Day Five

You have to love America. A country 40 times larger than the UK, over twice the size of the entire European Union but there is only one company that sells vertical grain bamboo decking and they have sold out until 2011. Oak, hickory, ash, cedar, mahogany, maple; I can have any of them in a matter of minutes – but not bamboo. Nope, nada, nein.

The decking design has it run across the front of the building, about 4 feet wide, and then open out to around 9 feet wide across the right side.

The bamboo flooring samples are being shipped over-night, so we should know tomorrow if the colour (stupendously important) is the one we are look for. Here’s a thing – the samples cost $4 but there’s no charge for the FedEx bit, which must be in the $10-$20 range – why not give free samples but charge for the shipping? I’m missing something in this calculation.

Anyway, we may have flooring, but we won’t have decking.

To my eye the picture below is a thing of beauty (I’d love it even more if I knew what CFM’s are), it has such a stark rational quality that it’s going to be framed and hung in the office on opening day.

It’s the plan for the HVAC system from the HVAC man and it arrived this morning as part of an incredibly long and detailed document that outlines what goes where and what it does – the document looks like a PHD thesis, but that’s my take on it.

The HVAC man tells me that the system will be “balanced”, meaning that each outlet will measure the temperature in it’s own little area and adjust the heat accordingly so that every inch of the building will be at the precisely the same level – get that; in England you get an open coal fire and everyone huddles around, pushing and shoving until we all pass out from the fumes.