Remediation of pollution can be expensive and technically difficult. Now many state and local pollution control agencies have found that encapsulating contaminated concrete is the most economical and long lasting solution for existing contamination. 100% solid epoxy can seal contaminants into the concrete with layers of 10 to 100 mils thick. In effect, the encapsulation works like an insect trapped in amber. Solids, gasses, and liquids are all trapped inside a solid hard capsule. Contaminants can thus be left in place, with no danger to crews that might have had to work in close proximity to remove them.
It is advisable to choose a white, yellow, or red color for the first coat, or “seal coat.” Subsequent topcoats are a contrasting color like gray or brown. In this way, workers moving around the contaminated surfaces are alerted when wear has made re-coating necessary. The contrasting colors thus provide a “wear meter.”
100% epoxy has no odor, can go on as thick as needed, and comes in colors as well as clear. When applying floor seals that can be 20 to 500 mils thick as they repair and level imperfect floor surfaces, it is critical to consider the height of the coating in addition to the length and width issues of normal roll-on applications. When water is poured on glass, it protrudes above the surface at the edges. Pulling a finger though the water, one sees flattening at the entry and exit points due to its surface tension. When leveling floors, these same effects of the epoxy’s surface tension must be dealt with. In other words “self-leveling,” which is incomplete even for liquids like water, will not produce a flat top layer of epoxy.
100% epoxy coatings do not shrink and will harden at any height it is left at after being catalyzed. But special procedures are needed in order to assure a flat surface while filling uneven anomalies in the substrate. Experience has determined that using a squeegee-like motion with a very short nap roller (3/16″) creates a pool of epoxy that can be pulled towards you to leak into low spots while keeping the surface flat. Care must be used to apply an even coat at the surface, and too much rolling can cause the surface to try to contour along the floor’s imperfections.
A good source of 100% epoxy floor coatings is Durall Industrial Flooring of Minneapolis, MN. Durall provides customized kits specially constructed to include every item needed for the specific project of the customer. Durall delivers these kits directly to the job site and provides factory-direct support during the application process. Web visitors can obtain free, job-specific quotes on materials or nationwide turnkey installations by completing a simple questionnaire at www.concrete-floor-coatings.com. This full-service concept allows anyone to enjoy the benefits of industrial strength floors.
For photo examples and more detail, visit www.concrete-floor-coatings.com For more information, contact Harvey Chichester at harvey@durallfmg.com Phone: 800-466-8910 or 952-888-1488 (24/7)
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You’ve just returned from a wonderful picnic in the park. You start to unpack and you notice that your brand new tote bag has a tear in it. A month later, when the tear becomes a hole, you’ll have to throw it (and the bundle of cash you paid for it) away . That sporty new day pack you bought isn’t looking so great either. Recently, it has become mildewed, discolored and abraded. Will it’s fate be any different? In a world of tears, rips and holes, what is one to do? The answer for your troubles is ages old. It actually dates back to 450 BC when the Scythians and Thracians made linens out of hemp. Hemp has been used to make sails and rigging since the 15th century. Levi Strauss made jeans for the miners of the Sierra out of hemp fibers. The Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper. So what happened to this wonderful product?
Since 1950, the American government has classified all grades of hemp as marijuana which has prevented its production in the United States. The type used for marijuana has a high THC (the chemical that creates euphoria ) content and is bred to have many leaves and buds. Industrial grades have a tenth to a fiftieth the amount of THC and contain high levels of CBD which counteract the effect of THC as well a being designed to have longer stalks and fewer leaves. However, true Hemp (cannabis sativa) fibers are several times stronger than cotton since the fibers of hemp run the length of the stalk which can be as long as 15 feet. Cotton fibers tend to be only a few inches long. This is why hemp bags are much more resistant to tears and abrasions than cotton bags. Everyone knows how durable and strong canvas is. The word canvas originates from the word cannabis because the earliest canvas sails were made from hemp.
These qualities also make articles made from hemp more resistant to soiling, mildew, shrinkage and sun damage. These are important qualities when deciding what to carry your most important items in. Laptop computers, items from a shopping trip down main street or provisions for a long hiking trip are all things we feel are essential to protect when traveling. Messenger bags, tote bags and saddle bag day packs made from hemp fibers are great choices for these activities. The icing on the cake is that these bags are very environmentally friendly. Hemp is the premier sustainable textile. Sustainable refers to a resource that is not able to be depleted by its very nature or the method of harvesting used. Hemp does not require chemicals to remove the lignin (the glue which holds the plant cells together) for bleaching. An acre of hemp can produce three times as much fiber than an acre of cotton and cotton requires 25% of the worlds use of pesticide, where hemp is naturally resistant to pests. Carrying a hemp bag, you will have the knowledge that not only are you sporting the strongest and most durable article you could choose to protect your valuables, you will also be doing your part to protect the earth, which is arguably the most valuable thing you can protect.
It’s not breaking the eggs that does the lasting harm; it’s the continual walking eggshells. Emotional damage has a way of lingering in the times between resentful, angry, or abusive flare-ups. The empty, dull ache of unhappiness is most accurately measured in the accumulative effect of these small moments of disconnection, isolation, and dread. Take the
The following quiz reveals what it feels like to walk on eggshells day after day. Read it aloud – the objectivity in hearing your own voice say the words – especially your answers -is the first step toward healing.
If you live with a resentful, angry, or abusive partner, you probably have a vague feeling, at least now and then, that you have lost yourself. In your constant efforts to tiptoe around someone else’s moods in the hope of avoiding blow-ups, put-downs, criticism, sighs of disapproval, or cold shoulders, you constantly edit what you say. You second-guess your own judgment, your own ideas, and your own preferences about how to live. You begin to question what you think is right and wrong. Ultimately, your perceptions of reality and your very sense of self change for the worse.
The cold fact is that it’s hard not to lose yourself in the morass of what you should say or what you need to do (to keep things peaceful) and how you’re supposed to be at any given moment. If you have to be one thing one minute and behave a different way in another (depending on your partner’s moods), your confidence and sense of self can seem to disappear. You begin to feel that you cannot reclaim yourself or begin to feel better until he changes and starts treating you better.
The understandable but tragic expectation that you are dependent on him for your emotional well being is the first thing you must change. You must heal and grow, whether or not he changes. Although our inborn sense of fairness and justice tells you that he ought to be the one to make changes, your pain tells you that you need to become the fully alive person you are meant to be. This means that you have to remove the focus from him and put it squarely on you. Happily, that is also the best thing you can do the help him and your relationship. This book will help you reclaim your true sense of self. That is its primary goal. But it will also help change your relationship.
All the tools you need to heal are in these pages. All the tools that he needs to replace resentment, anger, or abusive behavior with compassion are also in these pages. The first part of the book is about reintegrating your deepest values into your everyday sense of self. This will make you feel more valuable, confident, and powerful, regardless of what your partner — or anyone else — says or does. As you read these pages and reconnect to your deepest values, you will naturally, forcefully, and compassionately demand value and respect from your partner. Your compassionate demand for change is likely to be the only thing that will motivate him to once again be the man you married. But whether or not he changes, you must connect with your enormous inner value, resources, and personal power to stop walking on eggshells and to emerge as the richly creative, beautiful whole person you truly are.
The Worst Things
One of the worst things that can happen to your health and happiness is to live with a resentful, angry, or abusive partner. The worst thing you can do to your soul is become a resentful, angry, or abusive partner. And the worst thing you can develop in a love relationship is an identity as a victim, which destroys your personal power and solid sense of self. The cry I hear over and over again from women who walk on eggshells is, “I don’t like the resentful, angry person he’s made me.”
To stop walking on eggshells, you must overcome abusiveness and victim-identity. Your emphasis must be on healing, growth, and empowerment. The true issue at stake is your core value – the most important things about you as a person – not his behavior or your reaction to it. As you reinforce and reconnect with your core value, you are far less likely to be a victim. As you experience the enormous depth of your core value, the last thing you will want to do is identify with being a victim, i.e. with “damage” or with bad things that have happened to you. In your core value you will identify with your inherent strengths, talents, skills, and power as a unique, ever-growing, competent, and compassionate person. You want to outgrow walking on eggshells, not simply survive it, and you do that only by realizing your fullest value as a person.
You Both Walk on Eggshells
If you feel that you are walking on eggshells, you probably do not realize that your partner is, too, though in a different way. He is so reactive to you and so unable to regulate his reactions that he constantly expects you to say or do something that will “push his buttons” and “make” him withdraw or attack. He feels that you are totally in control of his emotions, and all he can do is pout or shout like a defiant child. He feels that you control him.
The Pendulum of Pain
Please do not make the mistake of thinking that you can heal yourself simply by getting in touch with your understandable resentment and anger and leaving your relationship. Most of the women who leave (or nearly leave) out of resentment and anger end up returning out of guilt, shame, and anxiety, when they see how lost their husbands seem without them. They enjoy a brief honeymoon period following the reunion, until the tension returns and the resentment and anger get overwhelming. So they leave again (or withdraw emotionally from their husbands), only to face renewed guilt, shame, and abandonment anxiety, once the resentment and anger subside. Sometimes economic considerations drive women to return to these relationships, but they are not the most compelling factor. Research shows that women with means return to walking-on-eggshells relationships as often as women who are financially dependent. My own mother, like many of my clients, was the sole support of our family, yet she returned to my unemployed, resentful, angry, and abusive father 13 times in my first 11 years of life.
This pattern of leaving (or nearly leaving) out of anger and resentment, only to return out of guilt, shame, and anxiety is a hallmark of walking on eggshells. I call it a pendulum of pain. It has nothing to do with your “indecisiveness” or your personality. It follows from the strengths of your emotions, from your attachment to your husband, which we’ll explore more in the next chapter. Resentment and anger at loved ones always resolve into guilt, shame, and abandonment anxiety. These painful, completely irrational emotions keep you attached to your husband no matter how bad the relationship is – these emotions developed in our brains at a time when to leave the tribe meant certain death on your own, by starvation or saber tooth tiger.
As long as you love someone, the only way to keep resentment and anger from turning to guilt, shame, and anxiety is to stay resentful and angry all the time. It might be safer if you did stay resentful and angry all the time, but that is probably not your nature. When your resentment subsides and your anger is exhausted, the pain of seeing someone you love in distress can become overwhelming and make you return to your now-remorseful, if not helpless, partner. However, if he does not learn to regulate his resentment, anger, or abusive behavior with compassion for himself and for you, the pendulum will swing back and forth, again and again.
Dr. Steven Stosny has demonstrated his highly successful recovery program on such national television programs as “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “CBS Sunday Morning,” and CNN’s “Talkback Live” and “Anderson Cooper 360″ and has appeared on numerous radio talk shows. He has been quoted by, or been the subject of articles in, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Chicago Tribune, U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, Mademoiselle, Women’s World, O, The Oprah Magazine, Psychology Today, AP, Reuters, and USA Today. His website is http://compassionpower.com
Report Excerpt: RenewableEnergyStocks.com Reports – Oil Prices and Environmental Issues Fuel Renewable Energy Investments and Initiatives
By Brian Noer, www.RenewableEnergyStocks.com November 2005
In North America, issues such as rising oil prices, hurricanes, global warming and other environmental crises are raising the awareness and importance of renewable energy initiatives. The benefits to both consumers and corporates of energy efficient lighting solutions are gaining in importance as executives from General Electric (NYSE: GE), Philips Lighting B.V. (NYSE: PHG) and Cyberlux Corporation (OTCBB: CYBL) make evident through their conversations with RenewableEnergyStocks.com in the following report.
Traditional lighting companies are obviously aware of the energy efficient trend and are working to develop solutions that fit into the nation’s renewable energy initiatives. “Energy-efficient GE products save customers money,” said Joseph G. Howley, Manager, Industry Relations & Environmental Marketing at GE Consumer & Industrial.
“Customers are willing to pay slightly more for these products because they get a quick payback from the energy savings, “continued Howley. “For businesses, the overall cost of light, not the cost of the bulb, is what counts: bulbs can represent as little as 4 percent of the overall life-cycle cost; maintenance and labor costs such as installation represent as little as 8 percent of the overall life-cycle cost; and energy costs over the life of a bulb can represent as much as 88 percent of the overall cost of light. The financial benefits to the customer and GE drive the development of energy efficient products.”
“The capability of solid-state lighting technology has advanced significantly, at a ‘Moore’s Law’ pace,” said Mark Schmidt, COO and president of Cyberlux. “Our products harness this capability and give home builders, residential designers and home buyers a new, energy efficient alternative to traditional lighting technologies.”
To Read the Full Report Click Here: http://www.RenewableEnergyStocks.com/Articles/Energy_Efficient_Li ghting.asp
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