I added to the new DIY section of my web site with an article on how to earthquake-proof a wine cellar.Originally, I wrote this for Wired's How-to Wiki. That article got dozens of Diggs, but Wired's How-to wiki seems to be dying a slow death. In fact, my vanity web site has a higher pagerank than the wiki article. So maybe more home handypeople will find this information useful, now that it's in a more prominent place.
5 comments:
Hi,
When I came up with the idea of the QuakeGuardian, the only thing that was on the market at the time was a supposed earthquake resistant rack, with the slide rails at 6 1/2 degrees.
I had to ask myself woulld that really protect the bottles during a mid to large earthquake. Well I found later when I had shake testing done. I put two racks side by side. the first rack had the QuakeGuardians with the coil cord installed the other rack has the slide rails at 6 1/2 degrees. Shake testing was performed by anco engineers.
Here is the youtube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlmMgJGJjH8
The person running the Company "Paul Ebanez" help design the huge shake table in Berkeley. We found at 6.5 or greater, the bottles in the 6 1/2 degree rack had nice loft before they came crashing down in a spectacular mount of wine and glass. The only way you would be able to drink your wine now is with a straw and sip it up off the floor. The shake testing continued up to a 7-8 range magnitude quake. Now we have a new "EPDM" leash for the QuakeGuardian that will take much, much more abuse!
If you are really interested in protecting you fine wines from earthquakes than contact me at ed@quakeguardian.com or
call 1-866-255-3145
The web site is http://www.QuakeGuardian.com
Check out the Testimonial page and look at the PDF of some of the clients with different needs.
We do give discounts for bulk quantities over 25 or more. The Packages on the store page all have the new leashes. I would suggest you start with a 25 pack of QuakeGuardians, then email me and tell me how many more you need.
We can come to some sort of price that will make you happy and protect your wine.
Thank you, Ed
ed@quakeguardian.com
Hi,
I wanted to tell you about the QuakeGuardian. It was designed to allow the bottle to move with the seismic event.
When I came up with the idea of the QuakeGuardian, the only thing that was on the market at the time was a supposed earthquake resistant rack, with the slide rails at 6 1/2 degrees.
I had to ask myself woulld that really protect the bottles during a mid to large earthquake. Well I found later when I had shake testing done. I put two racks side by side. the first rack had the QuakeGuardians with the coil cord installed the other rack has the slide rails at 6 1/2 degrees. Shake testing was performed by anco engineers.
Here is the youtube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlmMgJGJjH8
The person running the Company "Paul Ebanez" help design the huge shake table in Berkeley. We found at 6.5 or greater, the bottles in the 6 1/2 degree rack had nice loft before they came crashing down in a spectacular mount of wine and glass. The only way you would be able to drink your wine now is with a straw and sip it up off the floor. The shake testing continued up to a 7-8 range magnitude quake. Now we have a new "EPDM" leash for the QuakeGuardian that will take much, much more abuse!
If you are really interested in protecting you fine wines from earthquakes than contact me at ed@quakeguardian.com or call 1-866-255-3145
The web site is http://www.QuakeGuardian.com
Check out the Testimonial page and look at the PDF of some of the clients with different needs.
We do give discounts for bulk quantities over 25 or more. The Packages on the store page all have the new leashes. I would suggest you start with a 25 pack of QuakeGuardians, then email me and tell me how many more you need.
We will make you happy and protect your fine wines.
Thank you, Ed
ed@quakeguardian.com
866-255-3145
Hi Ed.
Thanks for posting.
When you say "6.5 or greater" and "7-8 range magnitude," what units are these measurements in? I checked your site, and it doesn't say either. Just a word of advice: when you want to make scientific or engineering claims, it helps to know what you're talking about, or else you aren't liable to impress people who actually understand a little bit about science or engineering. Things like listing quantities without units are a dead giveaway to those in the know that you are not. In the know.
Your site does list an acceleration, "1.3G." Of course, this is written correctly as "1.3g," The "g" here is a constant: the nominal value for the acceleration due to gravity. Also, it seems from context that the experiment lasted for 30 seconds, but the leashes were not subjected to 1.3g of acceleration for the full 30 seconds. Still, that's impressive. Or, it would be, except that's a completely meaningless statement, since you don't tell us the MASS that is being ACCELERATED AT ONE POINT THREE g.
Man, the stuff I put up with to be a highly-regarded wine rack pundit. OK, possibly the only wine rack pundit ever. Which means I dominate my field. Sort of.
Anyway, maybe it was a nice French 750 mL bottle of wine weighing about 1 kg that you accelerated by 1.3 G. Or maybe it was one of those 2 kg foufou Spanish 750s with way more glass than class. How am I to know? If it was one of those big-a** Spanish bottles and you hit 'er hard for 500 ms or so at 1.3g, then I'm impressed. Should I be? I'm not a real forensic engineer or even a product testing engineer. But I'm reasonably sure that there are an awful lot of earthquakes that don't manage to get anywhere near 1.3g of peak ground acceleration, and I explain why in my posting, if you want to go back and read it carefully.
Look, Ed, I think your product is probably OK. My issues with it are:
1. It's expensive.
2. How well it works is critically dependent on how well it's installed.
There is a group of wine sno-, er, enthusiasts out there that are happy to pay $10 or more per wine slot before they get to paying for wine. For them, looks are as important as taste, and they're going to pay somebody to install the whole thing anyway. These people are your customers, and I believe you can make them happy. Me? I'm geared up to rack a few thousand bottles, I care more how my cellar works than how it would look in a magazine, and I don't have a trust fund to throw at the problem.
OK, I have one of your EPDM leashes around here somewhere. (I agree with you that EPDM is an excellent material to use for wine retention devices.) I guess I'm going to have to do some destructive testing next weekend....
- Erik
Instead of O-rings and zip ties, you could also use #64 rubber bands strapping two bottles behind the front vertical post. These are strong 1/4" wide, 3.5" long bands, and one handles two bottles. They function in similar way to O-rings and zip ties in the sense that in the end the force is transferred to vertical posts.
Dex, the rubber bands would probably work great, although I'd want to test them first to make sure they don't stretch enough to let a bottle through.
But with rubber bands, wouldn't you need to replace them every year or two? Maybe it depends on the kind of rubber band, but my experience is that rubber bands get brittle after a few years.
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