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After Oil Radio

Recommended by one of our customers, “After Oil” is a recent radio program produced by the College of Engineering at Purdue University (which recently aired on KQED):

After Oil Website, with a link to audio files

Hosted by Barbara Bogaev, this is a grounded, intelligent, engaging 51 minutes to sharpen your perspective on America’s oil dependence, the impending threat of peaking supply, and the search for solutions.

Posted by Carolyn Comments 1456 Permalink Categories: Green »

SF GREEN CAB in the HOUSE

Green is a great movement; you can help yourself and everyone else at the same time.  This fact resonated yesterday when Thomas from SF Green Cab returned my solicitation to service his hybrid fleet.  This is not a charity case.  Taxi is all business, green or no.  We need to keep their cars on the road—efficiently and economically— and he is willing to pay: so he can rely on his fleet with confidence, to protect his manufacturers’ warranty, and to know his cars are not compromising all his green efforts when they take a break in the shop.

I approached SF Green Cab because, at bottom, they supported hybrids.  But I support green business as well, with equal emphasis on “green” and “business”.  You cannot be green and price gouge, because you effectively punish people for doing the right thing.  This applies to all LG services, for individuals and fleets.  We are priced to support environmental consciousness.

Beyond price, doing the right thing ultimately comes down to service.  Two weeks ago, after seeing SF Green Cabs around town, I arranged for them to give me a ride to the airport at the crack of dawn.  Anyone who’s called for a cab in this town can appreciate this leap of faith; SFGC did not disappoint.  Prompt and capable of hauling all of my crap with the efficiency of an 07 Civic Hybrid, the driver Beyen not only got me there, he charmed me with his knowledge and appreciation of the technology onboard his car.  He is a believer.

For more on SF Green Cab, check out their website, read the glowing reviews on Yelp!, or, better yet, call them for a ride: 415-626-GREEN

Welcome Thomas, Beyen, Mark, and the rest of the SF Green Cab family to Luscious Garage.  Here’s to a prosperous future making people happy, pushing the status quo, and doing right by the environment.

Posted by Carolyn Comments 15 Permalink Categories: Green »

Not Crude

The collusion between auto and oil goes beyond fuel; it permeates every corner of the machine, from the rubber wiper blades to the nylon safety belts.  Much of the car is recyclable, a fact readily cited by manufacturers in environmental forums.  How much is actually recycled depends widely on the waste stream.  A fraction of the new car is built from post-consumer recycled product (though it is getting better).  In short, today’s car is unsustainable.

Lubrication is but one aspect of the car’s oil dependence, but it’s one that we can’t easily forget, exactly because we’re reminded to “change the oil” every several thousand miles.  The motoring public—with its poor retention of technical details—has been brow-beaten into an oil-change routine every three thousand miles.  For new cars, this is excessive, but less frequent changes still entail oil consumption, something the hybrid owner may rue to accept.

The fabulous news is that oil changes need not require new oil.  Well, it depends on how you define “new” exactly.  As it turns out, when oil becomes “used” it is not actually the oil that degrades, but the additives and modifiers imbedded within.  “Refining” oil is what distills it out of crude, but the process includes the additive package as well. 

If you’ve ever encountered crude oil, you know how absolutely nasty it is.  In fact it bears little resemblance to the motor oil we pour in the engine (except that it’s oily).  Crude is exactly that—crude.  It stinks something awful, it’s dirty, and it needs a lot of work to turn into all the things we use it for. 

Enter re-refined oil.  Presumably not long after it became illegal to pour used oil into a hole in the ground, the “waste” oil that drained out of engines was recaptured and hauled away by an oil “recycler”.  From conversations with former collegues and shop owners, it appears the process was more “reuse” than recycle, where a stationary engine (or less sensitive machine) would inherit the lubricant and churn away none-the-wiser.  Eventually these recyclers learned that the waste oil still had chemical value and could be re-refined (reincarnated, if you will) back to new oil.  If you think about it, waste oil, however used, is cleaner than crude oil and retains the same molecular strength.

There is a longstanding prejudice about re-refined oil in the auto industry because of the original practice of simply reusing waste oil in other engines.  “Recycling” meant running it through a sock and nothing more.  But rerefined oil is different; I’m told that there is no test, no inspection under a microscope, no way to differentiate fresh, new oil that has come from a crude source versus rerefined oil from waste.  For me, once this prejudice was dismissed, I was determined to get rerefined oil, locally and in bulk, for Luscious Garage, and in the grades used in most hybrid engines.  This came true today with the help of Coast Oil and Golden Gate Petroleum.  We now offer 100% rerefined oil that meets the ILSAC GF-4 standard (the highest standard for all manufacturers) in both 5W30 and 5W20 grades, in bulk, for our oil changes.  We do not offer virgin alternatives except when the engine calls for a different grade (the Insight requires 0W20, for instance).  Though it makes perfect sense, I should also clarify that this oil is no more expensive than the virgin-sourced variety.

Therefore, even though the engine continues to burn fossil fuel, its oil-based lubricants can be sustainable. 

 

Posted by Carolyn Comments 27 Permalink Categories: Green »

Our Shop Floor

Most shops use epoxy paint to seal their floor, the industrial equivalent of nailpolish (if concrete wore nailpolish).  It’s non-porous, which is essential so that oil and coolant won’t seep into the ground water.  But the paint itself is as toxic as California will allow (along with the prerequisite treatment of muratic acid); you still need to wear a ventilation mask during application. Oh, and stay away a few days while it dries.  (That’s just cancer; don’t get me started about photochemical smog.)  Like any status quo, it’s popular because it’s popular.  It’s also readily available in many colors; it can stand up to high traffic, including that from tires.  In 2-3 years, though, it will weaken and chip, requiring another treatment and the same parade of toxins.  In short, for the green garage, an alternative to the epoxy floor is an absolute must.

The green home movement has since developed a selection of concrete treatments like AFM SafeCoat MexeSeal and EcoProCote.  The trouble is that they are largely unproven in a truly industrial setting: repeated pressure, sheer and lift from rolling tires and attacks from highly caustic fluids (gasoline, brake fluid).

Luscious Garage inherited the original concrete slab at 459 Clementina, dating back ninety years.  It had old black paint and lots of chips and cracks.  At least we needed to clean all this off before we sealed it.  This would essentially leave us with a virgin surface—highly porous, ready to soak up whatever we selected—so we wanted to choose wisely. 

We learned the latest fashion in concrete floors is a thing called “RetroPlate”.  The idea is simple: take a virgin slab, apply a non-toxic hardener that densifies the stone so much that it becomes non-porous (and very strong).  Then polish the hell out of it.  The result is very pretty and also very expensive.  I hear that several dealerships have used it for their showrooms and shops (including Burlingame Lexus?).  It’s also common in restaurants, retail stores, even school cafeterias.  It has no coating in the traditional sense, so it never wears away.  It actually gets stronger and shinier with age.

So we thought this was a great idea.  But would Burlingame Lexus to pay for it? 

The good news is that RetroPlate is the second generation of an equally capable treatment.  The original product came out over fifty years ago, called “Ashford Formula.”  It behaves the same way, is still non-porous, but is not quite as strong or as glossy (40x stronger than regular concrete, versus 500x with RP).  As for toxicity, it states, “The Ashford Formula is an odorless and non-hazardous material. It contains no solvents or volatile organic compounds. The Ashford Formula is non-toxic, and produces no harmful fumes or vapors. The Ashford Formula is completely water-based and environmentally safe. Use of this product requires no breathing apparatus or protective clothing.”  Best of all, it was within our budget. 

CDI Commercial Flooring performed the application this past June.  They ground all the cracks and surface imperfections by hand (their arms are as big as my leg) and resurfaced the floor with professional-grade diamond grinders.  They used a comprehensive vacuum system that collected all the dust and debris, eliminating particulate matter.  The pictures show what a tremendous improvement they made.

If you can’t tell, I am really proud of this floor.  Not only is it environmentally sound, it allowed us to extend the life of the existing slab (rather than pour a whole new one).  The result brings out the natural imperfections of the stone and all the interesting places it has been extended or repaired.  Best of all, it is totally non-porous and non-dust producing.  Oh, and it’s fully capable to handle automotive abuse. 

Posted by Carolyn Comments 998 Permalink Categories: Green »