How I Fixed Dust Infiltration

Last update Jul. 5, 2024. 

This post is slightly out of scope for this blog, being a sharing of experience and how-to piece, not a suggestion for a social experiment. Call it a case study, the conclusions of which always require confirmation.

I concluded based on copious and diverse lived evidence that I was being made sick by dust infiltrating into my apartment. The answer (symptom reduction) was to seal up all dust entry points in my apartment. This is a medium-sized, basement apartment in an older WWII-era apartment block. The entry points were many and varied. To find them all, I needed a mirror and strong light to see under every overhang. If you try this, always illuminate areas from a variety of angles. If I cannot keep my eyes open for longer than twelve seconds without blinking, I have a problem.

The applicable maxim is not “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but “When in doubt, fix it.”

I will not be imparting all my thoughts on this topic; compile a list of rules of thumb that help you discover dust entry points in your location.

This dust is extremely penetrating and may be full of static electricity; if you can  see a crack, it’s too wide. On a white surface, an important hole can be misinterpreted as a small piece of debris such as an adhering paint chip. Biological containment facility-grade workmanship may be required, which in any event will be useful against objectionable smells, hot or cold drafts, insect visitors, asbestos, mold, radon, COVID, or whatever comes down the pike next. (June, 2023: What came down the pike next was wildfire smoke.) Moreover, this dust does not seem to settle in confined spaces: a mirror set out in a closed cupboard or closet will collect nothing, even if the space contains active dust entry points.

Sealant applied near the ceiling or near any metal inexplicably develops bubbles, ridges, and holes before it can fully cure. Using the minimum amount of a fast-drying adhesive such as plumber’s glue (Gloozit) is helpful. 

Gloozit is transparent and colourless, so its presence will not be offputting to future tenants and thus the landlord, if you do a neat job. (Cleans up in Varsol.) 

Before sealing anything, vacuum the area and wipe it down with a paper towel moistened with Varsol followed by a dry wipe. Dust entry points accumulate an oily substancee, also inexplicably, which must be removed with Varsol before sealing. Another sealant, which is preferred because of its durability, is clear silicone caulking or white, paintable silicone caulking. You will need a caulking gun with the silicone caulking. Use lots of paper towels to clean excess sealant and buy a caulking tool to keep things neat. Paintable silicone is also useful for filling in pits in walls. Use the straight end of the caulking tool to create a flat surface after application.

In tile floors, the grout may crack and create dust entry points. Use a toothbrush to scrub the grout with concentrated bleach, wipe, rinse, and allow to dry. Then mask off the damaged grout with post-it notes, apply clear silicone caulking, tool, lift off the masking, and touch up if necessary. Clean smears off the tile with the straight end of the tool. Allow to cure overnight. The paper masking is set very slightly back from the edge of the tile, to allow the caulking to bridge across cracks that occur exactly at the edge.

To seal a big hole in an otherwise flat surface, apply a wall-repair patch followed by spackling applied with a 3” drywall putty knife. For straight, wide gaps, substitute backer rod for the wall repair patch and apply spackling as before. Contractor-grade masking tape can be useful but will not stick if you get sweat on it or on the surface it will go on. Impossibly complex areas like windows can simply be sealed off behind window film.

Because of the complexity factor, I had to isolate a closet and seal it off with weatherstripping on the frame of the door, which is now kept closed. The weatherstripping should not be too stiff, to keep down the force needed to close the door. All old paint was cleaned off the striker plate. A 1/2"-thick rectangular plywood insert was placed on the floor to hold the weatherstripping against the bottom of the door and transfer the closing force to the back wall. (A door bumper strip may also work.) I measured carefully before cutting the insert to size; this was a precision job. The weatherstripping was caulked in the corners. The crack between the insert and the floor was also caulked along the front. I ran my finger along all mating surfaces to make sure they were flat and eliminated all hollows and bumps, even small ones caused by old paint runs. Broad defects that require a straightedge to detect did not seem to be a problem. I finished with a light test on the theory that if the door doesn’t leak light, it doesn’t leak dust. Glowing sections were built up further with weatherstripping tapered at the ends and supplemented at the dicey spots with gaskets made by applying a slight excess of silicone caulking, covering it with scotch tape, closing the door firmly, and going to bed. Before starting the gasket job, put masking tape on the door to prevent silicone caulking from bonding to the paint job, which would eliminate the option of a quick undo. (A slow undo remains possible by alternately softening the caulking with Varsol and gently scraping with a fingernail.) An alternative to the light test is the stain test, based on transferring a thin layer of fresh, colored silicone caulking from the door to the weatherstripping when the door is temporarily closed. Uncolored spots on the weatherstripping indicate dust entry points.

Since your head will be close to dust entry points during this process, you must wear a respirator rated for hazardous dusts while you work and as much as possible at all other times, until you are finished. 

Progress can be judged by laying out mirrors for a fixed time and assessing the amount of dust they accumulate using a strong light such as a gooseneck desk lamp. This method can be used with multiple simultaneously exposed, identical, numbered mirrors to obtain spatial information about dust infiltration. One mirror in each corner of the room and in each corner of each window and door seems to suffice, but if you are not making progress, use more. You may have to hang some mirrors from map pins. Diagramming helps; locate the worst corner and then refine your estimate of where the entry point is by examining the diagonal greater-than relationships. The observed spatial pattern can be distorted by gravity, ambient electric fields, the updraft behind the refrigerator, your own dust-raising activities (notably running the vacuum cleaner, pouring powders, or changing clothes), and any large grounded appliances. A diverse mixture of particle sizes on the mirror indicates resuspended old dust, not newly entered dust. Close to the entry point, dust is small, numerous, and irregularly spaced; dust that has travelled far from the entry point is larger, sparser, and more regularly spaced. Be open minded and don’t get hung up on one explanation of how the dust is getting in.

A mirror suitable for elevated sampling locations 

Cover all air inlet and outlet registers with MERV 13 furnace filters attached and sealed with masking tape or Mulco (a clear, so-called temporary sealant that comes off with a little acetone).

All masking tape seals will develop loose spots over time, which can be seen with a strong light held at a low angle and moved around, and patched up by applying Gloozit with the finger. Adhesive tapes generally will not stick very long to anything that does not feel flat to the touch. This includes the tape used to apply window film. If necessary, sand it flat and clean off the standings before applying tape. Remember that older paint may contain lead and wear your respirator while sanding.

Temporarily remove everything removable, like doors, cupboards, and range hoods, to inspect behind them for cracks and holes. You wouldn’t think a door hinge could conceal an opening in the frame, but it can. Always use a permanent repair product in such areas and avoid tapes and temporary sealants, because you don't want to have to re-access the area in a year or month. Doors are more conveniently treated one hinge at a time, after door-stopping and shimming underneath to support the weight of the door while one hinge is unfastened. Seal all empty fastener holes you find, not just in door frames, and seal around the heads of any fasteners that appear slightly canted. Ask the landlord to make any obviously needed repairs if the defect could let in dust, but don’t get known as a complainer. Compliment the landlord for the repair on Google Reviews or BBB. 

Whenever you seal anything, come back and inspect for new holes a day later. 

If there is no chance that the airspace on the far side of the surface you are sealing can become pressurized, seal it with petroleum jelly (Vaseline). This product is also useful for controlling what silicone caulking sticks to.

Standard electrical wall switches are not dust entry points if the cover plate is sealed to the switch and to the surrounding wall.

To anticipate dust entry points, I sometimes imagine my living space as completely submerged in water and ask myself, “Where could it leak in?”

You will have to do maintenance on your sealing job, so keep those mirrors.

A crack or chip in a coat of paint can be a dust entry point if the paint has separated from the underlying surface, thereby creating a narrow space in which air-suspended dust can flow. Analogously, a kitchen counter made of particleboard covered in laminated plastic can develop delaminations that allow dust entry where the board has been repeatedly wetted and/or traumatized.

A dust entry point under a faucet in the bathroom (red arrow)
This one was really hard to find.

A massive piece of furniture moved close to a previously sealed moulding can push down the floor enough to make cracks around the moulding, either at that point or within a few feet to either side. Seal these cracks with paintable silicone caulking and move the furniture back to its intended use position while the caulking is still wet.

Do You Have All the Latest Patches?

There's about five and a half billion adult humans alive right now, and any two of them would be more powerful than you if they cooperated and your gang wasn't around, and they kind of do all cooperate, mostly subconsciously, and we call it God.

Geese flying in formation: a simple swarm intelligence phenomenon 

In a fast-moving malware landscape, commonly used programs often need quick patches (code snippets) to close newly discovered vulnerabilities and keep them useable.

Let us suppose that humans are like that. Let us suppose the existence of something real behind belief in God: a human swarm intelligence that is slow-moving and poorly accessible to consciousness. This swarm intelligence would be a product of natural selection and [the rest of this paragraph is conjecture] talks to us in a language of emotions. It tracks slow changes in the environment while the conscious mind tracks the fast ones. The two environment trackers communicate via a frequency band centered on one reciprocal week. This is also the dividing line between the bands processed by the two trackers.

 The week does not correspond to any astrophysical cycle; it is an invention (discovery?) of religion. 

What were you doing last weekend? Don’t remember, huh? You don’t need to; God will calculate.

Arguably, the slow swarm intelligence will occasionally fall behind in tracking especially rapid environmental change (e.g., global warming), show evidence of a weak spot in its frequency response, and, pardon the blasphemy, need to be patched. At least until natural selection catches up. Logically, this same natural selection should by now have come up with a solution: A proclivity of humans to self-organize into some patch-applying sub-process. This would be organized religion, of course.

The last patch applied to human nature seems to have been a package of five patches: the Pillars of Islam. Before that, we received two big patches at once: Jesus’ "Love God” and “Love thy neighbor.”

However, we now live in a world that would have been inconceivable to the 12 disciples and the early followers of Mohammed, and collectively we are facing unprecedented existential threats. Is it time for another patch?

I say yes, two in fact, and I suggest that the needed patches will be something very like this:

“Love Thy Planet,”

and

“Do Not Divide the People.”

The first of these precepts is already addressed by a recently-added fifth Mark of Mission of the Anglican church and a sixth Mark of Mission that speaks to the second patch was accepted on principle, then folded into the fourth Mark of Mission. The proposed patches are also echoed in the Anglican Baptism Covenant. Many other people have obviously been thinking along the same lines as myself. The new “commandments” will have to be presented and received as the voice of God to be effective, and I will not here tell organized religion how to do its job.

However, does organized religion itself need a patch? It seems to suffer from a worrisome lack of flexibility, leading to hand-wringing schisms. Perhaps a further needed patch is the definition of a new kind of commandment from God that could be called a “manifest commandment,” as opposed to a prophet-channeled commandment. This would be God talking to the entire human race at once.

Since there is little time, we cannot wait millennia to accumulate enough testing of new precepts in the crucible of life to confidently promote them to commandments from God. For example, the two I just mentioned. Thus, we must aggregate such human experience across space instead of time, using the Internet. Luckily, there are now about 5.5 billion of us able to participate, which should ensure a very high-powered study. Since this would essentially be an experiment on humans, the internet could also be used to collect the ethically required written, informed consents.

The above  reasoning argues against atheism but not for the status quo. Is panreligionism the only way to ensure that you have all the latest patches? Oligoreligionism may be more practical. I now have an app on my phone that notifies me of the Islamic prayer times, even the ones after dark. I don’t say the prayers but meditate instead. I wake up in the morning feeling like I have been watched over all night. 

However, the ideal human swarm intelligence will be a function of the details of the problems of existence we face, and these details will be a function of geographical variables like latitude, altitude, and distance from the ocean. Even with the same details, different populations will need different patches because of historical factors, such as the amount of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA they have. 

Photo by Nancy Hughes on Unsplash

Music

Today, while walking in a gentle snowfall, canned carols echoing in memory, I admitted to myself, "I don't understand music. I love it, and I don't understand it."

Five minutes later, I had the beginnings of a theory:

Music is the voice of the swarm intelligence.

Listen carefully, because the swarm intelligence is your ruler.

And don't be shy about being its voice yourself.

Just honestly sing out the message of your heart and

let the chips fall where they may.

You won't see where they fall.

Algonquin College, Ottawa, Canada

Recipe for "Covid Cocklewarmer"

Try this if you are bored with being cooped up at home.
This is my peanut-butter coffee recipe, and as such, it is a caffeinated beverage that will activate your brain. If you are like me, your brain is always your best source of entertainment.

"Slurp! Praise the Lord and pass the antiseptic!"

© 2020 David Matthew Mooney

Both versions make one serving.

Store the tap water in a refrigerator at 4–6°C.

Do not serve hotter than 56°C or the mixture breaks like Hollandaise. (But it's much easier to fix: just let it cool for a bit and then swirl.)*

To go hotter than 56°C without breaking, microwave the water longer to taste and add a tablespoon of milk before shaking.

Instant coffee version:

• Add 300 mL of water to a mason jar free of scratches.
• Heat jar in a 700-W microwave at maximum power for 2 min 30 sec without lid.
• Add 1 tablespoon (15 mL) of sugar.
• Add 2 tablespoons (30 mL) of instant coffee.
• Add 2 tablespoons (30 mL) of smooth, non-separating peanut butter.
• Put on a glove or pick up a dishcloth for comfort in handling the hot jar.
• Close lid and shake the jar up-and-down vigorously for 15 sec.

Filter coffee version (preparation time, 10 min):

• Add 400 mL water to a mason jar free of scratches.
• Heat jar in a 700-W microwave at maximum power for 3 min 40 sec without lid. Aim for 75°C.
• Pour the water into a large plastic cup. Test the cup first to see if it is melted by the hot water; some are and some aren't.
• Place a filter containing 3.5 tablespoons of fine-grind coffee on the jar.
• Pour the water through the coffee.
• Remove the filter.
• Add 1 tablespoon (15  mL) of sugar to the jar.
• Add 2 tablespoons (30 mL) of smooth, non-separating peanut butter.
• Put on a glove or pick up a dishcloth for comfort in handling the hot jar.
• Close lid and shake the jar up-and-down vigorously for 15 sec.

Note 1: Do not add a hot mixture to a cold container and then shake. This will cause the container to suddenly pressurize at the first shake, with unpredictable consequences. 

This filter gives the slowest percolation and therefore the best kick of the three that I have tried. Don't bother to change the microwaving time.

*Note 2: Kraft "Extra-roasted" peanut butter <07-12-2021: and now, the regular kind> can be pushed to 60°C in this recipe without breaking, but the mouth feel is not as good. <07-25-2021: JIF is better.>

01-14-2022: Peanut-butter tea tastes like walnuts. It’s like somebody made a milk substitute out of walnuts instead of almonds. Not bad. It doesn’t curdle like peanut-butter coffee either, at least not at 72 C (162 Fahrenheit). I used double-strength green tea, but followed the rest of the above recipe.

Here is an update on my cocklewarmer setup, 2.5 years on.

Overpop Redemption

The world's many current problems are consistent with a state of overpopulation. The Reverend Malthus laid them out for us long ago: 

• The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction; and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague, advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.

Chapter 7, An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798

T. R. Malthus

Nowadays (2020), we may add global climate change and global pandemics to the list. 

Clearly, people must change their ways. Governments can help, but direct actions consisting of just passing new coercive laws were tried in China and were eventually abandoned. Moreover, "The best government is that which governs least." (motto of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, founded by John O'Sullivan). By a parsimony principle I am fond of, what we want, then, is the minimum adequate response to Overpop. 

My suggestion is: Estateism.

Your "estate" is basically your net worth from all sources minus liabilities, usually considered at the time of death. By "estateism," I mean a life plan focussed on enriching your estate for the benefit of your nearest relatives after your death, as an emotional substitute for raising your own family. Is such a life plan necessarily "thin gruel," emotionally speaking? Not if you know no better--then it is sufficient, as I can testify. 

Governments can help lead the way by lifting all estate taxes from those who die childless and giving proportionate estate-tax breaks to those who die with fewer direct descendants than the national average. If near relatives young enough to reproduce are named as beneficiaries, they would pay no inheritance tax. 

The theory of kin selection by W. D. Hamilton suggests that this lifestyle makes evolutionary sense. Those who adopt it could represent the way of the future, termed "eusociality" by biologists. Many biological precedents for the workability of this idea are known, some of them in mammals. Estateists would be formally like the non-reproducing worker bees in a bee colony, but humans who adopt estateism cannot turn into insects. If you think that they can, tell me how that would happen, exactly; and no hand-waving, please. 

An estateist is free of the oppressive burdens of raising a family and need suffer no sleep deprivation due to the crying of some colicky infant. There is no attempt to balance work and family, which should make for a highly effective worker more than able to enrich his or her estate. The theory of kin selection, which seems to find an echo in the human "heart," is the intellectual anchor for such a life and suffices to give it meaning. 

03-19-2020: An objection can be raised to the foregoing that the inheritors of Estateist benefits will be tempted to expand the size of their families as a direct result, thereby offsetting the reproductive self-restraint of their Estateist relatives in fine Malthusian style. However, I doubt that human reproduction is as elastic as this scenario assumes, but the matter can be decided by mathematical modelling and computer simulations. In the event of bad news from the simulations, the effectiveness of Estateism as population control could be enhanced by testamentary stipulations on the uses to which the inherited wealth can be put, which would aim to prevent its use to support an abnormally large family instead of better nurturing of a normal-sized family. (The biological precedent for this is called "K-selection," an aspect of Life History Theory.) In that event, permitted uses of an Estateist inheritance would be such things as education, training, insurance, medical expenses, rehabilitation, and relocation.

04-14-2020: To this list I should add lawyer's fees--the sting of the Estateist.

The Shadow of the Observer

Albert Einstein once likened the body of scientific knowledge to an ever-expanding circle of light, and made the point that because of the expansion, the frontier of knowledge--the perimeter of the circle--will likewise be ever-expanding. I think that a more important point can be made; Einstein's circle of light has a shadow in the center where we the observers are standing. This shadow is the continuing lack of understanding of human nature in terms that relate back to the hard sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and biology. Before we can relate it that far back, we must first pass through neuroscience, genetics, and evolutionary psychology. Especially evolutionary psychology. Only then will we be able to devise efficient solutions to the problems that still beset humanity, because our solutions will touch the true causes of things.

Countless earnest workers in the humanities and soft sciences have been seeking an understanding of human nature. Why has this not sufficed? I suspect it is because key determinants of human behavior are processed through the unconscious pathways of the brain and are therefore never available for conscious introspection. For example, I strongly suspect that crowding stress is the master variable governing human history. This would simply be humans per hectare. Why are we therefore not acutely aware of it at all times? Because (hypothetically) it is represented in the right amygdala, which is known to be specialized for unconscious emotion processing. (The left amygdala is known to be specialized for conscious emotion processing.) This is an easily tested prediction.

The computations of the amygdala are most usefully understood in terms of the evolutionary selection process that created the human brain. This is why I think it important at this time to devote public funding to evolutionary psychology, the study of evolution as it pertains to explaining human behavior. You may object that generations of research investment will be needed before such an abstruse-sounding discipline will begin to yield practical benefits, but I beg to differ. Evolutionary psychology is a new field, and in new fields, there is still low-hanging fruit. In my theory blog, "Theoretician's Progress," at http://mmmtheory.blogspot.com, I have been scouting some of this low-hanging fruit, and there is plenty. My preliminary conclusions are written up in that blog in posts tagged as containing evolutionary-psychological subject matter.

We have to solve the ancient problems with ourselves before we can hope to solve the new problems such as climate change. Imagine, for example, that a narrowly technological solution to climate change is attempted, such as an orbiting space mirror. Who then decides what the target set point for the global temperature shall be? Temperate  countries will want it set higher; equatorial countries will want it set lower. The first country that feels left out of the decision-making process will start a vigorous space program aimed at blowing up the space mirror. Assuming the terrorists or some small, selfish interest group nobody ever heard of before does not get to it first. How can we hope to control the temperature of a whole, damned planet when we can't even control ourselves?

Signaletics for Salvation

"The Broken Link," a fast-acting, tactile reminder of "the three sinces" stated in the diagram below, at lower right.
It is a severed chain link. You can get these for free at hardware stores. File off the burrs first.

The core tenets of what I call "Signaletics" are as follows:

1. Human unhappiness comes from destructive, escalating signaling cycles, usually between two persons. Examples: arguments, feuds, schools of thought, gang wars, revolutions.
2. The signals exchanged are initially personal expressions of anger.
3. These expressions are MULTIMODAL, and therefore highly redundant. (e.g., threatening utterances, tones of voice, facial expressions, gait, crashing and banging things, spying, following, etc.) Your anger comes out of you "through every pore."
4. These signals are too many and varied for conscious control, which is why most people remain enslaved by their signals and cycles.
5. The many signals of anger all have a common root in the emotion itself, which is where control must be focused.
6. Anger is fear in disguise.

The flow diagram summarizes the Signaletics solution: a thought cycle called Radical De-escalation. "Radical" is Latin for "root," and the method focuses on the unitary root of your many signals, the emotion of fear, to break the cycle.

Unfortunately, there is another source of Signaletic danger beyond the anger cycle, namely the sadness cycle. The sadness cycle is asymmetric, however; sadness on one side, and contempt on the other. People trapped in this cycle would probably have been described by Stephen Covey, author of "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," as having the lose-win and win-lose negotiation styles. The treatment proposed here for the anger cycle can hopefully serve as a template for treating the sadness cycle. This is a direction for future research.

Signaletics is based on a home-made theory that could be classified as evolutionary psychology. The anger cycle is presumed to escalate until one of the parties must leave the country. When people are threatened, they seek allies, so all of society eventually gets drawn in and polarized as the escalation proceeds apace, like a black hole. Therefore, it is a group that must eventually leave, not a single individual, which is the basis of the refugee phenomenon. In ecological terms, the refugee phenomenon is clearly sub serving the function of dispersal. However, dispersal-producing behavior is fundamentally altruistic in a backhanded way. The benefit to the supposed loser, the group that eventually gets driven out, is that occasionally they find a newly-emptied vacant habitat in which to settle and therefore can reproduce without competition. This is a tremendous benefit in evolutionary terms and may once have been great enough to redeem all the waste and suffering of human-style dispersal.

However, altruistic behavior cannot evolve in the presence of non-altruists unless a signaling system is established to ensure that altruists are only altruistic to other altruists. That is why I lay so much emphasis on signaling here. I am basically teaching you how to game the dispersal algorithm and act like a non-altruist, but in a good cause: the preservation of civilization. The reason why the signals are so multimodal is that such gaming has probably happened many times in the past and the broken algorithm was repaired each time by natural selection with the addition of yet another signal component. The present solution promises to be permanent, however, because of its focus on the unitary emotion at the root of all these signals.