I’ve written in previous articles). Thus, when my wife and I took a trip to Tokyo earlier this year, I made it a point to visit the massive Tokyu* Hands store in Shinjuku to see their earthquake preparedness section (*not a typo; there are several of these stores in Tokyo but this is the one with the impressive earthquake section about which I was tipped off by a friend). If you want to read about Hands, here’s a <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/eviecarrick/tokyu-hands-department-store-japan#" target="_blank">cute description of them at Buzzfeed</a>, including the description that “It shares Hobby Lobby's love of crafts, Walmart’s size, and Amazon’s broad selection of both the normal and the weird. Then it takes it all up 10 notches.”</div><div><br /></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAxNPRJKUpix2oc4-vlSmOVsdoZgd0tL0nGMGnDGkHdZQX9keX9EPJu_wzvhv3amBFD3rHMB_cXag6GQCAiSMrjemfVs7Gdv5EalYrNrkbsVkHX8UOd3DagIwFdEdXN67ijigbAxJYiXcdgHc7Y-JT12mFpa0z5t4NLbw0g5xbPbaiG4FzXq0e_N8_zrvL/s2000/shims%20and%20wardrobe%20rods.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="955" data-original-width="2000" height="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAxNPRJKUpix2oc4-vlSmOVsdoZgd0tL0nGMGnDGkHdZQX9keX9EPJu_wzvhv3amBFD3rHMB_cXag6GQCAiSMrjemfVs7Gdv5EalYrNrkbsVkHX8UOd3DagIwFdEdXN67ijigbAxJYiXcdgHc7Y-JT12mFpa0z5t4NLbw0g5xbPbaiG4FzXq0e_N8_zrvL/s320/shims%20and%20wardrobe%20rods.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><b>(Click to enlarge).</b> Bracing rods and shim strips.</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table>I was initially a bit disappointed at how small the section was (just a couple of short aisles) but then I realized that they didn’t have very much of any one product out on the shelf, so that small area actually contained many different kinds of products. Looking over the available products, I saw several versions of things we can get in the US from companies like <a href="https://www.readyamerica.com" target="_blank">Ready America (a.k.a. Quakehold)</a>. I saw some clever variations on what I’m used to seeing; for example, I have long used small plastic shims (that is, wedges) under objects that might be otherwise unstable but are hard to appropriately brace, <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2016/02/special-challenges-can-you-seismically.html" target="_blank">such as floor lamps</a>, and even <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2011/12/where-should-i-keep-that-emergency-kit.html" target="_blank">under a box of emergency supplies</a> to stop it from sliding in a closet to block its own door. Here, they mean business; they had long shim strips that would stretch across the entire front edge of a wardrobe or bookcase. I was also delighted to see a whole array of the very wardrobe bracing rods that I had purchased from Japan to brace my massive wardrobe to the ceiling, <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-i-braced-monster-wardrobe-and.html" target="_blank">about which I had written before</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRu_ntlFiMhJU3U_cZu5_q0eN3q__TQmaZG-bX9dqht7AVrRvpT0kDrBKLqnSEd45D1DEw9CgJ-DcIiDI58T6jqy-2_sp7JlvX5IObvrl3EAMhI1vhI_iWWFKe3_cPplMnU0ze0PXzh2T0lL-BXYzFp8fHpHYuBhOtOP2QDAh1A8PFNVNTAPEuG8cmm3uv/s4000/grippy%20blocks%20montage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1086" data-original-width="4000" height="109" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRu_ntlFiMhJU3U_cZu5_q0eN3q__TQmaZG-bX9dqht7AVrRvpT0kDrBKLqnSEd45D1DEw9CgJ-DcIiDI58T6jqy-2_sp7JlvX5IObvrl3EAMhI1vhI_iWWFKe3_cPplMnU0ze0PXzh2T0lL-BXYzFp8fHpHYuBhOtOP2QDAh1A8PFNVNTAPEuG8cmm3uv/w400-h109/grippy%20blocks%20montage.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">(Click to enlarge).</b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> </span></td></tr></tbody></table>I decided to purchase three products to play around with them at home. The first one was grippy blocks to be placed under flat objects. “YAWN” you say, “big deal, <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2018/05/no-gripes-about-gripeez-way-to-use.html" target="_blank">you’ve written about Gripeez lots of times</a> for sticking down small light things, so what’s new?” Well, the strongest of these products there advertises that it braces 100 kg! (<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Metric-System-David-Adler/dp/0823451062/ref=asc_df_0823451062/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=564824089097&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=3125227576062487602&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9031953&hvtargid=pla-1570805428079&psc=1&mcid=ffc1d388df2e327ab7f1a9f13aa710d1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAnfmsBhDfARIsAM7MKi3NGTg2mJUHTRhEOxjJdUyWw0N5OYWiuh-trOn76hhXOn9Pklc3PTIaAtjWEALw_wcB" target="_blank">That’s 220 lb, for us Yanks.</a>) Check out the photos, including the Google Translate “Lens” screenshot showing what is says in English (for us Yanks). (Got to take those Google Translate Lens shots with a grain of salt though; on the same trip, it translated the plaque near a statue of a famous person to say his name was “Fast Food.”) I got one and plan to use it to brace something when the need arises. As the diagrams suggest, this product is for large flat-bottom furniture on smooth hard floors (although Google Translate Lens initially suggested that this product was intended to stick down bicycles). Never try using grippy pads of any strength to attach things to vertical surfaces like walls.</div><div><br /></div><div>What I wonder about is how easy it is to move the furniture again after it’s stuck down. Many of us have found that if you use too much quake putty on a large flat bottom item so it spreads out at too large of a diameter, it can be extremely difficult to remove the object afterward. Google Translate Lens says that the back of the product mentions that if it is difficult to remove afterward, slowly peel it off from one side to another, but what if your cabinet that’s already 220 lb is stuck to the floor? It also says that if the item is hard to remove, use fishing line wetted with water or neutral detergent and slowly move it back and forth between the pad and the surface. I’m worried... </div><div><br /></div><div>(The year is 2358, at the world-famous art museum in massive downtown Bakersfield: “Why is this vintage 21st Century wardrobe on display between the Mona Lisa and Clarke’s famous holopainting of Dame Taylor Swift?” “It’s because someone in 2024 used too many Japanese grippy squares to stick down their wardrobe in a house that used to be on this site, and since they could never remove it, they just built the museum around it.”)</div><div><br /></div><div>Another interesting product I wanted to get and play with was a refrigerator “seismic isolation” disk; in plain English, a grippy saucer that prevents the fridge from moving. This is a complicated issue. Refrigerators have several special challenges for quake safety: first, the doors can swing open causing the contents to scatter. There are braces that swing into place to prevent full-width doors from opening and have to be manually moved out of the way each time the door is open. I have had “French Door” fridge/freezer units for a long time and have less concern about those doors, since they are not as wide and don’t have as large of a lever arm (go check your old Physics textbook for that one). Second, they can tip over. There are braces for fridges to attach them to the wall like other tall furniture, but they are frequently in pretty tight frames in modern kitchens that don’t really give the top enough room to tip over. The thing that bedevils people still is when they roll out of their cubbyholes, and I THINK that is what these disks are supposed to prevent. </div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2M_XNUSCsQli-m8zux6P6UxwVaAGC9NcLikkRLCGGYrXTLhDw_fwVxHx_2_xVYE54Ptre2YbfJHW6hBQJvDAr59i-iNrR-kqyyYAsU1U8fK9DLxku4uEL4p0gB_yiN2jbgrKJm-9VC20TnLBM7DPlujIZXAtWzn86aNOD6tH3UTcQVa0_Yc6N5ACGcYHp/s2729/Fridge%20disk%20montage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1827" data-original-width="2729" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2M_XNUSCsQli-m8zux6P6UxwVaAGC9NcLikkRLCGGYrXTLhDw_fwVxHx_2_xVYE54Ptre2YbfJHW6hBQJvDAr59i-iNrR-kqyyYAsU1U8fK9DLxku4uEL4p0gB_yiN2jbgrKJm-9VC20TnLBM7DPlujIZXAtWzn86aNOD6tH3UTcQVa0_Yc6N5ACGcYHp/w400-h268/Fridge%20disk%20montage.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">(Click to enlarge).</b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> </span></td></tr></tbody></table>These disks are basically metal saucers with a grippy outer ring on the floor side, and a grippy inner plug for the fridge side. I’m a bit confused by the diagrams. If the fridge has only wheels, then I can see tipping it up and placing the front wheels on the grippy saucers, which come in pairs. However, my fridge has adjustable leveling feet in front of each front wheel, and it appears in the diagram that it’s the leveling feet that go on the grippy saucer. However, I would have thought that simply by leveling those feet so that they are on the floor and taking the main weight of the fridge rather than the wheels taking the weight, the fridge would not be able to roll. Unlike my previous refrigerator, which I could easily roll out to retrieve things that fell behind it, the current one does not roll, so I’m not sure I need these saucers and probably won’t use them. (That’s the cue for my various quake expert colleagues to pile on and correct me... I’ll update this article should that happen.)<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Lastly, longtime readers of this blog know that I’m really interested in quakeproof cabinet latches, so when I saw a new cabinet latch I hadn’t seen before, I had to get it. I tend to not like motion-activated latching mechanisms where something has to fall into place during an earthquake to prevent the cabinet from opening; I’ve seen that kind of latch fail many times. The ones I’ve liked have been <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2012/08/at-last-helpful-hints-on-installing.html" target="_blank">push latches (touch latches)</a>, and the relatively recent <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2018/08/earthquake-resistant-cabinet-latches.html" target="_blank">Murakoshi latch</a> (yep, from Japan) in which a small pendulum inside the mechanism needs to be perfectly straight for the latch to open; in other words, motion-DEactivated unlatching. Well, here was another motion-activated latch but instead of something having to fall in place, the slight motion in the outward direction makes a spring-loaded latch shoot down instantly, very effective. </div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEE5F4Nygm7UR0UTLvFCN5fETzHn0BWlaHAXNLC4q6wOzNu1nw_rb4oltOL8waeUTr-fcoDd3sfvCvlAycb8dVjWJ9hpdSpH-OIxhaOU2pdAfwR3zQEEUCBJFrggiSavdQmofdcWqRJIx42PlM7FQi2oKwLwQ046kZaqzO4c68dyq0dBqLlbdcJrsplMfK/s4000/latches%20montage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2069" data-original-width="4000" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEE5F4Nygm7UR0UTLvFCN5fETzHn0BWlaHAXNLC4q6wOzNu1nw_rb4oltOL8waeUTr-fcoDd3sfvCvlAycb8dVjWJ9hpdSpH-OIxhaOU2pdAfwR3zQEEUCBJFrggiSavdQmofdcWqRJIx42PlM7FQi2oKwLwQ046kZaqzO4c68dyq0dBqLlbdcJrsplMfK/w400-h208/latches%20montage.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">(Click to enlarge).</b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> (Warning: reading the instructions can cause seizures)</span></td></tr></tbody></table>Things to like about this latch: from my limited playing around with it, it seems like the mechanism will be very effective and reliable. Unlike any of the others I’ve tried, there’s no drilling or screws; it’s all done with wide pieces of adhesive tape (good if you never plan to remove the latch, bad if you want flexibility to put it elsewhere.) With the supplied templates for installation, it seems like there’s no guessing as to position. And, there’s a nifty extra arm that swings into place after it activates that will push the catch part back up out of the way the next time you push the door into place, restoring the ability to open the door.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR0ZEdweagVZsSS_y7s38_kABlXCZVPEADr1ivFSnCXqZrq2H54uTVk59U8oUcHsedrqoKeJY4QGdRGt6pMq8-046gt1hQHWYAlRHhvFN6Fy2AQy_0yO5mzc3p-6k4VYVfrHOdEjNUZtm-thfZmEM-dDkQ0ywazZzHD1Ck-EQOHz5EJIkfxNDPR2QW9oen/s433/old%20latch%20step%20figures.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="221" data-original-width="433" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR0ZEdweagVZsSS_y7s38_kABlXCZVPEADr1ivFSnCXqZrq2H54uTVk59U8oUcHsedrqoKeJY4QGdRGt6pMq8-046gt1hQHWYAlRHhvFN6Fy2AQy_0yO5mzc3p-6k4VYVfrHOdEjNUZtm-thfZmEM-dDkQ0ywazZzHD1Ck-EQOHz5EJIkfxNDPR2QW9oen/s320/old%20latch%20step%20figures.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">(Click to enlarge).</b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> Stepped cabinet frames present<br />challenges for many types of latches.</span></td></tr></tbody></table>Things to not like: As mentioned, it can’t be repositioned or reused unless relying on different adhesive if you trust it. The thing that worries me, though, is that if you have a cabinet in which there’s a little step, as shown in this figure lifted from my earlier articles about latches, you still have to either build up extra material to fill in the step, or, you might be able to put this latch’s main part further back behind the step (see figure at right). However, if the latch is too far back away from the cabinet door, then even though it will still activate and stop the door from opening, it looks like pushing the door closed won’t push the moving catch back up because that little nifty swinging arm I mentioned won’t reach it. It’s hard to describe, but I’d be worried that a door with such a recessed latch could be permanently latched after a quake. Also, just like the other latches, they won’t work on cabinets in which the ceiling of the cabinet is much higher than the top of the frame, which is common in lower cabinets.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ok, the fatal flaw in this article is that while I’ve seen various references to the ability to purchase from Hands online, I’ve been unable to find a way to do it. The online store exists but currently has a note saying that overseas delivery is not available. The Buzzfeed article that I mentioned earlier says that there’s a company that purchases from Hands and then sends to people overseas but the link doesn’t appear to work. I had managed to purchase the wardrobe bracing rods via Rakuten online, but that site appears to be gone. But these products are out there, hopefully available somewhere in the global online economy; and if you happen to be around Shinjuku, go check it out. (Omitting my typical more lighthearted endings out of respect for the current quake recovery effort in Japan.)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a></div><br /><br />Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-79451493409499734582023-07-22T20:51:00.000-07:002024-01-11T00:12:05.792-08:00Murphy eats procrastination for breakfast, and a personal note to my readers<a name='more'></a><p>Long-time readers of this blog may have noticed that new posts have been very sporadic over the last couple of years. A series of issues kept arising, including the pandemic and various personal matters that resulted in there always being a bunch of matters that needed to be addressed ASAP and always had to take priority to writing blog articles. That's ok, writing a blog is something that can go in fits and starts... however, the same issues have affected staying up to date with my quake preparations and making sure emergency supplies like food and medicines aren't expiring. And that's the reason for me mentioning all this: it underscores that there will always be reasons to put off taking quake precautions or keeping them up to date, and there will sometimes be reasons that make such postponements unavoidable, until the point is reached that the risk to the future of putting them off starts to outweigh the risk at the present of not doing them now. Where that line is, is a matter for personal choice and priorities, of course.</p><p>I'm distressingly late in checking my food supplies to replace any that are no longer good, and as I reported <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2019/01/more-fun-with-expiration-dates-some.html" target="_blank">the last time I replaced my expired supplies</a>, this is a real issue! Some stored foods really do go bad, there was the amazing exploding vitamin pill incident, and even the plugs for emergency power of mobile devices become defunct! The problem is that earthquakes can hit at inconvenient times. And lest you figure you typically keep enough food around and usually are not near the end of your prescription refill cycle, remember that quakes can occur when you are low on food and medicine. In fact, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy's_law" target="_blank">Murphy’s Law</a> would seem to dictate that this is exactly when the next large quake will occur! After all, how many times have you gotten a bad cold right when it was time to buy more Kleenex?</p><p>"Fortune favors the prepared mind" (yes, yes, I know, <a href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur" target="_blank">there are different translations</a>), to which Murphy laughs and says, “I eat procrastination for breakfast.”</p><p>So one purpose of writing this article, along with needing to finally break the silence and get these articles flowing again, is to goad myself into pulling out the emergency supplies and doing the expiration check that I have not done <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2019/01/more-fun-with-expiration-dates-some.html" target="_blank">since early 2019</a> (too long!) even though I have a bunch of other things I need to do. Hopefully, some of you will also realize you have been saying about basic earthquake precautions that “it’s on my to-do list” for the past 10 years.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4sXfpvvxVVuHwMAo8Fq1R1v9k0gA8pK5OJmlOVrlbzX4QN7K6DexfWAFFwVlopeGMPjlogksqk5DqPzO8QOjvBNjy6igAhNbyS1qEL0GpSotqWmYHcqw_s3UR7gbwZ5vILwyCCvYhZKOFPiPONDV3dMJGTIHE-axzP7uVyD1U3YLaoaOomD1G413YZFKY/s1440/Mom%202015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1357" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4sXfpvvxVVuHwMAo8Fq1R1v9k0gA8pK5OJmlOVrlbzX4QN7K6DexfWAFFwVlopeGMPjlogksqk5DqPzO8QOjvBNjy6igAhNbyS1qEL0GpSotqWmYHcqw_s3UR7gbwZ5vILwyCCvYhZKOFPiPONDV3dMJGTIHE-axzP7uVyD1U3YLaoaOomD1G413YZFKY/w189-h200/Mom%202015.jpg" width="189" /></a></div>The other purpose: one of the matters that kept me from blog writing was the passing away of my mother Joyce about half a year ago, after the better part of a year of many health problems. It's ironic because she was the main inspiration for a lot of my insights about quake safety, the talks I give (which have recently also been sporadic), and the blog articles that I write. She went through the 1971 Sylmar quake in the San Fernando Valley, along with me and our family. Then she lost her apartment in the 1994 Northridge quake, and went through the whole ordeal that those who have seen my talk know about, including being stuck in her apartment until being freed, and losing just about everything. She moved to nice safe Simi Valley, where earthquakes don't seem to cause as much of a problem, and ironically ended up having to evacuate a few times due to wildfires; then ended up in an assisted living facility in her final year where she had to deal with COVID outbreaks. (There's no perfect solution to avoiding earthquakes.) It was seeing all the stuff she had stuck down to surfaces in her Simi Valley apartment that initially made me think she was over-reacting, but then got me seriously thinking about the issue and realizing how sensible it was.<br /><p></p><p>During her health issues last year, at one point when she was a bit out of it due to the health problem <i>du jour</i>, she asked me out of the blue without context "is this the end of the blog?" I thought she might have been a little disoriented since we had been talking about something else, but then realized that even in her state, she must have noticed the absence of Quaketips update e-mails. I assured her that it was not the end of the blog, and indeed, it isn't.</p><p>Next time, I'll be reporting on my field trip to the earthquake supplies section of a major department store in Tokyo.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a></p>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-73013790312309456892022-12-27T14:49:00.001-08:002023-07-22T20:52:20.534-07:00The western US ShakeAlert system is loudly proclaiming its arrival (A Story of Three Alerts)<a name='more'></a><p>I was driving in San Francisco to an orchestra rehearsal about three months ago and listening to music on the car stereo from my iPhone, and then something unusual happened in the middle of the music: there was a jangling noise and a disembodied man’s voice said something like “Earthquake! Drop, cover, and hold on. Shaking expected.” A <a href="https://myshake.berkeley.edu" target="_blank">MyShake</a> app notification was on the screen saying something about a 5.0 in Sonoma County. I thought that was odd because a 5.0 in Sonoma County would be unlikely to cause a problem in San Francisco, but I pulled over and turned off the car and waited to see what would happen. And then a few seconds later, it happened! The car moved! It moved back and forth about 3 times... by a distance roughly the length of an ant.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQkOgSGpKFLrSUP0crPwfG2KoQlx6jAxN3qZklVYcqZ0AGXVUzctgO5s5pgTB-wp6va89t3U8NGS-pKDGVGNTXZf-gMjbmrm0fc2OFEZDpjdgVVfjoe5WJcjp38OPrQx4QuVznIwTMOqnF1okXmJaApnYaXt5w9kuGW0a_0t2VixycoQbORolQ2k1UzA/s1000/IMG_2339.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="863" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQkOgSGpKFLrSUP0crPwfG2KoQlx6jAxN3qZklVYcqZ0AGXVUzctgO5s5pgTB-wp6va89t3U8NGS-pKDGVGNTXZf-gMjbmrm0fc2OFEZDpjdgVVfjoe5WJcjp38OPrQx4QuVznIwTMOqnF1okXmJaApnYaXt5w9kuGW0a_0t2VixycoQbORolQ2k1UzA/s320/IMG_2339.jpeg" width="276" /></a></div><p>This exciting experience, while “ant-iclimactic,” got me thinking about what would happen if a bunch of cell phones on stage and in the audience suddenly started blaring alarms in the middle of a concert, especially if followed merely by an ant-sized movement. I contacted the folks over at UC Berkeley who administer MyShake (which taps into the <a href="https://www.shakealert.org" target="_blank">ShakeAlert</a> earthquake early warning system for the West Coast of the US), and asked why the alert had gone to a place with such little shaking. They told me that actually, most of the complaints that they received were from people who did experience shaking and were not warned, so this gives you an idea of how hard it is to thread such a needle. I wrote about this issue in an <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-western-united-states-finally-has.html" target="_blank">earlier Quaketips post in late 2019.</a></p><p>A month later, I got another MyShake alert on my phone while at home in the late morning, a loud noise, which startled me quite a bit, about a 5.1 down near San Jose. Several seconds after that, we indeed started moving (enough to be unnerving), and thanks to the alert, I was expecting it and didn’t have to waste time going through the “is that really an earthquake?” routine. Between already knowing it was just a 5, and feeling the mild beginning of the shaking, I actually did not get under my desk but I was ready to do that if it got worse, and I already knew there were <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-burning-question-what-happens-to.html" target="_blank">no lit stove burners or candles,</a> etc. That alert was really worthwhile.</p><p>Well, just a few nights ago, they had a nice medium-large one (6.4) up in Humboldt County, about 250 miles north of San Francisco. A BUNCH of people in Northern California got a MyShake alert about this one, which actually caused a lot of damage up there. Down here in San Francisco, we got the alert and depending on where people were and what they were doing, we either felt a slight shaking or no shaking, again making people ask why we got an alert for a quake that was so far away. Here’s an interesting fact: I inquired with the Berkeley people again and was told that the app is supposed to send an alert for any California/Oregon/Washington quake over 4.5 on the Richter Scale to the zone that is expected to experience shaking at level 3 of the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale (weak shaking), and San Francisco might not have gotten an alert for this 6.4 in Humboldt except that the quake was initially estimated at a 6.6, which would have shaken a larger area. (Because this is a log scale, the difference between a 6.4 quake and a 6.6 quake is actually pretty substantial.) The alert went out on that basis so it overestimated who should get it.</p><p>This is a great example of one of the unavoidable ironies of such a system: because the alerts are based on shaking at the epicenter that then radiates outwards to where most of the alert recipients are, those who are at the epicenter where the quake is strongest and thus are most in need of an early warning will not be the ones who get the warning early. And indeed, there were reports on the news about people in the strongest shaking area saying they got the alert after the quake was already in progress, which must have felt like a Homer Simpson “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D'oh!" target="_blank">D’oh!</a>” moment but you can see why it’s a natural part of the system. Between the people who get shaken the most without warning, and the people who barely feel the shaking and have an early warning a nice long time beforehand, is the "sweet spot” of the people who will benefit from the system the most: those who are close enough to the epicenter to experience substantial shaking but far enough from the epicenter to not experience shaking until several seconds after the warning is received.</p><p>At any rate, I don’t think anyone would argue that having an early warning system is not worth the occasional “false alarm” for some locations. Still, I continue to be concerned about the two biggest problems that I can see resulting from such overestimated alerts: harm and complacency. </p><p>By harm, I mean that having one’s phone make a noise even when set on “do not disturb,” or having many phones make those noises, can create problems and hazards that would be moot if an actual earthquake was occurring but will be trouble if there’s no quake. For example, as I mentioned in my <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-western-united-states-finally-has.html" target="_blank">previous article about ShakeAlert and MyShake</a>, a bunch of phones squealing all of a sudden during a performance of acrobats doing death-defying stunts could make them no longer death-defying if someone gets startled and doesn’t successfully grab something they are supposed to grab. Less consequential but more likely, if my phone goes off while I’m in the audience at an orchestra concert or ballet (not followed by a quake), I will be universally hated by everyone (except for anyone else whose phone went off and is also being universally hated). And if my phone goes off while I am PLAYING in an orchestra concert with no quake, that’s an absolutely unacceptable situation and I’m actually concerned about that. Here’s one more: having your phone go off during some little kid’s first-ever piano recital; think about it!</p><p>I typically set my phone to “Do Not Disturb” when playing a concert, but now I may have to also turn off the sound of Emergency Alerts on my iPhone (currently for iOS 15, Settings -> Notifications -> Government Alerts (it’s all the way at the bottom) -> turn “Always Play Sound” to off), or resort to turning off the phone altogether, at times like that. (One caveat, this seems to change with every OS update, so I’ll have to figure it out over and over again, or just turn the phone off.)</p><p>“Above all, do no harm” does not apply here, as it is incompatible with “protect as many people as possible from dangerous effects of earthquakes.”</p><p>The other problem is complacency: if MyShake keeps interrupting people and possibly even causing some of the hassles described above, with hardly any shaking, lots of people will simply delete the app if they don’t have the ability to turn it off when in do-not-disturb mode.</p><p>Here’s one suggestion about how to find a middle ground, at least for those with iPhones. Remember that there’s a difference between “notifications” and “alerts,” whereby <i>notifications</i> are after-the-fact news flashes that tell you when a quake above your magnitude of choice has occurred in a geographic location of your choice (a nice recent added capability), whereas <i>alerts</i> are the actual early warnings that tell you the ground might shake soon. Currently, the alerts are themselves of two flavors: those that go to your phone’s location and those that go to your default “Home Base.” If you have location services turned on, then wherever you are, MyShake will know where the phone is and will alert you if the phone is in a region that is expected to shake. On the other hand, your Home Base is a location that you set manually so that if that region is expected to shake, your phone will get the alert, regardless of whether the phone is in that location or elsewhere. <i>However, you don’t have to set a Home Base location.</i> <b>If you only want to be alerted if your current location is about to shake, and don’t want the early warning if your home base location is about to shake if you are not there, then leave the Home Base location unset</b> (or delete it if you have one already). Your phone will still sound the alert if you are in that location right before a quake there (assuming location services are on), and will sound the alert if you are somewhere else right before a quake in that place, but won’t sound the alert if your home is about to shake but your current location is not.</p><p>This solves some of the problem, because if my phone sounds the alert when my current location is expecting shaking, then presumably, lots of phones in the area will sound the alert as well and interrupting the concert won’t be MY fault. However, with my Home Base set for San Francisco, if it comes to pass that San Francisco and the area north of it is about to shake, and my phone and I are in San Jose 50 miles to the south where shaking is barely felt (or for that matter, if I’m in Los Angeles or New York or Paris), then I’d be the only one causing a disturbance completely irrelevant to everyone else within earshot. Not having a Home Base set at least prevents against this undesirable situation.</p><p>However, there does not seem to be a feasible way to prevent occurrences when lots of phones in a US West Coast audience will squeal about a coming local earthquake, either followed by significant shaking or not. I suggest that orchestra and choral conductors, theater and ballet directors, and directors of acrobatic shows like Cirque du Soleil, plan ahead and decide what their response will be when the chorus of phones in the audience starts squealing.</p><p>Oh, and secret agents who are sneaking around hiding from the bad guys should probably turn off those emergency alerts also. James Bond might like things shaken, but he wouldn’t want his phone to cause a stir.</p><div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a></div></div>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-51735387979476206082021-09-03T01:20:00.006-07:002022-12-27T14:50:40.903-08:00People who live in glass houses shouldn't have earthquakes: How well do modern glass-covered buildings hold up?<a name='more'></a><p>There’s been a building boom in downtown San Francisco over the past decade, and it can be summed up in one word (several times): glass, glass, glass. Lots of new towers going up completely covered with shiny reflective glass. Cool futuristic gleaming towers...or a major disaster waiting to happen in the next big earthquake? What will conditions on the street downtown among these towers be during a large quake? I’ve wondered about this and I’m certainly not the only one, and here’s what I’ve managed to learn. </p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_oWDp3W2-AE/YTHD4q1PN3I/AAAAAAAABB0/Uh7aC4QzTlYKIhrBfRH6fk8oGHH2JPlWACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Fig%2B1%2BBerry%2BSt%2Bwindow.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_oWDp3W2-AE/YTHD4q1PN3I/AAAAAAAABB0/Uh7aC4QzTlYKIhrBfRH6fk8oGHH2JPlWACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Fig%2B1%2BBerry%2BSt%2Bwindow.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"><b>Figure 1. </b>Floor-to-ceiling windows in a modern condo, <br />built ~2007. This photo is from my previous home.</span></td></tr></tbody></table>I have to admit, I like glass on skyscrapers; I like the way it reflects the sky and blends in without the stark concrete that makes up most of each building built in earlier days. I like the sleekness. I even like it in mid-rise buildings like where I used to live, where I enjoyed the fact that there were floor-to-ceiling glass walls so that the little dog could sit on the floor and look down, watching the world go by, rather than staring at a white wall <b>(Figure 1)</b>. However, in a quake, will the windows break and shower the street below with fragments of glass? Will the panes of glass separate from the structure and fall intact, creating open gaps in the walls that are hazards indoors for people during the shaking and pets afterward who may not realize that they will fall out if they try to lean against what has always been an invisible wall? What about the people outside, and particularly in downtown areas where anything that falls will fall a long way? <p>The reasons to <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2011/07/should-i-stay-or-should-i-gothe.html" target="_blank">not run out of a building during an earthquake</a> (like things falling right outside the building) are magnified in a downtown area because anything that separates from a building will fall quite a bit farther and will likely be very destructive. I’ve long had the impression that there would be no safe place to be outside in a downtown city center during a quake, and I’ve wondered if, as people are running out of those buildings (despite it being unwise), I would be fighting against the current to get INTO the building! To better understand the potential hazards, I've been looking into what happens to high-rise glass during quakes and into how far away from the building one can expect skyscraper rubble to fall.</p><p>It has been VERY difficult to get answers from the building engineering/inspection community about this, and a friend of mine who is a building engineer specializing in seismic safety astutely suggested to me that this is probably because the results are so hard to predict. I can see that; each situation will be different. Still, to give you an idea of the frustrations encountered along the way, one contact at a major city Department of Building Inspections actually answered my line of questions with the advice to “avoid standing under falling objects at all cost.” I kid you not.</p><p>Another inquiry to an SF Dept of Building Inspections engineer resulted in the advice that if glass DID fall from a skyscraper, it would fall straight down, so we shouldn’t be on the sidewalk but would probably be relatively safe out on the street. But think about that; ok, even in the absence of wind, there are other influences that will likely be there: (1) If there’s sideways shaking of the whole building, then there’s a sideways force on any glass that separates from the building for whatever reason, probably enough to send it at least a few more feet away from the building. (2) Even if the base doesn’t move very much, tall buildings sway even in high wind and their highest floors can move by several feet by wind alone (apparently the tall and slender <a href="https://www.quora.com/How-much-do-skyscrapers-sway-back-and-forth-on-windy-days" target="_blank">432 Park Ave building in New York City</a> sways up to 5 feet at the top in the wind). I’ve heard anecdotal accounts of people watching the tops of tall buildings move in large quakes in places like Japan (there are various videos on the web). This could amplify the effects of sideways shaking. (3) It just takes a slight temporary tilt of the ground on which a tower sits to make the top move to the side. Bottom line: I would not assume that debris from the top of a skyscraper in a major earthquake will fall straight down and land right next to the base of the building. </p><p>In the hopes of finally cornering a building engineer on this, I went to a San Francisco Dept. of Building Inspections workshop on seismic safety in downtown SF a few years ago, and listened to a presentation about tall building safety. There was a long line of people who wanted to ask questions after the talk, and one woman asked about exactly what I had been wondering; the topic of this article. The speaker evaded the question similarly to the responses I had gotten before. I later went to an info table that they had after the formal presentations were finished, and posed the same questions to the people at the table, who said basically the glass won’t shatter and it won’t pop out, and I simply could not pin them down with a “what if” question.</p><p>And I’ve lost count of the number of times that building engineers have told me that downtown San Francisco in a major quake would not become a shower of glass because modern buildings don’t do that, to which I’ve replied that many buildings in downtown San Francisco aren’t modern. That’s typically met with a shrug (figuratively).</p><p>So let me try to put this together based on what I’ve learned and seen and read, and remember, I’m not able to officially advise you on where to be in this situation if the experts can’t! But I will describe my thoughts and you readers can be the judge. I’ll be curious to see if any comments come in.</p><p></p><div style="text-align: left;">First, glass and building design have both evolved considerably over the last century. The glass itself, in very old buildings, breaks into shards. You can see in photos of older glass that you get jagged edges and what are essentially glass daggers; if these fall, you don’t want to be in their way <b>(Figure 2)</b>. If larger panes of glass dislodge, I have heard that they can sail quite far if they are falling from a tall enough building in the wind, but I can’t verify this.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mgSMWmSLT5w/YTHFjv9ulQI/AAAAAAAABB8/o7s871e4CLcnlCrN-v7aeX0MlhR4QrSagCLcBGAsYHQ/s1398/broken%2Bwindows.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="1398" height="373" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mgSMWmSLT5w/YTHFjv9ulQI/AAAAAAAABB8/o7s871e4CLcnlCrN-v7aeX0MlhR4QrSagCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h373/broken%2Bwindows.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><b>Figure 2. </b>Some older windows break as shards <i>(click images to zoom in)</i>. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Counterclockwise </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">from top: A building in downtown San Francisco after the 1989 Loma Prieta quake (KTVU </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Fox 2). Broken windows in a building in Fukuoka, Japan after the 2005 quake (By Oarih (Own </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">work), <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" target="_blank">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFukuoka_Earthquake_20050320_Maruzen.jpg" target="_blank">via Wikimedia Commons</a></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">). Two buildings in Nepal after the 2015 quake, </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">one </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">with no visible window damage and the other with extreme damage and windows broken </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">into shards (photo taken by my friend Laura Whitehurst, used with permission; she points out that we have very different building construction in California!).</span></div><p></p></td></tr></tbody></table></div><p></p><p>In contrast, modern window glass is tempered glass, and frequently laminated. This is extremely strong glass that fractures without falling apart unless there is an extreme impact, so you get that fracture spiderweb pattern so often seen in car windshields after something hits them, or a familiar pebbly texture. It’s likely that if an interior piece of furniture fell against a glass window in a modern building, even if the glass cracked, it would still be there but with the fracture pattern. If the quake was strong enough to truly break the glass, then this glass breaks into pellets rather than sharp jagged shards, as you know if you have seen the aftermath of a smash-and-grab auto burglary <b>(Figure 3)</b>. Still, pellets falling from high up are probably going to be like bullets when they hit the ground. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EFdtRn-bFBg/YTHN6_tCmII/AAAAAAAABCE/W-tpJvixC3oslF5HToSQeJqH50qFGPXNgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/tempered%2Bglass.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><b><img border="0" data-original-height="1052" data-original-width="2048" height="205" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EFdtRn-bFBg/YTHN6_tCmII/AAAAAAAABCE/W-tpJvixC3oslF5HToSQeJqH50qFGPXNgCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h205/tempered%2Bglass.jpg" width="400" /></b></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"><b>Figure 3. </b>Tempered glass fractures into pellets <i>(click on the image to zoom in)</i>. All photos taken by me, showing shattered tempered glass (probably laminated) in a bus stop ad window and a grocery store display case (I guess people get upset about late buses and expensive dairy products?), a familiar sight of smashed car window glass on the ground, individual pellets, and a smashed window that I photographed (no, I didn’t do it) shortly before finalizing this article. The lamination membrane of the smashed car window is visible around the top of the hole. (For readers born in the 21st Century, that round copper thing for size comparison is a penny. You know, a 1-cent coin that will buy you approximately one pellet of smashed tempered glass. Um, a coin; you know, cash? The thing you don’t need a cell phone to—oh never mind…)</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>There’s an <a href="https://www.physicscentral.com/explore/action/safer-glass.cfm" target="_blank">interesting website about laminated and tempered glass</a> that was supposed to also have a video at that site showing how tempered glass breaks, but it’s not there. Instead, I found this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIMVge5TYz4" target="_blank">YouTube video</a> of two guys who clearly have the best job in the world, not to mention the best accents in the world, showing the breaking process in slow motion and I highly recommend you take a few minutes out to watch this whole thing because it just keeps getting better and better; best on a full screen of a computer monitor to be effective. (They say in the video that the glass was laminated, but I confirmed with one of them via e-mail that it was not laminated, and that it was indeed tempered.)</p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fK4c_1vUalw/YTHSPCXbx6I/AAAAAAAABCM/muxau2Qm2eAEPkRttPosPD-Zao8SMtmBACLcBGAsYHQ/s817/Fig%2B4%2BGlass%2BBreaking%2Bpatterns.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="405" data-original-width="817" height="159" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fK4c_1vUalw/YTHSPCXbx6I/AAAAAAAABCM/muxau2Qm2eAEPkRttPosPD-Zao8SMtmBACLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h159/Fig%2B4%2BGlass%2BBreaking%2Bpatterns.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"><b>Figure 4.</b> Breakage patterns of different kinds of <br />glass, from a <a href="https://www.peerlessproducts.com/blog/what-glass-should-you-be-choosing-for-all-over-performance-and-aesthetics" target="_blank">Peerless Products blog</a>.</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table>To my surprise, basic skyscraper glass is not even tempered nor laminated; rather it is heat-strengthened, according to several trade websites including this one from <a href="https://www.thermomax-group.com/high-rise-window-glass-construction/" target="_blank">Thermomax</a>. <b>Figure 4</b> is a nice graphic comparing how different kinds of glass breaks. Somehow the breakage pattern of heat-strengthened glass is not comforting to me. Apparently, heat-strengthened glass is preferred over tempered or laminated glass due to better optical qualities (giving new meaning to the phrase “killer views”?). However, I did get confirmation from the SF Dept of Building Inspections and online sources like that Thermomax website that floor-to-ceiling windows are required to be tempered and/or laminated glass; in fact, I believe that applies to any glass panel with a bottom edge less than 18 inches from the floor. So it sounds to me like, ironically, the all-glass towers about which the typical person worries the most are probably tempered/laminated and will remain intact, whereas the older style towers in which windows are interspersed within a concrete façade are likely to have the more dangerous consequences of glass breakage.<p></p><p>However, advances in how windows sit in their frames make modern buildings safer. The main expected challenges to window glass in a quake would be twisting and torquing of the window frame, rather than impact, unless something heavy flies toward the window and hits it. If the glass was securely attached to the frame, a little twisting could stress the pane, but glass panes that make up the envelope of modern glass towers are in flexible gasket mounts that allow them to float a bit in the frame, so the building can undergo a bit of flexing and twisting without forcing the glass panes to break. </p><p>It sounds to me that in my old mid-rise condo in SF’s Mission Bay neighborhood with floor-to-ceiling windows (Figure 1), even if furniture flew right toward the window, the glass would be unlikely to shatter or fall out; this is reassuring with regard to safety for the two-legged and four-legged occupants of such modern condos. Still, I tried to have relatively light furniture by those windows.</p><p>However, we are more concerned here with what is happening out on the street, and wondering if we can be safe in the middle of the street around tall buildings during a major quake in the typical downtown area, whether in the US or elsewhere in the world. I’ve found very few images of windows in tall buildings after major quakes, intact or otherwise, but the ones that I have found suggest that even if your downtown has a lot of modern buildings, the presence of older ones in the mix could make the ground below dangerous.</p><p>Here are some photos of post-quake glass that I think are notable. In <b>Figure 5</b>, the top shows sharp glass shards on the ground after the 2011 Christchurch, New Zealand quake. The lower left shows the area outside of a store in Napa, California after the 2014 quake; you can see tempered glass pellets but also an intact window pane that fell out (notably, ground floor commercial windows use glass that doesn’t have the same standards as tall building windows since it won’t fall very far, but I wanted to include it as an example of what windows can do). The lower right is probably the most compelling to me; it’s an actual sharp large glass fragment after the 1994 Northridge, California quake that fell from higher up and landed quite a few feet away from the building; apparently not from the broken window that is shown (note the shapes don’t match). The information accompanying the photo online says “Shard of broken untempered glass that fell several stories from a multistory building in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake” and this is exactly the sort of thing that concerns me in areas with a lot of older tall towers. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HjWSIxwhG64/YTHWNTqcYiI/AAAAAAAABCU/kNuLUv2Qc-kda3jMgmyi1xvn5z3eFUlWgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/window%2Bshards%2Bon%2Bground.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1561" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HjWSIxwhG64/YTHWNTqcYiI/AAAAAAAABCU/kNuLUv2Qc-kda3jMgmyi1xvn5z3eFUlWgCLcBGAsYHQ/w488-h640/window%2Bshards%2Bon%2Bground.jpg" width="488" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"><b>Figure 5. </b> More distressing street-level glass after earthquakes <i>(click images to zoom in)</i>. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Attributions counterclockwise from top: </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Glass shards on the ground</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">, by Andy Miah [</span><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;" target="_blank">CC BY-SA 2.0</a><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">], via </span><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFebruary_2011_Christchurch_earthquake_22.jpg" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">. Shattered and intact glass in Napa, </span><a href="https://twitter.com/WayneFreedman/status/503552790334283776" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/WayneFreedman/status/503552790334283776</a><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"> used with permission, @WayneFreedman and Abc7news.com. Glass shard on Northridge lawn, from a </span><a href="https://www.curee.org/organization/office/docs/2011_FEMA_E-74_Nonstructural.pdf" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;" target="_blank">FEMA report</a><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">, Figure 6.3.1.4-1; photo courtesy of Wiss, Jenney, Elstner Associates.</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I have one more photo by itself as Figure 6 so that you can more practically zoom in, as there is a lot of interesting detail when you do that; from the 2010 Chile quake, described at the source as “Glazing damage, due in part to pounding with the structure at right during the 2010 Chile Earthquake.” Notice all the glass out in the street, even from this relatively short building, and some of it is sharp shards. I’m not sure which structure on the right did the pounding, and you might suspect that the red ledge caused some of the glass to divert further out in to the street, but extenuating circumstances and exceptions tend to be, well, the rule.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pbXRyP5GLkA/YTHY0Yb1BCI/AAAAAAAABCc/mh-agciqrBAZVKRtVy0UKPSlZCoB3MuSQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1510/Fig%2B6%2BChile%2B2010%2Bglass%2Bshards%2Bin%2Bstreet%2Bfrom%2Bbuilding%2BFEMA.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1510" data-original-width="1366" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pbXRyP5GLkA/YTHY0Yb1BCI/AAAAAAAABCc/mh-agciqrBAZVKRtVy0UKPSlZCoB3MuSQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Fig%2B6%2BChile%2B2010%2Bglass%2Bshards%2Bin%2Bstreet%2Bfrom%2Bbuilding%2BFEMA.jpg" width="289" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"><b>Figure 6.</b> Chile 2010 glass shards in street from building <i>(click image to zoom in)</i>, from <a href="https://www.curee.org/organization/office/docs/2011_FEMA_E-74_Nonstructural.pdf" target="_blank">FEMA report</a>, <br />Figure 6.3.1.4-4; photo courtesy of Antonio Iruretagoyena, Rubn Boroscheck & Associates. </span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>So what are we to conclude from all this? I will say that I’ve come out of this with a much better appreciation of the strength of glass than before. If people are looking up at glassy towers and picturing the kind of glass in pitchers and single-family home plate glass windows that get shattered by a wayward baseball, that’s not what’s up there; it’s MUCH more resilient and the panels can float a bit within their frames, as I mentioned earlier. Many of these modern all-glass towers might get fractures in the glass but it will still stay intact. A retired building inspector pointed out to me that while the lowest floors of skyscrapers might experience flexing and torquing, the upper parts of the towers will be moving as a whole unit, and any damage to the windows would probably be mostly limited to that caused by impact from within, rather than the shaking. In fact, to be fair, all of the examples that I showed of smashed tempered glass in Figure 3 are from intentional impact, not shaking. </p><p>Building construction standards have varied greatly around the world and over time, and older buildings without strengthened/tempered/laminated glass probably lead to riskier street-level situations in major earthquakes than modern buildings do. My examples in Figures 2, 4, and 5 show that window glass CAN break. However, my investigation suggests to me that this breakage is relatively unlikely to occur high up in glassy towers, where panes will move within their gaskets and even any glass that fractures will be resistant to shattering, suggesting that the risks of being outside around skyscrapers are not worse in downtown tower areas than in regular commercial areas. And practically, trying to run into a building while other people are (erroneously) trying to run out isn’t going to work. I suppose getting as far from the buildings as possible out in the street (assuming traffic has stopped) is probably still the best thing to do, getting down on the ground and curling up as small as possible while covering your head, trying to avoid downed electrical wires.</p><p>Even still, I wonder if I can make a few bucks selling bullet-proof umbrellas in downtown San Francisco on the anniversary of the 1906 quake. Just a thought.</p><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a></div>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-3000641638762067482021-06-18T02:58:00.003-07:002022-12-27T14:50:30.493-08:00IMPORTANT changes coming soon to Quaketips e-mail subscriptions; subscribers please read this <a name='more'></a><p>Quaketips is alive and well, even though I haven't had a chance to write new articles since January. However, <u>the e-mail subscription system is changing</u> and this affects all current subscribers. Until now, this blogging platform (Blogger) has used Feedburner to collect subscriber e-mail addresses to automatically send new articles to them, but Google is ending this functionality at the end of June.</p><p>Therefore, I'm experimenting with alternatives, and I will try to use Mailchimp, which strikes me as a very responsible service with robust options to report spam. In setting up Mailchimp, I have turned off ALL of the options to track clicks or collect any information about what e-mail recipients are doing.</p><p>Because I have promised for years to not do anything with e-mail addresses that subscribers provide, I decided to not move everyone to Mailchimp en masse myself. Instead, in the spirit of using an "opt in" rather than "opt out" approach, <b>all e-mail subscribers will have to go to the <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com" target="_blank">blog</a> itself and put their e-mail address into the little e-mail subscription box again</b>, just like what you did initially. I don't think there is a verification e-mail step for Mailchimp like there was for the old system; I think you just enter your e-mail and you're signed up.</p><p>Apologies in advance but I'm a novice at this and there might be some extra or duplicate messages that get sent out; please just bear with me as I work through it.</p><p>I hope you have all been enjoying Quaketips and that you'll take this extra step to show up on the new subscription list! </p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a></p>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-19406634252535864272021-01-13T01:26:00.005-08:002021-09-03T01:22:05.492-07:00 MRE shelf life follow-up follow-up: Ever wonder what a 21-year-old MRE tastes like?<a name='more'></a><p><b><i>“Previously, on Quaketips”</i></b></p><p><i>2013:</i> <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2013/10/mre-shelf-life-follow-up-ever-wonder.html" target="_blank">MRE shelf-life follow-up: Ever wonder what a 14-year-old MRE tastes like?</a></p><p>“Several days ago, I ate an MRE with an 'expiration date' of 2005, and lived to tell about it.”</p><p>“...May of 2011, I wrote an article about MREs in which I reported that while MREs have long had charts from suppliers showing shelf lives as long as 10 years depending on ambient room storage temperature, the official estimated shelf lives had recently been made considerably shorter. However, I also reported that this was based not on “going bad” but instead on subjective taster opinions about when the meals were no longer at their best flavor and texture, and that there was every reason to think that they would be edible and not harmful for years to come.”</p><p>“I purchased a new batch (this will be 2013-2020), planning to keep the remaining 2005-2012 MREs as backup, and found again that a new meal that I tried was better than the expired 2005-2012 MRE, but the expired one was not bad. So naturally, I had to find out what had happened to the ones with 2005 expiration that I had been keeping as a back-up.”</p><p>“...the 2005 ‘expired’ meal, which was packaged in 1999, was about as good in 2013 as it probably would have been in 2005.”</p><p>“However, I think I’ll stash one or two of them away to test in 2020, out of morbid curiosity, and I’ll report back...I guess that means I’m committing to this blog for at least 7 more years!”</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i>And now, the conclusion:</i></b></p><p>2020 was the target year that I set forth in my earlier article, 7 years before that. Not that there’s anything magic about 7 years; it was the approximate stated life of the MREs stored at the temperature of the closet in which they had been stored for 7 years before that. My current closet is colder, so that would presumably increase the time window for this somewhat arbitrary guideline, so it’s ok to do it in 2021.</p><p>OK, actually, the reason I waited until 2021 to try my 21-year-old MRE was because it simply seemed like a bad idea to try eating theoretically expired food in the year 2020…</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i2SEuO75cME/X_EmuJTneaI/AAAAAAAAA9Q/cGXZZFMMoWcpLlNWPyDI9_hDcvpzFCoYgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/old%2BMRE.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i2SEuO75cME/X_EmuJTneaI/AAAAAAAAA9Q/cGXZZFMMoWcpLlNWPyDI9_hDcvpzFCoYgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/old%2BMRE.JPG" /></a></div>So on January 1st, 2021, I dug out this very old MRE that has been sitting in my emergency supplies all these years. With anticipation, I opened the outer package. No goblins or hairy things emerged. More importantly, there was no bad aroma, and no ballooning packages. Interestingly though, there was a slight smell of mint when I opened the outer package, which turns out to have been from the pair of green (I presume that was the original color) spearmint chewing gum squares that were wrapped in cellophane inside the package of napkins and spoon, inside another thick sealed plastic bag. I don’t recall that happening in the identical menu MRE that I tried in 2013.<br /><p></p><p>So that means that some molecules can very slowly pass through multiple layers of plastic if given a couple of decades. Keep that in mind (foreshadowing!)</p><p>I remembered that the jam does not age well, so I opened the jam for the heck of it and sure enough, very dark and gloppy.</p><p>The chocolate covered oatmeal cookie was PERFECT. I mean it was really delicious, no hint of anything wrong, it was EXACTLY like its siblings of various younger ages. I ate the whole thing as a New Year’s Day dessert. Good stuff.</p><p>The crackers were in reasonable shape but there was just the slightest aroma of old cooking oil or old nuts (oxidized oils). I took a bite and it was fine but it had the slightest old taste to go with the old smell, so I opted to not continue.</p><p>The real discovery was the beef stew entrée itself. I already knew from last time to expect it to not look appetizing until it was heated up, and this indeed was again the case. However, unlike 2013, this had a mild old oil smell like the crackers. I would not say rancid; it was not terrible but since the mildly unpleasant aroma was there, I decided to not eat any. I don’t think it would have made me sick but something was clearly off that wasn’t off 7 years before.</p><p>This mild odor suggests to me that the process that ultimately makes old MREs undesirable is slow lipid oxidation of the natural fats and/or added oils. Since nothing was growing in the MREs after 14 years (for that matter, after even just a few months), I don’t feel that one would get food poisoning. However, it sounds like enough oxygen was able to get into the beef stew and the cracker packages, despite their individual vacuum-packaging and the outer bag, that the oils were oxidizing over 21 years to the point that the food was affected. So my recommendation from this experience would be that while 2 lifetimes are probably fine, don't push it to 3 lifetimes.</p><p>However, here’s an important point to consider. These late 20th Century MREs have partially hydrogenated oils in the ingredients lists of most of their components, and one of the reasons that partially hydrogenated oils used to be popular in the food industry was that they were very stable and could bestow a long shelf life on baked goods and Oreos and Pop-Tarts, etc. They were phased out of the food supply (at least in the US) many years ago though, because of our modern understanding of their harmful cardiovascular effects. I did notice some partially hydrogenated oils included in the "sub-ingredients" of something called grill seasoning in some of the more modern MREs, but it's presumably at lower levels than before. I wonder if as a result, this lipid oxidation will occur faster in modern MREs and their shelf-lives will thus be shorter than the MREs made in the late 1990s. </p><p>As a result, what any of us learn about currently old MREs may not be applicable to modern MREs when they reach a comparable old age. </p><p>Now a limitation, as we would say when describing a scientific experiment, is that this was “an n of 1;” that is, it was just one MRE and perhaps it’s the exception rather than the rule. However, in 2013, I tried several of the 1999 MREs including one with identical ingredients to this one, and all of them were fine; and in this MRE, more than one component had the old oil smell. That makes me pretty confident that what I’ve observed is real (at least for Mil-Spec brand MREs).</p><p>So my conclusion from this very long experiment with pre-Y2K rations is to keep "expired" MREs around as a back-up set for one extra shelf-life. And with that, I think I'll stop looking for old food to eat--although--wait, didn't the ancient Egyptians leave food in the crypts with their deceased Pharaohs? Hmm...</p><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com" target="_blank">>>Back to blog</a></div>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-14349255139490814642020-11-02T15:25:00.003-08:002021-01-13T01:30:37.054-08:00Command Strips for picture hanging, 3 years later: A couple of failures to report<a name='more'></a>I’ve written two articles (<a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2016/08/are-command-picture-hanging-strips-as.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2018/02/command-picture-hanging-strips-for.html" target="_blank">here</a>) about hanging pictures with Command Picture Hanging Strips (the interlocking double Velcro style), and I continue to be pretty impressed by them, but it’s important to come back a few years later and discuss how they have been holding up. Since these work by non-permanent adhesion rather than by a physical object like a nail in the wall, we basically take it on faith that the adhesive will hold. </p><p>As it turns out, I’ve had three partial or total failures, but don’t panic; they are special cases. None of the optimally mounted pictures have fallen. Here are the conditions that have caused problems:</p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pF26DjZnx1s/X6CQylbjFBI/AAAAAAAAA8A/tzVCDWeuqgIE0ItPrqRnhJEjZLBUjkj3ACLcBGAsYHQ/s2658/peeling%2Band%2Bintact%2Bstrips%2Bfrom%2B2018.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1183" data-original-width="2658" height="178" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pF26DjZnx1s/X6CQylbjFBI/AAAAAAAAA8A/tzVCDWeuqgIE0ItPrqRnhJEjZLBUjkj3ACLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h178/peeling%2Band%2Bintact%2Bstrips%2Bfrom%2B2018.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><b>Command Strips on picture mounted in 2017. </b>The one on the right has<br />pulled away from the wall due to having been adhered to a warped frame.<br />(Click the image to enlarge)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><b>#1 Warped picture frame:</b> I’ve known about this problem since shortly after I mounted the picture in 2017. The wall is flat and the picture frame was warped, so when I pressed all four corners to the wall (actually the top corners and the bottom about 1/3 up as they suggest), it didn’t take long for the frame’s natural warp to defeat the adhesive of the strip in that corner. However, part of that strip is still adhered and the other strips are adhered, and it doesn’t appear to have shifted since I mounted it; so I consider it more of an FYI than a failure. I actually mentioned this in my <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2018/02/command-picture-hanging-strips-for.html" target="_blank">2018 follow-up article</a> about Command strips and included the figure that I’m re-using here.<p></p><p><b>#2 Non-stick backing paper:</b> Ok, it’s probably not meant to be non-stick, but it basically is. This is an illustrated flat soft (probably balsawood) multi-panel that my wife has had for years; that is, several panels next to each other with a single piece of backing paper that results in flexible joints between panels, but when it’s completely flat, the panels make one unbroken surface that is illustrated. My wife had mounted it to the wall by putting a single small nail between the two center panels, and a slight bulging out of the panels had partially pulled out the nail so it was rather precariously hanging… over the toilet in a bathroom. Since I figured it would not even take an earthquake to make that thing fall, I re-mounted it with Command strips in 2017. However, I found that it was hard to do because the paper was slightly waxy and it didn’t seem like the adhesive strips were sticking very well. So, I put duct tape wherever I planned to put a Command strip, and adhered the strips to the back of the duct tape rather than to the backing paper. Smart, eh?</p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zHRvDeKyguA/X6CQx63aI8I/AAAAAAAAA8I/hAZ3f8FteS4Y-Xobm0Omuh2A56HGhToGQCPcBGAYYCw/s2044/panel%2Bfigure.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="759" data-original-width="2044" height="149" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zHRvDeKyguA/X6CQx63aI8I/AAAAAAAAA8I/hAZ3f8FteS4Y-Xobm0Omuh2A56HGhToGQCPcBGAYYCw/w400-h149/panel%2Bfigure.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><span><b>Multi-panel wood wall hanging with uncooperative backing paper<br /></b></span><span>(Click the image to enlarge)</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p></p>Except that it turns out that even duct tape doesn’t stick perfectly to that backing paper (I always thought duct tape sticks to EVERYTHING). The darned thing spontaneously fell a few months ago (the toilet lid was closed, thank goodness) and it turned out that the Command strips themselves were still strongly attached to both the wall and the duct tape, but the duct tape had separated from the backing paper! The panel with its backing paper had slowly slide down against the duct tape that was adhered to the Command strip, and finally failed. So without any really optimal way to mount that panel, I started over again, put MUCH larger pieces of duct tape on the back so it will be much harder for it to slip against the backing paper, put the adhesive strips on the duct tape, and put another nail in where the original one had been. The nail alone was not sufficient originally, but putting it back prevents the panel from sliding down due to gravity, and the combination should work I think. I neglected to photograph the back while I was doing this, and it’s a pain to get it lined up so you don’t get to see it, but here are photos of what the panel looks like and side views of the Command strips and the duct tape. You might be able to see the nail in the close-up; I colored it in so it’s not obvious.<p></p><p>This is a pretty unusual case, and might even be exacerbated by being in a bathroom in which showers are taken frequently; humidity probably did not help.</p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jNtihd2STQA/X6CQxxOKx1I/AAAAAAAAA8M/s_sQNWeMmJcOuCLGmz-MIeWOk9DZXvtfwCPcBGAYYCw/s1687/fallen%2Bbathroom%2Bframes.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="1687" height="364" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jNtihd2STQA/X6CQxxOKx1I/AAAAAAAAA8M/s_sQNWeMmJcOuCLGmz-MIeWOk9DZXvtfwCPcBGAYYCw/w400-h364/fallen%2Bbathroom%2Bframes.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><b><span>Poor adherence to plastic trim </span></b><span>(Click the image to enlarge)</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><b>#3 Frame with a step:</b> It’s pretty obvious that an adhesive surface works best when completely matched with the surface to which it is supposed to stick. However, we had two small framed photos in a different bathroom on a wall and I wanted to make sure they would not fall in a quake because Milo the dog actually likes to fluff up the little rug around the toilet and then lie down on the OTHER rug by the sink (don’t ask me why), right under those pictures. I don’t like having things above that spot that can fall, even if small and light. These frames aren’t conducive to <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2011/04/amazing-story-from-past-and-more-about.html" target="_blank">maze picture hooks</a>, so I originally stuck them up with Command strips (there were photos in my follow-up article to illustrate how black Command strips can be better for black frames even on a white wall).<br /><p></p><p>However, similarly to what I described in #2, they started sliding down slowly and one of them finally failed. In this case, they had been attached directly to the back of the frame, so this really is an example of the adhesive not being strong enough. There’s no shower in this bathroom so we can’t blame humidity.</p><p>What made this another unusual example was that these frames were odd; the back of the frame was very thin and the picture and backboard were pushed in relative to the frame back, so there was essentially a thin trim and a step. The adhesive strip thus did not have a full surface to stick to, and I just stuck them to the trim and some of the adhesive was just out in the air. Apparently, this plastic is somewhat hard to stick to, and the combination of that and the small area actually being attached resulted in them losing their adherence over time.</p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pViT6jjAetM/X6CQxwX9JSI/AAAAAAAAA8E/kxPjnzrz35EWGIBNMGPW2frORlrRc8zOwCPcBGAYYCw/s1762/fixed%2Bbathroom%2Bframes.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="694" data-original-width="1762" height="158" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pViT6jjAetM/X6CQxwX9JSI/AAAAAAAAA8E/kxPjnzrz35EWGIBNMGPW2frORlrRc8zOwCPcBGAYYCw/w400-h158/fixed%2Bbathroom%2Bframes.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><span><b>Leveling out the step to bring the backing into the plane<br />of the plastic trim </b></span><span>(Click the image to enlarge)</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table>My solution was kind of like what I did for #2 but more complex, as you can see in the photos. First, I put thin boards that I happen to have (they used to be dividers in small drawers) in the areas that I wanted to attach with Command strips. They are just thick enough to fill the gap behind the frame “step” so now there’s surface area for the entire adhesive strip to contact; and some of the material is the wood rather than the plastic; better adhesion. I taped them in place with LOTS of duct tape. I stuck Command strips to the combination trim/boards, and this time, I used larger Command strips than before. They seem to be pretty stable.<br /><p></p><p>I should also acknowledge what I have heard from a few people, that adherence of Command strips to interior walls is pretty reliable in temperate climates, but places that have more extreme temperature swings can experience shrinking and expansion of the walls that weaken the bond. I would think that interior temperature control would prevent that, but perhaps it’s a problem where people set their heaters and AC conservatively.</p><p>So the bottom line then is that I still like these Command picture hanging strips for sticking items to the walls, but it seems like straying too far from their officially intended use can be risky. </p><p>Hmm, I must be losing my touch; I like to end articles on a pun whenever possible but I can’t think of any I haven’t already used. I’m stuck—OH!</p><div><br /></div><div><a href="quaketips.blogspot.com" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a></div>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-70756103009695768872020-07-23T22:17:00.001-07:002020-11-02T15:27:34.980-08:00Hmm, your plumbing might be out for a while (or, “Quaketips descends into bathroom humor”)<a name='more'></a>(WARNING: This article contains graphic mentions of bodily functions and should not be read while eating lunch)<br />
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I’ve got some uncomfortable news for you. One of the first shortages in the US during the COVID-19 crisis was toilet paper, so suddenly TP is the must-have emergency supply. However, in the aftermath of a major earthquake, if your plumbing is out of commission for a while, having emergency toilet paper may not cut it. I mean, we have needs, if you get my drift. Without working toilets, what are we going to do, put poop in a bag like our dogs or use litterboxes like our cats?<br />
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Well actually, yeah, that pretty much describes what we are going to do! This is the perfect use for compact foldable camping toilets, which are basically a seat that empties into a bag that contains chemicals that disinfect and deodorize your waste. If you think that sounds distressing, compare it to the alternatives: NOT having a foldable camping toilet, or not pooping.<br />
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I must admit that it took me over 13 years of giving talks and over 9 years of writing this blog before realizing that I hadn’t provided for such eventualities, and I did a bit of research about it. There are a few different kinds of camping toilets out there, and I was able to glean quite a bit of information about them from simply reading Amazon reviews.<br />
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It seems some of them have a high risk of collapsing or falling over as you are sitting on them. I can’t even… let’s not even go there.<br />
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Another distressing feature that should be avoided: Something that reached out and grabbed me in these reviews was that some of these toilets reach out and grab you, and this is not the kind of earthquake-induced injury that sounds impressive to relate to people years later.<br />
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(There’s one review in particular that had me absolutely on the floor laughing hysterically. At the risk of turning this family-friendly blog into a PG-13 feature, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RTMQGRSDIN1H6/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B0024OAQ3Q" target="_blank">I’ll link to it</a> assuming the link is permanent.)<br />
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I ended up ordering the GO anywhere portable toilet by Cleanwaste. (This is not intended to be a product endorsement and I have had no contact with the company, nor do I have any relevant financial interests.) I’m not suggesting this as part of the portable kit, but it could come in really handy if stuck at home with a bunch of TP.<br />
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I think the only disadvantage I can see is that after unfolding the legs, it’s really hard to fold them back into position unless you use a screwdriver or some other similar tool to help you push some plastic tabs into their positions.<br />
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Now, longtime readers of this blog will know that I typically like to end articles on a light note with some attempted humor. It seems like a no-brainer that an article about portable toilets would have some great endings, but actually, I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t just too obvious (like flushing jokes). And then I was listening to a radio ad about some short term assistance loan program or something, and heard the announcer say, “There are relief programs available.” I don’t think I can top that…<br />
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<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a><br />
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<br />Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-64465639513383974162020-04-18T13:31:00.001-07:002020-07-23T22:19:07.953-07:00Masks for fires and earthquakes aren't necessarily good for pandemics<a name='more'></a>I haven't posted an article in a while because I've been spending a lot of time handling various impacts of COVID-19 on my "day job" research, but I wanted to surface briefly to mention an important point. Many people have face masks in their emergency kits in case they need to deal with rubble and dust after a quake. In places like California that have had major wildfires recently, even many people who don't prepare for quakes have N95 respirators left over from those smoke episodes, and many of those masks have a "cool valve" one-way vent that opens outward and makes breathing more comfortable. <br />
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<b>It's important to realize that these masks protect the wearer from outside hazards (including germs from other people), but do not protect other people from the wearer.</b><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TdyatGVrnvc/Xpti3RYMgpI/AAAAAAAAA4M/szVL6MWAQZYM_lCa6IK0s1m5AcFGbGB8wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/IMG_0588.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="986" data-original-width="1600" height="246" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TdyatGVrnvc/Xpti3RYMgpI/AAAAAAAAA4M/szVL6MWAQZYM_lCa6IK0s1m5AcFGbGB8wCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/IMG_0588.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Click image to get full sized version suitable for sharing</span></td></tr>
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This is crucial because the point of wearing face coverings in public, which is becoming common guidance around the world, is not so much to protect you (they don't do a great job of that) but more to protect other people from you if you are infected but don't know it, and are producing large respiratory droplets full of virus. Many people who have the virus don't have any symptoms and don't realize they have it, but can still be contagious, and this is now being estimated to account for a huge amount of community spread.<br />
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If you are exhaling virus, and you wear a mask with a one-way vent, then you are exhaling that virus unimpeded at anyone else who is nearby, and most of the point of wearing the mask is wasted.<br />
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(This is not a concern if a healthcare worker is wearing a mask to protect them from an infectious patient; then it's appropriate.) <br />
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So please, even if you feel fine and are wearing a mask out in public (and especially if you are wearing a mask because you are sick and want to prevent exposing other people in the home), do not use masks with one-way valves! Please share the graphic that I put together. Better to spread the word, than to spread the virus.<br />
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<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a><br />
<br />Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-91826896480303739792019-12-25T18:25:00.007-08:002022-12-27T14:55:21.373-08:00The Western United States finally has an earthquake early warning system, but you have to order your own milkshake<a name='more'></a><i style="background-color: #fcff01;">[12/27/22 note: some of the information in this article is now out of date; a <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-western-us-shakealert-system-is.html" target="_blank">new article</a> that describes recent developments has been posted]</i><br /><div><br /></div><div>“MyShake” is: (A) The name of a line dance from the ‘70s, (B) an earthquake early warning system interface on your phone, (C) an app that places orders for home-delivered milkshakes, or (D) a truly major typo for “asparagus.” The answer is… B! Yes, after lagging way behind several other countries that have had earthquake early warning systems for years (like Japan, Taiwan, Mexico, Romania, Italy, China, and Turkey), the western United States is rolling out its <i><a href="https://www.shakealert.org/" target="_blank">ShakeAlert™</a></i> system, which sends alerts to enrolled cells phones using the <a href="https://myshake.berkeley.edu/" target="_blank">MyShake™ app</a> from UC Berkeley that is available for iPhone and Android phones.<br />
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At this point, there’s a lot of information available about the MyShake app, but I was unclear on a few points and contacted the folks at the <a href="https://seismo.berkeley.edu/" target="_blank">Berkeley Seismology Lab</a> to clarify. I figured that it would be worthwhile to pass along what I learned. So this is not a comprehensive description of ShakeAlert and MyShake, which can be found online, but instead covers these extra points of info.<br />
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The short description of how it works is that it is not really a prediction that a quake will occur; it’s a notification that a quake has already occurred somewhere and will reach you soon. Unless you are right over the epicenter, this should give you at least a few seconds of advance warning to <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-burning-question-what-happens-to.html" target="_blank">extinguish candles or other flames </a>and to <a href="https://www.earthquakecountry.org/step5/" target="_blank">drop, cover, and hold on</a> (getting under something if possible, <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2011/03/important-information-about-recurring.html" target="_blank">NOT getting next to something</a>, NOT under a doorway, <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2011/07/should-i-stay-or-should-i-gothe.html" target="_blank">NOT running out of a building</a> (<a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2015/04/do-collapsed-buildings-in-nepal-mean.html" target="_blank">see also here</a>)). The US Geological Survey (USGS) has a <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/earthquake-early-warning-basics-0" target="_blank">nice graphic and description</a> that I’ve reprinted here:<br />
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“Earthquake early warning systems like ShakeAlert™ work because the warning message can be transmitted almost instantaneously, whereas the shaking waves from the earthquake travel through the shallow layers of the Earth at speeds of one to a few kilometers per second (0.5 to 3 miles per second). This diagram shows how such a system would operate. When an earthquake occurs, both compressional (P) waves and transverse (S) waves radiate outward from the epicenter. The P wave, which travels fastest, trips sensors placed in the landscape, causing alert signals to be sent ahead, giving people and automated electronic systems some time (seconds to minutes) to take precautionary actions before damage can begin with the arrival of the slower but stronger S waves and later-arriving surface waves. Computers and mobile phones receiving the alert message calculate the expected arrival time and intensity of shaking at your location. USGS image created by Erin Burkett (USGS) and Jeff Goertzen (Orange County Register).”<br />
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This system, which has resulted from a collaboration between the USGS, UC Berkeley Seismology Lab, and several other seismic networks, foundations, and west coast universities (<a href="https://www.usgs.gov/natural-hazards/shakealert/partners" target="_blank">here’s a complete list</a>), has gotten a lot of press coverage in California, Oregon, and Washington as it has taken shape over the years. The MyShake app itself was created by the Berkeley Seismology Lab and delivers alerts from the ShakeAlert system courtesy of the USGS and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.<br />
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Getting the app is easy; just download it for free from the App Store for iPhones or Google Play for Android phones. <br />
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One common point of confusion is the difference between “notifications” and “alerts,” since MyShake has both of them. <u>Alerts</u> are specific to your phone’s location and come from the ShakeAlert system augmented by built-in motion sensors in the enrolled phones. They are sent to any phones in the region that is expected to soon have significant shaking. <u>Notifications</u> are user-specified and let you know when large earthquakes happen anywhere in the world; they are basically just news. So you can choose to have the notifications turned entirely off, and still get the early warning predictions from the app if you are about to experience shaking.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-STBGExZ77jk/XgQYYv3Gc_I/AAAAAAAAA14/0xtlicXZ-EAwp6QfAe0-3agv06mEHOtuACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Vanuatu.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="861" data-original-width="1600" height="170" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-STBGExZ77jk/XgQYYv3Gc_I/AAAAAAAAA14/0xtlicXZ-EAwp6QfAe0-3agv06mEHOtuACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Vanuatu.jpg" width="320" /></a>As is pretty obvious from reading the reviews of the MyShake app for iPhone on the App Store, many people are confused about this point, especially since you can set a location preference on Android phones to be notified when quakes hit in specific regions of interest, but on iPhones, you can just have global notifications turned on or off, with no control over the location. That makes the notifications aspect pretty useless on iPhones (after being notified by my phone that an earthquake had hit Vanuatu, I turned off notifications). The MyShake folks hope to be able to change that on iPhones; no guarantee. <i style="background-color: #fcff01;">[12/27/22 update: they fixed this; now iPhone users can also tailor the location of these notifications, as described in my <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-western-us-shakealert-system-is.html" target="_blank">12/27/22 article</a>]</i><br />
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For more information on this point, here’s what they told me: “Earthquake early warning alerts will only be sent to phones in the estimated area of shaking in California for Magnitude 4.5 or higher quakes. Those are automatic and you don't need to set anything. You just need your location services enabled (so we know the phone is in the shaking area). Notifications are a separate service we have, which you can turn on or off. For those, you can be notified when earthquakes that interest you are published in the global USGS catalog (after they occur). On iOS you can choose to get global alerts, for Android you can also set custom alerts by clicking the green plus button at the bottom of the notifications setting tab.”<br />
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Why the strange limitation to only global notifications on iPhones? “…Apple's OS is very different from Android. We do not want to have to register people with a traditional login that requires email and other personal identifiable information. We don't want that because we want to protect people's privacy. Because we do not require a traditional login like that, we also cannot save user preferences on our backend. I don't know if phone A likes to know about earthquakes in Vanuatu, or if they only care about Florida. All I know on the backend is that phone A was at some location at some point in the last two hours.”<br />
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<i>[Matt note: "Earthquakes? In FLORIDA??? Mooooo…. " (Let’s see if anyone gets that reference from an old <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/johnson/article/Berkeley-Farms-milks-competition-2526496.php" target="_blank">Berkeley Farms commercial</a>…)]</i><br />
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“So, on Android, I can send a bunch of earthquake notification information to the phone, the app will wake up and decide whether that information applies to the user settings on the phone, and then if it does, the notification will pop up telling the user about an earthquake of interest. Apple does not work that way. You cannot send a bunch of information to the phone and have the phone decide whether it applies. You cannot on iOS have the phone run a bit of code and make decisions if the phone is asleep or the app is not in active use. Thus, no custom notifications possible using the current setup we have.”<br />
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“Alerts are different. There are no user settings customizing the experience. We just determine which phones are in the area and send an alert to all of them. The phones do not have to decide if the alerts apply to them, because we already did that on the backend.”<br />
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Another point that had concerned me was that even if we have Notifications turned off, I was worried that earthquake alerts, if sent out in situations that the shaking was not going to be terrible, could cause sudden distractions with terrible consequences. The Amber alerts on my phone got turned off the first time it ever squealed loudly due to a reported kidnapping hundreds of miles away; we don't want to do that to concerts and to situations like Cirque du Soleil shows where a bunch of sudden alarms could cause a surprised acrobat to fall, or while the dentist is holding the drill 1 mm away from your tongue.<br />
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The MyShake folks answered my query as follows: “We do not override user phone volume settings, so if the phone is on vibrate, it will just vibrate. People hate it when Amber alerts go off when they don't want them to, so we did not want to start messing with overriding people's settings. It also will not override a do not disturb.” <b><span style="background-color: #fcff01;">[12/21/22 important update: this changed a while ago; currently, the MyShake app DOES make your phone sound the audible alert even when Do Not Disturb is turned on.]</span></b><br />
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So it's good to know that we can have this active without risking those sudden audible interruptions. On the other hand though, if only activated when a large quake is actually about to occur, one could argue that the quake itself is already going to have those negative effects, so we might as well all be forewarned. Perhaps the wisest course is for dentists and surgeons to not have these alerts armed in their immediate procedure space, but to have someone in the next room able to receive these alerts who has the capability to notify the person holding the knife in a gentler way, such as an overhead announcement. Taken to technological extremes, the alert could even feed directly into such an announcement system, in much the same way that the alerts are envisioned to automatically open fire station doors, slow down public transit trains, etc.<br />
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One point that I think is important is that they are not going to be able to satisfy everyone. When the Ridgecrest quakes hit Southern California on July 4-5, 2019 (magnitudes 6.4, 5.4, and 7.1), ShakeAlertLA had already been rolled out but it did not warn people about the shaking in LA, which was far enough away from the epicenter that the local shaking was under the magnitude for which the app had been set to activate. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2019-07-14/earthquake-warning-shakealert-app-worked" target="_blank">As reported by the LA Times on July 15, 2019</a>, “But after the blowback that followed the Ridgecrest quakes July 4 and 5, officials agreed to lower the mark. By the end of July, the app will send alerts for local quakes with a magnitude of at least 4.5 and for any quake that results in ‘weak’ shaking locally despite officials’ concern that too many warnings could lead to complacency. ‘We want you to see the alert and immediately drop, cover and hold on,’ said Robert de Groot, the USGS’ ShakeAlert national coordinator. ‘If you see 30 of those a day, you’re either going to get incredible muscle tone and a core workout, or you’re going to stop reacting altogether.’”<br />
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(I love that quote and simply had to include it.)<br />
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<span style="background-color: orange;">I mentioned this earlier, but I’ll say it again here because I think it’s really important: If you get an advance warning of an earthquake, or even if you don’t and suddenly there’s an earthquake, you are indeed supposed to drop, cover, and hold on, but <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-burning-question-what-happens-to.html" target="_blank">if you have a candle or other active flame, your #1 priority before all else is to put it out!</a></span><br />
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By the way, if you go to <a href="http://shakealert.org/">shakealert.org</a>, you’ll see that seismologists love acronyms. The page looks like people were playing scrabble when an earthquake hit, and you’re looking at the floor afterwards. Notably, the USGS and the ANSS with the PNSN and the CISN, which is made up of the SCSN and the NCS (no mention of CSI or NCIS) are sending special messages like CAP for IPAWS/WEA in this EEW system. I feel better already.<br />
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<a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">>>Back to blog</a></div>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-5427334892339989522019-10-07T00:19:00.003-07:002019-12-25T18:26:28.527-08:00Earthquake Safety: What about Hanging Art from Picture Moldings?<a name='more'></a><span style="color: #38761d;">This month, Quaketips hosts guest blogger Fred von Lohmann. Fred attended one of my talks and absolutely stumped me with a question about hanging pictures on picture moldings (a.k.a. picture rails) in homes with lathe and plaster walls. In all these years, nobody had ever asked me about that before, and in all these years, I had never lived in a home without drywall and simply wasn’t aware that these things existed. Now I know they were the only game in town for a few hundred years, until just about 80 years ago.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">Fred said he’d find some more information about the topic for me, and got back to me with basically an entire article, so he agreed to let me run it as a guest article pretty much as is, with no editing on my part other than to stitch together a few of his photos. So without further ado, take it away Fred, and thanks!</span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EXBSlZ5LMWA/XZrj7ORrq6I/AAAAAAAAA0U/Hrq3-MjGihY5C_vcClg9pR1h8fAzo3-OQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="560" data-original-width="280" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EXBSlZ5LMWA/XZrj7ORrq6I/AAAAAAAAA0U/Hrq3-MjGihY5C_vcClg9pR1h8fAzo3-OQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/1.jpg" width="160" /></a>Before the 1940s, it was <a href="https://www.oldhouseonline.com/interiors-and-decor/how-to-hang-pictures-in-an-old-house" target="_blank">common</a> for houses to have picture moldings (also known as crown moldings, or picture rail moldings) for hanging art, rather than using nails and picture hooks affixed to the wall. And since nearly half of San Francisco’s housing stock was built before 1940, a lot of us rely on these picture moldings today (renters often have no choice, as leases frequently forbid making holes in the lath-and-plaster walls that are common in 100 year old houses). Surprisingly, however, there’s almost no discussion out there of how to secure art hung this way in the event of an earthquake.<br />
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Here’s a picture of a small frame hung in my house from a molding hook in the traditional manner. I’ve used fishing line (sorry, hard to see!) tied to eye hooks on the back of the frame. The fishing line then rests on the lower hook of the brass molding hook, while the upper portion of the molding hook rests on the molding itself.<br />
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There are several different sorts of picture molding hooks out there (see photo below), but all of them seem vulnerable in the event of an earthquake. First, there is nothing to prevent molding hooks from jumping off the picture molding in the event of a big quake. Second, the wire or cord holding up the picture frame could jump off the molding hook. (The good news, however, is that since the wire or cord is generally attached to the back of the picture frame, at least that connection will be secure.) <br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fns_RgLJMCo/XZrj7BLubUI/AAAAAAAAA00/Dy-MaJ9lDeoE4e_IfhgUPrlrQu4s0ozRQCEwYBhgL/s1600/2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="185" data-original-width="370" height="160" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fns_RgLJMCo/XZrj7BLubUI/AAAAAAAAA00/Dy-MaJ9lDeoE4e_IfhgUPrlrQu4s0ozRQCEwYBhgL/s320/2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
So what can be done? Well, one possibility is to screw the molding hook directly into the picture molding. Some brass molding hooks come with a hole to make this relatively easy (see photo below). But this still leaves the problem of the wire or cord attached to the picture frame jumping out of the relatively shallow lower part of the hook. This lower hook could probably be bent to make it deeper and more secure, and the wire or cable could perhaps be looped around the hook twice. But without having any way to close the top of the hook, the risk remains (although friends have suggested using museum putty to fill the gap).<br />
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In my case, after doing quite a bit of online searching, I discovered picture molding hardware that seemed to solve most of the problem. A company called <a href="https://www.gallerysystem.com/picture-hanging-systems/molding-hooks" target="_blank">Gallery System Art Displays</a> sells a hanging system designed for picture moldings that solves two out of three problems (here’s a UK <a href="https://picturehangingdirect.co.uk/victorian-moulding-picture-hanging/333-moulding-hook-steel-cable-kit.html" target="_blank">alternative system</a> that looks similar, but I’ve not tried it). The system consists of a molding hook (you can have brass or stainless steel) that has a captive metal cable that hangs down. A separate secure hook attaches to the cable, from which you can hang pictures (up to 44 pounds) using whatever you would use to attach it to a nail and picture hook. The secure hook slides up and down on the captive wire, allowing you to adjust the height of your picture. This also makes it much easier to adjust than the “cable triangle” that you have to rig up with traditional molding hooks. The bad news is that it’s not cheap: the hardware comes to about $20 per painting. As usual, a few photos make all this clearer than words. (You’ll see that I’ve left the additional wire hanging below my picture to the right, but you can trim the “tail”, if you prefer.)<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oV5PetziQS8/XZrlvdcFxfI/AAAAAAAAA1A/9VDFhfzD_iURt3W_nkACVzSqXa1LRQC5ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/456.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="409" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oV5PetziQS8/XZrlvdcFxfI/AAAAAAAAA1A/9VDFhfzD_iURt3W_nkACVzSqXa1LRQC5ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/456.jpg" width="312" /></a>This system still leaves the risk that the brass molding hook will jump off of the picture molding. In order to mitigate (but probably not eliminate) that risk, I added a pat of museum putty between the hook and the molding, which should help prevent it from jumping off, particularly since the design of the cable system should prevent the picture from putting any upward pressure on the hook itself. <br />
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As with lots of things, it’s not perfect, but it strikes the right mix of strengths for me.<br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">(As mentioned up top, this article was guest-written by Fred von Lohmann. Feel free to add comments, but you can e-mail Fred directly with questions at fred@vonlohmann.com.) </span><br />
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<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">>>Back to blog</a><br />
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<br />Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-2465929117565907982019-09-07T23:08:00.000-07:002019-10-07T00:20:25.883-07:00A novel solution: bracing floor lamps with plants<a name='more'></a>In 2016, I posted an article in which I asked “<a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2016/02/special-challenges-can-you-seismically.html" target="_blank">Can you seismically brace floor lamps and house plants? Should you?</a>”. I was addressing the challenges specific to torchiere-style floor lamps, which can be difficult to brace to prevent them from falling over and causing damage or injury with their axe—I mean bowl—on top unless they are the type with plastic bowls; and various challenges with houseplants caused by the drainage saucer that they frequently include.<br />
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Well, one company got in touch with me and let me know about a really innovative solution to both of those problems: combine them! No, I’m not talking about glowing plants or Christmas trees, I’m referring to their SmartFit Planter that is a floor plant pot that wraps around the pole of a floor lamp and weighs it down to the floor (see <a href="https://www.sfplanter.com/" target="_blank">https://www.sfplanter.com</a> for details and very clear explanations and images about how it works). They asked my opinion about the concept, and I looked into it and sent them my thoughts, and then realized that my reply to them looked an awful lot like a Quaketips article.<br />
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So this is not officially a product review per se, but I do think it’s worthwhile letting you know about this inventive concept and its pros and cons.<br />
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The planter is essentially a plant pot that wraps around a central hole, through which the light post sticks up. So it’s really a solution to the torchiere problems that uses a plant; not as much a solution to the plant problem unless you want to put all of your plants into these planters. The plant pot has a self-watering mechanism that uses a wick to keep drawing in more water from a 1.5 liter reservoir as the soil dries. This wicking approach keeps the water away from the lamp power cord.<br />
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I would say that with regard to the goal of preventing floor lamps from falling over without attaching them to walls or floors, this is a great solution. This concept really is ingenious; it looks like it not only adds weight to the base but also increases its footprint, both of which minimize the likelihood of it toppling. And the self-watering wick/tank concept is really neat. Coming in 5 colors is a nice feature.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KOIw4PPBwB4/XXSWnPeXOiI/AAAAAAAAAzw/ZLOzptDvN8E1lhhLEbqWGHETOA5RsOJTwCEwYBhgL/s1600/emptypot.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="724" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KOIw4PPBwB4/XXSWnPeXOiI/AAAAAAAAAzw/ZLOzptDvN8E1lhhLEbqWGHETOA5RsOJTwCEwYBhgL/s200/emptypot.png" width="180" /></a>As a plant pot, I did have one reservation [<i>note added in proof, no, I’m not a plant pot</i>]: I had someone at a garden center tell me once about the importance of letting water drain out of plants rather than just evaporating because of waste products that build up in the soil and need to be occasionally removed. He was suggesting that rather than trying to water sparingly enough to limit water draining into the little drainage moat around the base of the pot, I should be ensuring that a reasonable amount of water comes through; appropriate fertilization would replenish lost nutrients but waste products would be removed. So there's one disadvantage in a system like this, although I imagine this is more important for some plants than for others, and it would probably just reduce the effective lifespan of the plant rather than killing it outright.<br />
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A potential solution to that problem is an interesting variation on the self-watering wick, which is that just as it moves water from a reservoir to drier soil, it can also reverse-wick and remove water from saturated soil if the other end is just hung over an empty pot. I guess if the build-up of waste products is a concern, one can occasionally water heavily and remove the excess water (and waste products) by reverse-wicking. Repotting frequently enough is another option. When I asked the folks at the company about using their reverse wicking strategy for this purpose, they answered, “Yes, this may work, but we haven’t tested whether all the unwanted salts are removed by wicking. Using salt tolerant plants and repotting every few years is recommended for non-draining planters. After we accidentally stained a carpet by over-watering a draining planter decades ago, we have used non-draining planters exclusively for a wide range of house plants varieties, with good results.”<br />
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One potential problem is price. For the bracing of a $40 torchiere and even housing a $100 houseplant, the price tag of $257 for the SmartFit Planter is going to limit the inclination of people to get a bunch of them unless they are really doing a major investment. For example, I have 11 torchiere-style floor lamps in my home, so this moves out of the inexpensive why-not consumer solutions range into the major interior seismic bracing project range; which in itself is not a deal-breaker but certainly changes the equation! On the other hand, it’s hard to put a price on the ability to sleep at night without worrying about a lamp falling on your dog.<br />
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I imagine that even if someone did not want to put a plant in that spot where the lamp is (perhaps there is no natural light, or just for personal preference) the planter could be filled with some stones or even (gasp) artificial plants. The company folks commented on that piece of feedback and warned about children getting the stones and ingesting them or scattering them; basically, earthquake safety does not get one off the hook from the non-seismic safety concerns when it comes to kids.<br />
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One additional consideration is that it changes the aesthetically sleek and minimalistic look of a torchiere into something potentially more visually obtrusive; which would not always be a problem but could be for some people. The folks at SmartFit Planter replied to that concern by pointing out that the bulkier look is also protective against kids, pets, or clumsy adults, yes indeed! Also, since the center of the pot is reserved for the lamp pole, you can't use this pot for a central stem set-up as you might want with a small tree; it works better with shorter bushy plants as you can see in the photos at their website.<br />
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By the way, there is a super cool animation on that website showing how to assemble the system and how it works.<br />
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I might summarize my impressions by saying that this may not be an ideal solution for ALL of someone's floor lamps, but if there are a couple that are in particularly dangerous situations where falling over could be a big problem, it might be worth investing in this as a solution.<br />
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Let me just conclude by saying that I haven’t received any kind of compensation for mentioning this product and writing about it, and it’s not an advertisement, but this is the kind of innovative solution that I think deserves being mentioned! I kind of reminds me of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuENAWds5B0" target="_blank">classic commercials for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups</a>: “Hey, you got a lamp in my plant!” “Well you got plants all over my lamp!” “Hey, looks great!”… while preventing scenarios more reminiscent of the also-classic “Shake ‘N Bake.”<br />
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<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">>>Back to blog</a>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-21762787861812477472019-05-13T02:39:00.000-07:002019-09-07T23:09:12.435-07:00Back to back-up lights: An update on currently available power failure back-up lights<a name='more'></a>Because I’ve been so busy, I haven’t posted an article since a whole 4 months ago, when I wrote about <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2019/01/more-fun-with-expiration-dates-some.html" target="_blank">evaluating various canned goods after their expiration dates</a>. However, I figured that some readers might wonder if my long absence meant that my sampling of expired food had caused me to expire myself, so I’d better post this article that I have been meaning to write for a long time: an update on the latest generation of power failure back-up lights.<br />
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I’m referring to lights that are always plugged into your electrical outlet and are off as long as there is current, but if the powers cuts out (or you unplug it), the light turns on and then has several hours of charged internal battery life. <br />
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<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2014/02/dont-be-left-in-dark-which-kinds-of.html" target="_blank">I originally wrote about this topic in 2014</a>, and settled on a particular Greenlite model that was not perfect but that I felt was best specifically for power failures DURING an earthquake. The nightlight was too bright but I reported that you can dim it by using a simple loop of masking tape to reflect the indicator LED onto the light sensor and trick the light into thinking it’s not in a dark room. I also pointed out in that article that lights that have piercingly bright unshaded LEDs might be great during a typical blackout, but if everything is shaking and you are trying not to freak out, the last thing you want is to be blinded by the very thing that was supposed to let you keep seeing. So what might be the best power failure back-up light under most circumstances is not necessarily the best for earthquakes.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-c9JVGKXykWE/XNk0geKPy0I/AAAAAAAAAyI/AnhUakCPzaMEQ0NVzTVU27mMBnoyRp7LwCLcBGAs/s1600/Greenlite%2Bcombo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="1000" height="162" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-c9JVGKXykWE/XNk0geKPy0I/AAAAAAAAAyI/AnhUakCPzaMEQ0NVzTVU27mMBnoyRp7LwCLcBGAs/s400/Greenlite%2Bcombo.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Greenlite LED 3in1 Nitelite, the top pick from my 2014 article about power failure back-up lights.</span></td></tr>
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The Greenlite model that I settled on, however, is becoming harder to find, and Greenlite has informed me that they have discontinued it. This is a problem because the internal batteries and light sensors of such lights have a finite lifespan when plugged in; at some point, they become less discriminating and start getting really bright even when plugged into the wall, which is distracting in most rooms and unacceptable in or near bedrooms. I was able to get some new ones through eBay, but they are disappearing from most other sources. Therefore, I decided it was time to check on the current generation of power failure lights and to let you know what I think.<br />
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First, I suggest that you read <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2014/02/dont-be-left-in-dark-which-kinds-of.html" target="_blank"><span id="goog_973927793"></span>the original article<span id="goog_973927794"></span></a>, because even if it is out of date, the concepts are still useful and relevant. Also, the current article is not an exhaustive list of available options, but these three are the ones that looked most likely to be good on Amazon and are thus the ones that I purchased to try. I have looked at several brick and mortar stores including Home Depot and Ace, and have not seen any other better alternatives to these.<br />
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All of these have one very nice advance over the previous generation. Even though the earlier ones already had the electrical plug close enough to one end to not block the other outlet in the pair, they only allowed room in that other outlet for a cord plug, so anything bulky like a power adaptor or USB wall plug adaptor still would not fit. In contrast, the current offerings have the plug blades right at the very end, so the entire other outlet and surrounding space is left open. They also all have front-facing power-failure lights and separate flashlight LEDs at the top end.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Westek Night Light LED Power Failure</span></td></tr>
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<b>Westek Night Light LED Power Failure</b><br />
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The backup light is extremely bright but its LEDs are shaded by translucent plastic; bordering on blinding but not as bad as unshielded LEDs. Still, it might be too glaring to eyes in a previously pitch black room when everything is shaking. In a large living room, it might be ok. A small red LED lets you know that it is active and plugged in. I don’t recommend it for a bedroom because you can’t turn off the light-sensitive night light feature and that thing is bright enough to be a power failure backup light on its own! I supposed you could put some tape over it.<br />
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<b>Energizer Power Failure 4-in-1 Night Light</b><br />
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Much to like but it’s complicated. The front facing emergency light is nice and gentle, not blinding at all. It has two brightness settings that you can set with the on-off push button on the side, which actually cycles through off, dim front, brighter front, and end flashlight. The problem is that the dim setting is a bit too dim for my liking, a glow rather than illumination, and if you have it set to be off in the dark, then cutting the power (or unplugging it) puts it in dim mode. You have to press the side button after that for it to switch to brighter mode; and if you have it on brighter mode and unplug it and plug it back, then it resets and the next loss of power puts it back in dim mode again. Very frustrating. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vuNA0fTVU-U/XNk0glQnZiI/AAAAAAAAAyg/oT5kxtrH5wQF6jMc7PAE8A10C0XXfVi7wCEwYBhgL/s1600/Energizer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="696" data-original-width="1600" height="173" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vuNA0fTVU-U/XNk0glQnZiI/AAAAAAAAAyg/oT5kxtrH5wQF6jMc7PAE8A10C0XXfVi7wCEwYBhgL/s400/Energizer.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Energizer Power Failure 4-in-1 Night Light</span></td></tr>
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You can also press the button while it is plugged into live power and it goes into dim mode even while powered, as a night light. In this case, cutting power or unplugging it puts it in the brighter mode. But then you would need to have that night light on all the time, and again, the night light is too bright for a bedroom. A larger room in which nobody sleeps would probably be ok. If there was a way to have it be off when powered and bright when unpowered, then it would be the winner for me, but I just felt the process was too complicated and I would not want to have to go to the light to push the button before it was satisfactorily bright. The lack of an indicator LED means that when the room lights are on, or when the room lights are off but you aren’t using the nightlight, you can’t be sure the thing is actually working or plugged in securely.<br />
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The night light is supposed to be light sensitive, but while turning out my room lights made it turn on, turning the room lights back on did not make the night light turn off. The light sensor seems to be a bit buggy.<br />
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Regardless, the thing is just too complicated; they should not have tried to jam so many features into a single button. Here are the actual instructions, good luck getting through them:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UV989NiNek4/XNk0gq0BJaI/AAAAAAAAAyg/292iqwUsA-knwxTTtIvZqJSTMcVo3RZigCEwYBhgL/s1600/Energizer%2Binstructions.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1485" data-original-width="1600" height="296" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UV989NiNek4/XNk0gq0BJaI/AAAAAAAAAyg/292iqwUsA-knwxTTtIvZqJSTMcVo3RZigCEwYBhgL/s320/Energizer%2Binstructions.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Instructions for the Energizer model</span></td></tr>
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Clearly an example of over-engineering. I don’t want to have to think that much!<br />
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<b>Westek Night light LED Lumi Power Failure Light</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TDCNb4EG2Qk/XNk0g9jBpNI/AAAAAAAAAyk/P6YOB8tFcLAy40byth3h-tp1gCPu-GzxwCEwYBhgL/s1600/Westek%2BLumi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="577" data-original-width="1600" height="142" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TDCNb4EG2Qk/XNk0g9jBpNI/AAAAAAAAAyk/P6YOB8tFcLAy40byth3h-tp1gCPu-GzxwCEwYBhgL/s400/Westek%2BLumi.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Westek Night Light LED Lumi power Failure Light</span></td></tr>
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This Westek is a nice compact pod, smaller than the others and simple and pleasing to the eye when the lights are on. This one is a little different in that the flashlight is at the plug end rather than the far end, which doesn’t really make a practical difference. When plugged into the wall, it’s entirely off when the room lights are on, and the two low lumen LED night light setting goes on when the room lights are off. As a power failure backup light, it’s pretty good; nice and bright with three high lumen LEDs behind translucent plastic. Don’t put it in a bedroom though because the nightlight is WAY too bright to allow you to sleep; you’ll see it with your eyes closed!<br />
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<b>My recommendations:</b><br />
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The Energizer loses; too complicated and too many issues. The Westek Night light LED Lumi Power Failure Light is fine for rooms in which you don’t sleep, although you can’t cover that night light to make it dimmer because it’s the same light panel as the emergency light. For bedrooms, the best I can come up with is to use the Westek Night Light LED Power Failure (honestly, can’t Westek do a better job with the product names? Anyone see <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0BpfwazhUA" target="_blank">Monty Python’s The Life of Brian</a>? You’ll know what I mean.) with the nightlight panel covered with opaque or translucent tape.<br />
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It’s disappointing that none of these seem to have the simple combination of an optional or dim nightlight, a bright but not blinding emergency light, and a simple multi-position switch mechanism. What have I decided to do personally? Well, I did get that stash of new Greenlite lights through eBay and I intend to use them until they die, with the masking tape reflecting the central LED to dim the nightlight as I described in my earlier article. When they are no longer working, then I plan to switch probably to the (deeply inhale) Westek Night Light LED Power Failure with taped nightlight in the bedroom, and either that or the (deeply inhale) Westek Night Light LED Lumi Power Failure Light in other rooms. Perhaps by that time, there will be still newer and better options on the market, but here’s what I see are the currently available options.<br />
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I suppose a good earthquake-triggered emergency light could be created by putting a bunch of fireflies in a darkened jar so that if a quake knocks the jar over, the fireflies escape and fly around the room illuminating it. Try naming THAT one, Westek!<br />
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<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">>>Back to blog</a><br />
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<br /></div>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-60361378624494411412019-01-16T22:46:00.000-08:002019-05-13T02:40:15.005-07:00More fun with expiration dates: some things really DO expire!<a name='more'></a>If you have been following this blog, you know that I’m fascinated with expiration dates. I’ve reported that <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2013/10/mre-shelf-life-follow-up-ever-wonder.html" target="_blank">MREs last far longer than their presumptive expiration dates</a>, that <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2016/03/further-adventures-with-expiration.html" target="_blank">water envelopes and SOS food bars also last past their printed expiration dates,</a> that <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2013/07/does-bottled-water-really-expire-fda.html" target="_blank">unopened commercial gallon jugs of water basically don’t have an expiration date according to the FDA</a>, and that <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2014/06/choosing-right-kinds-of-batteries-for.html" target="_blank">stored lithium batteries last for many, many years</a>. Perhaps I should explore whether dates have an expiration date. However, you really should still check your emergency supplies every year or two to see if anything needs to be replaced due to expiration or obsolescence.<br />
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Also, if you have been following this blog, you know that I moved over a year ago and have been so busy with other things that various precautions that I usually take for granted took me an embarrassingly long time to implement. One of the final things that I just got around to doing this month has been to dig my emergency supplies out of the “still to do” pile and check them. And I’m glad I did, because my canned food all had use-by dates in mid-2016. While it’s well documented that <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Masses-of-food-wasted-use-by-dates-mislead-4825974.php" target="_blank">a tragically large amount of perfectly good food is thrown away due to arbitrarily chosen “use by” dates</a>, in the case of canned food, some of these dates are real and should not be ignored.<br />
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So my negligence gave me the opportunity to run a little experiment for you all! I opened up samples of each canned good that was 1.5 years past the use-by date to see what was still good, and I’m giving you the results here. I replaced all of my canned supplies whether good or not, but I tossed the ones that were bad and I’m incorporating the ones that are still good into my current meals.<br />
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<i>(In case it is not obvious, this was written at the very beginning of January 2019, and posted a few weeks later)</i><br />
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<b>First, here are the canned goods that were still fine:</b><br />
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Corn (Del Monte) in water, expiration date Aug 2016: Tastes good, smells good, good crunchy texture. I’ve been snacking on it.<br />
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Whole white potatoes (Safeway), exp. June 2016: Not exciting but still fine.<br />
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Whole beets (Safeway), exp. June 2016: Perfectly fine. I’ve been snacking on them; I actually had a beet instead of a cookie the other day!<br />
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<b>Now here are the one that I tossed but would still be ok to eat if food were limited:</b><br />
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Corn (Green Giant) “Steam Crisp” (packed without liquid), exp. Oct 2016: Ok, but not crisp and not sweet. Not unpleasant, but bland and boring.<br />
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<b>Now here are the ones that I tossed because they were unpleasant:</b><br />
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Almonds (Blue Diamond), unsalted, cans with peel-back foil and plastic lids, exp. Aug 2016: They smelled a little off and were ballooning at the sealed foil.<br />
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Garbanzo beans / chick peas (Bush’s Best), June 2016: Smelled unpleasant.<br />
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Sliced peaches in extra light syrup (Del Monte), exp. July 2016: Good flavor, but soft and mushy.<br />
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Apricot halves in 100% juice (Safeway), exp. March 2016: Not sweet at all and somewhat bitter, completely mushy and falling apart; very unpleasant! (In fact, I waited a week to write this so that I could confirm that I did not keel over after tasting one.)<br />
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<b>How about dog food?</b><br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WBheXUCXuOc/XDktBSRevVI/AAAAAAAAAxE/HCkHLrdDcdIpYYW-AmgP2cRE8PJHg1scwCLcBGAs/s1600/shrinkwrapped%2Bkibble.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1389" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WBheXUCXuOc/XDktBSRevVI/AAAAAAAAAxE/HCkHLrdDcdIpYYW-AmgP2cRE8PJHg1scwCLcBGAs/s400/shrinkwrapped%2Bkibble.jpg" width="346" /></a>I have supplies for Milo in our emergency kit as well: small cans of his Natural Balance wet food and also sealed bags of his w/d prescription kibble in the portable kit. The kibble was the subject of my earlier article about using oxygen absorbers to essentially vacuum-pack supplies in sealed mylar bags. However, I have not known how long the kibble would last, and these bags were filled in July 2016 with kibble that itself had a printed use-by date of October 2017. As you can see in the photo, the bags were still shrink-wrapped from the oxygen absorbers. And when I opened one, the kibble did not have a bad smell at all. However, it also did not have much of any smell at all; it seemed to have become very bland at least to the nose. I ended up tossing it rather than using it so Milo could still have tasty food.<br />
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Some of the wet food cans also had use-by dates of a year ago or more (I forgot to write down the dates). I did not even bother to open them; since wet dog food can smell a little odd to the human nose even when dogs love it, I would not want to guess if an extra odd smell had appeared so I just tossed them to not take any chances.<br />
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<b>Vitamin pills: cute idea but let’s not try that again</b><br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jZOuuvCBB6Q/XDktBZezwMI/AAAAAAAAAxU/sppWtChF5rIw7C4l3epfSByrAjFpi7D0QCEwYBhgL/s1600/vitamins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1026" data-original-width="1600" height="205" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jZOuuvCBB6Q/XDktBZezwMI/AAAAAAAAAxU/sppWtChF5rIw7C4l3epfSByrAjFpi7D0QCEwYBhgL/s320/vitamins.jpg" width="320" /></a>In addition to having a week or two (I had one week but now I have two) of certain medications that I take like statins, which I tend to let go maybe a year past their use-by date but then swap out with my daily meds to refresh the ones in the kit), I decided several years ago to include a bottle of vitamin pills. I decided to have a little fun and put in these Centrum “Flavor Burst” mixed fruit adult chews that look like brightly colored gumballs (I have a soft spot for artificially colored food with colors not even remotely resembling anything found in nature). Well, I noticed that they expired in 2014, and boy did they expire; a bunch of them had spontaneously exploded in the bottle! Oh well. I replaced them by adding in a couple of weeks of my normal multivitamin pills with the meds and I noted the expiration date from the source bottle.<br />
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<b>What else can go wrong?</b><br />
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Then there were the other things in the kit that needed to be replaced for various reasons that were sometimes surprising. My Eton American Red Cross emergency radio in its beautiful red shell was… sticky! Very sticky! Even though it had been sitting in its box in a compartment of my emergency kit and was not to humid or hot or anything. Gross. I have ordered a new one. (Yeah, I know, “insanity is doing the same thing…” but perhaps this was a fluke; they are a reputable company. Plus, the product has been redesigned last year.)<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rQk1igB-am0/XDktBeOzBKI/AAAAAAAAAxM/WKyVX6ZqFw8z82aQifRlJn5pZAHrKuR7gCEwYBhgL/s1600/charger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1304" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rQk1igB-am0/XDktBeOzBKI/AAAAAAAAAxM/WKyVX6ZqFw8z82aQifRlJn5pZAHrKuR7gCEwYBhgL/s320/charger.jpg" width="260" /></a>Then the one that really made me laugh is that I have a cool Energizer cell phone charger that works off of standard AA batteries, and I also have a solar chargeable charger pack that can charge cell phones. I opened both of them for apparently the first time in ages, and the accompanying photo will show you the problem! (For future historians who are reading this blog in the 23rd Century to see how we Silicon Age civilizations prepared for earthquakes, these wide iPod plugs have not been in cell phones for several years now.) I included an appropriate adapter cable for the AA battery charger and swapped in a new cable for the solar power battery.<br />
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So there you have it: not everything lasts forever. Even waiting an extra year from when you had planned to check your supplies is not a good idea. And even non-consumables can go bad as technology evolution leaves them in the dust. Now I must remember to back up this article… let’s see, where is that floppy disk drive again…?<br />
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<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-55646264986786125412018-12-21T03:27:00.000-08:002019-01-16T22:47:30.099-08:00How I braced a monster wardrobe and protected Narnia<a name='more'></a><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XEWNwdVna88/XBzG4tLhkXI/AAAAAAAAAwA/JTpfk2zsiskzNG34ozo9olT8VUyi5HivQCLcBGAs/s1600/Wardrobe%2Bbefore%2Bfixes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="553" data-original-width="1600" height="136" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XEWNwdVna88/XBzG4tLhkXI/AAAAAAAAAwA/JTpfk2zsiskzNG34ozo9olT8VUyi5HivQCLcBGAs/s400/Wardrobe%2Bbefore%2Bfixes.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">As always, click on the images for full sized versions</span></td></tr>
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This is one of those articles I do every now and then about how I have solved some special challenges. I have a freakishly large free-standing wardrobe from Ikea that I’m using for storage of various things; I won’t bore you with the details but it’s gigantic. In fact, I walked into it the other day, kept walking past coats, found myself in an icy wasteland with English kids and a talking lion—oh wait, <a href="http://www.narnia.com/us/" target="_blank">wrong story.</a>.. At any rate, suffice it to say that I’m using this wardrobe in such a way that it defies straightforward seismic bracing (preventing it from falling over, preventing the doors from swinging open, and preventing the contents from falling apart), and it took a while for me to figure out how to make it reasonably safe.<br />
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Here’s my story, in case any parts of this overall solution are relevant to problems being faced by readers:<br />
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<b>How do I stop the massive doors from swinging open?</b><br />
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These doors are about 7.5 feet tall, with lots of loose objects behind them. If they want to open, they aren’t likely to be thwarted by the typical quake-resistant cabinet latches like <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2012/08/at-last-helpful-hints-on-installing.html" target="_blank">push latches</a> and <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2018/08/earthquake-resistant-cabinet-latches.html" target="_blank">Murakoshi latches</a> about which I’ve written. The tall doors are floppy enough that they are unlikely to be controlled by a push latch in any one place, and even the Murakoshi latch at the top would probably not be very effective. The double door is the most problematic because of all of the contents piled up behind it, so I concentrated on that section first. <br />
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The first thing I did was to figure out a simple way to essentially clip the two handles together so that it would prevent the two doors from swinging open away from each other. I did not want it to be a pain to open the doors though. I tried a bunch of types of clips but they were either too inconvenient to use, or too pliable to actually hold against much force.<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Dkr26nY8Pug/XBzG5JlCs0I/AAAAAAAAAws/1QO-6LEOnWo3H09GCISabJ2NjKHCTyolACEwYBhgL/s1600/lock%2Bshank.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1600" height="178" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Dkr26nY8Pug/XBzG5JlCs0I/AAAAAAAAAws/1QO-6LEOnWo3H09GCISabJ2NjKHCTyolACEwYBhgL/s400/lock%2Bshank.jpg" width="400" /></a>My solution was either a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film)#/media/File:African_monolith_2001.jpg" target="_blank">stroke of alien genius</a> or luck or a bit of both. I noticed at the hardware store a very long-shank padlock, and if I leave off the lock part and just use the shank, this hardened metal U shape easily slides over the two handles and does not bend at all. I just slip my finger under the top of the U, slide it up and off, and then drop it back into place when I close the door. I can even do it without leaving fingerprints on the mirrored doors! Why, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film)#/media/File:African_monolith_2001.jpg" target="_blank">pre-language ape</a> could do it!<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JZqVOZTyW3U/XBzG4pRQwhI/AAAAAAAAAwg/QUrFPNEwJLUHWQCZ0E8tnIeefLW8yqn5ACEwYBhgL/s1600/left%2Blatches.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="756" data-original-width="1600" height="187" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JZqVOZTyW3U/XBzG4pRQwhI/AAAAAAAAAwg/QUrFPNEwJLUHWQCZ0E8tnIeefLW8yqn5ACEwYBhgL/s400/left%2Blatches.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
That’s great, and doesn’t look bad at all; but it’s an awful lot of pressure for a single pair of door handles to hold, so I tried adding a latch to work in concert with the clip holding the handles together. I suspect push latches just aren’t effective here, but after experimenting with those Murakoshi latches, I got a few more and added a pair to the top of these wardrobe doors. Alone, they would be ineffective, but together with the clip, I think it’s pretty secure. I used the white ones, which go better with the grey door and white back than the brown ones do.<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-E1V8ukxSan8/XBzG6S7Jk9I/AAAAAAAAAws/rnZ3EHQY4Kww5gHYu9dW4IER159PADCwwCEwYBhgL/s1600/right%2Blatches.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="489" data-original-width="1600" height="121" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-E1V8ukxSan8/XBzG6S7Jk9I/AAAAAAAAAws/rnZ3EHQY4Kww5gHYu9dW4IER159PADCwwCEwYBhgL/s400/right%2Blatches.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
For the single door, there is nothing to clip, but there are a couple of strong shelves that won’t be going anywhere. I decided to install two brown Murakoshi latches on the same door, one at the top and one at a shelf (orange and yellow arrows) so there would be two different sections of the door being prevented from opening. It really seems to work; I can hear that comforting “thunk” sound that you get whenever you open a door with the Murakoshi latch, but I’m hearing it from two different heights simultaneously.<br />
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<b>How do I stop the contents from falling apart and out?</b><br />
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Well, suffice it to say that I did not make matters any easier for myself by arranging the contents of the wardrobe. As you can see from the first photos, I have a chest of drawers INSIDE the wardrobe, some musical instruments on the chest, and a hulking shelf laden with heavy music (no, I don’t mean it’s all Mahler and Wagner, I mean that sheet music weighs a lot). I would not want the chest of drawers to topple and crash through the doors, and I wouldn’t want the shelf to collapse under the weight of the music and come down on the instruments.<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5bdiYzieE1U/XBzG6ZAO_YI/AAAAAAAAAwo/m5xA7Z6f-zQ77edpchSWCWRHwG3AzVtEACEwYBhgL/s1600/shelves.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="1600" height="120" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5bdiYzieE1U/XBzG6ZAO_YI/AAAAAAAAAwo/m5xA7Z6f-zQ77edpchSWCWRHwG3AzVtEACEwYBhgL/s400/shelves.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
For the shelf, I was less concerned with the shelf itself breaking because it’s a really thick strong wooden shelf and it doesn’t seem like it is in any danger of bending or collapsing. I’d be more concerned with the little pegs holding it up on both sides, as <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2017/03/do-you-have-ticking-time-bomb-in-your.html" target="_blank">I’ve already written about </a>experiences with these things failing suddenly and shelves crashing down even without an earthquake.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dmoNpnVi3qo/XBzG5Hf6aJI/AAAAAAAAAws/LyqQ4lBBHjUqxFW3SQFPyR9vaWSQXF8fwCEwYBhgL/s1600/peg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="238" data-original-width="809" height="58" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dmoNpnVi3qo/XBzG5Hf6aJI/AAAAAAAAAws/LyqQ4lBBHjUqxFW3SQFPyR9vaWSQXF8fwCEwYBhgL/s200/peg.jpg" width="200" /></a>If you look closely at the pictures, you can see two different kinds of pegs under the shelf. The brown ones are the pegs that were there originally, but they have been turned around. These have a screw and a plastic peg at right angles to each other, and the screw was attaching it to the bottom of the shelf while the plastic peg was in the hole; and <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2017/03/do-you-have-ticking-time-bomb-in-your.html" target="_blank">we know what can happen to plastic pegs in holes bearing weight</a>! (I couldn’t find a photo of the exact peg, but the photo shown here on the left is of a metal version; pretend this is brown plastic and you’ll get the picture.) I kept the original pegs but turned them so that the plastic pegs were sticking up into the holes underneath the shelf, and the thick metal screws were going into the holes in the sides of the cabinet. Then, still worried about all that weight on three screws per side that might not be great with shear force, I added three new plastic supports with metal pegs like the ones shown on the right. (Note: if you do something like this, the holes to drill for the additional pegs won’t be at exactly the same level as the pre-drilled peg holes; you’ll just have to bumble your way through it like I did.)<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dOJ1aonD1tY/XBzG3vYOQVI/AAAAAAAAAwg/lxb-xZOLu9UdcXGj6uFc_AVp69lUlhOKgCEwYBhgL/s1600/brackets.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1198" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dOJ1aonD1tY/XBzG3vYOQVI/AAAAAAAAAwg/lxb-xZOLu9UdcXGj6uFc_AVp69lUlhOKgCEwYBhgL/s200/brackets.jpg" width="149" /></a>Now how about that dresser. This is holding a lot of stuff and is very heavy. It’s an Ikea dresser (yep, I put it together all by myself; took all evening but it was worth it!) and ironically, the Ikea dressers now come with kits to brace them to walls and little inserts that say you must do this to prevent little kids from climbing up the front and getting seriously injured or worse. And of course, we all brace our dressers to the wall in Earthquake Country, right? And even though it is behind closed doors that were secured as I just described earlier, a large enough earthquake could still make this dresser want to fall forward and it might just punch through the doors. But it was not practical in the wardrobe to brace the dresser to the back because that back is just flimsy backing board, not structurally sound. I ended up screwing in metal L brackets on one side and on the bottom front as pictured in the accompanying figure. Yeah I know, this is not the strongest configuration, but it was all I could do and I think that in combination with the secured doors, it will prevent the dresser from falling forward.<br />
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<br />
<b>How do I prevent this massive thing from falling over onto my head?</b><br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A__Duf8IDzI/XBzG6CN9stI/AAAAAAAAAwk/eGcv3Bz37iAyPHG3AiECCtnC0JcyUsNCACEwYBhgL/s1600/straps.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="369" data-original-width="1600" height="91" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A__Duf8IDzI/XBzG6CN9stI/AAAAAAAAAwk/eGcv3Bz37iAyPHG3AiECCtnC0JcyUsNCACEwYBhgL/s400/straps.jpg" width="400" /></a>That’s an important question because my desk is about 5 feet in front it the wardrobe; if it falls away from the wall, it’s headed right toward me! The wardrobe already had two of the cabinet straps from Quakehold/Ready America at the top, and I added a third, <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2011/09/be-sure-to-bolt-your-furniture-bracing.html" target="_blank">all in wall studs of course</a>. Because this is so large and heavy, I didn’t just rely on the adhesive holding the fuzzy part of the Velcro strap to the top of the wardrobe; I screwed in the little short wood screws that come with some of the straps so that the assembly was more securely attached to the furniture. You can kind of see the screws in the middle photo and one is clearly shown in the righthand photo.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--VQKrEnW5uk/XBzG4Zvkh7I/AAAAAAAAAwc/KWHxi6beIWEcmJ5jTlp5dVW0EFIfM3d8gCEwYBhgL/s1600/ceiling%2Bpoles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="583" data-original-width="1600" height="116" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--VQKrEnW5uk/XBzG4Zvkh7I/AAAAAAAAAwc/KWHxi6beIWEcmJ5jTlp5dVW0EFIfM3d8gCEwYBhgL/s320/ceiling%2Bpoles.jpg" width="320" /></a>I’ve been a bit concerned, however, that this was larger and heavier than anything I had ever braced and I wasn’t sure whether the straps would really hold it. They probably would, but then I heard about something, ironically, from my next door neighbors, of which I had not been aware. The Japanese have poles that go between the top of tall furniture and the ceiling, compressed, so that the back of the top can’t get any higher, which it would need to do if the furniture was falling away from the wall. I could not find these on Amazon, etc., but a search brought up one Japanese source and fortunately I was able to successfully order them, despite return messages being in Japanese. In case you can’t find them, <a href="https://item.rakuten.co.jp/fujix/a4905009434640/?s-id=top_normal_browsehist&xuseflg_ichiba01=10551228" target="_blank">here is a link</a> to the product that works currently; if it changes, try <a href="http://www.rakuten.co.jp/">www.rakuten.co.jp</a>. The instructions are all in Japanese; you can figure it out somewhat from the diagrams but make sure you realize the following:<br />
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(1) Find solid ceiling. The instructions seem to want you to find wall studs in the ceiling rather than hollow drywall; my ceiling didn’t have anything at regular intervals but there was about a foot of solid material above the ceiling right next to the wall so I was able to place them under that solid part. Either way, you want them bracing the back of the cabinet rather than the front, because if it tips over, the back goes up and the front goes down.<br />
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(2) You are supposed to line up the different parts of the telescopic tube and screw in a sharp screw right through them, to keep the two parts at a specific length just shorter than what it needs to be. Then you turn the ring around the bottom to extend it and put pressure between the furniture and the ceiling. I do not know how tight it should be; I made it as tight as I could by hand without really cranking on it, because I don’t want it slowly cracking the drywall over time.<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B2tgeNc8jkM/XBzG3c5qerI/AAAAAAAAAwY/Xfzf2Ze0-ooiI70KfFYENRe89nkXOdDUQCEwYBhgL/s1600/Finished.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B2tgeNc8jkM/XBzG3c5qerI/AAAAAAAAAwY/Xfzf2Ze0-ooiI70KfFYENRe89nkXOdDUQCEwYBhgL/s320/Finished.jpg" width="240" /></a>(3) There’s a red line on the bottom tube showing where it is over-extended; you don’t want that red mark to be exposed when it is put together or it won’t be a strong.<br />
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<b>Finished and braced!</b><br />
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So here is the final product. I think it looks great, and while I put a LOT of effort into this, I do feel better about knowing that it is not going to be a massive death trap in a quake. In fact, I am feeling pretty confident about this now, and I suspect that if my entire home were to completely fall apart in a giant quake, this wardrobe would still be standing right here intact and closed and upright; gateway to Narnia and all. Although, if you are expecting any English kids to emerge back out of the wardrobe, you should probably take that clip off of the handles…<br />
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<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-21292923940006587022018-08-03T00:52:00.000-07:002019-07-08T22:16:59.532-07:00Earthquake-resistant cabinet latches revisited: an alternative to push-latches that is worth considering<a name='more'></a>(<b>A long one… </b>but much of the length is a technical description of installation that you can just skim over unless you are actually going to be installing these latches)<br />
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<span style="background-color: yellow; color: red;">E-mail subscribers: this particular article is probably best viewed <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">online in the blog itself</a>, rather than in the e-mail message, due to all of the videos.</span><br />
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Earthquakes frequently make cabinet doors swing open and knock out everything in the cabinets, creating a massive mess in the best case, and serious damage or injury in the worst case. Consider not only the breakable dishes and glasses in those cabinets, but also all the different kinds of oils and vinegars and liqueurs and condiments and sauces and bottled-that and jars-of-this that could tumble out and smash onto the floor… well, I suppose a revolutionary new culinary combination taste sensation could come out of it (or, if the earthquake is well-timed with an electrical storm, perhaps a new life form), but it’s generally a good situation to avoid. Having quake-resistant cabinet latches, especially in the high cabinets of a kitchen, is a really good idea. <br />
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There are several different kinds of products that call themselves quake resistant latches. I’ve long been a big proponent of push latches (touch latches) and have used them for about 25 years now in multiple apartments and condos. These are the latches that prevent your cabinet doors from opening unless the door is pushed in first to make them disengage, and then they re-engage when the door is pushed in again to close. I wrote a <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2012/08/at-last-helpful-hints-on-installing.html" target="_blank">long article about tips and tricks </a>for installing these latches in 2012 and for a while, it was the most widely viewed post on this blog. However, the question has been raised occasionally about whether an earthquake could shake the door just right so that it jiggles inward and disengages itself, defeating the whole purpose of having the latch.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zvhe9T5bwIM/W2K_mAXyKmI/AAAAAAAAAqY/NBWK88VJLHMpFAICDdUEdO1r0HUDe8lIACLcBGAs/s1600/1_Two_latches.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="492" data-original-width="1524" height="129" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zvhe9T5bwIM/W2K_mAXyKmI/AAAAAAAAAqY/NBWK88VJLHMpFAICDdUEdO1r0HUDe8lIACLcBGAs/s400/1_Two_latches.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">The two latches being compared: push latch (left) and Murakoshi latch (right)</span></td></tr>
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I’ve felt this was unlikely, and anecdotally have heard that push latches do well in quakes. However, I have recently learned about evidence that these latches can open under the right conditions, and have also been made aware of a different kind of latch that I want to tell you about: the “<a href="https://www.murakoshiseikou.com/en/about/index.html" target="_blank">Murakoshi</a> Perfect Lock PFR-TSAα: Earthquake-proof latch for hinged doors” from Japan (referred to below as the Murakoshi latch).<br />
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<b>First, some important disclosures: </b><br />
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- The Illinois company that is exploring marketing and distributing these latches in the US, <a href="http://www.tuson.com/index.html" target="_blank">Tuson Corporation</a>, which also deals in RV braking safety technology as well as manufacturing for various industries, contacted me initially to get my opinion about the potential US market. They supplied me with some complimentary test samples to try out that I was free to keep and use. Other than these test samples, I have not been compensated in any way to evaluate these latches, the company has known from the start that I would write an honest assessment even if negative, and when I decided to get more of their latches, I purchased them at full price. <br />
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- Based on my experience with different latches, I volunteered as a favor to review an early draft of their English translation instructions and made suggestions from the standpoint of someone who would try to follow them and install the latches. <br />
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- Unlike my decades of experience with push latches, I have only used these Murakoshi latches for a few months and therefore can’t advise from personal experience that they will work in a quake or will not freeze up with normal use. However, I am told by Tuson that these latches have been used in Japan successfully for a couple of decades (I have not attempted to independently verify that claim) and that they are on their third generation of latches.<br />
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- Some of my conclusions of how push latches and Murakoshi latches compare are based on seeing videos provided by Murakoshi itself. However, I found the videos to be pretty convincing.<br />
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I also want to discourage a subsequent wave of companies asking me to review their products, since I don’t have time to open myself up to that. However, in this case, Murakoshi’s approach was intriguing and I feel that the information I have learned about these latches is well worth passing along. <br />
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<b>Comparing the different strategies for quake-resistant latches</b><br />
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I don't like latches that are always closed and you have to push something out of the way every time you open the cabinet, like the typical child-proof cabinet latches; too much interference in everyday use of your kitchen.<br />
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I also don't like latches that engage when they sense shaking from a quake, because if some mechanism in the latch has to fall due to the quake, the door could have already opened. I tried the “Shocklock” many years ago and I had to shake it violently for it to finally activate after many seconds. Similar products have been marketed subsequently by some well-regarded seismic bracing companies and I admit I have not tried those latches, but in general, I feel it is a weak concept that success hinges (pun intended) on something in the latch that has to move before the door moves. <br />
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I do like the push latches, other than the potential for them opening as described here, as the extra pushing motion is really not inconvenient and is even nice because the door than springs toward you as it opens. One concern is that if your guests try to open your cabinet without realizing it has a push latch, <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-earthquake-precaution-step-nobody.html" target="_blank">they can potentially damage the latch or themselves!</a><br />
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When Tuson contacted me and described the Murakoshi latch, I was initially prepared to dismiss it as just another motion-activated latch. However, they have a really neat reverse twist on the concept: this latch is always in the position to <b>prevent</b> the door from opening but it moves out of the way when the door opens. However, a little pendulum mechanism inside the latch has to be centered to allow this, and any displacement of the pendulum prevents the latch from moving out of the way when the door opens. Sounds hard to picture but it works quite well (look at the videos a few paragraphs down). This means that nothing has to move into a lock position before the door opens. When the shaking stops and the pendulum rests in the middle again, the latch can open again; unless something has fallen and is pushing the door from the inside, in which case it doesn’t release until you push the door back inward. Ingenious. And it works.<br />
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These latches do have a few disadvantages. First, they are expensive. Mine were $12.50 per latch (they are sold in pairs); about double the cost of push latches, which adds up if you are outfitting an entire kitchen. Second, they can only be installed in certain cabinet configurations (more on that later). Third, they are, to put it simply, a pain to install. Even after having installed quite a few of them now, I still find the process to be a mini-ordeal and prefer to not attempt to install more than two of them in one session. However, this article will take a similar approach to my previous article about push latches: tips and tricks for installation and descriptions of how I dealt with some unusual situations.<br />
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<b>Do push latches really open up in earthquakes?</b><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-77YYim4Ho_I/W2K_mNS3I2I/AAAAAAAAArM/ggJnq-UKQi0Ick7UGbp1zD3rJzPg86A_wCEwYBhgL/s1600/3_Push_latch_cabinet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="541" data-original-width="1000" height="169" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-77YYim4Ho_I/W2K_mNS3I2I/AAAAAAAAArM/ggJnq-UKQi0Ick7UGbp1zD3rJzPg86A_wCEwYBhgL/s320/3_Push_latch_cabinet.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Video (below) showing cabinet doors with push latches not opening in<br />an"armquake" and photos (above) showing the latches in that <br />cabinet; note the "tenting out" of the cabinet doors (click to enlarge image).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Oh, did you notice in the video that my plant pot is stuck down??</span></td></tr>
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I think having push latches is far better than having non-quake-resistant latches, and I think under most circumstances, they would not open in a quake. As I said in a reply to someone’s comment at the end of my <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2012/08/at-last-helpful-hints-on-installing.html" target="_blank">push latches article</a>, I think the angle and motion of the shaking would make it difficult to open the latches because the latch end and the hinge end of the door, along with the rest of the cabinet, would be moving simultaneously, rather than having the latch end pushed in with a radial motion around the hinge. It's difficult to model this with a cabinet built into the wall. However, I have a free-standing cabinet (usually braced to a wall stud) in which I had installed these latches, with a double door and latch on each door. I tried shaking the cabinet back and forth in the direction perpendicular to the wall, with various forces and magnitudes and frequencies (kind of like my <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2016/08/are-command-picture-hanging-strips-as.html" target="_blank">“armquakes” to test Command Strips for picture hanging</a>). For what it's worth, these doors did not budge; you can see the video below (<a href="https://youtu.be/gGletk0pDXU" target="_blank">or online directly</a>). The accompanying figure shows the latches on the middle shelf and you can see the doors “tenting” out a bit. That doesn't mean that someone's cabinet won't open up, if given the perfect motion for that cabinet, and much could depend on the particular door and its width, but it doesn't appear that the doors tend to unlatch from general shaking in that direction. <br />
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<b>CAN push latches really open up in earthquake?</b><br />
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However, I have now seen videos of earthquake simulation tests (from Murakoshi; see disclosures above) of various latches and I've witnessed with my own eyes the push latch disengaging in some cases, with the Murakoshi latches remaining closed. Take a look at these videos below showing a push latch and Murakoshi latch in the same simulation of the huge 2011 Tohoku earthquake. I have seen several videos of push latches and several of Murakoshi latches, each with simulations of different large Japanese earthquakes from the last few decades, but I’m showing you just one representative of each; the other videos are similar and some smaller quakes also disengaged the push latch. What makes it compelling is that you can watch from outside the cabinet and also from another camera inside the cabinet, showing what the latch is doing. (You can watch small videos below, or better yet, <b>click these links for larger videos of the <a href="https://youtu.be/v6mpnKuDUl4" target="_blank">push latch</a> and <a href="https://youtu.be/pwy-PZkJPrQ" target="_blank">Murakoshi latch</a> and watch them on the full screen setting.</b>)<br />
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Another caveat here: I can’t discount the possibility that the simulations and latch installations were optimized to encourage push latch failure and Murakoshi latch success. However, I believe that the several push latch videos I saw do indicate that they CAN open, and that Murakoshi latches held under these rather violent circumstances.<br />
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One thing that occurred to me while watching these push latch videos is that the chances of these jiggling open are increased if there is relatively little resistance to the “push” motion to open the latch, and relatively short distance to travel from the starting position to the push-in position. As I discussed in my push latches article, cabinet doors that use push latches can’t rest in the most fully closed position because then there would be no more room to push in to open them, so they have to stick out a little, which has aesthetic disadvantages for double-doors because of the “tenting” look. However, in these Murakoshi videos, I see that the push latch cabinet door did not have to move very far to reach the push-in disengagement position. Minimizing the distance with push latches makes them look the most normal so people might intentionally strive for that situation. However, perhaps the best way to install push latches is to have a healthy distance (like in my figure above), therefore having a greater resistance to push in, reducing the chances that parallel jiggling of door and cabinet in a quake could reach the opening position. <br />
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So, I think the push latches will prevent the doors from opening in most quakes, especially if you give the door a little extra distance between its resting and opening positions, and I suspect that they will open in some quakes under the right circumstances; but it’s still far better to have push latches than to not have quake resistant latches at all. If I had a kitchen full of push latches, I’m not sure I would actually replace them all with the Murakoshi latches, but I might adjust their positions to make the cabinet doors stick out a little more.<br />
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<b>So how about those Murakoshi latches?</b><br />
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However, while I DID have a kitchen full of push latches, Tuson contacted me a few months before I was already planning to move to another home in which the cabinets had no latches at all, so this was a great opportunity to test the new ones and consider installing them instead of push latches. I now have them on most of my upper kitchen cabinets, and what follows is a guide to how I have determined is the best way to install them, including a few extra steps to deal with a non-optimal situation in which the cabinet has a slight step down from its ceiling to the top of the frame (hard to describe; see photographs).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Murakoshi latch, click to enlarge image</span></td></tr>
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First, here’s what the latches look like when installed. Two issues are already evident in these photos: first, as with the push latches, the only brown latch color available is much darker than the blonde wood cabinets and I really wish that manufacturers of plastic cabinet latches would offer a version that better matches this popular cabinet color. Second, you can see that step down that I mentioned a few sentences ago; these latches are designed to go on a FLAT cabinet ceiling but I was able to add an extra step to the installation to flatten out that step-down with thin pieces of wood or synthetic material (I needed to use slightly longer screws for the back of the latch to compensate for the extra material). This is similar to my approach a couple of homes ago with the push latches in the <a href="https://quaketips.blogspot.com/2012/08/at-last-helpful-hints-on-installing.html" target="_blank">last figure panel of my push latches article</a>. <br />
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<b>How do the latches work?</b><br />
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I took the liberty of dissecting one of the latches because I think it’s difficult to believe that the concept works until you see it with your own eyes. The three videos are below and I am also including links to the larger versions online <span style="background-color: yellow;">(again, you will have the best results by clicking on the following links and watching the high resolution videos on full screen)</span>. In this <a href="https://youtu.be/yZa2xCEIhT8" target="_blank">first video (with audio)</a>, I have popped the top off and I’m showing you how the guts work. In the <a href="https://youtu.be/Z4WUHyA3kUE" target="_blank">second video (with audio)</a>, I’ve re-assembled it and I am demonstrating how the latch works while in my hand, not installed. In the <a href="https://youtu.be/NWBYtdsaPEM" target="_blank">third video</a> (no audio in this one), you can see how the latch works after it’s been installed. Note that the catch on the door is supposed to freely slide up and down to ensure that the latch and the catch will fit together perfectly; the catch gets pushed into the correct vertical position when it first meets the latch.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><b style="background-color: yellow;">INSTALLATION</b></i></span><br />
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I’m making the installation instructions available <a href="http://earthquake.matthewlspringer.com/manuals_for_Murakoshi_latch_article/Murakoshi-Japanese.pdf" target="_blank">here as a pdf</a>, the instruction sheet that came with most of my latches. Haha, guess what, it’s in Japanese! If you end up obtaining these latches from Tuson, you will probably have to specify that you want the English instructions, which came with the first latches they sent me and <a href="http://earthquake.matthewlspringer.com/manuals_for_Murakoshi_latch_article/Murakoshi-English.pdf" target="_blank">which are available here</a>. Now, I did review an earlier version of the English instructions to make suggestions, but I have to say, even the current version is a bit difficult to follow because the process is a bit complex, so I’ve laid out a step-by-step procedure here based on photos taken while I installed one of the latches. You’ll probably find yourself removing the contents of the top shelf and then removing the shelf itself, so allow room for the power drill.<br />
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IMPORTANT: if you have never done this before, start with double door cabinets because if you screw up one and can’t open it for some reason, you’ll still be able to access the latch from the other open door. This also gives you the opportunity to look at how the latches are closing by sticking your head into the other open door, as in the video above.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3InHjfLwqSk/W2PqJGCwrhI/AAAAAAAAAs8/9BZpS4yz4_wOpJHECdire-BRDhjBzqCNwCLcBGAs/s1600/8_bumper_dots.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="732" data-original-width="1000" height="233" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3InHjfLwqSk/W2PqJGCwrhI/AAAAAAAAAs8/9BZpS4yz4_wOpJHECdire-BRDhjBzqCNwCLcBGAs/s320/8_bumper_dots.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Silicone bumper dots push the cabinet door farther away.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Click to enlarge image</span></td></tr>
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NOTE: There are two extra steps in my procedure that you might not need to worry about. The first is the addition of the extra flat pieces of material that I used to fill in that upper step-down that I mentioned before. The second is that if you have bumper dots on your cabinet doors like I do, to cushion the closing of the doors and cut down on the slamming sound, they keep the door further away from the cabinet frame and you need to install the latches slightly farther forward so that they reach the catches on the doors. Fortunately, there’s an easy trick to do that as you’ll see below.<br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br /></span>
<b>Step 1, test the latch:</b> Take each latch individually and before you install it, temporarily remove the two red protective pieces and confirm by hand that the hook part does not move when you jostle the latch, and that afterward, you can get it to move again by holding it perfectly still against the bottom of a cabinet. <br />
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<ul>
<li><i>Yep, I really do recommend this, for EVERY latch, because (especially in a single door cabinet) if you close the door and the latch does not open even when stationary, the cabinet could be stuck in the closed position! Out of the original 6 latches I was sent to test, one of them actually would not reliably let me open it again (in my hand) after jostling; in fact, that’s the one I dissected because I was already attempting to fix it and popped the cover off in the process. In the batch that I purchased afterwards, I’ve installed 9 more latches so far and none of them have exhibited this problem. Murakoshi says this problem should not occur and mine might have been a rare fluke, but knowing that such a defect (or perhaps damage in transit) is possible, play it safe and test the latches first.</i></li>
</ul>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZscVRJsxaHo/W2PsE9NGvDI/AAAAAAAAAuE/3rFNmA2-QOg1m6hnP1LdwOne-SJKGmNqQCLcBGAs/s1600/Step_1_testing_the_latches.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="345" data-original-width="608" height="226" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZscVRJsxaHo/W2PsE9NGvDI/AAAAAAAAAuE/3rFNmA2-QOg1m6hnP1LdwOne-SJKGmNqQCLcBGAs/s400/Step_1_testing_the_latches.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Step 1, testing each latch. Click to enlarge image.</span></td></tr>
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<b>Step 2 </b>(optional, only necessary if there is a step down from the cabinet ceiling), <b>fill the gap: </b>Determine PRECISELY how thick a flat piece of wood or some other material you need to fill the gap.<br />
<ul>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ozQwMzAnCS8/W2PqJNtGoII/AAAAAAAAAt8/Kr6qxqiRLRQSQmE1vNN-0xsB8cs0CUfxACEwYBhgL/s1600/Step_2_layers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ozQwMzAnCS8/W2PqJNtGoII/AAAAAAAAAt8/Kr6qxqiRLRQSQmE1vNN-0xsB8cs0CUfxACEwYBhgL/s200/Step_2_layers.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Step 2, filling any step-down</span></td></tr>
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<li><i>I had a very hard flat foam board that I had cannibalized a couple of years ago from the bottom of some old luggage; I also have some flat lightweight wood planks coincidentally of the same thickness. My step is about 7 mm deep and two of these planks together are almost 7 mm. I found that if I used double stick tape to make a two-layer piece and then put 4 more layers of double stick tape on the top, I could stick the whole thing to the ceiling of the cabinet with that tape and it was perfectly flush with the cabinet frame; the extra layers of double stick tape let me get an exactly flush mount that is necessary to avoid torqueing the latch when the screws are tightened. For these rear holes only, because of the extra material in the step, for Step 6 I used my own 3/4” flat-Phillips-head #6 screws instead of the 0.55” flat-Phillips-head #6 screws supplied with the latches.</i></li>
</ul>
(Clearly the latches were not designed with this kind of cabinet in mind, but you can make them work quite nicely if you are willing to go through this extra hassle. Fortunately, once you figure it out for the first one, assuming your cabinets are consistent, you can just repeat the same conditions for the others. Some people with this kind of cabinet will probably just opt to not use this kind of latch.)<br />
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<b>Step 3, position the latch:</b> Make a mark on the wood where you want the latch to start.<br />
<ul>
<li><i>The instructions specify putting the latch 0.8 inches (2 cm) away from the edge of the frame (single door) or center line (double doors), but I found that putting it 3 cm away instead gave me a little more room that was crucial for my power drill/screwdriver to fit in a single door situation. (The instructions only suggest making a mark for the double door but I like doing it on single doors also so that all of my latches will be in consistent positions; I think they look better that way.)</i></li>
</ul>
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<b>Step 4, mark position of rear holes:</b> (If you have the ceiling step-down, stick your extra layer to the ceiling of the cabinet with the double stick tape.) Hold the latch with its red plastic jig in place up against the cabinet ceiling (I do NOT expose the little built-in tape piece on top of the latch yet), pushing toward the back of the cabinet until the front tabs of the red plastic jig press against the front of the frame, and use a pencil to trace the oval <b>rear</b> holes on the ceiling or the extra layer, depending on your situation. Remove the latch.<br />
<ul>
<li><i>It’s important to press both red tabs against the frame firmly as you mark the holes so that you don’t end up with a skewed latch.</i></li>
</ul>
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<i><b>STEP 4 ALTERNATIVE IF YOU HAVE BUMPER DOTS:</b> Before you hold the latch up to make those marks, put some spare bumper dots of similar thickness to those already on your door right behind the tabs of the red plastic jig and press the tabs against those dots, rather than the bare cabinet frame, as in the figure. This ensures that your latch will be forward enough to clear the real dots and connect with the door catch. I have 4 bumper dots that I just keep putting up and taking off as I install a series of latches. </i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rQ4vNLcYCe8/W2PqJQSNLEI/AAAAAAAAAto/bEzPBx3ouCgbz1RoQR5xOFqe7FNabhRVQCEwYBhgL/s1600/Step_3-4_%2Bpositioning.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="1000" height="70" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rQ4vNLcYCe8/W2PqJQSNLEI/AAAAAAAAAto/bEzPBx3ouCgbz1RoQR5xOFqe7FNabhRVQCEwYBhgL/s400/Step_3-4_%2Bpositioning.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Steps 3 and 4, positioning latch. Click to enlarge image.</span></td></tr>
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<b>Step 5, drill rear holes:</b> Use a sharp pointed tool like an awl to punch a dimple into the very center of each oval. Then drill a pilot hole up into the frame. (The instructions say to tape the latch in place and then drill with the bit going through the oval hole, but I found that very difficult and prone to causing the latch to move and be attached unevenly.) I found it best to use a drill bit that is slightly on the large side for what you might normally use for the #6 screws that they supply or their equivalents, large enough to let the screws be tightened without too much difficulty; i.e., 3/32” rather than the 1/16” suggested by the back of my box of #6 screws. I usually lay some aluminum foil over whatever is below to catch sawdust.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fz5ASMKc1uc/W2PqJefxU5I/AAAAAAAAAtw/Be-4t_ch3zQSPAlE4hB7BR6e3OF7qWnWgCEwYBhgL/s1600/Step_5_drilling.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="1000" height="71" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fz5ASMKc1uc/W2PqJefxU5I/AAAAAAAAAtw/Be-4t_ch3zQSPAlE4hB7BR6e3OF7qWnWgCEwYBhgL/s400/Step_5_drilling.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Step 5, drilling rear holes. Click to enlarge image.</span></td></tr>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uULdHqDtusg/W2PqJoTDpoI/AAAAAAAAAt8/nBxk9l3skLoskc9qbjmH0AhJF4A6Y9oOgCEwYBhgL/s1600/Step_6_rear_screws.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="692" data-original-width="1200" height="230" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uULdHqDtusg/W2PqJoTDpoI/AAAAAAAAAt8/nBxk9l3skLoskc9qbjmH0AhJF4A6Y9oOgCEwYBhgL/s400/Step_6_rear_screws.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Step 6, installation of rear screws. Click to enlarge image.</span></td></tr>
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<b>Step 6, install rear screws:</b> Here’s where my advice and Murakoshi’s instructions differ considerably: You already put the rear holes in exactly the right place before attaching the latch, so now you can screw in the rear screws. However, still remove the cover of the built-in sticky tape to limit the latch’s ability to twist around as the screws are being tightened, which caused some frustration in my first few installations. Screw both rear screws in while keeping the latch firmly pressed in position because there is play in the rear holes. (I have not found the ability to slide the latch back and forth at this stage to be advantageous.) Then you can remove any temporary spacer bumper dots or you can leave them until the next step.<br />
<ul>
<li><i>A power screwdriver will make this job MUCH easier, but they tend to be bulky, so invest in an extended Phillips screwdriver attachment so that you aren’t limited to that stumpy short one that probably came with your tool. </i></li>
</ul>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iT5AnzVkdXo/W2P0jkp5SAI/AAAAAAAAAuo/1e_p-nbd6G8EJXaz4rOSUsVJPWohQka_wCLcBGAs/s1600/Step_7_position_catch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="409" data-original-width="488" height="268" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iT5AnzVkdXo/W2P0jkp5SAI/AAAAAAAAAuo/1e_p-nbd6G8EJXaz4rOSUsVJPWohQka_wCLcBGAs/s320/Step_7_position_catch.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Step 7, positioning the catch. Click to enlarge image.</span></td></tr>
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<b>Step 7, position catch: </b> If you have removed the red plastic jig, snap it back in its position in the latch. (The red and white cardboard insert should still be in place.) Peel off the white backing of the sticky black tape on the back of the catch and insert the catch into the holes in the latch. Make sure the catch is resting in its ideal position and gently close the cabinet door, press closed for a few seconds, and gently open it The catch should remain stuck to the cabinet door as it opens, in the correct position.<br />
<ul>
<li><i>It’s nearly impossible to pull that white backing off; I’ve reported this to Tuson and suggested that Murakoshi include a little overhang; we’ll see.</i></li>
</ul>
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<b>Step 8, drill and screw in catch:</b> The catch has a thin red tape that prevents the moving part from sliding at this point; leave it on. Punch guide holes exactly in the center of the metal holes where the screws will go and then drill into the door with the catch in place. Screw in the supplied catch screws and then pull the red tape off, enabling the catch to slide up and down.<br />
<ul>
<li><i>This requires some dexterity and the picture makes the danger quite obvious: don’t drill through the door! </i></li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ud2pVukyL3U/W2P1und7vSI/AAAAAAAAAu0/QkeLKKB7gbcFgz1Vq1UooDyywhH8qXebQCLcBGAs/s1600/Step_8_attach_catch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="522" data-original-width="842" height="247" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ud2pVukyL3U/W2P1und7vSI/AAAAAAAAAu0/QkeLKKB7gbcFgz1Vq1UooDyywhH8qXebQCLcBGAs/s400/Step_8_attach_catch.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Step 8, positioning the catch. Click image to enlarge.</span></td></tr>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g1EukDVxkzs/W2PqJxe3S_I/AAAAAAAAAt8/KzH7VNAGw1MIhOaAWwGhH8yKajzSTgvqgCEwYBhgL/s1600/Step_9_front_screws.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="263" data-original-width="1000" height="105" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g1EukDVxkzs/W2PqJxe3S_I/AAAAAAAAAt8/KzH7VNAGw1MIhOaAWwGhH8yKajzSTgvqgCEwYBhgL/s400/Step_9_front_screws.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Step 9, installation of front screws. Click to enlarge image.</span></td></tr>
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<b>Step 9, install front screws: </b> Now you finally get to take off the red plastic jig and the red & white cardboard tag! Punch guide holes in the center of the front metal holes and drill up into the wood, and then screw in the supplied front screws whether or not you used the supplied rear screws. <br />
<ul>
<li><i>Tighten securely but don’t over-tighten, and make sure you aren’t torqueing the plastic of the latch. Close the door; you may need to slide the catch around to get it to go into its home position rather than banging into the front of the latch, but once it is close enough to that position, it will take the exactly correct position as the door closes. Open and close it a few times to make sure you hear the “thunk” of the latch moving up and down. If you are installing in a double door cabinet, reach in the “other” door to feel the latch as you close the latch’s door and feel the hook moving in and out; and to convince yourself that things are lined up functionally, press on the back piece of the moving hook while that door is closed and make sure you can’t open the door as long as you prevent that piece from moving. </i></li>
</ul>
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You’re done! If you are used to push latches like I was, you may find it unnerving to not hear the click that accompanies the closing and opening of the doors with those latches; that feedback was constantly in the back of my mind telling me that the latch had engaged and disengaged. The lack of the click required a bit of a leap of faith that this new latch will actually work. However, there is that comforting soft “thunk” sound of the Murakoshi latch moving out of the way when the doors open, so there’s still audible feedback that the latch is behaving as expected; it’s just at a different time. It was disconcerting at first but I got used to it pretty quickly.<br />
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<b>Warped doors create a problem</b><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mBVa1sd7bcQ/W2PqKDbOQJI/AAAAAAAAAt4/8-I3Y_59tXMgG3m6bJNLkLgWpyiXSnsmwCEwYBhgL/s1600/warped_cabinet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="502" data-original-width="1600" height="125" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mBVa1sd7bcQ/W2PqKDbOQJI/AAAAAAAAAt4/8-I3Y_59tXMgG3m6bJNLkLgWpyiXSnsmwCEwYBhgL/s400/warped_cabinet.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Warped door increased the distance between the latch and the catch; fixed by<br />extending the catch with an extra wood spacer. Click to enlarge image.</span></td></tr>
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I did encounter one door in which the latch unexpectedly would not work, and upon looking more closely, I realized that this cabinet door was warped so that the top where the latch was actually farther away from the cabinet then the rest of the door. The top bumper dot did not even touch anything. That prevented the latch from being fully closed to the point that the hook would be far enough down to stop the catch from opening. You can kind of see it in these photos; when closed, the top of the door is a little more open than the bottom, and when you look at the open door straight on the edge, you can see a little of the inside of the door at the top but not at the bottom. This was enough warp to cost those precious few millimeters at the top. My solution is shown in the last photo; it works quite well. Not shown, I also replaced the bottom bumper dot with a felt dot to bring the whole door slightly closer to the frame.<br />
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<b>Thoughts on closing</b><br />
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Haha yes, that pun was intended… These latches need to be under a surface that reaches all the way to the door; they cannot be on top of a surface and they can’t be under a surface that stops prematurely. (By the way, not being on top of a surface means that they don’t take up room on your shelf, which is nice.) That means they can’t be used on most floor level kitchen cabinets because there are usually drawers or some kind of empty space above the lower cabinets; there’s nothing on which to put the latch. Push latches are also not the best in lower cabinets in the kitchen because you’ll constantly be opening them with your knees. For these reasons, I have not put quake resistant latches on lower cabinets, figuring that in most cases, things falling out of a lower cabinet won't cause many problems. I did install a very stiff latch on one lower cabinet in my previous home that had a bunch of stacked serving dishes; figured it was better than nothing. You can always put a catch style latch if you need to, but that looks, well, industrial (see the second-to-last figure in my push latch article). And I guess the point of those move-a-lever child-proof latches are to keep the toddler away from the bleach below your kitchen sink. Still, someone really needs to come up with a good solution for quake resistant lower kitchen cabinet doors. <span style="background-color: #f9cb9c;">[Revised 10/8/18 - Hey, someone did! Tuson points out that a 90 degree bracket can be fastened inside the frame and the latch can be attached to the bottom of the bracket, as shown in this extra photo added in this revision. Hopefully they will come out with an official attachment for this purpose, but if you really want to, you can rig up something yourself. The same could be done for push latches, although then the door would be at the mercy of knees and dogs.]</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: yellow;">Updated 7/8/19: Tuson now offers these latches through their own <a href="https://tusonrvbrakes.com/collections/murakoshi-earthquake-proof-latch-series-pfr-tsa" target="_blank">online store</a>. If you have questions, you can contact Felice One directly at felice-one@tuson.com. </span> Again, Quaketips has not gone commercial and it’s unusual for me to provide direct marketing information in this blog, but I think it is appropriate in this case to let you know where to find them. I have no financial connections with Tuson, Murakoshi, or any other latch manufacturer/marketer for that matter. And I repeat, while I’m impressed with the latches and have installed them in my own kitchen, I do NOT have enough experience with these latches (and won’t for many years) to feel comfortable “endorsing” or “recommending” them over other types. So let’s just say I’ve started a long-term experiment; the next time there’s a big quake, please fill up the comments section for this article saying what kind of latch you have (or no latch at all) and whether your doors opened! (I hope I am not unlatching Pandora’s box…)<br />
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<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a><br />
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<br />Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-78020819475542660552018-05-29T01:04:00.001-07:002018-08-03T00:52:42.249-07:00No Gripes about Gripeez: A way to use clear gripper pads to stick down display objects resting in stands<a name='more'></a>One of the types of display items on bookshelves and mantles that is difficult to brace is the common plate or other flat object that rests in a folding or non-folding stand, like the ones shown in these photos. This can be tough because depending on the object and the shape of the stand where the object rests on it, it can be hard to affix the display object to the stand, and even harder to affix the bottom of the stand to the surface. Sure, you can put a massive gob of <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2014/04/20-things-you-can-do-with-quake-putty.html" target="_blank">quake putty</a> on each part but you’ll see it and it can look ugly (no offense to quake putty). Sometimes, these objects are light and having them fall would not be a problem, but for those that you want to prevent from flying and damaging themselves or something/someone else, it would be nice to be able to stick them down.<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JPA2W2XWXDM/WmcblVSJk0I/AAAAAAAAAps/77zUbGrLKRQFyKmA6HLBWxMM8_XI2sSFgCLcBGAs/s1600/display%2Bplates.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="423" data-original-width="1600" height="105" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JPA2W2XWXDM/WmcblVSJk0I/AAAAAAAAAps/77zUbGrLKRQFyKmA6HLBWxMM8_XI2sSFgCLcBGAs/s400/display%2Bplates.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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In some cases, I have used putty and simply scraped away as much as possible so that it isn’t obviously visible, as shown in the first set of photos. But I have some thin geode slices sitting on clear plastic stands, and while quake putty was fine to stick the backs to the stands, even small dabs of putty on the stands’ feet looked bad showing through the clear plastic, as shown in these photos of the blue geode slide. I would usually use <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2014/04/20-things-you-can-do-with-quake-putty.html" target="_blank">quake gel</a> for clear objects but quake gel is runny, and doesn’t work well with very small feet of stands; it’s better for broad surfaces. <br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wcStidtS4mQ/WmcblEdfVhI/AAAAAAAAApk/Ao09RoHxCL8uhQ05d8MbW_qqJmKPHXD_ACEwYBhgL/s1600/blue%2Bgeode%2Bslice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="699" data-original-width="1600" height="173" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wcStidtS4mQ/WmcblEdfVhI/AAAAAAAAApk/Ao09RoHxCL8uhQ05d8MbW_qqJmKPHXD_ACEwYBhgL/s400/blue%2Bgeode%2Bslice.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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I solved this problem with one of my new quake-proofing friends, Gripeez. <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2017/10/moving-for-reasons-other-than-seismic.html" target="_blank">I’ve written about these magic clear sticky gel pads before </a>and I keep coming up with new uses for them. (I have no financial ties to the company, and I imagine there are other similar products from other companies.) In this case, I cut small rectangles of Gripeez that were the size of the feet of my stands and put them under the feet, with quake putty sticking down the back rest of the stand that can’t be seen from the front. It took a bit of finessing to get the sticky things to remain on the feet without twisting as I removed my fingers before placing the stand on the surface, because they kept sticking to my fingers, but I managed to do it. It looks great!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RW8yhG11O_M/WmcblD003GI/AAAAAAAAApo/ZSSfbhbEh1gIxwl4d4cawkYHIOs0Z9dJgCEwYBhgL/s1600/pink%2Bgeode%2Bslice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="355" data-original-width="1600" height="85" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RW8yhG11O_M/WmcblD003GI/AAAAAAAAApo/ZSSfbhbEh1gIxwl4d4cawkYHIOs0Z9dJgCEwYBhgL/s400/pink%2Bgeode%2Bslice.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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Because the Gripeez is thick (around 3 mm), the stand feet don’t rest directly on the shelf and the stand can move slightly from side to side, which isn’t ideal, but it seems to be holding this pretty well. In a large quake, it would probably come off, but I think this would discourage the objects from sliding or flying in a medium quake that might otherwise knock objects off shelves.<br />
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I also started using small pieces of Gripeez under the two lower corners of framed pictures if they were on maze picture hooks, to keep them straight, in my previous home. I used to use putty for that but the putty can leave shiny marks on some flat paint walls, and the Gripeez didn’t leave any trace on the paint in that home. However,<span style="background-color: white;"> some unexpected home repairs involving water damage have made me need to temporarily remove some of the framed pictures that I hung with maze hooks a few months ago in my current home, and I have found to my annoyance that the little squares of Gripeez that I had cut out and placed under the corners left the paint slightly shadowed, as if it was a little wet. I was annoyed to see this because the whole point of using these things instead of quake putty was to avoid shiny marks on flat paint, so seeing these shaded areas isn't much better. In my old home, which had a similar paint job, the Gripeez left the paint absolutely unaffected, so I guess different paints react differently. I did notice that they are extremely sticky though, so very small squares should still be effective and might leave less noticeable marks.]</span><br />
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By the way, these Gripeez are also really fun to play with; as they are sticky and squishy and stretchy and can offer hours of entertainment to otherwise mature adults, based on personal experience…<br />
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<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a><br />
<br />Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-13218787488407558152018-03-31T22:35:00.000-07:002018-05-29T01:05:01.154-07:00How to protect fine wine glasses from themselves and their brutish cousins<a name='more'></a>I’ll start this article with material that many of you know already, and then hit you with something you may not have thought about.<br />
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Here’s what you might already know, especially if you have attended one of my talks. Even if you have taken measures to prevent your kitchen cabinet doors from swinging open in a quake*, which would allow the contents to fall out and shatter or cause other problems, those contents can still get jostled around inside the closed cabinet and break. I think the most likely candidates for getting broken inside a closed cabinet are delicate crystal wine glasses.<br />
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<span style="background-color: yellow;">[*<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2012/08/at-last-helpful-hints-on-installing.html" target="_blank">See my discussion of push latches</a>, including some recent questions about conditions under which they might fail; a large article about different latches is forthcoming.]</span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TIu8I_grML8/WmcJrBj4PcI/AAAAAAAAAoU/u_w1MDWPon8D3HE_bgO-OISaMhPfjS-EwCLcBGAs/s1600/wine%2Bglasses%2Band%2Bputty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="559" data-original-width="1600" height="139" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TIu8I_grML8/WmcJrBj4PcI/AAAAAAAAAoU/u_w1MDWPon8D3HE_bgO-OISaMhPfjS-EwCLcBGAs/s400/wine%2Bglasses%2Band%2Bputty.jpg" width="400" /></a>If you don’t use those glasses very often, you can take steps to preserve them by sticking them down with several small pieces of <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2014/04/20-things-you-can-do-with-quake-putty.html" target="_blank">quake putty</a> under the edge of the base. Now if you do this, you need to be able to pick them up again to use them, and this ironically risks breaking the glasses if you try to hold them by their bowl sections (the drinking part), since the stems will easily snap. The secret is to grasp a glass by its flat base and gently twist the base while slightly tilting the glass (again, only by holding the base). At first, it might seem like you can’t do this, but a gentle insistent twist/tilt will ultimately convince the base to separate from the shelf.<br />
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Ways to prevent them from getting too difficult to lift up include using really tiny pieces of putty (smaller than the ones in the old photos above, like the size of a coriander seed), and not pressing them too hard onto the shelf when placing them initially. Using quake putty usually involves twisting an object and pressing hard onto the surface, but in this case, just gently press the base down, no twisting, and don’t flatten the putty balls too much, just enough for the glass to feel firmly attached to the underlying surface. Also, don’t put them too close together, because that little tilt means that the top of the glass moves sideways, and if there is another glass in its way, you could have problems.<br />
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I’ve noticed that if you pick up a glass within a year or two, the putty easily peels off the base without leaving any trace to be cleaned up; but if you pick up one after many years (like eight, in my case), they can be a little harder to lift up, and there might be a trace of putty that you end up needing to clean off. It’s still better than cleaning up shards of shattered crystal wine glasses on the floor after a quake. Remember to leave the putty balls on the shelf because you can reuse them when you put the glasses back.<br />
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Ok, now for the part you may not have considered. It’s admittedly a pain to do this to your wine glasses, and you will probably only do it for the expensive delicate ones, leaving cheaper wine glasses and also regular drinking glasses un-fastened. But that means that in a substantial quake, the delicate glasses might not fall over, but the crude and thick cheap glasses will be flying around and will crush the fastened delicate expensive ones! I solved this problem in my previous home, and have recreated it in my new home, by putting a wire shelf divider like the one shown in these photos, onto the shelf between the cheap ones and the expensive ones. These are available at places like the Container Store (not an endorsement; it’s just where I got mine) and most certainly from online merchants.<br />
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One limitation of these dividers is that they have large gaps through which smaller glasses, pieces of glasses, or edges of intact glasses could still hit the adhered delicate glasses. I actually did not think that the following idea would work when I first tried it, but it was magnificently successful: I put a piece of white card on the side of the divider closest to the cheap glasses, and adhered it to the divider with… guess what… quake putty! <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2014/04/20-things-you-can-do-with-quake-putty.html" target="_blank">The uses for that stuff just keep getting more numerous!</a> It is on the side closest to the cheap glasses because those are what we are trying to stop from going through the divider; if they were on the putty side rather than the card side, they could theoretically push through and knock the card off, and proceed to cause the mayhem we are trying to avoid. <br />
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If you get the type shown in the picture, it is very stable and does not easily slide on the shelf or tip over; it’s a very solid combination. I assembled the one shown in the photo in 2009 for my old home, it was still solid in 2017 when I pulled the divider off of the shelf, and it remained solid through the move and being tossed in a pile so that when I put it on the shelf in my new place as shown in the picture, I didn’t have to do anything to it; it was as strong as the day it was put together.<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SIpxJZXM638/WmcJrQkitvI/AAAAAAAAAo0/p8JMGV9QcD8s5A7zl0g15gjnOuMUQ7iDQCEwYBhgL/s1600/divider%2Bwith%2Bcard%2Band%2Bputty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="697" data-original-width="1600" height="173" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SIpxJZXM638/WmcJrQkitvI/AAAAAAAAAo0/p8JMGV9QcD8s5A7zl0g15gjnOuMUQ7iDQCEwYBhgL/s400/divider%2Bwith%2Bcard%2Band%2Bputty.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Note that this card was somewhat glossy and smooth, and made a good surface for the putty to stick. Had it been more fibrous or porous paper, I doubt this would have worked. But any smooth, non-floppy surface to which the putty will stick, including smooth card, plastic, light weight metal, etc., will work well. Of course, if you want, you can use any of a number of glues or cements.<br />
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The moral of this story is: always be thinking one step ahead of potential earthquake-caused problems, including putting up a fence to keep the bullies out.<br />
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<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a></div>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-42163234420402428242018-03-12T16:58:00.001-07:002018-03-31T22:37:40.338-07:00Special bulletin about Gripeez leaving marks on some painted walls<a name='more'></a><span style="background-color: white;">This is a special short bulletin regarding the use of Gripeez to stabilize the bottom corners of pictures hanging on <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2011/04/amazing-story-from-past-and-more-about.html" target="_blank">maze picture hooks</a>, <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2018/02/command-picture-hanging-strips-for.html" target="_blank">which I have recently been recommending</a> as an alternative to using pieces of quake putty to stabilize the corners.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">This worked wonderfully in my previous home. However, some unexpected home repairs involving water damage in my current home have made me need to temporarily remove some of the framed pictures that I hung with maze hooks a few months ago, and I have found to my annoyance that the little squares of Gripeez that I had cut out and placed under the corners left the paint slightly shadowed, as if it was a little wet. I was annoyed to see this because the whole point of using these things instead of quake putty was to avoid shiny marks on flat paint, so seeing these shaded areas isn't much better. In my old home, which had a similar paint job, the Gripeez left the paint absolutely unaffected, so I guess different paints react differently. I did notice that they are extremely sticky though, so very small squares should still be effective and might leave less noticeable marks.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">I've updated some recent articles in which I had mentioned this use of Gripeez but wanted to post a new bulletin in case anyone already read those articles and won't be reading them again.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a></span>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-12977628410112375582018-02-09T00:05:00.000-08:002018-03-31T22:37:19.584-07:00Command Picture Hanging strips for earthquake resistant picture hanging: A follow-up<a name='more'></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--snrEDb0OXM/WmaRaDA0plI/AAAAAAAAAnI/7tZMHnfbpKsgsMeglK2zRK0d4ivyilN7QCLcBGAs/s1600/packaged%2Bstrips.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="400" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--snrEDb0OXM/WmaRaDA0plI/AAAAAAAAAnI/7tZMHnfbpKsgsMeglK2zRK0d4ivyilN7QCLcBGAs/s200/packaged%2Bstrips.jpg" width="150" /></a>Here’s an update on sticking pictures to walls with Command Velcro-style picture hanging strips, <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2016/08/are-command-picture-hanging-strips-as.html" target="_blank">about which I wrote before</a>. (If you haven't read that article already, I suggest reading it before reading this one.) I continue to be very impressed with these, but I have additional experience that I would like to share with people here as I’ve been putting up a lot of pictures in my new home.<br />
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First of all, as you might guess, these are not a good option for frames that have paper on the back. They will stick, but if you were to try to remove them by unzipping the Velcro-style connection between the two strips, you run the risk that the strips would remain together and the paper would rip off. Therefore, for such pictures, I continue to use <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2011/04/amazing-story-from-past-and-more-about.html" target="_blank">maze picture hooks.</a><br />
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If the frame already has a picture wire, then you can usually remove the hardware that holds the wire in place, like screw-eyes, because they will prevent the back of the frame from getting close enough to the wall for the Command strips to work. Also, if you have a hybrid frame that has a fold-up kickstand for tabletop display, and you don’t want to rip that off, then you have to make sure it is thin enough so that the Command strip sandwich will still connect the back of the frame to the wall.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wkYYmnlq2Ko/WmaRagIYksI/AAAAAAAAAnM/eLL4r6q_04w-eJ6Z_W8encHYkUwITfZogCEwYBhgL/s1600/peeling%2Band%2Bintact%2Bstrips.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="713" data-original-width="1600" height="177" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wkYYmnlq2Ko/WmaRagIYksI/AAAAAAAAAnM/eLL4r6q_04w-eJ6Z_W8encHYkUwITfZogCEwYBhgL/s400/peeling%2Band%2Bintact%2Bstrips.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
I also realized in my current round of picture hanging that if the frame is not completely flat, it can cause problems. As you can see in these photos of a couple of small framed pictures in a stairwell, they are working very well but there is one frame that apparently has a slight bend to it, and that prevented the sticky back of the Command strip against the wall from sitting flush on it (rightmost photo, upper part of the strip; you can click on the picture to enlarge it)). I am not too concerned though, because most of the strip is on the wall and I haven’t seen evidence that it is slowly peeling off; it is just off of the wall in the part where the frame is bent. The rest of that strip, and all of the other three strips, seem fine.<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VxQY_cE2wy0/WmaRZs8dGfI/AAAAAAAAAnU/wb8i3pYURJ0A79cslIuusPu3v0RndDeFACEwYBhgL/s1600/metal%2Bplate.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VxQY_cE2wy0/WmaRZs8dGfI/AAAAAAAAAnU/wb8i3pYURJ0A79cslIuusPu3v0RndDeFACEwYBhgL/s200/metal%2Bplate.JPG" width="150" /></a>By the way, other than this one instance of the sticky part of the strip not completely being flush with the wall, I have not observed any other instance of these becoming separated, either at the sticky surface or at the Velcro interlocking faces. I mentioned these Command strips at one of my talks and someone in the audience said that they had had a bad experience with them coming off, and I was hoping to find out more about that and requested that they e-mail me details afterward but they didn’t contact me afterward, so I don’t know if it was a situation like this one instance I’ve described here. It does not appear likely to me that the interlocking Velcro part will spontaneously come undone, and the sticky parts of regular Command strips (i.e., not the Velcro style, but the single strips that attach hooks to walls) have been very stable over many years in my experience.<br />
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I also used the Command strips to stick this ornamental plate to the wall (shown above); two strips at the top and one in the middle. Quite nice!<br />
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One disadvantage of using the Command strips is that if you decide to repaint your walls, you won't just be taking pictures off of hooks and pulling nails out of the wall temporarily. You'll either have to paint around the wall-mounted half of the Command strip pair (which means you'll see the footprint if you later remove that strip to reposition the picture), or you'll have to permanently undo the whole set-up and start again from scratch after the paint job.<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tvmSUPbN_Ho/WmaRbe-XHBI/AAAAAAAAAng/iJ4MR-rvfC0xCoFZfyjMvSw4iI5gwiLKQCEwYBhgL/s1600/white%2Band%2Bblack.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1151" data-original-width="1600" height="287" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tvmSUPbN_Ho/WmaRbe-XHBI/AAAAAAAAAng/iJ4MR-rvfC0xCoFZfyjMvSw4iI5gwiLKQCEwYBhgL/s400/white%2Band%2Bblack.JPG" width="400" /></a>Now here’s one more issue: I put a couple of small pictures on a bathroom wall with the command strips and they look great from the front, but you can see in the photo that the pull tabs of the strips are somewhat visible from the side on the wall, and very obvious in the reflection of the frames in the mirror! Even though the wall is near white and the pull tabs are white, they show through the shadows easily (upper photos; click on the figure to enlarge it). These Command strips are also available in black, and I had avoided those because I figured they would clash with a white wall. However, I tried them in this case and I was completely wrong before: the black ones don’t clash with the white wall; instead, they blend nicely into the shadow (lower photos). MUCH better looking in this case than the white ones. I actually tried a hybrid in which a white one was on the wall and a black one was on the picture frame, but that one white pull tab was still visible. So don’t be afraid to use the black ones in a shadow situation if the frame is black.<br />
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By the way, in case it doesn’t go without saying, I don’t suggest determining what size strips to use by the weight capacity listed on the package. That figure is set to avoid spontaneous failure on stationary walls, NOT for separation during shaking in an earthquake. I would err on the side of larger strips.<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qmFLw9Lc6ys/WmaVz90LHSI/AAAAAAAAAn4/W0q4xXQiFDoKvKdKkA6MjeydrfGPQ6tbACLcBGAs/s1600/hallway%2Band%2Bmodern%2Bpictures.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="588" data-original-width="1600" height="145" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qmFLw9Lc6ys/WmaVz90LHSI/AAAAAAAAAn4/W0q4xXQiFDoKvKdKkA6MjeydrfGPQ6tbACLcBGAs/s400/hallway%2Band%2Bmodern%2Bpictures.jpg" width="400" /></a>Well, it’s been about a year and a half since I first started experimenting with these Command Strips and wrote <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2016/08/are-command-picture-hanging-strips-as.html" target="_blank">my original article</a> about them. Having used maze picture hooks as much as possible before these, what is my current default approach to hanging pictures? Actually, I would say I have about half maze hooks and half Command strips. I’m using Command strips for framed pictures that are relatively light-weight and no more than about 3 feet wide (no magic number there; I’m just going by the feel of it), for unframed pictures even if they are larger if they have a broad enough back edge for the strips to stick, and for objects like that metal plate above that can’t take picture wire (see the couple of examples shown in the accompanying figure). I’m using maze picture hooks for the larger, heavier framed pictures. If they are just very large but still relatively lightweight (for example, if I can easily pick it up with two hands and position it on the wall), I’m using a single maze hook nailed into the drywall, or two maze hooks several inches apart lined up horizontally if the picture is wide enough that I want extra stability. If the picture is REALLY big and heavy, like the very large picture shown below, then I go for two maze hooks lined up horizontally 16 inches apart and <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2011/09/be-sure-to-bolt-your-furniture-bracing.html" target="_blank">bolted into the wall studs</a>. As I wrote about in an <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2011/04/amazing-story-from-past-and-more-about.html" target="_blank">earlier article about maze hooks</a>, I also use these for heavy objects suspended from string like metal gongs on the wall, with the hook bolted into a wall stud.<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-USgWGwlOBNc/WmaRY-ZXp7I/AAAAAAAAAnc/NznaWQ0NO5sew1PGr1Q1ErNjiOg60eGdQCEwYBhgL/s1600/large%2Bpicture.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-USgWGwlOBNc/WmaRY-ZXp7I/AAAAAAAAAnc/NznaWQ0NO5sew1PGr1Q1ErNjiOg60eGdQCEwYBhgL/s200/large%2Bpicture.JPG" width="150" /></a><span style="color: red;">One more evolved part of my strategy is that I no longer use small pieces of quake putty in the lower corners to stabilize the pictures from rotating or swinging out, because that does involve risk of shiny marks on otherwise flat paint surfaces. I am now routinely using small cut-out rectangles of “Gripeez” (<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2017/10/moving-for-reasons-other-than-seismic.html" target="_blank">see my 10/23/17 article</a>), which is one of the modern polymer-based tacky gripper pads that stick well with no adhesive residues and no alteration of painted surfaces of which I’m aware.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: yellow; color: red;">[update (3/12/18): regarding the use of Gripeez to stabilize the bottom corners of pictures hanging on hooks, as mentioned above, some unexpected home repairs involving water damage have made me need to temporarily remove some of the framed pictures that I hung with maze hooks a few months ago, and I have found to my annoyance that the little squares of Gripeez that I had cut out and placed under the corners left the paint slightly shadowed, as if it was a little wet. I was annoyed to see this because the whole point of using these things instead of quake putty was to avoid shiny marks on flat paint, so seeing these shaded areas isn't much better. In my old home, which had a similar paint job, the Gripeez left the paint absolutely unaffected, so I guess different paints react differently. I did notice that they are extremely sticky though, so very small squares should still be effective and might leave less noticeable marks.]</span><br />
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So now remember, if someone asks you, “so you’re following that Springer guy’s blog, what did you think of it?,” be sure to use words like “gripping!,” “suspenseful!,” or perhaps “hooked!” (but hopefully not “tacky”…)<br />
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<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-26286760318311940092018-01-07T16:38:00.000-08:002018-02-09T00:07:10.830-08:00So how did Matt react to the largest jolt in 10 years? (1/4/2018 Hayward fault quake)<a name='more'></a>As those in the SF Bay Area could not help but notice, we had a small but intense earthquake in the early morning of January 4th, a 4.4 on the Hayward Fault located near UC Berkeley. As far as I'm concerned, it was still late night January 3rd because I was still up, working in my den at home.<br />
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I have not been posting much recently because I've been so busy, but wanted to make this quick post because it's interesting to note how I reacted during this quake, given how much I think about these things.<br />
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First of all, the article title that mentions the largest jolt in 10 years is referring to the way it felt to me, here in the Outer Richmond District of San Francisco, near the ocean and the offshore San Andreas Fault. The 6.0 Napa quake in 2014 was quite a bit larger than this 4.4 and it did far more damage, but to me in San Francisco's Mission Bay district at the time, it was pretty mild and I even slept through most of it, just groggily waking up at the end. In contrast, this was sudden and intense where I was. Some people have described it as rolling but in my home, it shook us with a very fast side-to-side motion, not gentle at all. In fact, it was distressing enough that for the first time since the 5.4 quake further south in the East Bay in 2007, I was seriously considering that this could be the beginning of a major quake.<br />
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(By the way, for anyone who was here in this earthquake and has not experienced a larger one, it would be worthwhile to review <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2011/10/small-quakes-good-or-bad-for-geology.html" target="_blank">my article about small quakes and what they mean</a>.)<br />
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So how did I react? Did I practice what I preach? Well, yes and no. I successfully made use of "<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2016/05/situational-awareness-step-before-first.html" target="_blank">situational awareness</a>," which I wrote about 2016. This is the practice of being aware of your surroundings and making last-minute judgement calls about what needs to be done that may not be consistent with the default generic advice. Milo the Dog was in the den with me resting on a cushion on the other side of the room, and the first thing I did (to my credit) after the few seconds of realizing that this was actually happening was to look at him. He was freaking out and looked like he was about to bolt, and not knowing what would happen next, I did what I had told myself I would do in the past: I scooped him up in my arms and prepared to take him with me <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2011/03/important-information-about-recurring.html" target="_blank">to get under the desk</a>, rather than have him run into some less safe place. The quake ended before I could even start to get under the desk.<br />
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Ok, that's good. But actually I did NOT do the other things that I had practiced in my mind many times before, the steps I planned to take if a quake occurred while working at my laptop in my office. My plan has been to first shut the laptop lid (<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2012/04/do-i-really-have-to-stick-down.html" target="_blank">the laptop is not stuck down for obvious reasons</a> and this would help protect it from damage), and to grab my iPhone on my way to wherever I went so that it would be with me. I did neither of those things; didn't even think about them until the quake was over. <br />
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I guess that must mean I put Milo ahead of all other considerations, which is nice, but it would have taken 1 extra second to shut the laptop and grab the phone, and would still be worth doing. Of course, remember that if I had had a flame going somewhere, like a candle or something simmering on the stove, <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-burning-question-what-happens-to.html" target="_blank">the first thing to do would be to put it out.</a><br />
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The other thing that kind of annoyed me is that I forgot to follow the current advice (<a href="https://www.earthquakecountry.org/dropcoverholdon/" target="_blank">"drop, cover, hold on"</a>), which is to drop down to the floor and cover your head before moving to wherever you need to go. This prevents you from being knocked down by the shaking or hit by something before you get to your safe spot. Darn it, we keep saying the words and doing the drills but in that moment, I was focused on Milo and the need to get to him as quickly as possible. I actually think that if I had dropped down, I might not have reached him before he ran, so it was probably the right thing to do, but if the quake was much larger, this could have been a problem. Perfection is difficult to achieve!<br />
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<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-21319258605329910662017-10-23T02:44:00.000-07:002018-03-12T16:32:37.564-07:00Moving for reasons other than seismic events: A diary of undoing quake precautions before moving out of a home<a name='more'></a>I have something shocking to tell you. Today, August 25, 2017, I have absolutely no earthquake precautions in place whatsoever. No, I have not simply cracked under the pressure; it’s because I have recently moved to a new home, and since the whole concept of moving one's possessions is the opposite of the concept of preventing one's possessions from moving, seismic bracing and other quake precautions need to be undone.<br />
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We spend all of our time discussing earthquake precautions in the context of implementing them (that is, bracing, fastening, arranging, etc.), and spend very little time talking about tearing it all apart! So for a change of pace, I am keeping a mini-diary of my thoughts as I start undoing my earthquake precautions while preparing for the move. You will read about it when completed after the move <i>[10/21/17: haha, that’s an understatement…]</i>, but I am keeping track in real time. The move will be August 4th; movers are packing me up on August 3rd, and I plan to have everything ready to go by the end of August 2.<br />
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<b>Various dates in July:</b> As home inspections and buyers’ mortgage lender inspections have taken place, I have made sure to <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-earthquake-precaution-step-nobody.html" target="_blank">inform the inspectors and appraisers</a> that the top row of cabinets are using push latches so they should not attempt to pull those doors open. I have also mentioned that many objects are stuck down.<br />
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<b>July 22:</b> I had friends over for dinner and I unstuck some of my good quality wine glasses that were protectively adhered in my cabinet using <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2014/04/20-things-you-can-do-with-quake-putty.html" target="_blank">quake putty</a>. When I washed the glasses and put them back, I just placed them on the shelf without re-sticking them down. Then I pulled the others up as well; now none of my wine glasses are stuck down and they are ready to be packed by the movers.<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5m2y0DXzXao/We2vs-9-46I/AAAAAAAAAl0/0eZMPQwR_IMZvZZkFeTQ2jAb0HD_bIa-wCLcBGAs/s1600/statue-putty.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1393" data-original-width="1600" height="173" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5m2y0DXzXao/We2vs-9-46I/AAAAAAAAAl0/0eZMPQwR_IMZvZZkFeTQ2jAb0HD_bIa-wCLcBGAs/s200/statue-putty.JPG" width="200" /></a><b>July 25:</b> Starting to remove some small objects stuck to surfaces of minor furniture that I plan to discard. Quake putty is coming off of things without much trouble, although there is usually a bit that doesn’t come off right away that I pull off by dabbing at it with the putty that I have already removed. I am pulling off the clear objects stuck to clear glass shelves, including the Waterford crystal glasses that were featured in <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2014/04/20-things-you-can-do-with-quake-putty.html" target="_blank">my article about quake gel</a> and how objects will slowly slide over a period of months if the surface is not perfectly level, leaving a snail trail. I’m happy to report that these objects were still securely stuck, with no snail trails, which means I ultimately leveled the shelves well! I’ve pulled up one of the <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2016/02/special-challenges-can-you-seismically.html" target="_blank">plant pots that had been stuck to the top of a cabinet with putty</a>.<br />
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So now, we are entering a period in which more and more objects are NOT braced, and one hopes an earthquake does not choose this next week to hit. I won’t be unfastening things until I have to, so most furniture and objects are still braced/stuck, but the items I’ve freed up today for discarding/donating/giving tomorrow are sitting freely, including one tall display case and one glass/iron small tall end table that were strapped to the wall.<br />
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Well this is distressing. A large crystal vase that has been stuck with quake putty to the top of a speaker for years came right off as if there was no putty there. I know it used to be stuck because I tried lifting it once and the speaker came up with the vase. Hmm, I guess it is worthwhile checking these things every few years! (It’s worth noting that this crystal vase was not flat on the bottom but was faceted; inherently weaker for putty even if the gaps are filled. Objects with flat bottoms were sometimes extremely hard to detach.)<br />
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<b>July 26:</b> Taking out the first bolts from the wall where I’ve removed the first furniture to give away. Because this is a metal frame home, I didn’t make small holes in the drywall for bolts to screw into wood studs; I made BIG holes in the drywall and in the metal studs so that toggle bolts could fit through them (1/2 inch and larger; see <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2011/09/be-sure-to-bolt-your-furniture-bracing.html" target="_blank">my earlier article</a> about anchoring to wood and metal wall studs). There were a couple of places where there were no handy studs, so since it is insufficient to bolt directly into drywall, I used toggle bolts behind the drywall in those spaces, so between the toggle bolts in the metal studs and those in the drywall, I have a lot of large holes to fill! Remember that with such large holes, spackle can still fill them but it is helpful to blow out all dust from the hole, push in the rim of the hole with a blunt object like the handle of a butter knife to prevent the paper in the drywall from sticking out, and pack a thick layer of spackle into the hole but intentionally push it in too far so that it will harden as a backing; then fill in a second layer over the hardened first plug and smooth that even with the wall using a putty knife, to avoid any shrinkage of the otherwise flat surface. Alternatively, there are drywall repair tapes and meshes that can be used to give more support to the spackle, as well as other kinds of fillers; I won’t digress into that here. (Oops, guess I kind of already did.)<br />
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cWi5Fg2gBJ8/We2wET23lZI/AAAAAAAAAl8/gPzPMPp0VkYakNFh8OiJ0kTtP68BSCS1ACLcBGAs/s1600/unstrapping.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cWi5Fg2gBJ8/We2wET23lZI/AAAAAAAAAl8/gPzPMPp0VkYakNFh8OiJ0kTtP68BSCS1ACLcBGAs/s200/unstrapping.jpg" width="150" /></a><br />
<b>July 28:</b> Been staring for a few days at the tall display case, which it turns out I will give away next week, so it is sitting there totally unbraced with its straps hanging out unfettered. Such tempting of fate; I am a WILD man!<br />
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I think I will not have the movers move my 12 gallons of bottled water because there is already a bunch of water at the place to which I’m moving. I just opened one of these bottles, with a use-by date of 2011. Remember <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2013/07/does-bottled-water-really-expire-fda.html" target="_blank">the FDA said you can ignore that date</a> and keep these unopened commercially bottled jugs indefinitely, but I figured this was a good opportunity to see what it tastes like. I opened it, poured a little into a glass and prepared myself for an off taste that should mostly go away after I have had a chance to shake up the water and aerate it, but actually, the water tasted fine! <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2013/07/does-bottled-water-really-expire-fda.html" target="_blank">I have updated my article</a> about the water use-by dates to include this 6-year experimental result.<br />
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<b>July 29:</b> I’ve started taking pictures off of the walls; mostly those that have been on the walls for 8 years and are on picture wires hanging from <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2011/04/amazing-story-from-past-and-more-about.html" target="_blank">maze picture hooks</a>, with small dabs of quake putty under their lower corners to make keep them straight, and to push the bottom out a bit so that the relatively thick maze hook (a little plastic brick) doesn’t cause the top to be too tilted forward. When removing quake putty, little bits can remain behind, but these can be picked up by dabbing at them with the remaining quake putty. This typically works well but I can see that when the putty has been in place for years, it’s a bit harder to get the remaining bits off of the wall. I succeeded and found that if I dabbed with the rest of the putty and then pulled away rapidly and to the side, it was more efficient at removing the remaining bits. Still, there is indeed a slightly shinier area on the flat paint where the putty was. <span style="color: red;"><a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.in/2016/08/are-command-picture-hanging-strips-as.html" target="_blank">I have already written previously</a> that cutting small pieces of a modern self-sticking polymer pad like “<a href="https://www.buygripeez.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gripeez</a>” (I have no financial interest in this product) and placing them under the bottom corners instead of putty works well; it does not leave the shiny spot on the flat paint that putty leaves.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: yellow; color: red;">[update (3/12/18): regarding the use of Gripeez to stabilize the bottom corners of pictures hanging on hooks, as mentioned above, some unexpected home repairs involving water damage have made me need to temporarily remove some of the framed pictures that I hung with maze hooks a few months ago, and I have found to my annoyance that the little squares of Gripeez that I had cut out and placed under the corners left the paint slightly shadowed, as if it was a little wet. I was annoyed to see this because the whole point of using these things instead of quake putty was to avoid shiny marks on flat paint, so seeing these shaded areas isn't much better. In my old home, which had a similar paint job, the Gripeez left the paint absolutely unaffected, so I guess different paints react differently. I did notice that they are extremely sticky though, so very small squares should still be effective and might leave less noticeable marks.]</span><br />
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<b>July 31:</b> I’ve been giving away furniture that isn’t getting moved, sold, or donated, and patching holes as I go. I’m also dumping out the rest of that >6-year old water, again not because it’s not good anymore, but because I just don’t want the movers moving a bunch of water. It’s worth noting that I’ve had 12 of those commercial gallon jugs of water, on shelves so not pressing down on each other, and individually bagged in large Ziploc bags; and none of them appear to have leaked. There’s no condensation inside any of the outer bags. I did manage to drop one of them, and the jug ruptured and water poured out…into the outer bag, which held. My klutziness enabled me to confirm that having that outer bag is a really good idea, especially if these things might get clobbered in a Murphy’s Law earthquake.<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_TpOaYkQAPM/We2wtIzxwjI/AAAAAAAAAmI/uz5ULmuD4IsTjWPr2mJfzikZZSKcg6swACLcBGAs/s1600/labels.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_TpOaYkQAPM/We2wtIzxwjI/AAAAAAAAAmI/uz5ULmuD4IsTjWPr2mJfzikZZSKcg6swACLcBGAs/s320/labels.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<b>August 2:</b> The movers are coming to pack up my stuff tomorrow, which means I have to have things unfastened today. I’m putting <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-earthquake-precaution-step-nobody.html" target="_blank">labels on the push-latch doors to warn the movers</a>, since I convinced the buyers to leave them in place, at least initially, so I did not have to remove them all. My knife blocks are on double sided Velcro squares, adhered directly to the granite countertop. The adhesive squares come up from the counter without leaving a mark, although it is taking a while to slowly pull them off. Pliers help quite a bit, with a rocking side-to-side motion. Unfortunately, the bottom adhesive squares can’t be reused, so even though the top adhesive squares are still attached to the bottoms of the knife blocks and the Velcro hook middle piece is intact, I’ll have to get new ones or at least find a replacement for the bottom piece that is as strong as the one that comes with this product. <i>[I ended up just ordering new sets for the use in the new kitchen.]</i><br />
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I just took one of my bedroom stereo speakers off of the dresser, repeating the angst-filled experience I’ve had in several previous moves because I stuck it down with quake putty, and over the years, the putty has spread and flattened to make a freakishly strong attachment; but I ultimately manage to pry it off each time without leaving a mark. Wow, I forgot I tried an experiment with the other speaker 2 years ago when I put it on a wicker hamper and figure that quake putty would not be removed well since it would work its way in between the wicker “twigs” so instead I stuck it down with four “Gripeez” (see above). It worked excellently. The speaker did not come off too easily (so the attachment was good) but I was able to kind of peel the speaker off of the wicker surface without too much trouble, and the Gripeez came off of the speaker nicely with a bit of pulling and stretching.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N6CZO6MmYyE/We2z6xo8oRI/AAAAAAAAAmU/a8sHx409rvANSRy9yPmkSDLsnOWOndyZACLcBGAs/s1600/speakers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="711" data-original-width="1600" height="177" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N6CZO6MmYyE/We2z6xo8oRI/AAAAAAAAAmU/a8sHx409rvANSRy9yPmkSDLsnOWOndyZACLcBGAs/s400/speakers.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Speaker that was stuck to a hard surface with putty (left) and another speaker that was stuck successfully to the wicker hamper with Gripeez (center, right)</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UyK2rM5tlhM/We205aWOGrI/AAAAAAAAAmc/U-daYV3s3VYVA5g3LnxnmkK7NLvP0IolwCLcBGAs/s1600/clean-wall.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UyK2rM5tlhM/We205aWOGrI/AAAAAAAAAmc/U-daYV3s3VYVA5g3LnxnmkK7NLvP0IolwCLcBGAs/s320/clean-wall.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Wall after Command Picture Hanging Strips were removed, showing no marks</span></td></tr>
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I’m removing the pictures that I had <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2016/08/are-command-picture-hanging-strips-as.html" target="_blank">stuck to the walls last year with Command Picture Hanging Strips</a>, and I’m very impressed. The pictures were just as firmly adhered as when I put them up, but easily separated at the Velcro-like interlocking layers when I used a peeling motion; then I removed the Command Strips by pulling the tabs to make them lose adherence, and the two pictures came off leaving no holes and no marks whatsoever. There is no sign that anything had ever been stuck to those walls. Very nice.<br />
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<b>August 3-10!</b> I then fell into the inevitable swirl of constant activity that didn’t allow me to write as I went along, but I will mention the important points. First, I made sure to unlatch, unstick, and unbrace everything rather than having the movers do it. Not including taking pictures off of walls, that was a total of 85 objects detached, both large and small. I was filling a lot of holes in the wall, and of course, the last couple of days in the old place were spent with no seismic precautions; good thing a large quake did not occur during that time! And in the new place, it’s taking a long time to set up and unpack; bracing is not practical yet. So that guy who keeps nagging everyone to take precautions (that would be me) is currently in a place where bookcases can fall over, objects can fly through the air, cabinet doors can open, etc. But as I’ve said in <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2015/04/do-collapsed-buildings-in-nepal-mean.html" target="_blank">other articles about not running out of buildings</a> and so on, this is an odds game. If you can reduce the chances of an earthquake causing problems by 99%, that’s pretty good even though the 1% chance is still there. Likewise, if I am in a seismically secure home all the time except for a few days once a decade, then my chances of being slammed by a quake have been enormously reduced!<br />
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<b>Epilogue October 21!!</b> I’ve been so swamped that I have not had a chance to polish this article until now. A perfectly poorly timed 2-week illness and several unforeseen events didn’t help. It’s taken a while to put the new place together and much of the bracing and sticking can’t really be done until things have found their final resting places, so my home has been a model of not practicing what I preach… although by now, all large furniture is well braced, some but not all objects are stuck down, and notably I have not had a chance to install <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2012/08/at-last-helpful-hints-on-installing.html" target="_blank">cabinet latches</a> yet but will be doing that soon. And of course, within days of moving in, we had a tiny earthquake on the San Andreas fault just a few miles offshore of where I just moved that most people didn’t feel but I did, and the Mexico quakes were in the news a lot; let’s just say that being me, I’m getting more worried about being massively embarrassed by an earthquake than being injured by one!<br />
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Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-63800741342076717122017-07-24T02:52:00.000-07:002017-10-23T02:45:40.809-07:00Simple ideas for making sure your phone and eyeglasses stay on your nightstand<a name='more'></a><div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O1lt9ea7s08/WXW9qpmKdYI/AAAAAAAAAjQ/3pYwhQ6rSQgBZifMmEmJyU6TQC-4swmnACLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_0006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O1lt9ea7s08/WXW9qpmKdYI/AAAAAAAAAjQ/3pYwhQ6rSQgBZifMmEmJyU6TQC-4swmnACLcBGAs/s320/IMG_0006.jpg" width="240" /></a>Here’s a relatively short article with some simple ideas for
preventing the useful items on your nightstand from flying away in an
earthquake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I already described <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-simple-way-to-keep-your-flashlight.html" target="_blank">how I keep my flashlight easily accessible</a> a few years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, I also keep my eyeglasses and my
cell phone on my nightstand when I’m sleeping, and it would sure be nice if
they remained handy if a quake hit while I was in bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My approach is not rocket science but I figured
I’d share it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The astute reader will discern several things by looking at
this photo of my nightstand. (1) It’s in
terrible shape (it’s an end table from the 1970s currently in its 10<sup>th</sup>
life), but that is not really relevant. (2) My eyeglasses case is right next to
me under stationary conditions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(3) My
iPhone is charging in a nice convenient stand. </div>
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You can kind of see the flashlight on the lower level, but
concentrate on the upper level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here’s
how those objects are held in place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BuAcEKlztM8/WXW9qhpErMI/AAAAAAAAAjI/-si5LAeN918nkUi-SNJemwJrL8gT0C9XQCEwYBhgL/s1600/IMG_1074.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BuAcEKlztM8/WXW9qhpErMI/AAAAAAAAAjI/-si5LAeN918nkUi-SNJemwJrL8gT0C9XQCEwYBhgL/s200/IMG_1074.JPG" width="200" /></a>First, the cell phone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Pretty simple: that charging stand is stuck to the surface of the end table
with <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2014/04/20-things-you-can-do-with-quake-putty.html" target="_blank">quake putty</a>, since I never need to move the charging stand and it even
makes it easier to remove the phone from the charger with one hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I might have been hesitant to put quake putty
on bare wood if the nightstand was some great antique, but considering my
nightstand is a non-great “antique” full of water marks, I’m fine with it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Second, the glasses case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I like to be able to pick up the glasses case when putting my glasses into
it at night or taking them out in the morning, so I didn’t use putty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One could potentially come up with a Velcro-based
solution, but I decided to use magnets and my favorite <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2016/08/are-command-picture-hanging-strips-as.html" target="_blank">3M Command Strips</a> (the sticky
tape with a tab that you can pull to make it stop being sticky and release from
a surface).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this case, I used the
clear Command strips, so you don’t have ugly white tabs on the dark wood
furniture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, I would hesitate to
put these strips on good wood furniture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I used those strips to stick down a couple of strong magnets, figuring I’d
attach other magnets or a metal plate to the bottom of the glasses case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, as luck would have it, the glasses
case was already paramagnetic so I didn’t have to add anything else to it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just stuck down the magnets to the table, and
now if I even put the case close to the right place and let go, it jumps right
to where it should be; quite helpful in the dark.</div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PbPnul_cHL4/WXW9rSX5gVI/AAAAAAAAAjY/9cSpmeTCiVUpIx-H2uX7fxSWenmVdRufgCEwYBhgL/s1600/IMG_1076.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PbPnul_cHL4/WXW9rSX5gVI/AAAAAAAAAjY/9cSpmeTCiVUpIx-H2uX7fxSWenmVdRufgCEwYBhgL/s200/IMG_1076.JPG" width="200" /></a>Now, these may still fly off if the quake is large enough,
but it’s nice to know they are at least discouraged from leaving. Velcro might be safer, but I do like the idea
of being able to pull the glasses case off without making an audible noise that
could wake up someone else in the bed.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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The touch light visible in the photo is actually also stuck
down with putty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span id="goog_342378585"></span><a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2012/04/do-i-really-have-to-stick-down.html" target="_blank">None of the other objects are stuck down</a><span id="goog_342378586"></span>, like the wireless remove for my floor heater or the
wired remote that adjusts the firmness of the bed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-330ZtgUUHeg/WXW9rbkqk1I/AAAAAAAAAjU/pNz7B5rKs9Itc3vrl-uazbVcD7aolkUcACEwYBhgL/s1600/IMG_1075.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-330ZtgUUHeg/WXW9rbkqk1I/AAAAAAAAAjU/pNz7B5rKs9Itc3vrl-uazbVcD7aolkUcACEwYBhgL/s200/IMG_1075.JPG" width="150" /></a>I’m sure that those reading this could easily come up with similar
solutions on their own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The point of
this little exercise is really to plant the suggestion in your head that it’s
worthwhile to keep important objects at hand if a quake hits while you are
asleep in bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I pointed out at the
end of the flashlight article, this is all moot if the nightstand moves away
from the bed, so you might consider discouraging it from sliding if necessary,
perhaps by putting rubber non-skid pads under the feet. </div>
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Of course, if these essential objects stay on the nightstand
and you tumble out of bed, then I guess the joke is on you. Somehow, resorting to velcro pajamas and
bedsheets seems like a bit much, although it could possibly benefit the space
program.</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-49952447231965244922017-06-28T17:09:00.000-07:002017-07-24T02:53:50.047-07:00Special bulletin: potential evidence that push latches can fail during shaking<a name='more'></a>I have been recommending that people use <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2012/08/at-last-helpful-hints-on-installing.html" target="_blank">push latches</a> (a.k.a. touch latches) to prevent cabinet doors from opening for several years. There have been discussions and debates about whether shaking in the right direction can cause the door to wiggle enough that the latch would disengage. There are various accounts from people who have experienced quakes while using these latches that the doors don't open, and I have shaken a cabinet and noticed that since the hinge is moving along with the rest of the cabinet, the door doesn't move relative to the hinge so it does not jiggle in and out and the latch does not open. <br />
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However, that doesn't mean that some kinds of earthquake motion can't disengage the latches.<br />
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<span style="background-color: yellow;">Evidence is now emerging from simulations of actual earthquakes of various intensities that these latches may fail more easily than previously thought.</span> While I don't yet have enough information to warrant no longer recommending the latches because they may still be protective in many earthquake scenarios, I feel the responsible thing for me to do is to alert people about this issue now, and I will post a new article with more comprehensive information in the near future when I have looked into it more fully.<br />
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<a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">>>back to blog</a>Matt Springerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388585440067493359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1960936282220367813.post-43828107746066959022017-04-08T13:38:00.001-07:002021-03-05T20:59:46.015-08:00How to vacuum pack dry supplies without a vacuum (the magic of oxygen absorbers)<a name='more'></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hZNWHfKYvho/WOMxESb9y5I/AAAAAAAAAiA/3Zb_nhnRHoIkoVW7UsvVongGx6cIwPAtwCLcB/s1600/O2%2Babsorber.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hZNWHfKYvho/WOMxESb9y5I/AAAAAAAAAiA/3Zb_nhnRHoIkoVW7UsvVongGx6cIwPAtwCLcB/s200/O2%2Babsorber.jpg" width="156" /></a>Today I’m sharing a tip about preserving dry emergency supplies, from a chance observation that I was surprised to make a couple of years ago. Most of my emergency supply food is in the form of <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2013/10/mre-shelf-life-follow-up-ever-wonder.html" target="_blank">MREs</a>, <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2016/03/further-adventures-with-expiration.html" target="_blank">emergency food bars</a>, and canned food. However, I also wanted to store away a few small bags of my dog’s kibble (dry food), so I parceled out portions into a couple of heat-sealable Mylar bags to be sealed and stored in my emergency kit. To ensure that they were adequately preserved, before sealing each one, I tossed in a fresh oxygen absorber packet, the kind that you commonly see in sealed bags of jerky and other preserved foods to remove oxygen from the sealed contents and avoid oxidation. These sealable Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers are easy to find online.<br />
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I also took the same approach to preserve some dry dental hygiene treats (yes, still for the dog) that I could only get in a large bag; I wanted to preserve smaller bags of them and open them successively over a couple of years. This was not for the emergency supplies; it was simply a way to stretch the contents of the large bag over a longer time than I felt they would last after opening once air got in.<br />
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No, I haven’t gotten to the surprising part yet.<br />
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In both cases, I pressed as much air out of the bags as I could before heat-sealing them, but since the contents were dry hard pellets, it was impossible to get rid of ALL of the air since the air left between the hard objects could not be pressed out. That means that the bags right after sealing were firmly enveloping the hard contents but the outside surfaces of the bags were smooth and flat. <br />
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However, when I looked at the bags the next day, in both cases, I was surprised to see them appear to have been shrink-wrapped and vacuum-sealed, even though neither was the case. That is, there were invaginations in the bag surface between each pellet, it looked like crinkled foil, and it was completely stiff with no movement at all of the contents inside! As close to a perfect vacuum as one could get with no actual vacuum device!<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-C2zQZLpti5c/WOMxGUfxa-I/AAAAAAAAAiI/1J97nM1kZAg9GG_mAZSMW8rLlqHi9ExewCEw/s1600/dental%2Btreat%2Bbag.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-C2zQZLpti5c/WOMxGUfxa-I/AAAAAAAAAiI/1J97nM1kZAg9GG_mAZSMW8rLlqHi9ExewCEw/s320/dental%2Btreat%2Bbag.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I would not have guessed this in advance, but the oxygen absorbers apparently were able to remove enough gas from the sealed bags that they effectively vacuum-packed themselves. This is shown in the photo of the dental treat bags, in which the bag on the left was sealed the day before, and the bag on the right was just sealed a few minutes before the photo was taken. And yes, that bag on the right looked like the bag on the left the next day.<br />
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The next pair of photos shows one of the kibble bags that I just removed from my emergency kit to photograph, viewed from the front and side. It’s as tight as it can be, like a brick, completely vacuum packed still nine months later.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EpZ2jIHPufg/WOMxDA1ALpI/AAAAAAAAAh8/JWINgIs47J0I3_miRkMGKpL2T2CB5ixHACEw/s1600/kibble%2Bbag.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EpZ2jIHPufg/WOMxDA1ALpI/AAAAAAAAAh8/JWINgIs47J0I3_miRkMGKpL2T2CB5ixHACEw/s320/kibble%2Bbag.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Perhaps a chemist will weigh in here; I was a bit surprised since air contains only ~20% oxygen (78% is nitrogen), so if the oxygen absorber only absorbs oxygen, I would not have expected it to effectively remove all of the gas from the bag. However, I’ve done this several times and it always happens.<br />
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So you can actually vacuum-seal and preserve dry supplies even if you don’t have a vacuum sealer, just as long as you can heat-seal bags and have oxygen absorbers. <br />
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By the way, a few years ago, I had an e-mail correspondence with a representative from Pack Fresh, one of the companies that manufactures oxygen absorbers and sells them on Amazon. I learned some interesting tips about preserving supplies in heat-sealable ziplock bags; that is, the bags that have a ziplock top but then extra material beyond the ziplock part that you can heat-seal (the bag is completely sealed until you rip the top part off and then you can re-close it with the ziplock). That ziplock part is just plastic, not Mylar, and I was surprised to learn that oxygen goes through even the closed ziplock because the plastic is somewhat permeable to oxygen.<br />
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That means that if you take an ordinary plastic “Ziploc” bag and close it, oxygen can still get in. If you have a Mylar bag with a ziplock top that is closed, oxygen still gets in, more slowly. You need to heat-seal the opening of the Mylar bag to truly keep the oxygen out. This means that if you put supplies into even a Mylar ziplock bag with an oxygen absorber and just close the bag with the ziplock part, oxygen will ultimately get in and overwhelm the oxygen absorber, and you will not have successfully stored away the contents. For that reason, you should heat seal the top of the bag for long-term storage, and then when you ultimately open it, you can use the ziplock closure for subsequent closing for short-term storage.<div><br /></div><div><i><span style="color: #2b00fe;">[Note added 3/5/2021: It's true! I bought a bag of chicory granules online, to add to coffee, and could only get a 1 lb bag, which is like a lifetime supply since I only add it occasionally when I feel like it. It also takes up too much space on the shelf by my coffee supplies. So I decided to put a manageable amount into a smaller container, and store away the rest for the future by putting an oxygen absorber in there, and tried just squeezing air out and closing the bag with its ziploc top. Not only did it not shrink down, it even inflated a little. I then sealed it with the heat sealer, and it became vacuum-packed.]</span></i><br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0deyzurm2p8/WOMxF2rcWgI/AAAAAAAAAiE/gU_1ROGnptUHoPq3n8BdRT6UuFmnwObMwCEw/s1600/seal-a-meal.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="143" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0deyzurm2p8/WOMxF2rcWgI/AAAAAAAAAiE/gU_1ROGnptUHoPq3n8BdRT6UuFmnwObMwCEw/s200/seal-a-meal.jpg" width="200" /></a>He also told me that while an actual heat-sealer (like that used for Seal-a-Meal bags, the photo shows mine) is great, many people just use a clothing iron or a hair iron and that works as well.<br />
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Of course, if you really want to go all-out and your bag contents are dry, you can also toss in a desiccant packet before sealing the bag. Interestingly, a comment was left on <a href="http://quaketips.blogspot.com/2017/01/new-years-resolution-put-some-cash-in.html" target="_blank">my recent article about keeping emergency cash in emergency kits</a>, from someone who had put some paper money in their kit and opened it years later to find that it had gotten moldy! I checked my paper envelope of emergency cash and it is fine, but I guess if you suspect that moisture might be a problem, you could also seal emergency cash in a Mylar envelope with a desiccant packet inside.<br />
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So there you have it; how to shrink-wrap bags with oxygen absorber packs. However, this doesn't work for everything; please don't attempt to reduce your waist size by eating oxygen absorbers!<br />
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