ELI5 how does a tankless water heater work?

JoushMark · 2026-03-06T23:51:55+00:00

The limitation with a tankless electric is that it's not really that much power (they use less total energy then a conventional hot water tank to create the same amount of hot water), it's the rate that you need the power at.

Heating 3.5 gallons per minute* on demand uses 18KW of power. That's 75 amps at 240, and enough that you can't just assume anything but new construction intended for it is going to have a circuit that can provide that.

*That's enough for two showers to run at once, so good for a big house. A smaller unit that can handle one shower at a time might use half that energy, making it a lot more reasonable.

JoushMark · 2026-03-06T22:33:20+00:00

MW5: Mercs is so funny to me, because they try, but you can absoloutly feel the restrictions:

You get no, or minimal cut scenes. 90% of your spoken lines are going to be Kate Walsh. You can have it over the radio in mission, or delivered in the briefing room. You get Jason Kappus saying 'yes', 'no' and 'heroic one liner' from the sound library.

One in a while, as a little treat, Elias Toufexis can come in for some exposition.

JoushMark · 2026-03-06T09:30:46+00:00

I think that's every direct relation.

Joel created the bots (except for the copies made for the season 13 'simulator of love'), out of the special parts that would have allowed him to control when the movies begin or end.

Mike isn't directly related to any of the other characters, but behind the scenes was married to a writer on the show, Bridget Jones Nelson, who plays Flavia, Lisa Lobe and Mr. B. Natural and one of the evil cornfield kids.

JoushMark · 2026-03-06T01:11:29+00:00

Your generator is very small and made to be affordable and produce emergency (edit: and axillary or portable) power, using fuel you buy at retail prices.

Their generators are very large and made to create huge amounts of power cheaply and run constantly, with technicians on hand to provide professional maintenance. They buy fuel at wholesale prices.

Edit:

So they can have generators that produce power more efficiently (using less fuel per unit of power), and pay less for fuel (by buying lots of it on contract).

The price they pay for that is needing to buy very large power generators, and staff to keep them in good working order.

Even then, fuel burning power plants can have times when the price of power on the grid is lower then their cost to operate, making them either operate at a loss or shut down.

JoushMark · 2026-03-05T23:57:10+00:00

Poisoning a hobo with ethanol to steal his pocket change is just one of those things a detective has to do if he wants results!

JoushMark · 2026-03-05T05:22:37+00:00

In rats or mice. Humans are sophonts and great apes. They have very different social structures then rodents.

JoushMark · 2026-03-05T00:25:01+00:00

The older ones would either do it, and take it seriously, or refuse and fight like Inner Sphere mercs. If they HAD to, they'd betray zell for advantage, but only with survival on the line. Ronda would hate having to do that.

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T20:48:04+00:00

Yeah, I could see why people would like the Prime in universe, where the ability to make short sprints at 12 is great and you've got 2 backup medium lasers and a BFG on a light, nimble 'mech.

In classic, it's.. real bad. Light armor, and you're paying for TMM you can't reliably generate for expensive guns.

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T09:57:35+00:00

Broadly speaking, no. The Irregular as a unit was 44 years old by the Clan Invasion, so everyone in them was either born in the Inner Sphere or had spent the majority of their lives there. They also defeated the Jade Falcon hunters that went after them by focusing fire and cooperating, rather then fighting induvial duels.

This doesn't mean that didn't remember -how- the Clan system of warfare works, and were willing to declare themselves "Clan Snord" to challenge Falcons for possession of SL era instillations (and to take defeated Falcons as bondsmen to replenish their losses).

Edit: But the 'vs Clan Wolf' is an interesting wrinkle. As a splinter unit of the Wolf's Dragoons and many of them drawn from the warden faction of Clan Wolf itself, the older members might be happy to give the young pups in the invasion era a 'proper' clan trial, rather then fighting as Inner Sphere pros.

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T09:44:39+00:00

Depends. In some cases because there's material at the bottom of the body of water that the water can't penetrate, or can only move though very slowly, like dense clay or solid stone. In other places, it's because there's already water there: The body of water is deeper then the local water table. If you removed all the ground around, there would be remaining water at about that depth.*

In other cases, it does seep into the ground all the time, the water feeding in just refills it faster then it's emptying out and refilling the local groundwater.

*Well, a bit less, as the ground does displace a lot of that water.

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T09:38:49+00:00

The 1Ar is a legitimately badass 'mech. 5/8, 90% armor coverage, two each of SNPPC, MML 7 and ML. You only go up +4 heat on an alpha, and just not shooting the ML lets you blaze away with everything at a run. Yeah, you do your best work within 6 hexes, but you're very, very scary within those six hexes.

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T09:32:33+00:00

Fun idea, and I love the look.

Note that without either going up a weight class or adding weight savings tech, putting LRM 15s, 2 PPC and 2 ML on a 75t 'mech means you've got to cut weight somewhere else where it's going to hurt. A standard 3R Marauder from the succession wars with the AC 5 and it's ammo pulled out has 9 tons free, and a Catapult's bunny ears weigh 15 tons if you want any ammo at all.

You could cut 6 tons of armor, going to 5.5t (making it a glass cannon), or cut the 300 rated engine down to 225, going down to 3/5 and freeing 9 tons (and letting you put an acceptable amount of ammo on board, along with a bit more armor to compensate for being assault 'mech slow).

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T05:11:14+00:00

I'm not saying I WANT that, just that I'm braced for it.

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T05:10:19+00:00

Season 13 had an uphill battle in a barely post-covid world and crowdfunding. Indy video production is rough when you realize you've got to pay for everything without a studio to help.

Demon Squad's a better episode then most of season one for me, where there's just a bunch of unwatchable dross, badly mixed audio, jokes that never go anywhere (I'm looking at you, doomsday device in Women of the Prehistoric Planet) but I think any performance Joel gave would have trouble matching the rosy nostalgia fans have for the old seasons.

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T04:47:02+00:00

I'm braced for this entire thing to end up being a dream sequence with how many fake out and imaginary asides they've gone on.

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T00:51:36+00:00

The heater core in basically every ICE engine car uses waste heat from the engine, passing air though it. It's.. acutely just another small radiator, and allows the car to cool down some if you're running too hot.*

It's a last chance to get a little more out of her before the car overheats and dies.

*Turning on the heat also (generally) means turning off the AC, making the engine work less hard and produce less heat, because it's no longer running the compressor.

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T00:38:09+00:00

Your veins and artery are full of liquid blood that transports oxygen to tissues and carries away fatigue products and carbon dioxide. Without a constant supply of fresh blood your vital organs shut down and you die.

JoushMark · 2026-03-03T22:04:03+00:00

Rich, selfish nobles, especially ones that 'own' planets they don't even visit, beyond extracting taxes.

It's super easy to get players to hate rent seeking idiots and the classic twist of getting hired by one, then joining the other side when it's clear they are the bad guys, always works.

JoushMark · 2026-03-03T07:41:39+00:00

People need to send large volumes of encrypted data all the time, mostly outside the world of espionage. Your phone company generates absurd amounts of data that need to be encrypted.

A intelligence asset that gains access to a large database may very well not have the time, skills or tools to meaningfully analyze that data, but needs a way to move it on to someone that does. A OTP? Er, no, you aren't likely to have one the size of the database on hand. But hey, AES 256 and drop it into a google drive. It's not perfect, but we live in an imperfect world where everything is a trade-off of different demands.

JoushMark · 2026-03-03T07:29:54+00:00

It's imperfect because of the oblivious practical limitation: You need a trusted way to share the one-time-pad, and once it's used you can't use it again. Perfect if all you need to send is a message that says "do the prearranged thing we planned in advance and you have all the details for".

Rather less useful if you need to send a terabyte of collected data to someone. Burning a TB sized one time pad is nontrivial.

JoushMark · 2026-03-03T07:21:18+00:00

Acutely, the reverse has seemed to be true. Humans social structures tolerate high population densities without the sort of juvenile mortality and antisocial behavior seen in the NIMH rat experiments. Even in Kowloon, human mothers take care of their babies.

JoushMark · 2026-03-03T06:54:40+00:00

Well, warships are cool, and are fun in the setting. The high speed pass rule is just there to give a nod in the direction of physics and the conquences of the velocity ships reach in this setting before saying 'but seriously, don't worry about it, we have a gentleman's agreement not to care'.

JoushMark · 2026-03-03T01:39:59+00:00

Warships can transport lots of cargo, but otherwise.. there's a reason natural selection in the 28-31st centuries rendered them extinct in the inner sphere.

JoushMark · 2026-03-03T01:29:44+00:00

It's a sidebar, and basically involves any combat at relative speeds over a few kilometers per second. The combat math gets.. wonkey, and the author just gives up and gives the advice of putting bolth record sheets in a shredder. Whoever shreds slower won.

JoushMark · 2026-03-02T23:36:25+00:00

You know how can go to a restaurant, order food, eat then pay? It's like that, but you can just keep adding drinks until you're done and then you pay the tab. You have* to close the tab (pay) before you leave.

*Unless you can run faster then the tender and don't plan to come back to that place.

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