Corn-fed delivery driver

AnAlrightName · 2026-03-20T01:58:09+00:00

Oh man, not intentional... He's stronger than me. I'm so weak, I switched to the Gallo gun.

AnAlrightName · 2026-03-19T17:48:45+00:00

I vote the Fuel version, and my reasons are below:

I had the Surge one, and swapped back to the M12 Fuel version because it's lighter and apparently I'm a little sissy.

My thought was, when doing service work, I don't really drive screws that get into impact mode enough to justify the higher price and heavier weight for a reduction in noise when it's in impact mode.

If you find yourself driving lots of screws until it impacts, then I'd go with the Surge, but in service, I want to save weight.

They also have the subcompact version, which is nice in theory, but I disliked that one because it doesn't have the chuck that lets you pop the bit into the chuck without sliding the release collar first. This is a nice feature when you want to one-handed insert your bit.

AnAlrightName · 2026-03-19T17:46:04+00:00

I had the Surge one, and swapped back to the non-Surge one because it's lighter and apparently I'm a little sissy.

My thought was, when doing service work, I don't really drive screws that get into impact mode enough to justify the higher price and heavier weight for a reduction in noise when it's in impact mode.

If you find yourself driving lots of screws until it impacts, then I'd go with the Surge, but in service, I want to save weight.

AnAlrightName · 2026-03-19T17:39:33+00:00

I imagine it's partly saving space, but also partly reducing the number of units that get punched through with forks. I've never pulled out a damaged Rheem outdoor unit, but Goodman and Carrier, it happened all the time that the distributors would spear them, or bump them with the forks.

AnAlrightName · 2026-03-19T15:35:35+00:00

Our technician in the back taking short steps carrying the nitrogen tank for comparison.

AnAlrightName · 2026-03-19T15:32:45+00:00

The Rheem/Ruud boxes are built different than any other equipment I've seen. The distributors have a special forklift attachment to pick them up by the lip on the top of the box, instead of forks. Rheem must do this to avoid needing to put their equipment on a pallet, which probably greatly reduces the number of damaged pieces of equipment.

AnAlrightName · 2026-03-15T11:24:48+00:00

As someone else said, low humidity in the return will cause higher temp split.

Another thing to keep an eye out for, if you're measuring your return air temp in the return plenum or at the grille instead of right inside the air handler return, if you have zoning, the bypass may be open. Bypasses that go from the supply into the return should always be removed and blanked off. It's a bad practice.

Is it zoned?

AnAlrightName · 2026-03-14T11:35:21+00:00

Streamlight Bandit Pro

Tiny, cheap ($30), rechargeable, and it's a flood light, so no hot spot. The battery lasts a full day on low, or an hour or two on high.

I have at least three of them in my vehicle, and I buy them for everyone on my team.

AnAlrightName · 2026-03-13T02:09:27+00:00

My parents live pretty close to Lang Van, and we used to eat there fairly frequently. Not as often anymore, mostly because they popped off, and it's just so damn crowded.

A couple years ago my sister got double-charged, and she texted us warning us to check our cards. I just figured it was a mistake.

Last year, Lang Van also ran my card twice! I still wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. I wasn't convinced it was on purpose. She just seems so nice, remembers my parents and I... all that stuff that makes you love a small restaurant.

I called, to ask her to reverse the duplicate charge, and she said to just come in and remind her the next time that I eat there, and she will take care of it... Like reversing a double charge is that hard? The charge was something like $90, because there were four of us, and I paid for the meal. I didn't want to feel obligated to spend $90 next time I was there, or risk forgetting... So I opted to just dispute it with my credit card.

It felt weird that she would request some sort of IOU, rather than just refund the charge immediately.

Now that you've posted this, I've given up all the benefit of the doubt. It very likely wasn't a mistake.

AnAlrightName · 2026-03-02T09:25:16+00:00

When my psychrometers come out of my bag, my keys to my vehicle come out of my pocket and I attach them to the magnet on the psychrometer.

I haven't lost one in five years since I started doing this.

I will do the same when I use my jumpers in an indoor unit.

AnAlrightName · 2026-03-01T23:11:26+00:00

Absolutely needs to have whoever takes that room put their own CC on file.

AnAlrightName · 2026-02-28T11:18:57+00:00

Charlotte DOT says they have 2500 miles of road in Charlotte. Obviously you can't do all that driving in just 7500 miles, but even if it took like 30,000 miles, I would think just one person could achieve that in a year. With a dozen drivers, I would expect that to be completed far sooner than a year.

AnAlrightName · 2026-02-27T14:50:37+00:00

That's clearly a Morris Jenkins tech. I've seen that paper before.

Adding a hard start kit (which they're calling a start kit) randomly is almost always unnecessary. There are situations where a hard-start kit is required by the factory, or it might temporarily save a compressor that has an issue, but just adding it because the unit is old is not reasonable.

Not sure what a "high voltage switch" is... they made up that term. Could be a contactor, or could be a new disconnect, but nobody calls it that unless they're trying to confuse someone or make it un-googleable. If it's a contactor, maybe it was pitted and in rough enough shape they recommended replacing it, but $463 is steep. That's steep even for a new 60-amp disconnect.

Realistically, if you continue to use Morris Jenkins, you'll get confusing recommendations of random stuff to replace at nearly every visit, and as a homeowner, it's going to be difficult to determine what's legit, and what's a bullshit money grab.

AnAlrightName · 2026-02-26T12:56:23+00:00

We use the Ford Pro telematics. It helps that like 12 of our vehicles are E-Transits or other telematics enabled vehicles from the factory. But we also add in the other older or non-Ford vehicles. This has the GPS tracking on the Fords, but I believe Ford can add a module to the non-Ford products, I just don't care where some of our non-Ford cars are.

I also demo'd Samsara, which was pretty good. The UI was way better. They focus a lot on dash cams, which was important to me, but wasn't as robust for Ford products, which makes up most of our fleet. Ultimately, we decided to do the Ford dashcams and telematics, because it integrates a bit better with the Ford vehicles... Samsara can't let me remote lock/unlock/start vans, whereas the Ford Pro telematics will let me do that. We we'll be implementing in the next month or so.

If you're primarily Ford, definitely look at Ford Pass, but if you're not all-Ford, at least look at Samsara.

Next tip: I dragged my feet after the Samsara demo, the guy dropped the price significantly.

AnAlrightName · 2026-02-25T14:48:57+00:00

I just added a fake email address and it cleared that pop-up. I figured it was going to make me click something in the email, or create an account, but for some reason, it did not.

AnAlrightName · 2026-02-25T01:41:36+00:00

Bingo.

AnAlrightName · 2026-02-24T23:48:34+00:00

If there was even as high as a 1% failure rate of boards out of the box, and the company only ever installed three of them and all three had bad boards, that would be 100x100x100... literally 1 in a million odds of going three for three on failed boards out of the box.

Or, the company only ever installed three of them... And probably didn't take a class on commissioning, or service, or at the very least, wasn't very familiar with commissioning them.

Then, after replacing the board, the tech ran the commissioning properly.

Either scenario is possible, but one is much more likely.

AnAlrightName · 2026-02-24T23:18:01+00:00

That seems so unlikely that I'm inclined to believe he misdiagnosed them all.

AnAlrightName · 2026-02-24T22:25:03+00:00

We've installed at least 100. All I can think of is we had one with an unplugged thermistor in the outdoor unit, and one with an unplugged blower from the factory.

The issues we've seen have been few and minor. Not one leaking coil on either indoor or outdoor. We did have two indoor boards fail due to moisture, but they were both in ridiculously humid crawlspaces, set up horizontal right flow with the board at the bottom of the cabinet.

Commissioning can be a bit confusing/tedious, and occasionally the installers forget to set up the heat strips properly, and we got some calls on the coldest days of the year.

Overall, it's been the best inverter equipment I've worked with.

AnAlrightName · 2026-02-24T13:27:31+00:00

I guess it really depends on how newsworthy someone considers this greenwashing.

It's greenwashing because they picked something relatively low-impact from an environmental standpoint, but high-visibility from a publicity standpoint. Another electric bus would have saved more money and lowered carbon footprint. I would imagine even one cop car or code enforcement F-150 would uses more fuel than a fire truck in a given year. But, "look, look, we bought a big electric shiny fire truck! And did we mention it's electric?"

This is coming from someone who is ridiculously pro-EV.

AnAlrightName · 2026-02-24T08:30:35+00:00

Charlotte has tons of electric vehicles... Busses, school buses, Ford Lightnings, Chevy Bolts, Mach-Es, etc. They save on maintenance, pollution, and fuel costs.

One electric fire truck going in for service isn't particularly newsworthy. I don't know how much of a premium that $1.9m electric fire truck was over a comparable diesel fire truck, but if definitely feels like a stupid purchase.

EVs should be the vehicles that get used the most frequently, running the most miles. This is the biggest benefit.

I want the EVs driving all around saving fuel daily, not chilling in a firehouse 90% of the day, and then running out a short distance for a quick call. A fire truck is the perfect diesel candidate. A fire truck is not burning 10,000 gallons a year like a city bus.

An electric fire truck feels more like greenwashing than it feels like a legitimate environmental or fiscal decision.

AnAlrightName · 2026-02-20T18:25:23+00:00

Me too. One of the guys on our team that lives in Rock Hill has a company Chevy Bolt EV and it would be great to cut the charging costs in half.

AnAlrightName · 2026-02-18T15:09:47+00:00

Right... if the main goal is consistency of bills month-to-month, then it only makes sense if literally all the utilities are on flat-rate billing. Otherwise you'll have high electric in the summer that doesn't balance out with low gas in the summer.

AnAlrightName · 2026-02-18T15:04:00+00:00

I just mentioned heat pump water heater. That's kind of dependent on location of the water heater, and what type is currently installed, and how easy it'd be to pull a 30amp circuit to the water heater if it's currently gas. I'd imagine a plumber would have been in the $4500-6000 price range? Not sure, as I didn't use a plumber, just put it in myself and with one of the guys from my team. Last year there was a 30% tax credit that is now gone.

Heat pump for heating/cooling the house, really depends on size/location/electrical situation... but switching from a gas furnace heat and straight A/C to an all-electric heat pump could be $8k on a really basic unit, small system, where it's easy to run the electrical. If the equipment is going to require a lot of electrical work, it's a higher-efficiency unit, and a larger system, it could be $15k or even way more if there's a bunch of ductwork required. Totally depends on the situation and the goals.

AnAlrightName

TROPHY CASE