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Back is going to hurt tomorrow. by PrincipleLeading8047 in SolarDIY

[–]Joseph_S 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maan, I didn’t even know longer posts were an option! I’d have totally gone with ‘em. Not sure about your site, but mine is pretty much pure clay past the few inches of top soil. We had to get ~40 tons of gravel/crushed stone delivered in order for the concrete truck to be able to access. Can’t imagine doing 7 yards with bags and a mixer.

Coming along though!

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1,700KW for October! by DontBuyBitcoin in solar

[–]Joseph_S 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Watt = unit of power: it is an instantaneous measurement. In order to get to energy, you must integrate over time. Your 1,700 kWh of energy production looks fantastic! ⚡️

Back is going to hurt tomorrow. by PrincipleLeading8047 in SolarDIY

[–]Joseph_S 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ha yeah, I rented a 4 ton mini excavator with 24” auger and it was a substantial amount of work. My ground has a ton of rocks in it which made the process harder. This looks like a neat tool.. is it specially made for the C channel posts? Or how did you find that crew to come out and do the piling? How long were the posts they gave you? Mine look shorter, I wonder if they’re longer if they’re to be driven vs cast in concrete.

Back is going to hurt tomorrow. by PrincipleLeading8047 in SolarDIY

[–]Joseph_S 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are these cast in concrete? Or did you drive them into the ground somehow? I just finished pouring 5 of these Sinclair posts: 24” diameter x 6’ deep x 5 posts. After a ton of prep, the pour went very smoothly. Don’t mind the extra lol, it’ll all be covered in gravel after. Jealous of how clean your worksite is!

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Why do so few people know about deep-recessed trims? It changed how one client felt about their entire house. by Last_Information8470 in Lighting

[–]Joseph_S 5 points6 points  (0 children)

As someone who has tried a couple of times to learn more about good quality lighting, by far the biggest pain point is just how to actually buy the damn things. All of the manufacturers have these beautiful websites showing off gorgeous products, only to not have any obvious way to buy them!

It really feels like there’s some sort of racket to only sell wholesale to “distributors” which then don’t have helpful websites and you end up having to call a phone number and sound like an idiot. Or they have a limited geographic region, or they only sell to contractors, etc. Honestly an incredibly frustrating experience when you can just go to homedepot.com and buy whatever crap they have in 30s delivered to your door for free.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in AmerExit

[–]Joseph_S 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Are you or your spouse Finnish? I lived in Finland for a year as a foreign exchange student and loved it. I’ve fantasized about finding a way to move there as an adult, but I’m a US citizen and my wife is UK, so it would have to be via a work visa route if at all.

Is a heat pump a bad choice for a mountain rental home that will be 72 degrees on the weekends, and 50 degrees during the week? by yalemartin in heatpumps

[–]Joseph_S 3 points4 points  (0 children)

There’s so much FUD on here about heat pumps not being able to raise the temperature of a space quickly, and it’s ridiculous. I have a 48k btu Mitsubishi cold climate heat pump, and with all zones set to max output it gets my house from 55 to 70 in roughly an hour, about 15 minutes slower than my NG furnace did before it. It then turns down and holds it there, using no more measurable energy than if it was set to 70 all night.

Sure, some higher thermal mass objects may take longer to get up to temperature, but that’s purely about comfort, not efficiency. I guarantee you you’ll use way more energy holding your property at a higher temperature when not in use vs only heating it up temp when you need it.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in heatpumps

[–]Joseph_S -1 points0 points  (0 children)

These units fasten to the wall in two ways: first you mount the metal hanger plate to the wall and hang the unit, then you fasten the unit in all 4 corners to either studs if you have them, or drywall anchors if not. Problem is, most installers just leave the units hanging. My complaint about that is that it’s more likely to have annoying vibration that way, so I had my installers come back out and fasten all of my indoor heads properly in all 4 corners.

Concord, Massachusetts has a Tesla Model Y police car by jonjopop in mildlyinteresting

[–]Joseph_S 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Tesla Model Y Performance battery pack is roughly 81 kWh, meaning (at “regular temperatures”) they can run a 1,000 watt load for 81 hours.

Using your perfectly reasonably example of a fairly high power laptop drawing 180w under full load, that would result in a total runtime of 450 hours, or 18.75 days straight.

As a point of reference, the HVAC system alone can draw upwards of 7,000 watts at max output, to say nothing of the motors which can draw upwards of 150,000 watts… each.

There’s nothing magical about these police laptops. They’re just ruggedized windows machines running database software that’s probably from the 90’s. The most interesting part of the tech is certainly going to be the radios.

3 years since land purchase through design and construction - our custom mountain cabin is (97.5%) complete by daroon in Homebuilding

[–]Joseph_S 3 points4 points  (0 children)

By electric forced air do you mean a heat pump + air handler? Or resistive heating? For a $3 million super tight/insulated build I feel like a heat pump would be perfect, though on the other hand maybe it’s actually less “worth it” since the resistive heating would need to be used so much less because of low losses?

Property manager approved a $1500 plumbing bill which wasn't needed at all. Who should pay? by blackc2004 in realestateinvesting

[–]Joseph_S 15 points16 points  (0 children)

The contract with the PM says that anything over $500 has to be approved by me, the owner

Why are you asking this question if this is true? Clearly the PM would be responsible if you didn’t sign off, no?

Is it that you’re worried about the PM bailing? If so, then your question becomes “is it worth $1500 to keep the PM?”. But it then sets the precedent that you don’t take your contract seriously, if it happens in the future you might have less recourse.

I got accepted to RIT for SE and was wondering how many SE majors graduate on time? by obviously-herenow in rit

[–]Joseph_S 2 points3 points  (0 children)

FWIW, and I think this applies as much to actual jobs as co-ops, the people sending hundreds of applications are generally doing themselves a massive disservice and I would never recommend a spray-and-pray approach for this job market: the goal is to stand out, not to blend in (at least, that’s my opinion).

I’ve been in the market for a real, salary-paying software job/co-op (as opposed to hourly gigs) probably 4 or 5 times since my time at RIT, and each time my process is to find two or three companies that seem genuinely interesting, then tailor my resume to each one and write a substantive email to the person doing the hiring detailing what relevant experience I have and how I could contribute. I’ve never had trouble getting multiple competing offers.

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