What color is it, really??

So you're going shopping.  You have some fun money to spend or you're in search of the perfect outfit for an event coming up.  You think about where you want to go, how much you want to spend, and if you need new shoes...But I know what you haven't thought of.  Does the color of the lighting in the store you're going to shop in really matter?  Have you thought about if their lighting will affect how colors appear to you?  How they look with your skin tone?

 

Ever tried on and found the perfect pair of black pants only to find out when you got home that they were in fact really dark blue?  And the last time you checked you weren't color blind.

 

Ever spent an hour getting a makeover in a high end cosmetics store or navigated the labyrinth of department store counters looking for the perfect shade of foundation and when you looked at yourself out in the sunlight, clearly the skin care consultant missed your olive undertones!?

So much time and money wasted because of poorly designed lighting.  And to add insult to injury you have to waste time returning your ill-purchased products in hopes of getting all of your money back.  Who has time for that??

Not only does this waste your time and could waste your money but what kind of experience was it?  Good?  Bad? For sure, irritating. You may have had the most helpful sales associate.  You may have found great deals.  But not getting what you paid for really affects your opinion of the retailer, to be sure.  If they really cared about your shopping experience, about how you spend your time and about how you spend your money, would they really allow bad lighting to showcase their products in their dressing rooms or on their sales floors?  Would they knowingly hire lighting consultants and electrical engineers who don't know or care about the customer experience? 

At Larson Binkley this is the only thing we think about when considering the light colors, levels and placement of lights in the retail dressing rooms and in the retail spaces we design.  Consumers have the right to know that what they are looking at in the mirror is an accurate representation of what those pants or that dress will look like then they get them home.  Cosmetics are very personal, and sometimes UNRETURNABLE once opened so the quickest way to lose a woman's brand loyalty is to sell her something that doesn't make her feel fabulous. 

Taking the time and using our expertise to correctly light a space is a matter of responsibility and honoring the customer's time, money and experience in the store.  It's part of making the shopper comfortable.  It's what we do.  We are constantly looking for ways to live up to our commitment of "Perfecting Comfort to Optimize Human Experience" in every building and retail space we design.  We are Larson Binkley.  Engineering a better experience.

www.larsonbinkley.com

Have a greener kitchen.

We’re all about “improving the experience” around here at Larson Binkley.  It’s in our culture.  It’s in our design process.  We’re thinking all the time about how our clients experience us, about how their customers experience them and about how our employees experience our own work environment.  We look for ways to make those experiences more comfortable and enjoyable.  Chris Larson has challenged us, in everything that we do, that we are “Perfecting Comfort to Optimize the Human Experience.”

As a member Larson Binkley’s Culture Team, I am tasked with our team mission to “To make everyone feel welcome, taken care of, and part of the LBI family.  To create a fun and safe environment that fosters creativity, professional growth, and risk taking in its employees.  To empower the employees to feel like they are valuable players in the company and take ownership in their successes.”  As a woman, and probably more so because I’m a mom, I take our Culture Team mission very seriously. 

I had a group of clients in recently and I really had to take a hard look at their experience in our office in terms of simple hospitality and global responsibility.  It was an early meeting and I had picked up bagels and coffee that morning and was feeling pretty pleased that I was going to have an opportunity to make them feel welcomed by offering them breakfast.  They arrived and the boxes were opened and very quickly I found myself scrambling around in our kitchen for plates, napkins, coffee cups.  I served those bagels that day to a group of a very well respected architects on mismatched paper plates, plastic knives and Chipotle napkins leftover from a lunch and learn.

 I was mortified.  That table setting screamed “We weren’t prepared for your visit!”  And even worse “We don’t care about the environment!”  None of which was true, we had prepared technically for the meeting very thoroughly, but our hospitality, the human comfort piece, was lacking. 

We are very dedicated to preserving natural resources and conserving energy here.  We have 31,299,531 square feet of LEED certified projects in 46 states.  We have a great program for recycling in our office.  But in the kitchen we were behind.

That day, I scarified trees for those paper plates and napkins and contributed to the landfill with plastic knives covered with cream cheese.  Our integrity had been compromised… 

Our Culture Team approached Chris with an idea to enable us to “walk the walk if we’re going to talk the talk” to our clients about sustainability and energy conservation as well as allowing us to really welcome and take care of our clients and our own employees when they are in our office.  Our team researched and found out we were spending around $500 per year in paper and plastic goods.  That was way too much.

We proposed replacing those paper and plastic products with reusable china dishes and silverware. 

We also installed an energy efficient dishwasher which uses less water and soap than washing dishes by hand.  The carbon footprint of our dishes being transported only happens once as opposed to paper plates being driven around the country on an ongoing basis. 

 

We can’t wait for you to visit us, enjoy a treat and a nice cup of coffee, from our green kitchen.


***Nikki has been plumbing designer for Larson Binkley Inc. in Overland Park, KS since 1993. Recently promoted to Vice President, she currently holds the position of Waterflow Department Manager and loves helping clients improve their plumbing experience. Plumbing might be often overlooked but it is never under used. :)

http://www.larsonbinkley.com/
 

Will swimming at the pool make you sick?

Ahh Summertime.  My daughter's favorite pastime during the summer months is going swimming at the pool.  And while we all may joke about the pool being a big “potty”, do you really know how clean your public pool is?  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that at least 54%  of all swimming pools were in violation of at least one public health code.   That’s more than half.  Really shocking!

The CDC has published “Six Steps for Healthy Swimming” as a guideline for keeping your family safe from recreational water illnesses (RWIs) and healthy this summer.  Per their guidelines:

“You can choose to swim healthy!  Healthy swimming behaviors will help protect you and your kids from recreational water illnesses (RWIs) and help stop germs from getting in the pool in the first place.

Here are six steps that promote Healthy Swimming:

Three Steps for All Swimmers

 Keep germs from causing recreational water illnesses (RWIs):

·         Don't swim when you have diarrhea. You can spread germs in the water and make other people sick.

·         Don't swallow the pool water. Avoid getting water in your mouth.

·         Practice good hygiene. Shower with soap before swimming and wash your hands after using the toilet or changing diapers. Germs on your body end up in the water.

Three Steps for Parents of Young Kids

 Keep germs out of the pool:

·         Take your kids on bathroom breaks or check diapers often. Waiting to hear "I have to go" may mean that it's too late.

·         Change diapers in a bathroom or a diaper-changing area and not at poolside. Germs can spread in and around the pool.

·         Wash your child thoroughly (especially the rear end) with soap and water before swimming. Invisible amounts of fecal matter can end up in the pool. “

http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/swimming/pools/six-steps-healthy-swimming.html

HealthyPools.org encourages everyone to “Use Your Senses” when visiting your local public pool.

If you have real doubts about the safety of your local public pool, don’t be afraid to test the water quality yourself.  You can visit the Water Quality and Health Council’s Healthy Pools page http://www.healthypools.org/freeteststrips and order free test strips.

The CDC recommends the following water quality ranges:

·         Free chlorine level 1–3 parts per million (ppm)

·         pH 7.2–7.8

·         Ask the pool operator the following questions:

o    Are the free chlorine and pH levels checked at least 2 times per day and more often when the pool is heavily used?

o    What is the latest pool inspection score?

o    Has he/she completed specialized training in pool operation

Don’t be fooled into thinking that your pool is clean because it has a strong odor of chlorine.  When pool water is not properly balanced, chloramines form when the good sanitizing free chlorine molecules combine with ammonia in the pool water. The "chlorine smell" that you associate with swimming pools is actually ammonia being broken down by the chlorine.  Yuck!

By using some common sense and by becoming familiar with the recommendations of the CDC you can swim safely and stay healthy all summer long!

***Nikki has been plumbing designer for Larson Binkley Inc. in Overland Park, KS since 1993. She currently holds the position of department manager and loves helping clients find solutions to their plumbing needs. Plumbing might be often overlooked but it is never under used. :)

http://www.larsonbinkley.com/

Filtered water for your dog?

In the midst of the "Probert Zoo” there is a Shih Tzu dog named Leo who has terribly sensitive skin.  He is prone to getting yeast infections, particularly on his paws and neck, and has to have a regimented diet of low carbohydrate dog food.  In addition, he takes acidophilus tablets to create a healthy flora in his GI tract (eewww – there is just something about flora and GI tract that shouldn’t be put in the same sentence) and Benadryl to control his itching.  As I continued to research natural remedies for his problem, I came across several articles that said dogs should have filtered drinking water.  What????  As if filtered water for my family isn’t enough.  But the articles made a lot of sense.  The chlorine in regular tap water can upset the delicate balance in a sensitive dog’s digestive tract and cause a yeast infection to flare up.  Some inexpensive solutions would be to have a Brita type filter pitcher for your pet or to buy filtered water by the gallon or 2.5 gallon jug.  Remember, dogs tend to drink a lot of water during the warm summer months so keeping several on hand is a good idea. 

So while I’m not advocating designer bottled  water for your precious pooch, I do think filtered water is a good way to bolster the health of your dog if he has itchy issues like mine does.  Bottled water companies, like the K9 Water Co. are actually marketing bottled water for dogs in flavors like “gutter water”, “toilet water”, “hose water” and “puddle water”.  Think of the heads you would turn whipping out a bottle of toilet water and serving it to your dog a the local dog park :)  http://www.k9waterco.com/  They are advertized as being flavored and vitamin fortified for providing the essential vitamins and hydration your dog needs for overall good health.  I don’t think I’ll be buying it for Leo anytime soon but it might be fun to try it sometime in the future.


***Nikki has been plumbing designer for Larson Binkley Inc. in Overland Park, KS since 1993. She currently holds the position of department manager and loves helping clients find solutions to their plumbing needs. Plumbing might be often overlooked but it is never under used. :)

http://www.larsonbinkley.com

Do we have quality drinking water?

I'm a mom. A wife. A plumbing designer. Weird, right? And we Mom's have enough on our plates to worry about in this day and age, what with our kid's crazy schedules, trying to make sure they are eating right and whether or not they have enough time for texting. Just kidding! My oldest seems to get in way more than enough texting without any intervention on my part.

             
Anyway, I'm lucky. I have plenty to fuss about with a husband, two daughters, two cats and two dogs but the quality of my family's drinking water is not even a blip on my radar of concerns. I grew up in a small town with great water (Golden City, MO) and we have really high quality water where I currently live in Belton, MO. Besides relying on your taste buds and your nose to tell you if you have good or bad tap water, do you know how to found out for sure? Do you know where your tap water comes from? Ours comes from the Missouri River, believe it or not. I once took a riverboat cruise with my husband Dave and my in-laws on the Missouri River and the Captain described it as too thick to drink but too thin to plant anything in. Ha!

Our water is drawn out and treated by the Kansas City Water Plant before it is delivered to our homes. All residents are treated to yearly water reports with our water bills which tells me everything I need to know about our water quality. If you don't have one sent to you periodically, I encourage you to ask for one from your water department. It might even be posted on your city's website as they are in my hometown. Take a moment to get familiar with it.  Do a little research online and see if the numbers seem in line with what national standards are for healthy drinking water. A really good water report, like ours, will give you definitions and present the information in a clear and concise manner.

















Personally, I like to have a faucet filter in the kitchen and a filter on the water dispenser on my refrigerator water dispenser but honestly I don't hesitate to fill a glass from my bathroom faucet. It tastes fine and I know it's safe. We refill water bottles a lot in our home and I feel the added filtration is a nice bit of insurance.
        

So give yourself a little peace of mind. Check out your water quality. You might find out that you thought you had crummy tap water when you really didn't. Or you may find that a faucet filter, a filtered water pitcher, filtered water bottles or whole house filter would be a really good investment in your family's health.

Drink H20 to your health!



****Nikki has been plumbing designer for Larson Binkley Inc. in Overland Park, KS since 1993. She currently holds the position of plumbing department manager and loves helping clients find solutions to their plumbing needs. Plumbing might be often overlooked but it is never under used. :)

 

http://www.larsonbinkley.com/