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PRR, JR,

I have the opposite problem in Texas! The garage I work in will go 105F (That's 40C) in the summer.
This time of year, it's cold in there (32F?) - but that's quite bearable when your working with SMD and Hot Air!
 
Rochey said:
PRR, JR,

I have the opposite problem in Texas! The garage I work in will go 105F (That's 40C) in the summer.
This time of year, it's cold in there (32F?) - but that's quite bearable when your working with SMD and Hot Air!

If low humidity you might try a swamp cooler.  Poor man's swamp cooler is to hang a clothesline in there and use the heat to dry wet laundry. When the moisture evaporates it will absorb heat. While the extra humidity will not help human comfort level in a closed space. 

Yes, the hot air station is much nicer to use in the winter than summer.

A dehumidifier is effectively a small air conditioner with the room air being recirculated. It seems you could get the benefit of some local spot cooling "and" lower overall humidity by modifying a stock dehumidifier to blow cool towards you and the hot exhaust away from you. 

JR
 
> only smells funny the first time it turns on after sitting over the winter

Short-term. This looks like it sat idle for many years. Also I'm sure it didn't live in the house.

> 5,600W should be enough heat to get your garage comfortable.

Not really. 2.5-car, so it needs 1,000BTU (per hour) per degree just to heat the walls. Ceiling rises to a well-insulated room, but the floor slab is nearly that infinite heat-sink (cold-sink).

So 5,600 Watts is 18,000BTU and will raise the area maybe 18 deg F.

Today it's 14F. I can raise it just over freezing. But if I leave a wrench on the floor, it will freeze to my hand.

Yesterday was colder.

I would prefer 40,000BTU. I can't get that much from my electric line. (I "can" but the drop is large and the lights would be too dim.) (Anyway the cost!!)

I'm cleaning a well-used pellet stove, 50,000BTU, but this week is rough for wrenching cold steel fire-plates.

It's all about the insulation (as I said in the unrelated thread). My house is much bigger than the garage, and heats to 68F with 20,000BTU (25% duty on 80,000BTU burner) on the worst days.
________________________________

> more sense in MS than ME

There was a company sold a LOT of heat-pumps here. He went utterly broke from break-downs inside warranty. I do not know the technology, though I bet it was air. Ground-dump systems cost more than most folks can pay, and much land here is nearly undiggable.

Wind is not doing bad. Off-shore and also on the first hills back from the sea there's moderately steady winds in much of the winter.

There's no pipe-gas outside a few urban areas. With the recent gas glut there's a boom. One company hopes to connect 50 homes this year. They've said that before, and left customers converted and gas-less. (Here we will never have ANY underground utility, more shallow-rock than people.) Another company is snitting with the town about contributing to the cost of extending their natural monopoly. They seem to want an uncommonly quick pay-back. Maine missed similar fights in NJ and everywhere, our laws are insufficient.

Nat-gas is so cheap that one company will *truck* it to you. The stuff is so thin (half the BTU per tank of propane, much thinner than a truck of oil) that it normally has to go by pipe. This makes great sense when a pipe is coming but not yet. But they also have customers who will never see a pipe.
 
I really hate being cold and may have to move further south than MS... We're not ME cold, but cold enough for me (20's overnight).

I was kidding about drilling for NG, while you could dig a little deeper for geothermal heat. :)  I have a hard time feeling good about wind power. Anything that needs that much subsidy is a little shaky. I just read that electricity use is rising at less than 1% a year and not expected to grow at the higher rates we had in the past. Maybe if electric cars were more successful that would bump up electricity demand, but the projection I saw was around 1% growth going to something like 2040, so they are not electric car fans either. :)

I just read about another planned refinery (2014?) to convert some of this excess NG to more usable diesel, but it's planned for down in TX or somewhere on the Gulf, and a lot of that will get exported out of the US. But that will be good for jobs and the economy here. We are still flaring off a lot of NG because we don't have the infrastructure to effectively move it. I think there already is a NG to diesel refinery under construction in the middle east somewhere. I see cheap NG as a phase we will go though for only a decade or two, but lets make hay while the sun is shining

I don't know if NG is going to be around long enough to justify building out infrastructure to the last mile, every where. Electricity infrastructure is already in place so it is the logical medium for effective energy transport. When I was a kid i remember having a room in the basement that was apparently filled with coal, before the heat was converted to use an oil burner. I am still trying to figure out how to send power over the internet.  8)

JR



 
Oil-guy just left, and reminds me that oil is just a lesser evil. I do NOT understand how home heat fuel costs more than gasoline or diesel when it carries no road tax. I'm not even sure it is a better fuel than modern diesel. Seems to be ample Sulpher-stink and it gets gummy in the tank.

> electricity use is rising at less than 1% a year

Yes, but existing generators fade-away 2% (coal) to 5% (gas) per year, due to 50 or 20 year useful lifetimes. We need new generation or that end will become as sad as electric transmission or highway infrastructure.

Yes, at present wind is mostly a tax trick. At best it is too small, too far from load, and won't run steady.

> Anything that needs that much subsidy is a little shaky.

Yes, the recent run-up in nat-gas investments show that when there is a clear business case the market finds capital. Wind towers are no longer hand-built experimentals, and tapping into the grid is old news. So this year's rush to get wind projects "finished" before the tax subsidy expired (it was renewed, but nobody was sure) suggests wind is not economic. (I still like it over burning.)

Hydro: I just saw some numbers showing New England has harnessed 101% of the available (useful) water drop (which must have been true for a century). Mid-Atlantic is nearly as exploited. Hydro rights are trading, it's good stuff once someone else has invested the dam. But a lot of small hydro is being abandoned (save the fish) or gifted to wishful small players.

Long pipes are hot here. There's an abandoned line up to the top of the state for a cold-war bomber base. Someone wants to re-purpose it to bring product (not sure what) from Canada. It's gone back to some of the furthest wilderness in the east so environmentalists are against the idea.

> i remember having a room in the basement that was apparently filled with coal

I was looking at a house once and there was a bit of coal in the bin. I saved it because I never grew up with coal (my father told stories). Here a coal cellar is common in older buildings. Coal is not widely used, but the guy here bought it in 50 pound bags (he grew up in PA so he knew how to light it). I've thought about it. Coal is by far the cheapest fuel at the mine. Small users will burn selected anthracite which is less nasty than the bulk coal which kills our trees. Transportation costs are brutal especially when demand is small. And Maine really does have renewable trees so pellets are the new coal. (Major facilities build chip burners.)
 
There is both a new coal plant in MS to exploit a major local coal seam, and a new wood to bio-fuel plant to exploit loose federal tax dollars.  :eek:

I have long been looking at tress for at least a short term source of fuel. Long term you have to farm trees just like anything else so the energy calculation is less obvious.

In New England as i recall, and here as I observe, there is lots of harvestable tree's in/near roadway and power line right of ways. They do a pretty good job of keeping the major high tension spurs clear of trees, but the local distribution lines have many examples of tree growth within easy striking distance, as regular storms routinely demonstrate and major storms exclaim emphatically.

Some state or federal authorization to harvest these trees within striking distance of power lines, could general a lot of wood, at least in the short term. There would be a cost to harvest this, but that would be somewhat offset by energy extracted from the wood, and reduced power outages after storms.

Up north you'd have to arm wrestle the tree huggers, down here not so much, probably more of a question about how to fund the pre-emptive harvesting since it would not be net profitable in the short term, and power utilities the logical choice to do this are highly regulated. 

JR
 
Harvesting under electric lines won't work. That wood is "mine". (Except the line is on the other side of the road.) It is left for the property owner.

Yes, on dedicated right-o-way the wood may belong to the company. However much RoW here is pretty rugged.

Also there's a class system. Linemen are not lumberjacks.

North of Portland there's no tree-huggers. (Exception, a few notable specimens, and any tree that's "mine!" and hasn't been paid for.) They's just too many trees. Trees is weeds.

There's VAST tracts of woods which already have passable roads. That Bull Hill wind-farm, in the satellite pictures you can see all the lumbering around it. Felling for lumber takes only the better trees. Felling for cord-wood will take trees that won't cut 16-foot straight, but still mostly just straight trunk. Pellet wood can take the really gnarly trees and larger branches. Less trash in the woods, more clearance for lumber-worthy trees to grow in the next decades.

I'm really not worried about trees here. The Canadian government is subsidizing lumbering to keep their people employed, even to the point of driving down global prices. When Canadian lumber at Home Despot is cheaper than Maine lumber, nobody does a lot of cutting. That will eventually kill the lumbering business here, by under-funding harvester mortgage payments. But meanwhile cutting slash for pellets keeps the racket going for a little while. The home pellet market is strong. Hospitals and such are building bio-burners to take vast quantities of larger chips. While cord-wood is cheaper per BTU, it is a lot of work to control the burning. Modern pellet burners are almost as automated as oil burners. They self-light, they flare/idle on a thermostat, they shut down politely.
 
Brian Roth said:
Excuse me here a second.....using wood for heat?  I thought that calif. shut that down as an alternative fuel....

bri

@Bri I think they amy have shut down government subsidies for using wood as an alternative fuel(?) that received subsidies, as some projects were (duh). Air quality is also a priority there, so wood burning has been outlawed in some communities for a while. 

@PRR yes the wood business in ME has been tangled up with Canada for a long time. IIRC there were also issues with how little pay American workers were willing to do heavy work for, so for a bizarre while, canadian workers were harvesting american trees, for American companies here in America, because American workers wouldn't take the jobs. Don't know whats going on lately, but Canadian wood has affected many US lumber markets.

The wood-to-biofuel plant down here in MS is no doubt an effort to replace some of the now gone soft wood (pine) harvesting industry.

JR
 
I've bought a house in central France for my retirement and it will run on wood fired central heating.  The natural resources in this area are hardwood and Limousin cattle.  There is also an oil-fired boiler there so I plan to use that for just first thing in the morning, then get the wood boiler going for the rest of the day.  I can't imagine using electricity for heating its so expensive.

PRR, don't you have modern wood burners in the US?  Mine cost $3200 but it will pay for itself in a year or two on oil saved.
best
DaveP
 
I just did a quick Google re. using wood as  heating fuel in California:

http://www.aqmd.gov/news1/2012/CBYB.htm

In the case of SF, even stoves fueled by pellets are banned:

http://sparetheair.org/

hmmmmm....can't use wood, petro sources are frowned upon......so, freeze to death in the cold, you evil humans!

Bri

 
Brian,
I guess they are talking smoky fires there.

Wood is classified as a renewable over here and is encouraged.  Modern wood burners are 72% efficient and have airwash on the glass to keep it clean.

best
DaveP
 
"With the help of an online video and a $20 part, she repaired the dryer on her own in 45 minutes and joined the ranks of do-it-yourselfers reshaping the nation’s service economy.
"The can-do attitude saves consumers money and gives them a sense of empowerment, but it also dings the appliance-repair industry. Spending on appliance repair collapsed...."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/pity-the-maytag-repairman-1428276891
 
The EU is upset over  trace amounts 0.1-0.01% at the homogeneous level of "hazardous materials"... yet no worries dumping tons and tons of inferior metals and god only knows what in the land fills....

 
PRR said:
"With the help of an online video and a $20 part, she repaired the dryer on her own in 45 minutes and joined the ranks of do-it-yourselfers reshaping the nation’s service economy.
"The can-do attitude saves consumers money and gives them a sense of empowerment, but it also dings the appliance-repair industry. Spending on appliance repair collapsed...."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/pity-the-maytag-repairman-1428276891
I saw that article too but not sure about their punchline... "appliance repair collapsed". I installed a new dishwasher a few months ago and almost immediately one of the LEDs on the control panel stopped working... Even though it was brand new and covered by warranty, I took it apart to see if I could repair it, ASSuming it is probably a bad solder joint.  After visual inspection and ohming out the LEDs everything looked OK. I retouched all the associated solder joints I could identify but no love...

So I broke down and pinged Whirlpool service...  Since I don't live in a urban service area they farmed out my repair to a local guy (Paul) . A couple weeks later when he showed up I told him exactly what I told Whirlpool and he wrote down the significant serial  numbers et al, and ordered a replacement control board.

That was about a month ago, so when I saw Paul at the post office across the street from my house the other day, I ambushed him and asked how my replacement control board was coming.  ;D He said it was still back ordered (I believe him).

Since then another LED on the control panel stopped working. The dishwasher still works fine, or I'd be more aggravated, but the bad PCB seems to be getting worse, and I have to ASSume that the button pressed  registered properly .  If some more LEDs go out it will be even more fun to operate.

Perhaps they had a run of bad PCB, which is why they don't have any in repair stock now...  maybe if it drags out another month with no PCB I'll take it out and try to fix it again... I suspect there is either a LED driver chip and/or bad solder on a processor... While at this point I'd like a new good PCB.

=========
Back to my quibble with the WSJ article, I asked Paul how his repair business was and he said it was hopping, and if he was willing to relocate to TX he could make really good money... Of course just a one rat sample, but professional appliance repair is apparently not dead...

JR

PS.. In general repairs are 5% parts, 15% labor, and 80% knowing what to fix.... The WWW can help with the 80% but not all of it.  Common problems should be talked about on the forums.  I have been impressed with availability of repair parts (not that cheap ) for many appliances (no I couldn't find a control board for my washer, but I fixed my old tired vacuum cleaner a few years back thanks to www repair parts ).
 
> just a one rat sample

Indeed. But I did suspect the WSJ story wasn't the whole story. For every one woman ("one rat sample") or man who gets-up the moxie to DIY repair, there's a thousand who call for service, and another thousand who chuck the disposable product in the garage and buy a new one.

I'm watching videos about pulling the pump out of the bottom of my well.

I've also learned that my 75' sewer-line may grow 1.5 inches longer in August, and shrink-back in February, which matches the crack I see peering into the cleanout (my poop is leaking under the porch). This line has apparently failed before. It also has a dip which may be thermal give. Time to put some "snake" and expansion joints in so it can give with the temperature without snapping at the fittings.
 
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