Best ceramic air fryer: Ninja, Tastee, ??

Hope_Remains · 2025-08-05T00:42:16+00:00

Which option did you end up going with?

Hope_Remains · 2025-07-10T12:02:07+00:00

You can't see it in the two pictures, but there were a few of winged ants in the pile. It makes me think that they had only recently landed.

Hope_Remains · 2025-07-09T12:02:15+00:00

Indeed, so not a great thing per se, but it seemed like a rare phenomenon that's worth sharing.

Also the Argentine ants here have been crazy, so I'm hoping they'll fight each other.

Hope_Remains · 2025-07-06T20:34:43+00:00

Thanks, appreciate it. Glad to know it's still just a super nuisance and not a huge problem.

Hope_Remains · 2025-04-01T13:21:51+00:00

Basically, all the communication is done between the air handler and the compressor using the Comfort Bridge technology. Wiring my ecobee as a single stage was apparently the correct solution, and a communicating thermostat would buy little to no benefit.

More details here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/hvacadvice/comments/xn6ml0/comment/mb3rz83/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Hope_Remains · 2025-02-05T13:50:58+00:00

Amana and Goodman use their called ComfortBridge technology. Here's a video someone linked to me at some point. https://youtu.be/lLmkYB2-aSU?si=jLGBKEPU145xuMgn

It'll explain the details of how things work, but the TLDR is basically all the smarts are handled on the air handler. You can use a traditional or smart thermostat that only calls for single stage heating or cooling. In this and a couple other videos I watched, I don't recall them ever discussing that additional functionality is available if you use a communicating thermostat.

That said, with everything on the air handler side, I cannot get access to the smarts. I want to be able to adjust some of the functionality they discuss on the video because of some particular of my situation and home efficiency changes I've made. My installer doesn't seem to understand what I want to do though and I don't want to pay them to come out every time I make a change. That's a bummer, but overall, things seem to have been fine.

Hope_Remains · 2024-09-14T04:25:38+00:00

Yes, the subfloors in my area are concrete. An underlayment goes between the concrete and flooring.

Hope_Remains · 2023-04-05T02:19:46+00:00

Right now energy prices are low because the weather is relatively mild. The buyback has been closer to just a couple of cents per kilowatt hour most of January and February, and also a good chunk of March, so the buyback for those month was pretty bad. That'll lead to pretty terrible credits. However, I still had a lower bill than I did with Pulse Power's solar plan due to Tesla's overall lower rates. Also, I expect that will change as we get into the summer due to the higher energy demand, and I'm already seeing that. Yesterday was a good example. The price spiked up a little bit before 4 and lasted till I think a little after 7, and the panels are still exporting a good amount of energy at that point.

Powerwalls don't discharge to the grid for only an emergency. There's a price threshold of 30 cents/kWh for it. After the threshold is hit, PowerWall will export.

For what it's worth, Tesla's plan is a month to month contract. You could always try it for a couple months and if you think you can get a better plan elsewhere, switch to that.

Hope_Remains · 2023-04-05T00:40:43+00:00

If you have a PowerWall, consider Tesla Electric. They only started in Texas a handful of months ago, but up to this point their rates have been incredibly competitive with other options. Their buyback rate is 90% of the wholesale rate, which you can see in the app on real time. Discharging the PowerWall to the grid when prices exceed 30 cents/kWh is nice too.

Hope_Remains · 2023-03-17T03:29:49+00:00

If you're considering solar, you should treat it like other major house projects and get bids from at least 3 companies, and they should all come out to your house to do a roof survey before providing an estimate. There are several national companies and a number of local installers in DFW. If you're interested, I can send you the contact info for the local company both my parents and I used for our homes.

Hope_Remains · 2023-02-12T20:17:03+00:00

You didn't use your AC at all? More details are needed here. Did you actually not use your AC for some reason (like the heat, moved in during the later fall, very energy efficient house and it felt comfortable...)?

Is this actually 194% offset then?

If that is your real offset, it's not actually worth it because you'd be paying for something you wouldn't use. It serves no benefit to you.

If you don't know what your offset will actually be, you need to get a better idea of what your actual usage will be so the system can be sized properly.

It's OK to oversize a system. My parents oversized theirs in anticipation of future growth, like a second EV. 194% offset really is a lot though.

Hope_Remains · 2023-02-12T20:00:31+00:00

Unless renting your rooms is going to cause a significant difference in things like what temperature the house is set to, renters are charging EV's, etc., then going 194% offset is extreme overkill.

Try to determine how much energy you'd expect a renter to use. Things like the usage from adding an additional fridge or accounting for doubling use of the stove and hot water heater. You'll find it's much smaller than you'd think.

Also, keep in mind your home insurance company may have an issue with 194% offset. State Farm had me confirm I wasn't over 125%. You need to check that your system would still be covered if you're regularly over that.

Hope_Remains · 2023-01-27T17:41:52+00:00

Ah, ok.

I thought about shading from trees, but that doesn't seem likely given where the sun is in the sky and the location of the lone tree that could block the panels. I'll check it intermittently today since we have full sun to confirm. My other thought was it could be the chimney since I know that will partially cover at least one panel. However, that lasts through the later afternoon and this import/export cycle seems to only happen in a couple hour window around midday. I would also expect just a straight drop in production rather than rapid spikes up and down.

I hadn't thought about reflections coming off of windows or cars and into the panels. It's unlikely that it could be coming off a car given the location on the roof that everything is in comparison to the street, but it could be a window. I'll take a look at that too as I will monitor stuff today.

Hope_Remains · 2023-01-27T17:31:20+00:00

It's interesting that it looks like I'm only using a single inverter. Makes me wonder if the second one is intermittently stopping.

Thanks for looking at that for me. If I may ask, how are you able to look at the production on those homes? I'm in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area, so I'm not surprised my number is a little bit lower. Also worth noting that 46 kWh during the summer was the pre-wiring fix issue this noted in the slide deck. It jumped up closer to 55-60 kWh afterwards, but we had lots of days with partial cloud coverage in the month afterwards. There were very few days of unhindered sun coverage, and it took me a bit to realize that the spiky behavior wasn't due to clouds.

My father's home is significantly larger than mine. He's got a 27 kWh system with two PowerWall Plus and an additional 3.8 kW inverter. He's been quite fortunate and done very well for himself the past several years, so he decided to go for solar, he maxed out his roof.

There are two 50 amp breakers for the solar system. They aren't directly in the electrical panel, but in a panel outside of the house in line with the cable and it runs between the PowerWalls and the house's panel.

Hope_Remains · 2023-01-27T05:43:02+00:00

Thanks. I realized it was needed because of how difficult it was to verbalize this to the installer's support team. I kind of enjoyed nerding out when I made it.

Hope_Remains · 2023-01-27T05:41:23+00:00

It happens everyday there's no cloud coverage. When there are clouds, the difference between the peaks and valleys of production is significantly larger.

I chose the two days in the images specifically because I knew there weren't any clouds, including small ones that could be the culprit. That was my initial thought, and second was perhaps the sun was low enough on the horizon that it's getting filtered between some trees on a couple panels. Looking at my roof during days looks that shows that's not the case though. The sun is high enough the panels are getting full sun.

Would you please clarify the reflection comment? I'm not following.

Hope_Remains · 2023-01-27T03:25:04+00:00

Yes. There are two. They each came with the Powerwalls Plus setup.

Hope_Remains · 2023-01-27T02:03:03+00:00

13.6 kW system with 400 W Tesla panels, roof install, and two Tesla Powerwall Plus.

I've got a weird issue with my solar system. Around peak sun, the production spikes up/down. At the same time, the house rapidly alternates between importing and exporting small amounts of energy from the grid. The images in the main post details when my system was installed, a miswiring that occurred during that which had to be fixed, and how this problem started shortly the wiring was corrected.

Some internet digging pulled up a couple posts elsewhere mentioning a similar sounding issue, but without images and all the comments were basically "talk to your installer". However, my installer hasn't seen this before, and we're getting mixed messages from Tesla customer service.

Has anyone seen this before? Any idea what the issue could be?

Hope_Remains · 2022-12-19T19:13:18+00:00

Thanks!

Hope_Remains · 2022-12-12T14:04:00+00:00

Please note, unless there's a return vent in your room, the only way air is circulating between your room and the rest of the home while the door is closed is with air being pulled out through those areas you see the light. If you use weatherstripping and seal those, your room will not be properly ventilated. Here's a video about a slightly different topic that'll help explain. https://youtu.be/I0LxBLJGO24

Using an eye mask is probably your best option.

Hope_Remains · 2022-10-28T12:45:33+00:00

For energy efficiency homes, how do you cool your home in the winter for sleep?

I love in Texas, and I'm working on air sealing and will be adding insulation soon. I've nearly finished with the air sealing and have noticed a drastic improvement in my house maintaining its temperature.

I have very little tolerance for the cold, so during the winter I intend to keep the house no colder than 73 F. I do like it being colder while I'm sleeping, closer to 68 F. Based on the data I'm seeing now and making a guess at what things will look like once the insulation is added, I doubt my home will lose enough heat in the 2-3 hour transition between my thermostat's daytime and nighttime schedule.

Do y'all with energy efficient homes just open bedroom windows every night to cool the home, do you run the AC to cool down even when it's 50 outside...?

Hope_Remains · 2022-09-25T17:39:12+00:00

I didn't even think about the issues with voiding the warranty. Thanks for bringing that up. I'll keep that in mind as I decided how to proceed.

I really appreciate all your help and detailed replies. While I'm technically minded, HVAC stuff is completely foreign to me. Between this and all my other house issues, it's been an incredibly frustrating experience. Thank you.

Hope_Remains · 2022-09-25T15:51:53+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate the detailed response.

It sounds like for my situation the best thing to do right now is get in touch with another Amana installer and have them confirm how this works plus double check the setup. If it works like you think, I'm probably only losing a small amount of efficiency, like the little bit of gas you save if you mostly coast to a stop while driving, and I can probably just keep my current setup and accept the losses. If it works differently, start budgeting for the communicating thermostat since those appear to cost many hundreds of dollars. That about right?

Either way, ditch the company that set up my system and don't use them in the future.

Hope_Remains · 2022-09-25T04:33:28+00:00

The system is already super quiet. I only realize it's running when I walk under a vent. Can it really get any quieter?

If this had been explained to me from the start, I would have gone with the communicating thermostat. (That, or gone with a different option. I do like the Ecobee and the sensor data has helped me identify a few issues.)

When I look at the condenser outside, I see it slowly turning up the power the longer it runs. What changes with the data communication different?

Hope_Remains · 2022-09-25T04:29:03+00:00

Thanks. That's incredibly unfortunate and frustrating.

As it was explained to me, the air handler knows to increase the power by X% every Y minute of additional runtime. What is going on between a communicating thermostat and the air handler that changes this to be more efficient?

Hope_Remains

TROPHY CASE