Post #1896: On re-using political yard signs: Composting shed, part 1.

 

Today is the day when a whole lot of campaign signs go straight into the dumpster.  Along with the political aspirations of half the recent candidates,

Which is a pity, really.  (The signs, I mean.)  The best of those signs are made to last a long time.  We really ought to do better than treating them as a single-use disposable.

So I suggest that the first Wednesday following the first Monday in November be declared Campaign Sign Recycling Day.  In keeping with that, today is a good day for me to make something useful out of some dead political yard signs.

This post is the theory.  Next post is the actual assembly.


We’re talking Coroplast.

Source:  Coroplast, Inc.

Campaign yard signs come in several varieties.

Cheap campaign yard signs aren’t re-usable in any obvious way.  Some are coated cardboard, on some sort of stick.  Some are a printed plastic sleeve that fits over a three-sided wire frame.  For both of those, the metal frames (if any) can be recycled.  But the signs themselves aren’t good for much.  Far as I can tell, once they’ve served their purpose, they’re trash.

By contrast, high-end campaign yard signs are Coroplast(r).  That is, corrugated plastic sheets — two sheets of plastic bound together with thin plastic channels.  As pictured above.  Effectively, they are built like corrugated cardboard, but plastic.

These sheets — typically made from polypropylene — have a surprising amount of structural integrity.  Much like corrugated cardboard, they are quite resistant to bending or folding across the corrugations.  This means you could  use a single thickness of Coroplast to build light-duty objects, and multiple thicknesses to build heavy duty objects.

These also stand up well to being used outside.  The ones forming the sides of my oldest raised beds now have more than five years of cumulative outdoor exposure (first as yard signs, then as raised bed sides.)  Only this year did they begin to show brittleness from all that sunshine and weather.  (And if I’d cared to keep them painted, I probably could have avoided that, as most of the damage is from exposure to the UV in sunlight.)


Fastenating

I’d say that the biggest downside is that these can’t be glued together.  (Or, at least, not well, or not easily, using conventional glues).  The underlying material (typically, polypropylene) just doesn’t stick to much.  And the ink coating — the printed message — further complicates things.

Near as I can tell, most people who make DIY projects with Coroplast sheet opt for some sort of mechanical fastening.  That can be as simple as cutting slots and tabs, so that sheets fit together.  Than can include melting sheets together, in places, to form a sort of plastic rivet.  Or can include using actual metal fasteners (bolts, washers, nuts) to hold the plastic parts together.  Or staple or nail them into a wood backing.

(The big exception being model airplane enthusiasts, for whom gluing coroplast is the only practical option.  That said, after having read one or two sites discussing that use, I’m convinced that gluing up Coroplast is not something that you’re likely to get right the first time.)

There are chemical methods that might, in theory, hold these sheets together.  Some are specialized glues specifically designed for this sort of application.  All of those appear to cost an arm and a leg, at least for the quantities that would be needed to build (e.g.) a piece of furniture.  And then there’s solvent-welding the polypropylene (PP).  That is, finding a solvent that will dissolve PP, dissolving some pieces of PP in that solvent, and then using that as if it were glue.  I strongly suspect that either approach — specialized glue, or DIY solvent-welding — requires a nice clean PP surface, involving a lot of complicated surface preparation, and that the ink firmly bonded to the typical campaign sign would interfere with that.

Dare I say this?  Even duct tape is iffy.  The same factors that make it hard for glue to stick, make it hard for tapes to stick.  And surface preparation for taping is not easy (e.g., lightly torching the PP surface).  All told, taping or gluing this stuff seems like a lot of work, on the off chance that you can get something to stick firmly.

The upshot is that I’m going with mechanical fastening only.


Never in small amounts

I find most plans for upcycling or recycling of materials to be of little value.  Most involve using small amounts of materials.  Most involve creating something for which there is a very limited demand.  The results tend to be more of a novelty than a way to divert significant amounts of material from the landfill.

Contrast that with using campaign signs for the sides of raised garden beds.  That used up a lot of material, slowed down the inevitable progress toward the landfill by years, and avoided consuming considerable amounts of virgin materials.

In this case, I have a stack of roughly 35 campaign yard signs, or about 100 square feet of Coroplast sheet.  Pre-cut into neat 2′ x 1.5′ pieces.  So I’m looking for a project that will use up just about that amount of material, and give me something useful in return.


Revisiting cardboard furniture

Source:  Google search

In Post #887, I did up a quick summary of the various construction methods used to create corrugated cardboard furniture.  I’d guess that just about anything you could build as corrugated cardboard furniture could also be built out of Coroplast.

So if you are stuck for ideas, you can look up cardboard furniture plans.  As long as they don’t depend critically on glue, they ought to work with Coroplast.

As I see it, the main approaches to creating weight-bearing structures for cardboard furniture are:

Simple stacked sheets.

Source:  Homedit.com

Folded beams

Source:  Time, inc.

Structural grids (with or without surfacing materials):

Source:  Planet Paper


Totes

Source:  Storage Techniques for Art, Science, and History

It seems worth mentioning that a lot of lightweight commercial bins and totes are made from folded and fastened sheets of Coroplast.  It’s such a common use that there’s even a market for used Coroplast bins and totes.

You can find lots of different plans on the internet for constructing Coroplast totes, bins, boxes, and so on.  They all boil down to folding a sheet into a box shape, and then somehow fastening it together at the corners.  In the example pictured above, the author constructs a sort of “rivet” out of hot glue, and uses that to fasten the corners mechanically (reference).

Here, I’m shooting for something larger, to use up more Coroplast signs.


From dead campaign signs to structural integrated panels.

Source:  Builder Bill

I’m going to turn my pile of used Coroplast into some structural integrated panels or SIPs.  In this case, the SIPs will be flat, rectangular wooden frames, faced with coroplast sheets, and filled with … probably scraps of insulating foam board.

Like a hollow-core door, if you’ve ever dealt with the insides of one of those.  The entire frame around the rim is solid wood, and so has enough strength to hold fasteners and hinges.  But the broad flat surfaces are just thin, rigid sheets backed by some hollow, honeycomb-like structure.

As long as those rigid face sheets stay firmly in place, the entire unit ends up being quite strong, given the light weight.  Far more than you might reasonably expect.  This is why (e.g.) you can easily use a hollow-core door as a table-top, even though the individual face veneers are far too flimsy for that use.

I think this takes good advantage of the strengths and weaknesses of Coroplast.  And it allows me to connect the Coroplast to the structure using a (hardware) staple gun, which is about as fast and as lazy as it gets.  But all the connections subject to high point loads — the sort of connector that would pull out of a thin plastic sheet — can be made through the solid wood edges.

And it’s generic.  I’m going to use this to build a little knock-down insulated shed for my composter.  But nothing would stop you from (e.g.) building furniture this way.  Bookshelves.  A larger shed.  A lightweight travel trailer.  Anything that can be made from rigid flat panels can be made this way, within the strength limitations of the materials.

 


From structural integrated panels to winter composter cover.

At this point, putting the composter cover together is just a matter of connecting the panels made in just above.

Ideally, I’d like to have “knock down” construction — something that can be easily disassembled and re-assembled without tools.  (That way, I can store it away easily during the off-season).  But in the end, this is only going to take four long screws to hold it together.  So I’m just going to screw it together.

How this actually goes together is going to depend on what scraps of lumber I build it out of.


Conclusion

In this post, I figured out how I’m going to use up a lot of 1.5′ x 2′ Coroplast campaign signs.  My proposed method is to build a bunch of “structural panels” out of those signs.  That is, thin wood frames faced front and back with Coroplast sheets.  And then use those rigid panels to build a structure.

This approach:

  • Uses up a lot of signs.
  • Doesn’t require gluing the Coroplast sheets to anything
  • Uses (hardware) staples as the main fastener
  • Avoids putting high point loads on the plastic sheets themselves, by placing all the “structural” fasteners into wood.
  • Is flexible — just make the panels different sizes.

All I have to do now is to make that happen.

I’m now going to test that, by building a winter cover for my composter, using that “structural panel” method.  Assuming all goes well, the construction of that should be documented in my next post.

Post #1852: The USDA says to #leavetheleaves.

 

No less an authority than the USDA is now on the bandwagon for #leavetheleavesThat is, the idea that gathering and disposing of fallen autumn leaves is foolish from an environmental standpoint.

The conspiracy-minded among you may view this as just another facet of the Deep State, an evil cabal within the U.S. Civil Service determined to disrupt every facet of the American Way.  Yes, stooping so low as to attack that most harmless of small-town fall rituals … 

requesting that citizens rake/blow leaves to the curb, so the Town can repeatedly drive its high-decibel fleet of dedicated leaf-vacuuming equipment through town, and so spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to suck up those leaves, then trucking hundreds of tons of leaves down the interstate so that they can be sterilized via hot composting at some remote location, ensuring that no offspring of this year’s crop of butterflies and similar insects survive.

Well, at least, that’s the tradition in my small town.  It’s an industrial-scale process that’s a far cry from Normal Rockwell, if you get my drift.

Source:  Pinterest.

The USDA is just the most recent in a long line of organizations that have gotten behind the idea that leaf collection and disposal of this type is a relic of the past.  Historically, in this area, it’s the immediate successor to the era in which suburbanites routinely raked up and burned fall leaves.  Before that was banned owing to the resulting air pollution.

Locally, even the surrounding county (Fairfax County, VA) has proposed to stop doing vacuum leaf collection (see Post #1821).  In part, because that turned out to be a real hassle for county staff this past year.  But also for all the good reasons outlined on the USDA web page.

But in Vienna, VA, traditions die hard, unless there’s some profit to be made in killing them.  And new learning percolates excruciatingly slowly.  Town-wide, this is mostly about doing our bit to slow the insect apocalypse (reference National Academies of Science).  Not sure that matters to most residents, even though it should, from a survival-of-our-species standpoint.  All said and done, it’s still an open question as to whether we can break ourselves of this 40-year-old tradition.  Just to benefit a bunch of butterflies and such.

My prior screeds on this subject include:

  • Post 1822, on the fuel used in this process.
  • Post 1821, on Fairfax County staff recommending no leaf vacuuming.
  • Post 1612, on the emissions from gas versus electric leaf blowers.
  • Post G22-034, on vacuum leaf collection being a relic of the past.
  • Post 1463, on putting the environment first in the Town’s decision-making.

This, in addition to several posts on the economics of the Town of Vienna’s centralized leaf collection and disposal process.

 

Pictures in this post are mainly from Gencraft.com and Freepik AI

Post #1846: Vienna Market, a grim and dumpy place.

 

Vienna Market is one of many “mixed use” developments that you should expect to see along Maple Avenue in the future.  Most will likely be “stumpies”, that is, stumpy little apartment/condo buildings with first-floor retail and underground parking.  But Vienna Market is a development of townhouses, with some vestigial retail space along Maple.

In theory, in exchange for rezoning that part of Vienna’s commercial district into a housing area, citizens of the Town of Vienna were to have been given a pleasant new quasi-public gathering space.  As a quid-pro-quo. 

This space, per the plans submitted to the Town of Vienna, below.  Note the couple enjoying the day at one of many tables, set in a large, level green area.

Artist’s conception, Vienna Market common area

Other imaginary views show it as a substantial open, level green space.

Artist’s concept, Vienna Market common area
Yet more artist’s conception of Vienna Market common area

What we actually got looks like this, from some pictures I took while on a walk a couple of days ago, below.

You may notice a few things.

There are no tables.  Actually, there’s not even enough level space to put a (one) table.  There’s no green gathering space.  Actually, there’s no gathering space, period.  There’s a broad brick sidewalk, a stairway, and some utility paths for residents of the development.  There’s the building’s electrical transformer, which will eventually be hidden by shrubbery.  And all of the electric meters for the building, which may or may not get hidden by shrubbery.  Inexplicably, there are some construction cones stored where the couple was sitting in the first picture.  Which is OK, because that’s a walkway at the bottom of a stairway, not someplace you could sit and sip your coffee.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter anyway.  Maple Avenue is typically so noisy from passing traffic that the whole idea of a pleasant daytime pocket park, directly adjacent to the roadway, is just kind of silly.  At least, not one that you could have a conversation in, at any rate (see this post for sound level measurements.)

But that was the solemn promise the last time Town Council tried to rezone Maple.  It just has never come to pass.  Not for the Chick-fil-A car wash, where the builders provided a broad sidewalk, terminated by a drive-through exit and two large electrical transformers for the building.  Not in any sense for the new old folks’ home, where the residual green space on the lot is less than it was for the prior building.  And not for Vienna Market.

This, despite how spacious and inviting those spaces looked, in the materials developers used to sell the development to Town Council.

I doubt we’ll see anything in the form of a pleasant public outdoor area from the last of the MAC buildings, still to be built.  Nor, I predict, will the postage-stamp plaza streetside of the new glass-and-steel Patrick Henry parking garage and library get much use.

Directly-adjacent-to-Maple Avenue is just not a nice place to hang out during the day.  Never was.  Likely never will be.  Route 123 is an arterial highway, for goodness sake.  And it’s the only east-west non-Interstate through crossing for a roughly five mile stretch.  It’s going to be jammed with vehicles, most days, most of the day.

Source:  The Traffic Legacy of the W&OD Railroad.

In general, Vienna Market has turned out to be a rather grim-looking development, in my view.  Maybe it was just the low cloud cover, the day I walked past it.  I guess it reminds me too much of Chicago.  This, despite the best efforts of the Board of Architectural Review to salvage something after the original ornate Georgetown-style building plans they approved were somehow swapped for a dull, plain brown brick building.  Before Town Council passed it (see this post for my epitaph on Marco Pologate).

It does at least look relatively energy-efficient, with (by modern standards) a relatively small area devoted to glass, in the townhouses.

All the retail there remains dark (un-rented).  Judging from Fairfax County tax maps, those townhouses began to be purchased in late 2021.  And it’s more than a year since title on the retail spaces was transferred, again per the tax maps.  So we’re well past a year, I think, since the building was essentially finished.

Again, it doesn’t matter.  Based on my earlier analysis of the economics of such housing developments for Vienna’s MAC zoning, it really doesn’t matter whether or not the retail space is rented.  If they can manage to rent it, it’s icing on the cake.  This development’s value is in the housing, not the retail.  New “mixed use” with significant dark (unrented) retail is the new normal in the suburbs.

Consistent with the vacant retail, every expense was spared for the entrance to the parking garage.  Luckily this is something that drivers along Maple will likely not notice.  Only if you walk past it will you be treated to this view.   I may be confused, but at some point I thought there was supposed to be a mural of a train on that wall, to lighten things up.

So why build this way?  The only new land on which you can build stumpies and other high-density housing, in the fully-built-out suburbs, turns out to be the old retail districts.  Slap some shops along the street edge of the first floor of the parking garage, and you can build high-density housing in the rest of the space, and term it “mixed use” development.

Fig-leaf retail, maybe that’s a better term for it.  It’s the fig leaf that allows the Town to convert the commercial district to a housing district.  Under the rubric of “mixed use development”.

So there you have it.  It’s kind of grim and unfriendly.  But so is much of the rest of the future.  So this is just a sign of the times.  I question the wisdom of building significant “mixed use” development along a skinny, typically half-block-wide strip of land, directly adjacent to a thoroughly congested urban highway.  No matter how trendy mixed-use may currently be, the plausible social benefits of mixed-use development aren’t going to happen in a linear strip like Maple Avenue.  But the increased traffic?  Yeah, we’ll all deal with that.

As an economist, part of my job was to compare the actual end result with the prediction.  That’s good science, and good public policy.  Here, this is clearly not the building that was planned.  Aside from more tax base, any promised benefit to the general public, from that rezoning, in the form of a street-side pocket park area, has failed to materialize.

On the plus side, it’s not a partially-vacant lot.  So that’s a good thing.  But you wonder whether or not the promise of profit from the rezoned parcel is what kept it under-used for so long in the first place.

What it’s not, for sure, is what was depicted in those final plans.  And it just doesn’t matter.  Sunk cost, water over the dam.  Pick your metaphor.  As long as promises like that aren’t used going forward, to sell the idea of yet more high-density housing along Maple.

All we can ask for is reality-based rezoning.  Anything but wishful thinking.

Post #1821: Fairfax County staff recommend discontinuing fall leaf vacuuming.

 


True rumor

Source:  clipart-library.com  To me, the original for this seem as if it were genuinely old.  But I got it, presumably without copyright restrictions, from that source.  If this is new, kudos to the creator for the look of it.

Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services (DPWES) employees recommended discontinuing fall vacuum leaf pickup. Continue reading Post #1821: Fairfax County staff recommend discontinuing fall leaf vacuuming.

Post #1820: Dribs and drabs of Town of Vienna historical data.

 

Today I stumbled across the dollar value of the 1961 Town of Vienna operating budget, in an old Town of Vienna newsletter.  It seemed small to me, even after considering inflation.  So I decided to compare a few key statistics for the Town of Vienna, 1960 (ish) versus 2023 (ish).  And, in fact, it was small.

N.B., one U.S. dollar, in 1960, was worth just over $10, in current (July 2023) currency.  Actual silver coinage (90% silver coins) did not disappear from U.S. circulation until 1964.

Town of Vienna, VA:  2023 versus 1960

Population:  43% increase

  • Per the 1960 Census:  11,500
  • Per the 2020 Census:  16,500

Dwelling units: 100% increase:

  • Per the 1960 Census:  2,750
  • Per the 2020 Census:  5,600 (est).

Persons per household:  26% decrease.

  • Per the 1960 Census:  4.1
  • Circa the 2021 Census:  3.03

N.B. 2 x .74 = 1.48, so even though the data above come from different, independent data sources, the math very nearly reproduces the actual increase in population (44%, not 48%) over the period.

Median house price:  Roughly five-fold increase.

  • Per the 1960 Census: $18,400
  • The 1960 price in 2023 dollars:  $189,000
  • 2023 median (estimated), all houses: $900,000.
  • 2023 median, listed for sale:  $1,030,000

Town of Vienna operating budget:  Roughly 10-fold increase.

  • Per the June 1961 TOV newsletter:  $462,000.
  • The 1960 cost in 2023 dollars:  $4,800,000.
  • The 2023-24 actual cost:  $50,000,000

Most of the operating revenue for the Town comes from real estate taxes.  To reconcile the 10-fold growth in house prices, and the five-fold growth in the cost of government, you have to know that the tax rate per $100 of market value fell by roughly 50% over this period.  In 1961, it was $1.35 per $100, assessed at 32% of market value, or (1.35 x .32 =) 0.42 per $100 of market value.  That, from the June 1961 Town newsletter.  Currently, the rate is just over $0.20 per $100 of market value, per the 2023-24 Town budget.

References:

1960 Census of Population and Housing:  https://usa.ipums.org/usa/voliii/pubdocs/1960/pubvols1960.shtml

2020 Census:  https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/viennatownvirginia/PST045222

Town of Vienna 1961 newsletter:  https://www.viennava.gov/engagement-central/newsroom/vienna-voice-town-newsletter

Town of Vienna operating budget:  https://www.viennava.gov/your-government/town-budget

Inflation calculator:  https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

Post #1804: Speed limits in Fairfax County, how much slack?

 

Background:  A speed limit + 10 rule?

Source:  WTOP.

There was an article today on the local news-radio website (WTOP) regarding speeding in school zones.  I took note, because I routinely drive through one of those zones where Fairfax County VA operates speed cameras.  The zone is clearly marked, and you’d have to be blind to miss it, as shown above.

And yet:

In total, 23,431 cars were caught going 10 or more miles per hour above the speed limit in April, May and June combined.

I supposed I should be impressed by the sheer numbers.  But instead, a completely different figure caught my eye:  They only ticketed folks for going at least 10 MPH over the limit.

First, I thought it was intemperate of the reporter to note that exact figure.  Anybody reading the article realizes that there’s no risk of a ticket at anything up to the posted speed plus 9 MPH.  So, presumably, if generally known, that now becomes the de facto speed limit.

But second, I’d heard that same figure before, a few years back, in a discussion of red-light cameras and speeding cameras in Vienna, a town in Fairfax County.  There it was phrased as “we don’t ticket unless they are going at least 11 MPH over the posted limit.”  The explanation given at the time was that Fairfax County courts would not accept cases for any infraction less than that.


Is that the rule here, and if so, why?

Short answer is, yes and no.

In theory, by Virginia statute, you can get ticketed for traveling one mile an hour over the speed limit in a residential area.  This is my interpretation of § 46.2-878.2 of Virginia statute, which says :

Operation of any motor vehicle in excess of a maximum speed limit ... in a residence district of a county, city, or town ... shall be unlawful and constitute a traffic infraction punishable by a fine of $200, in addition to other penalties provided by law. 

The black-letter law provides no slack.  If you’re in a residential district, on a highway (meaning, in Virginia, any public alley, street, road, or highway), and you’re going a mile over the limit, you can, in theory, be ticketed and will owe a minimum of $200.

Except that the law spells out a different set of penalties for drivers caught by speed cameras in school zones.  My interpretation is that because the process is, in effect, automated, they cut drivers a lot more slack than they would if they’d been pulled over, in person, by a uniformed officer.

In the case of speed cameras in a school zone (§ 46.2-882.1), emphasis mine:

1. The operator ... shall be liable for a monetary civil penalty ... if such vehicle is found ... to be traveling at speeds of at least 10 miles per hour above the posted ...  speed limit ... .  Such civil penalty shall not exceed $100 ...

...

4. Imposition of a penalty pursuant to this section ... shall not be made part of the operating record of the person upon whom such liability is imposed, nor shall it be used for insurance purposes in the provision of motor vehicle insurance coverage.

The bottom line

There appears to be no hard-and-fast rule regarding ticketing for how much “slack” you get, speeding in a residential area in Virginia.  The plain language of State law in Virginia law says that if you exceed the posted limit, you can be ticketed.  I believe that pre-empts any local law, as we are a Dillon Rule state.   That is, local governments can only make their own rules where the Commonwealth grants them permission to do so.  And nothing in Commonwealth statute appears to do that, with a few limited and explicit exceptions spelled out in the law.

Except that “ten miles over the limit” is written into law, in Virginia, for speed-zone cameras.  There, the Commonwealth leans heavily in the direction of protecting drivers’ rights, and avoiding Big Brother information harvesting.  So, in exchange for what is basically an automated process, you face a small fine.  There’s a monetary penalty, but (as I read it) no points on the license.


Extras for experts:  Two non-obvious reasons not to speed in residential areas.

First, if you are speeding, in Virginia, you lose any claim to having right-of-way.  So if some bonehead does something to get you in a car accident, where you had the right of way, but you were speeding at the time … tough luck.  You cannot claim right-of-way while you are speeding.

§ 46.2-823. Unlawful speed forfeits right-of-way.

The driver of any vehicle traveling at an unlawful speed shall forfeit any right-of-way which he might otherwise have under this article.

The reason for that is pretty clear.  Traveling at excess speed makes it difficult for other drivers to judge whether or not an accident will occur.

We had a horrific accident in this area, last year, that is a classic illustration of that.  The culprit was a bozo who was driving a BMW about 80 MPH in a 35 MPH zone.  His car got struck by a car turning left, and his car subsequently jumped the sidewalk and killed two high school student who were on the sidewalk, walking home from school.

Normally, the car going straight has the right of way.  Should the car turning left have therefore been charged with the accident, for failure to yield right-of-way?   I don’t think any sane person would suggest that.  If nothing else, on a curved road, excessive speed of that magnitude more-or-less prevents drivers from seeing you coming in time.  The accident was entirely the fault of the speeding driver.

Second, if you speed significantly in areas with red lights, you will run red lights. 

Not may, will.

This point is courtesy of Road Guy Rob on YouTube.  Yellow light duration is set based on expected traffic speed.  (Plus regional variation, I guess).  High-speed roads have long yellow lights, low speed roads have short yellow lights.  In both cases, the length of the yellow allows drivers that are far from the intersection to stop before the light turns red.

If you drive at high speed, on a low speed road, there will be a stretch of pavement, and a rage of excess speeds, so that if you see the yellow light while you’re in that zone, you will literally be unable to avoid running the red.  That’s because, between your reaction time and the car’s stopping distance, your car will travel much further than the engineers who set up the light expected.  If you are within just the right range of excess speeds, if you see the light turn yellow, you both a) can’t make it through the intersection before the light turns red, and b) can’t stop before entering the intersection.  No  matter what you do — hit the brakes, hit the gas — you go through the red light. 

And so, at some level, excessive speeding and running red lights go hand-in-hand.  There’s a certain pleasing symmetry to that.  My guess is, the folks who don’t care about the first, don’t much care about the second either.