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[#] Thu Sep 04 2014 19:11:25 EDT from LoanShark

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Suggestions?

Remove all your clothes, cover yourself in fruit and garbage, go into the attic while singing "Vespula! Dolichovespula! I am here!"

[#] Thu Sep 04 2014 20:24:21 EDT from vince-q <vince-q@ns1.netk2ne.net>

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I will *not* write what I am thinking.... <very evil grin>

[#] Thu Sep 04 2014 22:55:17 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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I was just thinking large explosives.

[#] Fri Sep 05 2014 01:45:23 EDT from ax25

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Just dawn a rubber suit from head to toe and a rubber and poly mask that covers your head, and climb up in to the 90+ degree F attic and ... Well, that does not sound like a happy outcome.



[#] Fri Sep 05 2014 09:46:27 EDT from wizard of aahz

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IG - If you're gonna poke around do it at night, but I assume you already know that. Honestly though. Get the exterminator in. Sometimes it's best for a professional to handle it.

[#] Fri Sep 05 2014 12:46:54 EDT from LoanShark

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I was just thinking large explosives.

Yeah, the house will have to go. Such a shame really, you just bought it.

[#] Fri Sep 05 2014 14:49:26 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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No no no, you misunderstand. I'm not going to blow up *my* house. I'm going to blow up the house of someone who bothers me more than the bees do. It won't fix the problem but it'll make me feel better.

[#] Sat Sep 13 2014 18:17:17 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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Ok, instead of explosives I purchased a free standing pantry for my kitchen.
It's cheap flat-pack furniture which I'm assembling now. But I've learned from experience: to avoid having it spontaneously disassembling itself later on, I'm applying Gorilla Glue to all the joints. This thing is going to be solid.

[#] Wed Oct 08 2014 17:10:54 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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Vince posted this in the QSO room:

While I wouldn't mind using power amplifiers to heat the house in January,
space is at a premium in the office

And it made me think a bit.

My house has electric resistance heat. (Yeah, I know, I'll be looking into a heat pump and/or a wood stove once I get a season behind me to get the lay of the land.)

Assume that it is winter and the house needs to be heated. Despite the cost of electricity, electric resistance heat operates at 100% efficiency (all of the electricity fed into the system is converted to heat). For appliances whose primary purpose is something other than heating, any electricity converted to heat is normally considered to be wasted. But, if I need electric resistance heat anyway, can I consider "waste heat" from these appliances to be heating my house at the exact same cost (in terms of watthours-to-joules or whatever) as my heaters?

Am I connecting the dots correctly? Any emeritus physics instructors out there? ;)

[#] Thu Oct 09 2014 02:16:24 EDT from vince-q <vince-q@ns1.netk2ne.net>

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Am I connecting the dots correctly? Any emeritus physics instructors

out there? ;)


You are correct. Basically it's why I leave the oven door open after I'm done baking and it's turned off. Let that heat into the house! Less work for the furnace!!

The other quirky Italian Thing... ever notice how, in winter, the house just "feels more comfortable" on spaghetti night?

It's not the food. It's the water you boiled. Made the place more HUMID and also, that steam had to condense, releasing 540 calories per gram as it turned into water.

Neat, eh?

--Vince
[Who, when not wearing his Ham Radio hat, is a retired Physics teacher...]

[#] Thu Oct 09 2014 05:38:56 EDT from dothebart

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the problem about electric radiation is, that electricity usually is generated from heat using steam turbines.

They usually are not 100% effective (remotely...)

plus you have lots of waste on the transport due to resistance in the wires.

however, nowadays people figure that you can build storage ovens which use electricity when renewables are available, which seems to be a pro argument.

However, I don't like the fact that they burn dust inside, and then launch this burnt dust at you using their fans - not very nice for the nose and lungs.



[#] Thu Oct 09 2014 09:25:24 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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Efficiency on the supply side is not my concern (at least not for the purpose of this discussion). I'm looking to optimize my electric bill, not my environmental impact. The latter cannot be fixed until we get rid of the watermelons.

The bit about the oven ... I've thought about that before. As long as the entire appliance sits inside the kitchen (as opposed to a built-in on an exterior wall or something) ... all of the heat from the oven is eventually going to enter the kitchen regardless of whether the door is open. The only difference is how long it takes.

So, for all practical purposes, during the heating season, heat-generating appliances cost "nothing" to operate since they offset the production of domestic heat which had to be paid for anyway. (I put "nothing" in quotes because obviously there's a cost, but it's canceled out by an equivalent cost of domestic heat which didn't have to be purchased.)

[#] Thu Oct 09 2014 10:15:01 EDT from vince-q <vince-q@ns1.netk2ne.net>

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The oven in my kitchen seems to exceptionally well insulated. While it is running, the kitchen is, basically, not any warmer than it would otherwise have been.

Once I'm done, particularly on cold weather nights, leaving the oven door partially open after turning it off makes things very much warmer in the kitchen, and the small air-circulation fans we use pushes that air out into the dining area, and from there to the living room (where all the neat audo/video toys do their *own* job of heating the place!).

[#] Sat Jan 10 2015 14:03:37 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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Is there any such thing as an electrical box that mounts on top of another electrical box? I want to make a transition from recessed to surface-mount in my garage.

[#] Mon Jan 12 2015 23:45:39 EST from ax25

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Probably, but just don't take it too far:

http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_apr2012/ElectricalBoxExtension.jpg



[#] Tue Jan 13 2015 15:55:41 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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Ok, I was looking for something more like [ http://tinyurl.com/kmw5b57 ] but your photo shows that the more boxes I put in, the more awesome it gets.

[#] Tue Jan 13 2015 23:01:24 EST from ax25

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When the sparky's can't find fault with it in reading the code, you know you have something special!



[#] Thu Jan 15 2015 10:00:29 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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What I really wanted was a dual-gang box that mounts on top of a single-gang box.

And unfortunately when I googled "electric box extender expander" it ignored "electric box" and showed me a lovely selection of penis pumps.

[#] Sun Jan 18 2015 13:08:10 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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So it looks like what I need is a RACO 187:

(They don't sell 'em at Home Despot)

This box will make the transition from a single-gang inset box to a 4" surface-mount box.  This will allow me to draw power from the existing outlet in my garage, and come out into the rest of the garage using conduit along the exterior cinder block wall a few feet away.  This will allow me to have an outlet near my server rack, so I can plug in my router, and another at my workbench, where I can plug in my router.

(see what I did there?)



[#] Sun Jan 18 2015 13:22:47 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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Speaking of electrical disasters...

As I may have mentioned earlier, I'm in the process of replacing the horribly inaccurate thermostats in my house with digital ones.  As it turns out, mechanical line voltage thermostats are notorious for being completely unreliable at getting an accurate temperature, which is why a lot of homes built with electric heat use relays and low voltage thermostats.  But I can't do that because I've got 11 zones of electric heat, each room wired with its own thermostat, each room being either freezing or broiling because of the way they interact with each other.

So I was changing the one in the living room yesterday, which my wife requested as a priority because she suspected we weren't getting a lot of heat in there.  Turns out she was right.  While searching for the correct breaker I eventually matched it up to a 20 amp double pole that I hadn't been able to close without it popping right back off.  I had assumed that breaker went to some old construction that had been capped badly when the house was converted from a two family back to a one family, but I was wrong.  When I disconnected the old thermostat, I was able to close the breaker and measure 240 volts on the wires.

Upon opening the wiring box of the baseboard heater, I found:

  • Burnt/carbonized marks all over the metal
  • Several exposed wires hanging loose
  • A partially melted wire nut
  • The remaining splice held together with tape instead of a wire nut

Thank goodness for circuit breakers and metallic enclosures, or this house would have burned a long time ago.  I had assumed all the wiring was done correctly, because this is a manufactured home.  I can't imagine who would have ever had a need to go in there later and change out that wiring.  Now I'm wondering if I have to go through the rest of the house and open every box and every heater.

I'm surprised the home inspector didn't catch this.



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