Wow.

I honestly wouldn't have imagined this sort of thing being a problem in a US military shower installation. Were these units built in the US and shipped over, or were they procured locally?




Living in Ohio.

Seriously, though. Is that just water/sewer for a household of one, or is that some larger utility bill for a family of four? Because I'm pretty sure I would just assume that a billing error had occurred if I ever saw a $100 water bill.

I guess I tend to be somewhat frugal by nature, to the point of miserliness. But I certainly don't think I've ever really been abnormally conservative when it comes to water usage. I take a hot shower of ordinary duration once daily (sometimes skipping a day on the weekends, but also sometimes having a shower in the evening if I've been doing something dirty / sweaty), and when I lived in FL / OH / CA and had my own washer and dryer, I'd typically do a load of laundry every week. I flush the toilet if I've deposited anything of significance into it. I don't use a dishwasher, nor fill the sink to capacity with water when washing dishes, but I doubt that's a huge savings.

I should look back at some past bills to grab my actual usage in gallons, rather than just comparing dollars.



I'm sure it's probably both. The amount of weird shit that I have to slog through in the normal course of finding bizarre images to post to this board is pretty impressive. (Some of the more exotic of the Pony stuff, in particular, is just downright creepy.)



Your water bill includes ambulance service? How the hell does that work?

Gondola service?

https://af-production.s3.amazonaws.c...gif?1338270655

Yep. We pay a basic service fee to keep the times below whatever the imposed minimum response time is, then we have to actually pay for the ride if you ever have to use it. I also think some of the cost of the water pays for other things in our city like the parks and golf course (and with green fees the golf course still loses approaching $350k per year!).

My water bill also includes sewer and trash service.

For the wife and I, in the only suburb of Tulsa with it's own water supply, we pay around $75 month for everything with a typical 5000 gallon per month usage. Hopefully that will go down a bit over the winter since I won't be watering all the new shrubs.

I have a feeling they were not shipped over from the US. Each FOB/COP had a different style one, so I think they were coming from all over. It was basically a conex with 5-6 showers and then a tent on the end. The lighting was built into the roof the conex and my understanding was the pipes were shitty, would leak, corrode the wires, and then zap.

I would imagine they were made in China or India but I really have no clue.

For the record the actual military showers on the smaller COPs were pretty good. It was just these cookie cutter showers that were supposed to be "nicer" because they had water heaters and actual shower stalls. Instead of just a rubber mat on rocks and a sack of water hoisted up high that sat in the sun, which actually worked great when it wasn't below freezing.

During the summer months here in Texas, on my 3/4 acre plot with in ground irrigation, it is not uncommon for my water bill to outrun the electric bill. I would say on the upper end of the spectrum I pay ~$275-300 for water and ~$250 for electricity. This is just for my wife and I, no kids, and we both work.

Oh, and don't ever own a pool. The old saying is quite true - "The happiest day in a pool owners life is the day he becomes a pool owner, and the day he sells it". Especially when it is surrounded by oak trees.

Sidebar:

I have visited several local stores thus far, trying to find this one specific fan, which is inexpensive and has stellar reviews for quietness and airflow. It's also the perfect size for my application:

http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pro...251961_300.jpg


Both the Home Depot on 23rd st and the Staples on 34th allegedly have it in stock according to their respective websites. But when I arrived at both, I was told "Oh, that's a seasonal item," as if this were a perfectly obvious and reasonable explanation for why they don't have it on the shelf.

Well no shit, it's a seasonal item! If it weren't fucking winter then I wouldn't need it, would I? Why on earth would I want to buy a little 9" fan to attach to the go-kart radiator in my living room if it were summer? You know that here in the northern hemisphere, summer is hot, right? Do I look like I'm retarded? Jesus, I swear I don't understand how some people manage to not drown in their own saliva.

[/rant].

That I can see.

If you're watering the ground, you're probably using more water just for that than I use for all other purposes combined, by a multiple of quite a lot.

And I can sympathize with the fact that adding a spouse to the equation, especially a female one, automatically quintuples the amount of laundry which must be done. Suddenly, things like bath towels and bedsheets need to be washed more frequently than once every 2-3 months, pants more than every other week, and so on.

So, given your application, this seems high, but plausible.

Ditto the electricity. I've been to Texas, and it's both big and hot. This seems to cause people to live in large houses with lots of topside surface-area, covered with non-reflective material that soaks up lots of solar radiation, and then expend huge amounts of electrical power to move the heat from the inside of the house back to the outside of the house. My sister down in Florida lives under similar conditions, and pays about the same as you for electricity (thought not for water, as they don't irrigate.)

And, to be fair, now that I no longer live in SoCal, I expect that I will probably start to use air conditioning from time to time in the summer, as it does get into the 80s and 90s rather frequently here during that time of year.

I'm just saying that for me, personally, $60 for electricity and $45 for water is fucking outrageous under these specific conditions at this specific time of year.

Is it a lot of money in the grand scheme of things? Hell no, my liquor budget is larger than that. It merely annoys me on general principle.

haha. i have that honeywell fan.

sell it to joe

How would you rate it in terms of quietness, airflow, and the availability of mounting points to attach it to a go-kart radiator?

Family of 4, but the two kids are under 3 years old and the water bill really hasn't gone up that much since having the kids.

To answers everyone's question, no the bill is not just for water, it does also include garbage removal and I think one other minor municipal bill. However, those other two charges on the City Municipal bill are like ~$10 combined. The large majority of the bill is water/sewer fees.

To give you a better comparison, there is a single young man living in my neighborhood who I would guess is as H2O frugal as you Joe, and his bill is >$80 every month. The city I live in has some of the highest water rates in this part of Ohio, and the logic for it is complete BS.

Anyway, the cost of the water isn't really my biggest concern, it's the fact that it is stupidly expensive and also awful, awful quality.

it's kinda loud, but blows a really strong directional airstream.

actually i think i *had* that fan and it died after 10 long years of service and it was a sad day.

I agree, they are pretty loud. We have two of them. Walmart sells them too.

I also have had one in the past. I picked it up at Walmart to use in my dorm room. It was a bit louder then I would ahve liked, other then that it worked fine.

Now onto weird bills. At my new house the sewer bill is separate from the water bill. It is a flat $44 a month. For water in my county there are 3 different water providers depending on your your address.

The lakehouse is on county water (no sewer) with the Butts County Water and Sewer Authority at $12 a month. It is of excellent quality.

Ah, beautiful Butts County.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1384369530

I use that Honeywell fan on my bench for cooling hot electronic circuit prototypes.

Interesting.

That's where I was born, and where I lived the first year of my life.

You know where the State Prison is? There. As in, literally on the grounds.

How would you rate it in terms of quietness, airflow, and the availability of mounting points to attach it to a go-kart radiator?

I also have that fan, it's sitting in my window right now. It's loud to me, but the airflow is very good. I like it loud though at night since the traffic with my window open is annoying and the fan drowns it out. I don't see any way for you to mount it easily though.

In terms of noise, the standard for comparison is a 3,000 HP GP-40 diesel-electric locomotive, running at full-tilt-boogie on a load dyno, one block away, at 2am.

(No, I'm not kidding. I live right next to the NJ Transit maintenance yard at Hoboken Terminal. It is not quiet.)

You should be fine on noise, but available mounting points seem minimal.

You're telling us, that in all the years working on rack systems, you never snagged a "spare" muffin fan of a suitable size?

Sheesh, even I have some fans laying around. Maybe not quite that large, but they do move a lot of air.

That is correct.

At PR&E, 100% of the machines that we designed were convection-cooled. This being equipment intended to go into a studio, fans were absolutely prohibited. It was damn near religious zealotry. Aside from the faint 200,000 Hz hum of the power supplies, our equipment was absolutely, 100% silent.

(Believe me, this was not an easy task in the larger cardframes, which could easily dissipate 200+ watts. I remember back in 2003 it took us weeks of trial-and-error to get the geometry of the original Vistamax chassis nailed down, using handmade dummy boards loaded with resistors stuffed into cardboard chassis mockups equipped with thermistor probes everywhere. Why didn't we just model the shit in some fancy computer program, you ask? Because we were idiots, that's why.)

On the other side of the company, the air-cooled transmitters were equipped either with axial fans several feet in diameter, or with squirrel-cage fans the size of a small beer keg, and both powered by three-phase motors. Not precisely the sort of thing you can casually slip into your pocket and sneak out the back door with.

Aside from our own products, I haven't had to do any sort of maintenance / repairs in nearly 15 years, so I never bothered amassing a stockpile of such parts. I've got a bunch of 486DX computers which are smaller than a credit card, but that's about it.

Additionally, when I moved from San Diego to Santa Clara, I literally got rid of nearly all of my worldly possessions. I made that move in one trip with a 10 foot U-haul truck. As I mentioned earlier, it was complicated... Imagine trying to fit everything that you own into a box ten feet long, six feet tall and six feet wide.

It's fairly quiet for the strength, and the airflow is nice and narrow so it reaches far. I'll have to look at it for possible mounting points.

Joe, do you need a vids of it? I have one here in my living room.

Joe, talks of bicycle parking problems, general space and commuting problems, and your electric bike saga caused me to think of you when I saw this.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1384436722

It would fit in an elevator, haha! How about an electric version?

All you'd need is a few gyros and to "borrow" some segway code.

What the...

Is that a joke, or is it an actual thing?

For me, the big issue is weight. The problem with the folding e-bike that I tried out was that even at a paltry 38 lbs, lugging it through the PATH train system was a real chore, hauling it over turnstiles and around crowded train cars at rush hour. I've pretty much just accepted the fact that there is no practical unified solution to that problem, and that my transportation needs are going to have to be solved with a split approach- one system on the Jersey side (presently Jerseybike the $95 WalMart Wonder) and another on the Manhattan side (presently CitiBike, currently working on ShitiBike.)




Nah, I went ahead and ordered one from Amazon. Definitely going to need it, too. With the temps being in the 30s lately, the present system is adequate to keep the apartment from being intolerable, but I'm maxed out how much water flow I can make good use of, and I need more airflow to get it back up to "comfy without needing a sweater."

Whatever it is is what it will be. And, to be honest, the noise isn't that much of a problem. I wasn't joking about the diesel locomotives running all night long just outside my bedroom window. Well, I was exaggerating about them running full-tilt-boogie on a load dyno, typically they alternate between idle and unloaded running speed, but they do in fact do it all night long, and they are not quiet. Conformal silicone earplugs don't even block all of it when the engine speed perfectly matches the natural resonance frequency of my bedroom windows.

To eliminate* the possibility of flooding, you could keep everything confined to the sink(or right above it), and simply route some smallish collapsible heater ducting to your room(or to the foot of the bed.. beneath the blankets?!). Fold it up and throw it aside when not needed. Would be pretty cool to have it your hoses, radiator, and fan mounted on some type of swivel platform to swing back over the counter to free up the sink.
Or how about having the radiator sit horizontally above the sink, with the ducting running straight up, loosely mounted to the ceiling, ran to your bed room. Would keep everything out of the way. Not really sure how much heat would be lost along the way, or how much more power would be needed to push the air. Would cut down on your fan noise with it being further away...

Oh the fun I could have with a fixed water bill!

(*or trade for a greater electrical fire risk)

System upgrades!


Front grille detached from fan, and affixed to a 1/8" sheet of ABS plastic, pre-cut for fan opening:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1385306330

(Protip: see those cut-down fender washers? Operating an angle grinder in the kitchen makes a huge fucking mess.)



Grille-and-plate re-attached to fan, with sealing foam added:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1385306330



Complete assembly bolted to radiator with 1" nylon spacers:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1385306330




I also solved the supply-side problem. Conveniently, the apartment was already pre-plumbed with a 3/8" compression-style hot water outlet under the sink specifically for this purpose. It had a dishwasher plugged into it for some silly reason, but a piece of faucet hose and one adapter solved the problem rather neatly:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1385306330



Still gonna do something about the return-side. I'm thinking maybe a J-shaped section of hardline looped over the side of the sink.

Well this thread just got more interesting.

Data!

This has probably been covered, but if your setup can handle full city water pressure you could use a recirculation pump and send the spent "coolant" back down the cold water pipe.

That way you would only be freeloading the heat and not wasting clean water and the sewer resources do deal with the coolant.

So Joe, how well does this system actually work? Is is worth the effort, or is this more, as you say, just "sticking it to the man"?

I wish I could provide it. My current job does not afford me easy access to laboratory-grade measuring instruments.



An interesting concept.

While I don't have accurate data on my own water pressure, a bit of research has shown that "typical" domestic water pressure can range from 40-90 PSI. A typical OEM radiator cap is around 0.8 to 1.0 bar, or 11.6 - 14.5 PSI. I wouldn't really feel comfortable operating the radiator at 5 times design pressure.



Pretty well, actually.

This apartment is about 800 sq.ft, and it's a corner unit with large windows almost totally covering two sides. When the wind is really up, I can feel cold air seeping through every seam.

Today, the outside temps have been in the mid to upper 20s, heading down to a low of 21 tonight. I've had the fan running on high speed, and water flow at around 30 GPH.

To be honest, I wish this Honeywell fan moved more air. It was clearly not designed to operate against a restriction, though it's doing a reasonable job none the less, and far better than the computer case fan I started with. Even at high speed, it's reasonably quiet. I can hear it, but it's hardly objectionable.

I have no way of accurately measuring the temperature inside the apartment, and while it's not exactly toasty, it's perfectly comfortable with a light sweater over a T-shirt, and fuzzy pajama pants. I have the main heaters in the apartment turned off. If it were to become significantly colder, I might turn one of them on at a low level.

I wouldn't be interested in putting possibly toxic elements into the building's drinking water system.

Spend a couple of minutes and a few bucks on weatherstripping or at least taping the seams with clear packing tape. It might make a significant difference in the draftiness.

Joe, get a dishwasher drain tee. Why bother leaving your system incomplete?

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1385391024

Even better, the existing dishwasher had to drain somewhere. In his picture you can see a white hose returning from the dishwasher, shouldn't be hard to tap into what's already there.

I feel like an accused witch in the 17th century being tried for poisoning the town well and turning the cow's milk sour.



Yes, there is a dishwasher tee. I considered using it, but I don't wish to.

Being able to observe the outflow water affords me a quick and easy means of adjusting the inflow, based on a learned knowledge of flowrate vs. fan speed vs. heat output. Short of someone sending me a free flowmeter, I need to be able to observe the outflow, and that means a free-return into the sink basin.

The return line isn't a major hardship like the supply line was, more of an aesthetic concern. I am going to fabricate an inverted J pipe out of copper hardline to hook over the edge of the sink basin.


A couple of interesting tidbits:

When I had the system apart over the weekend, I noticed a surprising quantity of mineral deposits inside the end-tanks and inlet fittings. I presume this to be calcium, but whatever it is, it concerns me. Sidebar: In the past, I have always religiously used distilled water in my car's radiator, rather than tap water, and for this exact reason. This experience affirms that superstition.


I also figured out part of why my electric bill has been so damned high. I was looking at the original (un-cropped) version of one of the photos I took over the weekend, and something caught my eye. I got down on my hands and knees this evening, and found this:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1385428468

Yup. An electric heater under the sink, completely obscured from view. I presume that it's been running continuously since I moved in. I THOUGHT that the kitchen always seemed warmer than the rest of the apartment, but with no logical explanation for it, I'd written this off to the operation of the refrigerator, the flow of hot water through the sink, etc.

Now I know what that mysterious, unlabeled 20A breaker is for!

Anyway, that little piece of shit is now disabled, so it'll be quite interesting to see what effect this has on my next electric bill (or, rather, the one after that, since I'm already halfway into the current billing cycle.)

I have literally never seen anything like this before in my life! A little electric heater built into the base of the cabinet, and recessed such that it's totally hidden from view unless you've practically got your face on the floor. Is this sort of thing common here in the northeast?!

You don't want to force water down the drain anyway. Every type of drainage system needs to go down at it's own rate. Sending the pressurized water down the drain wouldn't be good. Could even send toxic stuff back into drinking water. Like sixshooter said.

Yes. Keeps the woman's bare feet warm while she does the dishes.

I wonder how much that heater has been contributing to the "effectiveness" of your homebrew setup?

This.

And seal your window gaps.

Joe: Source for that tiny radiator?

Something I've absolutely hated since I started homebrewing is the giant fucking waste of water that traditional cooling methods use. I started with a simple copper immersion coil, then moved to a 25' counterflow chiller and now I have a DudaDiesel 12" 30 or 40 plate stainless steel & copper brazed plate heat exchanger. This still uses too much water IMO.

I have an urge to build a closed loop system on the "cold" side with a fan/pump/radiator/reservoir setup, and your tiny radiator looks like it would be ideal.

It's an intercooler.


Oops, no it's not. My bad.

He said a few times that it's a go-kart radiator, though he is sometimes not serious.

Joe, the home depot filter kits with the carbon filter will remove most of the minerals from the water. I am guessing you'd only need a filter annually, if that. Since you're not drinking it, just leave it in there forever or until flow slows.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1385495142

I want you to know something. I first read this response earlier today on my phone, while sitting quietly in the back of the studio during a taping. It took every fiber of my being not to burst out laughing. I damn near gave myself a hernia in the process.

You have won the internet. Here is your prize:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1385515870




Well, it was definitely doing something. The apartment overall seemed perhaps just a tad cooler when I first get home this evening, and the kitchen / foyer / entryway / bathroom half of the apartment (which is seperated by a short hallway from the living room / study / bedroom half of the apartment) is staying much chillier than usual.

But once I've fired up the heat exchanger in the living room, it still comes up to a reasonable temperature within an hour or so. And when I move it to the bedroom and close the door, it gets downright toasty in there. As in "this is uncomfortably hot, I am going to turn it down to low." (I should note that the bedroom has only two windows, and they are both on the same wall.)




Small Engine Radiator, Cap, and Temperature Switch

EDIT: I also strongly contemplated the purchase of a Honda Civic radiator (the funny-looking half-width ones) which cost about the same, but give probably 3x the core area. Example: http://www.ebay.com/itm/ALUMINUM-RAC...ca7ddb&vxp=mtr

I chose this one mostly because it's small enough that I can coil it up and store the whole thing under the sink off-season. Additionally, the 3/4" hose fittings on it were much easier to adapt to a hot-water garden hose (which is 5/8" OD).




Interesting.

I used to use a homemade counterflow unit, which sounds similar to yours. Roughly 25' of 1/4" OD copper tube run through a garden hose. Compared to the immersion chiller it was a fucking miracle- I was never really tempted to replace it with a plate chiller.

Protip: capture the spent water and pour it into the washing machine. If you have a spare fermener that's not in use at the moment, capture more water in that for a second batch of laundry. Assuming that you're done sanitizing for the day (which you should be if you're racking), use your sanitizing bucket to capture yet more water for a third load of laundry.




An interesting idea.

At around $60 for the filter, I think I'm going to see how the radiator fares by itself. If nothing else, I will have a good test-bed in a few months to judge the effectiveness of the common "radiator flush in a bottle" products sold for a few dollars at most auto parts stores.

Well someone has to make up for all your wanton water waste :D I've got a big long ass hose on the back end of the CFC running out to the front yard, so the water gets used on the grass my landlady insists I water and thus pay for, so I try to get dual use where I can. Washing machine ain't a bad idea either.

Thank you for the link, this is actually much better than I expected, what with the temperature switch/bung and all. This will really tempt me to grossly over complicate things :rofl:

And yes, I'm pretty sure that CFC is something else that Prometheus stole from the gods and granted to us mere mortals.

Brooklyn Homebrew Shop is pretty tits from what I understand, and you can use your seasonal temperature fluctuation to lager in your living room :bigtu:

Last time I was in the lower East side and looked towards Jersey, I couldn't see it for all the damn buildings in Lower Manhattan. I could look east though, and see Brooklyn just fine. I take it you meant to say, "when you stand on the WEST side of lower Manhattan". Where you working on E42nd? U.N. building? The world would be a better place for it.

Damn, these picture remind me of scenes from Auschwitz.

Your heater idea is nice. Have you measured the temp of the air exiting the radiator. You could add another one in series to utilize the residual heat from the circulating water. Build a frame with the two rads at an angle to each other, set the fan in a housing behind them to blow through both of them. More heat with no more electricity use.

Oh, sure. If you subscribe to the out-moded notion that north is UP.


Couple of blocks away. 42 btwn 2 & 3. The News building.


I don't remember Auschwitz all that well, mostly on account of having not been a Polish Jew during the 1940s.




I have no measuring equipment available.

I adjust the flow of water at the wall to achieve a nearly room-temp outflow from the radiator (measured by hand), which works well on all but the coldest days. I don't think there'd be much to gain from a second-pass system. If I were going to upside, I'd just go to a Honda Civic radiator- one of the weird half-width ones from the late 90s.

Do they welome home engines coming off duty by blasting their horns several times? One of our company managers was telling me he learned about that NJT "tradition" after purchasing his house. There was a slight twinge of buyer's remorse in his voice.

I have actually used the 1/2 inch or so blue styrene foam insulating panels meant to reside beneath exterior paneling as a temporary sound and thermal barrier for a bedroom window. I cut it to fit snuggly within the window frame and taped the perimeter.

I'd not been aware of the specific reason for the late night horn-blowing (NJTrans does not have level-crossings, at least not around here) but yes, they do.

Much like your friend, I made the mistake of assuming that the maintenance yard would shut down the engines at some point in the evening, rather than running them 24/7. I failed to actually visit the property at midnight to verify same.

I do not know where I will be living after my lease runs out next September, but I know quite well where I will not be living.



No amount of foam is going to help when the wall itself is vibrating. We're talking about noise that penetrates directly into your skull such that silicone earplugs don't even make a dent in it.

According to my dad, who is a real "rail nut" it is common practice in the railroad industry to run straight water in the cooling system. Running the engines 24/7 mitigates the need for anti-freezing additives.

according to him, they also dont use oil filters, which I thought was wierd. Apparently the just do a UOA while the engine is running, and if they see a problem they rebuild the engine.

Performance of the system continued to be satisfactory. It was actually getting so warm that the humidiy plunged to about 20%, necessitating the purchase of a humidifier. Small price to pay (both literally and figuratively.) I'm now enjoying a balmy 72 degrees and 55% RH.


Finally got around to fabricating a proper drain line, so no more hose crossing over the sink with zip-ties. 1/2" rigid copper tube fits into a 5/8" ID hose perfectly.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1387683161


While installing this, I made a rather important discovery; I am no longer able to turn the system off. I fear that I have created a hydraulic version of GLaDOS, and that it may be plotting to release deadly neurotoxin into my kitchen.


Apparently, valves of the sort commonly found under the sink are designed to operate fully-open or fully-closed, but are not suitable for fine regulation of flow. The total travel of the valve (appx 3 turns) now accomplishes virtually nothing- it's just on at about 25% flow all the time. Gonna have to figure out a way to fix this, and I have a feeling it's going to be messy, as there is no master shutoff for the apartment which I am able to access.

get a videographer.

Hmmm; interesting development. Could this actually be the sounds of 'the man' pulling that stick out Joe?

What, like they entered his apartment and sabotaged the valve underneath his sink?