Recent content by vbaker

My accident: "" And my wife's was two days later, my car was out of service and she was summoning hers into the garage when the 4G dropped, it ran into the support for the garage shelves and dropped them on the hood, dented the bumper too. She is still driving it around like that.

I sometimes wonder myself when I get it rocking front to back onto the buckets!

I just picked up a 1974 Case 580B backhoe. All soil is soft... ;)

Yes. There is a cam that the cable rolls over to latch and unlatch. The pin on the cam broke (probably under my weight sleeping in back). I did that repair and a broken "7 seater trunk" cover support plastic piece (definitely broke due to my weight trying to pull the seat up) at the same time...

Correct, but the air almost always has capacity to absorb moisture. So expose enough air to the condensed water, and it will re-absorb it (except in the case of air saturated to the point of fog). ~edit: re-absorb the warmer-than-pipe-temperature water drops - air still makes deposits of...

I got you now. The condensation of water is more ~without~ airflow because airflow enables evaporation. It would evaporate a lot of the condensed water, even on the cold surface. This is how our modern frost-free freezers work, they have airflow in the freezer to evaporate the frozen and...

Yeah, we usually have a hard time thinking of vapor pressure and air pressure being different critters, the odd part is the denser vapor moving faster. Or was it through a restricted orifice where the vapor could act as a blockage for the air?

As I have been posting, those wall hung units! They are made to run almost continuously, advantage being de-humidification. Central air units do not run long enough to be effective at de-humidification.

And you have to think about the humidity (at least in the mid west). Sometimes getting the house cooled to 68F is not worth the extra humidity once it is closed up. Definitely look at those wall-hung heat pumps, most of them are pretty much DIY - if you have existing air returns you can use to...

I have done a lot of experimentation with passive energy transfer, rule of thumb: the most efficient transfer happens with ~15F temperature differential. That last 15F takes a lot longer to achieve.

I did some reading on the multi-room conditioners, LG, Mitsubishi etc. Apparently -4F for heat and +118F for cooling, and I think the literature called it inductive heat pump exchangers. You hang it on a wall, and route three pipes and some wires out to the outdoor unit. Most of the work is DIY...

Mother Earth News ran an article about 10 years ago about a guy in Minnesota that used solar thermal to heat his workshop and home. www.builditsolar.com, very good plans on a solar water heater that is proven to work. I did some experiments using the NREL data on my front SE facing porch and...

Excellent, I was getting ready to mention the SEER and EER, two things that have me thinking I may give up my propane furnace. "Convert EER To SEER Rating (Calculator + Chart) | LearnMetrics" has good info on how to figure it and an understanding why the SEER is important.

Please don't let the wife know... We never spoke, right? Seriously, we only use cast iron now so it would work well for us and we have mentioned it. But I am still fighting the battle of keeping our 1992 living room set because it is in great shape, I don't need to fight the good fight on...

The only reason we keep the dual-fuel propane/electric range is the recovery energy needed to maintain the heat for a strong sear on a good steak. :) And yes, I know beef production is also very bad for the environment due to the inefficiencies of raising cattle, but humans ain't at the top of...