Systematically Improving my House

I have recently been graced with the privilege of attending Manish Jain 's Systems Thinking workshop at PayPal . New theories were revealed to me, it is as though a whole new algorithm of thought was revealed to me. This method of thinking, Systems Thinking, or my new systems awareness, is like a power tool that I can use to tackle many different problems, personal or professional (I've divided problems into two sets, personal and professional, I'm not sure what other sets there are).

One situation and/or system that I have been able to improve, and am working to improve during my 2 weeks of PTO is my property! My girlfriend and I own a triangle shaped property that has a house in San Jose, at the end of a cul-de-sac. We have done many things to improve our property.

Some of the things we have done to improve the property follow

• Evonne bought a very large tent that we used to house our workout equipment
• We have planted an orange tree in the front yard
• I cleaned up the trash and recyclables that was littering the backyard. Bringing it from a state of potential danger for our dog, to a state in which we can comfortably allow our dog to roam the backyard.
• I manually removed a tree stump in the back yard that was directly next to our fence. (60 + hours of manual labor, I know I can use power tools for this, but there is something fun about manual labor!)
• I fixed the gate that constrains our driveway usage after someone accidentally drove into it
• I started, and am still manually removing concrete from the backyard. This is old concrete that sits directly atop dirt, with no rebar. So it is very uneven.
• Learned law relating to property and building regulations in San Jose in order to speed up negotiations with neighbor, who had erected a fence prior to us purchasing the property, that blocks us from the very far back of our property. The "conversation" was dragging on for months, I think at least half a year. Within a span of a week, and through an e-mail thread, I was able to apply my legal learnings in order to communicate that we demand the fence is torn down, and a new fence is erected along the actual property line. After the neighbor ordered a survey and hired a lawyer, he learned he had to comply to our demands.
• Clean the house on a more consistent basis, or in smaller batches, in order to reduce the time it takes to prepare to host events, or just to live our day to day life. (I need to focus on continuing this and improving at this, this action is also beneficial to my romantic relationship!)

Now I can likely keep listing improvements, but I will stop there. I'd like to mention one mistake I have made! At one point, we decided to get solar panels and a power wall installed. I wanted to do this because it would increase property value, which I believe would propel Evonne and I closer to a point in which we do not have to pay mortgage insurance. However, we actually consume very little energy at our house. I (I believe incorrectly) also thought that the more solar panels we have, the more our home value would increase!

So in order to increase my energy consumption, I decided to get into cryptocurrency mining. I believe Bitcoin miners consume the most electricity, so I went with bitcoin miners. I also believe BTC is the most stable of cryptos (I know very little about this). I figured that once the solar panels are installed, I would have a significant surplus of energy, so what I would do is instead of maximizing the efficiency of the bitcoin miner, or ratio of hashrate to power consumption, I would maximize the ratio of hashrate to $ cost of miner.

I never took the time to understand the basic concept of kilowatt hours. I did not realize that if a 1 KW device ran for 24 hours, this would be 24 KWH of usage. Whatever I did to calculate KWH was completely incorrect. This resulted in me buying 4 of the cheapest and least efficient miners I could find. After I bought these, and set one of them up, I found out that I was only producing enough solar power to power one of these devices for about 20% - 30% of the day! To make matters worse, solar panels degrade and become less efficient over time! This means that my power calculation was off by about a factor of 16!!! And it is just going to get worse with time!

So I ended up buying an unnecessary amount of solar panels and bitcoin miners, this has had a negative fiscal impact on me, but at least I learned something!

Now that I am more aware of systems, I am able to improve my house more easily. I am able to connect various different projects together, in order to achieve multiple improvements at once! That large workout tent that I mentioned earlier, is no longer being used in full. At one point there was a big storm that ending up flying the tent onto our avocado tree! After that, we decided to dismantle it, and all of our workout equipment has been sitting outside.

However, I realized that I can still use the tent, I just don't have to use the whole thing at once. I have put together one segment of it, which has the same width, but is about 20% of the depth. I will be able to put a tarp over this segment, and will be able to put a tarp on the bottom of the segment, and will be able to build mechanisms to hold the tarp within the tent up like a flooring so that water does not get inside when it rains. I will be able to use a segment of the giant tent to house a subset of my workout equipment!

Now I also have been working on a concrete project. I have been, and will continue to manually remove the concrete in my back yard. The process of manually removing concrete without power tools involves (1) applying leverage to the concrete in order to pick it up off the ground and (2) SLAMMING THE PROPPED UP CONCRETE WITH A SLEDGEHAMMER. When the project started, my friend and I piled the broken concrete pieces atop the concrete. However, we have demolished the concrete all the way up to the concrete pile! So our creation of the pile became a blocker for demolishing more concrete! We must have assumed we would do multiple trips to dump the concrete. I don't know what else we could have been thinking.

So last night (we can work at night because I bought a high power work light at some point, per my friend's excellent suggestion), we spent several hours moving the concrete pile, which likely weighs several tons, off the concrete and further back on my property, onto the dirt, so that it will no longer block the concrete removal process. While moving the concrete, we discussed different approaches to carrying the concrete, like "Should we start at this end or that end?" I decided we should start at the end closest to where we were creating the new pile because that would mean that every time we move a piece of concrete, we are removing obstacles that are blocking us from moving the pieces of concrete that are further from the new pile.

Now it gets more fun. I realized the concrete project could connect to the tent project! Once we get rid of our low quality concrete, we could pour new and more level concrete that I am comfortable power lifting on. When we pour this new concrete, we can install hooks or sheaths within the concrete that the tent could connect to to ensure that it does not fly away!

Another part of my property system is my neighbors. It ends up, one close neighbor runs a concrete company. He can help me with this entire concrete project. He likely will, we have just discussed it two days ago. He could hypothetically perform the demolition, the hauling, and the new concrete pouring with the mechanisms to secure the tent to the ground. However, there is something very fun about swinging a sledgehammer with your best friend. So we decided my friend and I would continue the demolition, which we have given ourselves a timeline of less than a week to complete. And once demolition is complete, my neighbor could handle the hauling and installation of the new concrete. And now, I am off to get breakfast with my best friend in order to fuel ourselves to demolish more concrete!