I tell my family that it rains in Seattle 9 months out of the year, but I don't think that they believe me. When they come to visit in the summer it is usually sunny and nice and they think that I am just telling them a story so they won't want to move here. I offer this photograph as visual proof on how wet and dark it is in Seattle. Every Spring I have to powerwash the moss off of my driveway. This photo shows the before and after difference. My driveway is in broad daylight. It is just so wet and dark all winter that moss grows on it. The slime on the right side of the picture is made up of moss, smog particles dropped by the rain, and assorted goo.
For Christmas my wife gave me a Netatmo weather station because I am a home weather station nerd. The Netatmo is very cool, but it has an unexpected feature: it measures indoor Carbon Dioxide (CO2) levels. As soon as I set it up, the Netatmo began to alert that our indoor CO2 was at an unsafe level. The notes said that outdoor CO2 is usually around 400 ppm, and numbers above 1500 ppm could be unhealthy. On that first day, my house was at around 1300 ppm. Prior to that, I never gave indoor CO2 levels a thought. I began to do some research and discovered high levels of CO2 can cause symptoms such as fatigue, headache, breathing difficulties, strained eyes and itchy skin. My family does have all of these issues, especially on the weekends when we are home all day, but I never connected that to indoor air quality. Previously, I installed a Nest thermostat . The Nest is very smart and saves energy by learning your habits and programming itself. Unfortunately, it is so efficient, that t
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