Sticking it to the man
 

So I know that some of you think I've turned into some kind of hippie of late. I just want to re-assure everyone that I'm still fully capable of fucking mother nature squarely in the goat-hole, when doing so best serves my own financial interests.

Having recently re-located from California to NYC, one thing which really annoys me is the manner in which the utilities are billed in the apartment at which I live (a stereotypical hi-rise building). To wit: electricity is billed in the usual manner, at a straight metered rate which is absurdly high, while water is billed at a fixed rate, regardless of consumption.

Now, the first month that I was here was fairly unremarkable, weather-wise. Not hot, not cold. So, having not run the A/C or heat very much at all, I was shocked to receive a nearly $60 electric bill for the first month. I've in no way changed by electrical lifestyle since moving here- same two PCs running 24/7, same type of refrigerator set at the same level... If anything, I should be using less electricity as a result of replacing the 13 year old three CRT rear-projection TV with a modern LED flatscreen. How electricity can cost more in a state where they still burn coal and have functioning nuclear plants vs. one with the strictest environmental regulations and just de-commissioned fully half of their nuclear capability astounds me.

Shock turned to outrage when the first water bill came; at $45, nearly double what I'm accustomed to paying for metered service in SoCal which, need I remind you, has some of the highest water rates in North America on account of being a friggin' desert. Those of you who have never lived in the southwestern US probably can't appreciate just how much of a huge deal water is down there. It's so scare that it has to be imported from two states away. It plays a role in electoral politics, too. Remember that not only do Californians drink it and flush it down the toilet, they use it to water the crops in the state which has the highest agricultural output of any in the USA.


(rabble, rabble...)


So the gears start grinding...

The electricity is really fucking expensive as well. And with winter setting in, and electric heat in my corner apartment with fucking windows everywhere, that's going to cost some money...

And I'm being charged an outrageous amount for water, including hot water, and yet that rate is fixed no matter how much I consume.

No matter how much I consume...

And that unmetered how water? It's actually surprisingly hot. Like "you can burn yourself with this shit" hot.

Hmmmm.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1384180155

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In for flooded apartment pics.

List of places I will never, ever live.

I love NYC, but it does cost an absurd amount to live there. You can make $75k doing admin work with little experience and all of that money goes into your transportation and living expenses.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1384183753


Interesting, but that fan looks a little spendy to me. I wonder if you could use a drill-powered water pump instead? Hook a fan blade to the shaft and use the water pressure to spin it?... Worth a shot maybe.

Your hot water comes from the water company? Not a personal hot water heater?

One thing that does confuse me though: I've lived in a lot of places, some with water provided on a fixed charge, but in all those places the apartment had it's own water heater on my electricity.. Your building has a common water heater?? That seems odd.

Or just buy warm clothes and keep the windows open. Save money on the fridge, better cooling for the PC, and fresh NY air.

If only he could make the fan work off of the water pressure, now that would be genius! Well, maybe not genius, but still.

See post #5.

If he really wanted to stick it to the man he would just start a fire, just burn garbage you find on the shitty NYC streets. Vent it to outside and you win.

Domestic hot water. A lot of buildings have a "main" boiler for hot water around here. Usually 200 gallon, but i'm not sure what a skyscraper would have. Maybe multiple general boilers and tanks.

I am dumb, but I must admit I scrolled past the gigantic picture without reading.

I was thinking more 18th century water wheel that dumps out the window though. Maybe grind some grain while he is at it. Water power!

Arizona calling out NYC up in here!

Yeah, I've been thinking about those windows too, but the solar possibilities of them specifically. A few ideas:

Simple black panels that lay on the floor by the windows and collect heat?

Or...

Make up some of those cool "solar collectors" from old soda cans and set them in front of the windows? Bonus: Recycled materials. Who says you're not a hippy?!??

Build Your Own Soda Can Solar Heater

No, you were right: it's fucking genius. Here's to us Harv; The Bright Boys!

Just get 3 or 4 cats and strap solar panels to their back. They always lay in the sun so you won't have to work any tricky mechanism to follow the sun.

Genius!

They roll around a lot. You really need to cover them in solar panels all around the mid-section, but then they get irritable and irritable cats are never good.

We shall see.

I've been extremely fastidious about making certain that everything is secure, leak-proof, etc. High-quality hoses and fasteners, etc. It's certainly a concern, but one which I believe I have adequately addressed.

The sink fittings shows here are for proof-of-concept. Having deemed the system to perform adequately, I am thinking about hard-wiring the setup into place using the dishwasher feed and return (I never use the damn dishwasher.)



This from a guy who lives in Texas... :rolleyes:



Well, it's not that bad. Housing is a little expensive, but not all that much worse that some parts of Cali.

Transportation is actually cheap here, if you use your head about it. I pay $80 a month for an unlimited-rides PATH Metrocard, and $95 a year for a Citibike key. That's marginally less than I'd otherwise be paying for gasoline, insurance, taxes, etc on a car that I owned outright, and a couple of hundred a month less than a "normal" person who is either leasing or making payments on a new-ish car would be paying.

Even if I also got an unlimited-rides MTA Metrocard (NYC subway) in addition to the PATH Metrocard (PATH is the train which conjoins Hobokien to Manhattan under the Hudson river), that would only be a combined total of $192 a month, which is still far less than the average person spends on car payments / gas / insurance. Depending on how much snowfall we get this winter, I may do that for a couple of months in lieu of cycling.




The fan cost me $9.99 with free shipping from NewEgg: Rosewill RCA-220-BL Case Fan - Newegg.com

This is one area of the system which I believe needs to be improved. This fan just isn't moving a lot of air, and while it's adequate to keep the bedroom warm-ish at night right now, it's probably not going to cut it in a month or so when it starts to get properly cold outside.

Frankly, I chose to start with a case fan like that on the basis that I knew they were quiet, but this is one area where form is going to have to take a back seat to function. It's not like any fan I pick is going to be louder than the diesel locomotives running all night right outside my bedroom window, so in reality, fan noise isn't a huge concern. I'm thinking about upgrading to something like this: Honeywell TurboForce Air Circulator - Black : Target
or this: trueliving 9in Box Fan - Fans - Dollar General

The core height on my radiator is 9", so that's kind of my target, fan-wise. I'm open to other suggestions.

I've owned a drill pump of the sort you picture, and I can guarantee you that it would be inadequate to the task. You'd need GPM, not GPH, to turn that thing fast enough to drive a useful fan.

This is pretty much standard in high-rise buildings in urban areas. One huge gas-fired water heater to service all apartments. Same way it's done in large hotels.

Actually, a lot of really old buildings also have a common boiler for space heating as well. My building, however, was fitted with PTAC units when it was constructed.

I didn't have my own water heater when I live in SoCal, either. Each building in the complex (15-20 apartments per building) had one large water heater, and each apartment had two meters- one for cold and one for hot. If you lived on the end of the building furthest from the heater, and were an early riser, it took a while for the hot water to show up first thing in the morning.

Are you living in Manhattan and commuting to Jersey or vice versa? I mean if you are over the river in Jersey the living costs become much cheaper. Manhattan is pretty spendy for anything more than just a studio.

Admittedly, public transportation cost in the NYC area isn't bad. If they had spent more money on it in the last fifty years instead of the idiotic highway and bridge system it would be way way better.

In b4 trackspeed rad and 12" spal. For them cold winter nights.

If you find a woman that is legitimately impressed by both the concept and actual implementation of this in your bedroom, I implore you to propose marriage or some other form of commitment.

But if he's trying to save money, how can a female make any sense whatsoever?

LOL at the overall concept though. Even if it does nothing, it gives some satisfaction.

I think you should just turn your apartment into an Asian bath house. Have various tubs of water around the place with the water constantly circulating.

Oh, I get it. You can add females to this mix and then come out with positive cash flow.

I hear that NYC tap water is what is used for most bottled water sold on the open market.

You see where I'm going with this Joe?

You're wasting profit down the drain.

Working in Manhattan on E 42nd, living in Hoboken, which is literally on the shore on the Hudson river just on the other side. It's what you see when you stand on the east side of lower Manhattan and look towards Jersey, just north of the Holland Tunnel.

So my commute is Jerseybike from my apartment to the Hoboken PATH terminal, PATH train to 23rd & 6th in Manhattan, and then Citibike to either 42nd & Park Ave or 39th & 2nd, depending on my mood.

For my 1 bedroom apartment on the 11th floor, the rent is $2,800. This is about average for this area, and roughly $1,000 less than what I'd be paying for a comparable place in Manhattan.


It's downright cheap as compared to car ownership pretty much anywhere in the US. Hell, even the LIRR and Metro North railroads are pretty reasonably priced for what you're getting.

And in terms of the quality, I gotta say, it's pretty good. Yeah, some of the trains are getting on in years, and some of the stations haven't been remodeled since their original construction over a hundred years ago, but for the most part the system is pretty damn fast and reliable. Certainly faster and more reliable than commuting on the highway around any major city.



Fuck marriage, I'll propose the formation of a corporation!



It's actually among the cleanest in the whole US, and undergoes virtually no processing / chemical treatment.

I know, you wouldn't think it, but NYC literally has some of the best tap water around, straight from the catskill mountains.

DINK. I didn't pay for an M3 and a Miata on my income alone. :brain:

Yes, this.

And we keep our finances separate.

The highways, parkways and bridges in and around NYC are a fucking disaster for traffic at most times of the day whether it's a weekday or weekend. I try to avoid going through there whenever possible.

And yeah, the mass transit system is definitely going to be better, but if Robert Moses had built mass transit out more instead of spending so much damned money putting parkways all over the fucking place through Long Island and CT that can't have a bus driven on them as well as building highways every which way and around the island we would definitely be better off.

missingthepoint.com

I'm obviously doing it wrong. But my grandson thinks I'm God (for now anyway).

I still think having a water wheel to grind grain would be fun, well, along with the Japanese bath house.

No shit.

Don't get me wrong- there are times when I do think it would be nice to have a car. Like to go pick up groceries when it's 35° and raining. But then, even if you handwave over the cost, I'm not sure I'd want to deal with the hassle of car-ownership in this town.



The point being that you want me to go into business selling bottled water from my apartment?

Have you ever actually seen the machinery which is used to fill, cap and label drink bottles? Even the "small" ones are fucking enormous. Like, if I got rid of the sofa and TV, I still doubt if I could fit a single station into my living room. Never mind that I don't have three-phase power available.

What are you smoking?

Nope. You are only doing it wrong if you got married, she never worked, and you had no offspring.

We need good people to breed, preferably at above average rates in constructive and positive family units, to offset my lack of progeny. :)

Returning to this point --

Okay, so using the water pressure to power the fan isn't going to work, but there's got to be some way to capture a bit more energy before dumping it back down the drain, right?

I can't think of any useful way to use whatever residual heat remains after passing through the radiator.

But maybe you could use the water pressure to turn a small generator. You could use that to power a small lamp for a few minutes, maybe.




I have another concern, however. The city services here in the grand metropolis of Ridgeland, MS has a system that records when a water meter has been running continuously for 24+ hours, and sends an automatic notice to the resident to check for possible leaks.

Do you not run the risk of triggering some similar system for your building with your new heating device? Does the fact that individual apartments are unmetered (for billing purposes) mean that they definitely have no way of tracking usage per unit? Presumably your lease agreement includes some clause that regulates "non-standard water usage amounts" or some such language.

like an AT&T style data cap on his pipes?

I think a series of small hydrodynamic generators could potentially provide power for enough CFM to move that air.

Of course just turning the whole thing so that free convection moves the air is probably sufficient.

Barring that, I'd say just put down a layer of floor heating tubes and run your water through that.

Yes, except that I doubt they have the ability to throttle his water. More likely to just send him a huge bill.

Yes! Or maybe keep a hot (warm?) tub running at all hours.

YOU FORGOT THE RE-ROUTE:party:

If I wanted to maximize the efficiency of the system, I would use the hot water to warm the evaporator of a heat-pump style heater. This would make the system more than 100% efficient from the point of view of extracting thermal energy from the water (eg: the water could exit the system at below ambient temperature.)

Of course, that would cost *me* more to run, since I'd have to pay for the electricity to run the heat pump. And, of course, I'd have to buy the damn heat pump in the first place, since the noisy old PTAC HVAC units in my apartment use conventional resistive heating elements- the second-least-efficient possible way to heat a building (right after passing potable hot water through a go-kart radiator and then dumping it down the drain.)



Understand, I do not have a torrent of water going through this system. It's more of a trickle. Here's the actual water flow as I have it set now:



I'm just not going to extract much useful mechanical energy from that.







I just did a quick measurement, by capturing the output water in a container while timing it with a stopwatch. At the current flowrate, I'm passing around 18 gallons per hour, or ~200 gallons per day. (I've been turning it off when I'm not home.) In a hi-rise complex with approximately 500 apartments in it, that kind of usage seems unlikely to arouse suspicion. Granted, the flowrate will go up once I get a more powerful fan and the really cold weather sets in, but even then we're talking, what, 500 gallons per day? That's about 1/2 extra toilet flush per day per apartment. (And some of these apartments have 2 bathrooms.)


Well, let's explore the possabilities:

One, of course, is that my usage goes un-noticed given how insignificant it is in the grand scheme of the whole building.

Two is that they do, in fact, have the ability to individually meter my apartment. If they admit this, I will then raise a stink and demand that my billing be based on my usage.

Three is that they literally go from apartment to apartment, performing an inspection to determine who is using all of this freaking water. When they find me out, they will demand that I stop. I will point to my lease (see below) and ask on what ground they make this demand. I will then call my old high school buddy Pat, who used to live in this very same building, holds a grudge against the management, and (to the best of my knowledge) is still licensed to practice law in the state of New Jersey.



You know, it's interesting that you ask this.

I just went back and carefully re-read the lease document.

In fact, even though the incredibly lengthy and detailed lease contract describes specifically how I agree that the apartment complex will contract with a third-party company to not only bill me at a flat rate for water whether I use it or not, but to also bill me for the service of billing me (I can't make this shit up), it says absolutely nothing whatsoever about my use of said water needing to be reasonable.

So, yeah.


See the above video. Extracting useful work out of the flow of water which I'm consuming is not an option. And, sadly, the sink drain doesn't work well enough for me to flow much more water than this on a continuous basis.



Hmmmm........

Thanks Joe. Another thread filled with win.

My not just build the heat tubes into a vest you can wear, with a twenty or so foot extension for the water. Now you can regulate the heat almost instantly and it's much more effective than heating up the whole apartment. Not to mention if the water is cool enough this will work well in the summer too.

I like the heat tube idea. You could just run heat tube around the whole place and have a current of water flowing through it.

First. When I lived in Michigan before I pored my driveway I coiled up irrigation tubing. Guess who never had to shovel the driveway?

In college during the winter in the dorm I used a little fish tank glue and some plexi glass to wall in my shower. Regulated water flow with a rag to keep my keg nice and cold. Worked great.

This thread is win. My coils worked well for the driveway but I wasn't trying to warm a room and I only needed to run about 60-70degree water to get stuff to start thawing. I like joes idea better because I feel you can mount it out of the way and it's less invasive.

What did you run through the irrigation tubing? Hot water? Tap water? The molten core of the earth?

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1384273783



This is actually common in high-end homes, the trade term is Radiant Underfloor Heating. Tubing is laid under the floor, and fed with a glycol solution that is heated by a central boiler, usually the same one providing the potable hot water.

Although the initial cost is much higher than with a forced-air system, it is supposedly more efficient to operate, and also provides a much more uniform temperature- rather than cycling on and off, the system is modulated to a steady-state flow adequate to achieve the desired temperature.

Such systems are also very easily zoned, so that individual rooms can have their own temperature setpoints, and can be switched off when not in use. (eg: no need to heat the kitchen and living room at night when everyone's asleep, nor the bedrooms during the day.)

Example: Is Under-Floor Radiant Heating More Efficient Than Conventional Systems?: Scientific American

That may be slightly more involved than I want to get at this particular apartment. Though if I ever build another house in a northern climate, I might consider doing something like this.

On the subject of heating:

Electric shower heads scare me.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1384304640

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It might inspire more confidence if they weren't all ghetto rigged. Proper wiring anyone?

woah, this is a thing?

I'd imagine there's a heating element in the shower head. Besides the obvious question why. How efficient could it be? Unless it's doing something other than heating water.
This.

Yes, it's a thing. It's common in South American countries, where central water heaters are not ubiquitous.

Yes, there's an electric heating element inside the shower head.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1384308021

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1384308021


In theory, it's supposed to be properly connected, using adequately-sized wire, and supplied from a dedicated, GFI-equipped 50 amp circuit.



In practice, well...

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1384307299





Anyway, more shower heads:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1384308021

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http://bit.ly/rFnEvQ

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This is my very favorite one:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1384308193

Yup, that's a 19th-century knife switch, with completely exposed copper conductors, in a shower.

You know, during my time in Afghanistan the scariest thing I encountered was not the constant direct and indirect fire, but the rare times when I was able to shower in the trailers on the FOB. We often heard about people getting electrocuted in them because of the shitty wiring, and then it happened on one of the FOBs I was hanging out at for a few weeks. I almost swore off showering until I was stateside.

My water bill averages $135 / mo.

I've had water bills over $200.

I live in Ohio, surrounded by the great lakes and the Ohio River Valley.

The city I live in has the worst water of any city I have ever lived in by far, and it's also the most expensive.


What am I doing wrong?

Bathing

You must either have an incredibly fascinating, or incredibly terrifying browsing history, Joe.

The electric shower head is commonly referred to as the suicide shower by expats in South and Central America. They are quite common.

You don't have a well.

Is that just water, or does it include trash/ambulance/etc like my water bill does?

With the wiring like pictured, i dunno why...

Living in Ohio.

Assuming that is just water & sewer and not inclusive of all utilities, trash, electric, etc it appears your main error is living in Central Ohio or at least that specific municipality (but mostly Ohio in general).

Our combined utility bill probably averages $200 (+/- $25) throughout the year.