Rehab Right Front Cover

The book’s introductory chapter gives an overview of architectural rehabilitation and how it relates to preservation and restoration. Here you will find simple guidelines to bring a home’s original style back to life, and advice on balancing your personal style and aesthetic as a homeowner with the character of your home.

The second chapter details nearly a century of styles, from 1860s Italianate through War Tract housing of the 1940s. Full descriptions and beautiful drawings accompany each of 13 architectural styles, providing rich information to anyone wanting to identify the style of a particular home or neighborhood, or with an interest in local architectural history. Although the book focuses on Oakland’s historical architecture, many of these styles and variations are found throughout the architecture of the Bay Area.

Chapter 3 guides the homeowner through important project planning: budgeting, setting project goals, determining relevant building codes, deciding whether to hire a pro or DIY.

Illustration from Rehab Right/City of Oakland. Architectural styles covered include Italianate (mid-1860s to 1880s); San Francisco Stick (late 1870s to 1890s); Queen Anne (1883 to 1890s); Colonial Revivals (1890s to 1910); Craftsman (1890s to 1925); Prairie School (1910 to 1925); California Bungalow (1910 to 1925); Period Revivals (1915 to 1935); and the Wartime Tract (1942 to 1945).

The nuts and bolts reside in chapters 4 and 5, which overflow with detailed information on how to rehab exterior and interior elements, from repointing masonry to electrical upgrades, from fixing a squeaky floor to replacing glass panes in a door. Published with a homeowner in mind, Rehab Right presents language and illustrations that are clear and simple.

Illustration from Rehab Right/ City of Oakland

Architectural preservation brings reuse to the level of our built environment. More than simply conserving the materials and effort embodied in a house, or its market value, it fortifies the character of our places – our neighborhoods, cities, and regions. We hope you’ll take a look at Rehab Right, and that in its pages, you’ll find a valuable technical resource provided in the spirit of maintaining our local histories.

Made in America from 100 percent Organic Cotton!

Back in stock by popular demand!  Urban Ore canvas bags are proudly made in the U.S.A. from 100% organic cotton.  ONLY $5!  Now that Alameda County and other neighboring cities in the Bay Area have adopted plastic bag bans, demand for canvas bags has skyrocketed. Why not try one of ours? These large-capacity, sturdy canvas bags are perfect for groceries and other errands. Long handles conveniently fit over the shoulder, leaving your hands free to ride a bicycle. We’ve banned the plastic bag. Now say NO THANK YOU to 10 cent paper bags! And by saving 10 cents per paper bag, you’ll be able to afford that sweet, vintage Schwinn cruiser you’ve had your eye on. Beep, beep!

Did we mention these bags are made from 100% all natural organic cotton? That means they are compostable as well! You will also be happy in the knowledge that you are saving precious resources by not using paper bags each time you take a trip to the grocery store.

Dimensions: 18”w x 17.5”h x 7”g with 25” natural cotton web handles.  Perfect for groceries, laundry, camping, the gym, anything!

Manufactured by our friends at enviro-tote.com

If you actually want to buy a toilet at Urban Ore, where do you even begin? Forget the camera. To stack the odds in your favor, you should know thy toilet inside and out. Or at least make note of the following measurements about your current toilet.

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1.     Rough-in

In the sales yard, a straight edge stands in for the wall to help measure this toilet's rough-in.

This is the absolute most important measurement to have in hand. To find out your toilet’s rough-in, measure from the wall behind the toilet to the middle of the closet bolts, which hold your toilet to the floor. That distance will likely be a bit more than the standard 10″, 12″, or 14″ rough-in dimensions. Round your measurement down to the nearest standard rough-in. If you have an old toilet with 4 bolts, measure to the rear ones.

When shopping for a used toilet, use a straight edge or sight down the back of the toilet to estimate where the wall would be. Measure from there to the middle of the bolt holes.

Ideally your replacement toilet should have the same rough-in as your old one. A smaller one will fit, though any items stored on top of the tank may tend to fall behind the toilet. A larger one won’t fit at all unless you change your plumbing or move the wall.

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2.     Bowl shape & length – round vs elongated

Round bowls work well in tight spaces; elongated bowls offer a more comfortable seat.

Elongated bowls provide a more comfortable perch, while round bowls generally work better in small or awkward bathroom spaces. From the toilet seat’s mounting holes to the front of the rim, round bowls measure 16″-17″, compared to 18″-19″ for elongated bowls. (Toilet seats are also either round or elongated to match the bowl style.)

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3.     Bowl height

ADA-accessible toilets put the top of the toilet seat 17 – 19 inches above the floor. This provides an easier transition to and from wheelchairs, but can also help tall people or folks with limited mobility. Regular toilets run about 2 inches shorter.

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4.     Gallons per Flush

Find a toilet's GPF label between the seat and the tank. Reuse is great; reduce is even better!

There was a time when toilets used up to 7 gallons of water per flush. In 1995, federal standards limited new toilets to 1.6 gallons per flush (or GPF). Modern toilets are permanently labeled with their maximum GPF. Find that label between the seat and the bowl. Toilets without a GPF label probably pre-date the move toward water conservation.

If you want a low-flow replacement toilet, we regularly have many in stock. We’re even seeing newer 1.3 GPF toilets in our inventory.

Urban Ore regularly has a good selection of classic older toilets to match or recreate the aesthetics of an older home. (Does anyone make seafoam green toilets these days?) Reducing GPF on older toilets is a bit out of our arena, but there’s always Google. There’s a piece on TLC’s website, for example, about retrofitting older toilets to reduce water use.

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5.     Left- or Right-Hand Flush Lever

Flush levers can be on the left or right. Depending on the layout of your bathroom, you may find that it’s easier to reach the lever on one side or the other. If you have a preference, look for a toilet with a handle on the right…. er, correct, side.

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Armed with these measurements, your chances of finding a replacement toilet that works for you are closer to swim than sink.

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Below are some resources from the Web. Most of the focus is on lead paint in houses, but lead was also used on furniture and architectural elements prior to 1978, so the basic principles apply.

For starters, get the low-down on lead from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Accurate information is the best tool available in addressing the potential risks of lead paint.

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Determining if it’s lead paint

Old lead paint is most dangerous when it’s peeling, chipping, or flaking.

Lead paint was banned from the US market in 1978. Not all paints used before that contain lead. You might be able to make an educated guess based on the age of the item, considering lead paint hasn’t been sold for nearly 35 years. For instance, a bookshelf made in 1993 likely doesn’t have lead paint.

In less obvious situations, safe is probably better than sorry. Either test it, or assume that it’s lead paint and proceed with proper encapsulation or removal.

California’s Department of Public Health offers helpful information on testing for lead paint. If you do test, it’s very important to test ALL layers of paint for lead. (I stripped a set of craftsman-style cabinets a few years ago and counted THIRTEEN layers of paint!) If lead paint is present, it’s more likely to be in the earlier layers – in other words, the coats that went on before 1978.

Not all test kits are equal. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognizes two test kits for accuracy, both of which are currently available online or in local hardware stores. I checked around and it looks like you can pick up a pack of 8 swabs for under $30 or 2 swabs for around $10.

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Handling lead paint

Two approaches are commonly recommended for handling lead paint: encapsulation or removal. With encapsulation, a special liquid coating is applied over the lead paint to create a barrier. This only works if the lead paint is in good condition – not peeling or chipping off. It’s also not recommended for use on high-traffic or movable surfaces where abrasion would wear through the encapsulation layer. As an alternative to removal, encapsulation may be a good approach in some cases. Ultimately, though, the lead paint is still there.

If you plan to remove the paint, it’s best to avoid any process that might release lead fumes or dust. That means no dry sanding, scraping, or heat guns. The EPA provides general recommendations for large-scale DIY lead paint removal online. Paint strippers, which would be impractical for large projects, are great for smaller projects, like a dresser or a door. Because paint strippers remove the paint without sanding or heat, they remove lead paint without a lot of complicated equipment or setup. A quick online search turns up a wide selection of products made specifically for removing lead paint. Always follow the manufacturer’s instructions and recommendations closely.

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Cleaning up after your project

Photo credit: blue shoe farm/ www.lucky-days.blogspot.com

Begin with the end in mind, and clean-up is the rightful end to any project. Check with your local authorities about proper disposal of stripped paint and any materials that may have been contaminated in the process. Lead paint and chemical paint strippers are both hazardous materials and shouldn’t be disposed of in the trash.

Alameda County residents can check with the county’s Household Hazardous Waste program  at (800) 606-6606 for a complete list of materials accepted and for dates and hours of operation, or visit their website.

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If you live in Alameda County, and you live in a house or apartment built before 1978, you can receive a free in-home lead consultation.

We hope you found plenty of information here to help you confidently choose to reuse.

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That’s the brave new world of EPR, much of which is in place in British Columbia, and which is even today helping US legislators write laws to bring us resource monopolies that might ask for exemption from antitrust laws. You can read most of this vision in a draft white paper from the new nonprofit Recycling Reinvented (RR).  It was recently posted to the GreenYes listserv, so I have felt free to post it here, with only a few annotations.
RR White Paper (PDF)

RR hopes the monopolies would consult with existing recyclers.  Maybe rural areas would be serviced.

RR’s board of environmental heavy hitters consists of attorney Robert F, Kennedy, Jr., President of Waterkeeper Alliance and Clinical Professor and Supervising Attorney at Pace University School of Law’s Environmental Litigation Clinic; Kim Jeffrey, President and CEO of Nestle Waters of North America; Bill Shireman, formerly of Californians Against Waste and now of Future 500; and Conrad MacKerron, founder of the As You Sow Corporate Responsibility Program.  The Executive Director is Paul Gardner, who served in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2007 – 2011 and who was Executive Director of the Recycling Association of Minnesota from 1997 – 2006.

RR’s new Outreach Director, Melissa Innes, is resigning as a Maine legislator to take this job.  She released the group’s draft EPR whitepaper on the GreenYes listserv.  It describes most of the structure I outlined in the first paragraph, although I took a couple of those points from current events in British Columbia.  BC is the international poster child for EPR achievement.  But BC is looking for a site for its new proposed incinerator to supplement the one in Vancouver that now burns and therefore wastes 300,000 tonnes a year.  Many BC communities already remove organics from their mixed discards, so what’s expected to be available for burning, post-EPR, that can support long-term contracts?

RR works on legislation and intends to help write the brave new rules.  Ms. Innes doesn’t expect to recommend incineration.  Nestle Waters North America is considered different from the Nestle corporation in the UK that is advocating more incineration of plastics.

Other EPR organizations include the Product Stewardship Council (PSC), which has the Covanta incinerator company on its board; and the Product Policy Institute (PPI), which has RR’s Melissa Innes on its board.

Regarding big-corporate control, PPI’s Matt Prindville said, “We need the corporations to save recycling because they are the only ones with capital.”  So recycling needs to be “saved?”

Gird your loins, recyclers, if you want to keep control of your industry or even the resources you personally harvest.  Or get ready to say “uncle,” and with a smile, too, if you want to stay in business.  Bill Sheehan, PPI’s Executive Director, once asked Dr. Ore and me, “What do you care who you work for?”

As for me, I work for the planet.

Aunty Entropy

Designed to work like an airport; the new facility treats discards as if they are suitcases

Urban Ore’s design team has proposed a rebuild of our 1983-vintage transfer station.  It was designed to feed a garbage burner that was never built, and it is old and run down.  We even hired two local architects to work with us.  We produced dozens of images showing the new buildings and how they would work.

This new system we have proposed could take us well above 90% diversion if it was run right.  At first, Public Works refused to even look at our ideas.  Later, they let us present to them, but nothing happened for years.

At the December 2011 Zero Waste Commission, there was zero interest from staff in any Berkeley rebuild; their approach was still to cut, cut, cut.  But by its January 2012 meeting, the Public Works Department was showing a more friendly face.

While cautiously grateful for this welcome change, I believe that even more change is called for.  Almost more than a physical rebuild, Berkeley needs a new agency to run its discard management system.  In most cities since the sanitary landfill took over the way discards were handled after WW II, Public Works became the traditional home of “waste management” as a profession.  That’s certainly true of Berkeley, whose Public Works Department nearly got council to build a mass-burn garbage incinerator at Second and Gilman, until recyclers and citizens put a stop to it.

Back then, our slogan against the waste burner was “Give Recycling a Chance!”  As we predicted, after the incinerator was rejected, recyclers’ enterprises grew and grew, and new enterprises were formed.  But management stayed the same.

Berkeley boasts the fourth-highest diversion of fifteen cities in Alameda County, 76%.  (The lowest is 59%; highest is 83%.  Berkeley’s waste managers don’t have that much waste to manage anymore.  This waste deficit is one reason why all of Berkeley’s private-sector recyclers came under attack from Public Works in 2011. Up to then, their way of paying for many of the city’s recycling costs was to use waste fees, but waste fees were declining.   In 2010, Public Works suddenly fell deep into deficit mode after being profitable for years.  Council was told by Public Works that the reason for this deficit was we recyclers had done “too good a job.”

In mid-2011, an outside consultant was brought in at a cost to the cash-starved Public Works Department of around $80,000.  His recommendation was to automate everything possible, and let displaced city employees, 27 in all, take over all 3 of private sector recycling contractors, including Urban Ore’s transfer station salvage program. This was a shock and a crisis we had to meet, and fast.

City employees were understandably torn by this tactic, which didn’t work out but ended up hurting them anyway, because the SEIU employee pool got downsized and is scheduled to be downsized some more.   The private sector recyclers battled back, and survived.  But in the scrum, ideas for making more money, for increasing rather than decreasing labor, for a vastly expanded customer interface at the City’s priceless regional transfer station asset, were shelved in favor of cuts in service.

Then key staff pushing this line left the city, and we got a new City Manager and a new head of Public Works.  This ushered in a new era of friendliness.

Some elements of the needed change are already in place.  The City’s discard management system is an Enterprise Fund. There are at least six “enterprises” (3 city-owned, 3 privately owned) that make up the bulk of Berkeley’s ecology of commerce.

The problem is not the people running the system, it’s the structure.  It’s an election year, and candidates are looking for ideas they can make into a winning message.  What we are proposing is basic applied sociology, like Urban Ore.

So, dear reader, shouldn’t we create a new agency to champion the transfer station rebuild and to take us all the way to the city’s professed goal of zero waste to landfill?

Packer truck dumps garbage at landfill. Is this good to compost?

There are many nuances in the new garbage-to-energy initiatives. In May a conference is coming to San Francisco put on by the new wave of wasting enthusiasts who claim their high-tech schemes are “sustainable.”  Last September I went to a bioconversion conference where the enthusiasts claimed the maximum we can recycle is 65% of discards (they dispute today’s higher claims by San Francisco, Berkeley, and other cities).  So that makes it okay to mash the remainder together and put it into a digester.  The processes generate methane, which can be burned for energy.  They call it “sustainable” energy and the digestate can be landfilled.

Some of my questions are: doesn’t this put a lid on recycling? Doesn’t this set of technologies require 20-30-year put-or-pay contracts for the discard supply? Doesn’t it require 20-30-year contracts for the methane or electricity demand? Doesn’t it require community assistance in siting and overcoming local resistance? Doesn’t it assume high-nitrogen feedstock, which would discourage clean composting of yard debris and food? If it receives MSW, doesn’t it mix in toxics from under the kitchen sink? What’s the chemical composition of the digestate if the feedstock is MSW? The products must be as variable as the MSW batches.

One speaker last September was from Germany. He said there are many digestion plants around Germany. He was the only speaker, however, who accepted only clean yard debris and food. He said his digestate could be used as soil amendment. He wouldn’t give me an opinion about composting MSW; he only talked about his own operation.

Dan Knapp went to a BioCycle conference in Wisconsin in November that featured digestion of clean manures from dairies. Those operations looked very interesting and indeed sustainable.

Garbage in, garbage out.

We receive lots of amazing art daily! Come find your masterpiece today!

Move into a new apartment? Have a large loft that has bare walls? A fan of classic prints or original weirdo outsider art?

Well the Urban Ore Arts and Media Department is the place for you!

From children’s finger paintings to lost masterpieces, you can find it here. We put out carts of artwork several times a week.

High end pieces can be found in our Gallery, alongside antique furniture, housewares and antiquarian books. Come take a look often, because our stock rotates daily.

Buddy Boyd of Gibson's Recycling Depot and some of the Urban Ore staff in Florianopolis, Brazil.

This past October, Urban Ore had the honor of being invited to the 7th annual Zero Waste International Alliance Zero Waste Dialog in beautiful Florianopolis, Brazil!