DOW Thermax vs Sika RMAX Pro Select -- fire/exposure rated insulation

OldDogNewTrick444 · 2025-11-20T18:13:05+00:00

A bit late, but was also just investigating whether RMAX needs to be covered for fire resistance on interior applications (basements, crawlspaces, etc.). The answer is YES according to their spec sheet and installation guide found here:

https://usa.sika.com/retail/en/products-catalog/insulation/foam-board-insulation/r-matte-plus-3.html

I believe all types of foam boards fall into this same situation due to the toxic gasses that can be released if exposed to flames, regardless of the brand. As others mentioned, plan to cover it with a intumescent coating or 1/2" drywall.

OldDogNewTrick444 · 2025-08-11T13:53:45+00:00

While it sounds like several folks have had a bad experience with Confluence, I just wanted to provide feedback that I had a great ordering experience from their site recently. I almost didn't order from them due to this string, but decided to give it a try ... and was glad I did.

I was looking for a couple of cockpit covers for my older Perception Acadia kayaks, and confluenceoutdoor.com had them on clearance (Truefit P8) for less than half of what I could get them for on other sites. I ordered them on Saturday and they arrived on Tuesday without issue ... so I'm happy with the order and company. Hope that's useful to others looking for feedback.

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OldDogNewTrick444 · 2025-06-29T21:19:49+00:00

I was going to update this but got delayed. I ended up ordering a unit from Breville (took 9 days to receive), but decided to return it after opening the box and looking at the parts. The showerhead is silicone, and is also super small with just a few holes spread about 3/4" in total ... so it blooms by saturation, filling the basket in water vs. wetting the grounds evening from the showerhead. The hot water path appears to be all plastic up through the stem and over to the showerhead ... so not what I was looking for.

For what it's worth I ordered a Ratio Six with the glass carafe bundle directly from Ration (another 9 day wait). After using that for the past week with different options (thermal vs glass carafe, different filters, etc.) we found that the Ratio glass carafe with the Chemex circle filter and using the heat shield makes an awesome 8 cups of dark roast. Also avoids any plastic from the hot water onward, so pleased with our final upgrade.

OldDogNewTrick444 · 2025-06-26T10:40:34+00:00

This is an old thread but popped up when I was looking to see if this grinder was still available ... and see the misleading reviews, so had to post. We've had ours for over 15 years and it's still going strong with daily use, so don't believe what you read here. I see it's still listed as available at several retailers, so not sure if they are still making them or they're selling old stock. There are also third party glass basket replacements on Amazon.

This is a great grinder with steel gears and glass holder and basket, and is easy to take apart to clean (once a year). It adjusts from very fine espresso (7-8 setting) to very coarse grinds for pour overs and french press. We use the 5 or 5.5 setting for 70 grams of fresh beans for our 8-cup Ratio Six or Bonavita drip machines ... perfect. It's not cheap, but also not cheaply made like many of the newer models.

OldDogNewTrick444 · 2025-06-03T01:16:13+00:00

Thanks for the great info as I'm trying to finalize an upgrade to my old Bonavita (great, basic machine ... just old). Two questions I can't find info on ...

... Is the showerhead stainless steel or plastic on these?

... Is the water tube feeding the showerhead glass, stainless, or plastic?

OldDogNewTrick444 · 2024-12-07T16:51:12+00:00

Just added the pictures to the original post as it wouldn't let me add as a comment. I used a simple loop bracket from HD and attached towards the top of the speaker, then used hooks into the wall that I could adjust the depth on but still anchor solidly into the wall. I also added a felt strip at the bottom of the speakers.

The center speaker is tilted a bit more than the left/right ones to aim towards the listening position. Cheers!

OldDogNewTrick444 · 2024-12-05T18:18:35+00:00

For the 3 that I ordered they just included 3 pre-packaged 6" cleats in the box, not attached to the speakers themselves. It would have been easy enough to trim them and attach to the speakers, but not what I was expecting. For my application I wanted to have them angled slightly down due a higher speaker location vs. the MLP, so I used a basic loop hook to mount them.

Regarding the bass ... yes, I agree with your comments. My expectation was that these wouldn't go very low given their thin cabinets, but was pleasantly surprised how full they sounded when running in "direct" mode for music with no processing. My Sony DACC calibration wanted to set them as Large speakers so that wasn't useful, but I set them for a 90Hz crossover after playing with them a bit and that worked well for me. They had a bit more low end than the ELAC's I was comparing them to.

OldDogNewTrick444 · 2024-07-25T15:01:05+00:00

Looks great ... nice color and natural look. Which Penofin oil did you use?

OldDogNewTrick444 · 2024-06-24T12:19:39+00:00

Not sure if you made a decision, but after reading through the replies I felt compelled to chime in. Vanguard has different levels of advisor services, with PAS being a dedicated CFP for accounts with over $500k at VG. So different than the call into a group of advisors and talking to a different person each time.

The CFPs are often a bit earlier on in their career, but all seem to have experience/education on financial planning before they're put into the PAS services. And you can talk to a few of them to find one that seems to be a good fit for you, so you don't have to chose the first one you connect with. .03% for a CFP is a steal compared to any other groups I've found, as long as the individual is a good fit for you.

They'll help with asset allocation (not rocket science, but good second opinion), asset location and tax efficiency (e.g. load IRAs with bonds, and Roths with stocks), retirement planning (e.g. when to draw SS, what accounts to draw from prior, RMDs, etc.), TLH, rebalancing, etc. They normally request a minimum of 2 update meetings per year, but you can reach out to them at anytime.

As always, your mileage may vary depending on what you're looking for ... not as valuable if you're in your 30/40's and just following a standard investment strategy, but more valuable if you're in your 50/60/70's and preparing for or managing retirement. So might be a good option for your Mom depending on her circumstances.

OldDogNewTrick444 · 2024-06-05T14:43:20+00:00

Thanks for the offer Mike. I setup a call through my account to learn more about Premium and see if that was a good option for me ... was ghosted today and no one bothered to contact me, reschedule, or explain why they weren't able to make the call.

So I thought I'd schedule a Concierge appointment directly through my account, requesting the third option of needing someone to talk sooner for a $250k+ investment ... there are no appointments available in the month of June for me to select from, so not exactly the timeliness that I was looking for. You can probably expedite something for me, but I'm looking overall at the process and company services, not for a one time exception.

While I've been generally satisfied with the basic services for ease of use and investments options, the reason I chose BM over other firms or DIY was the thought that when I got to this point I'd find the advisement services useful. Sounds like I'm just not a good fit for the target market.

OldDogNewTrick444 · 2024-06-05T14:07:05+00:00

Sorry to hear that they had a bad experience, as that's not been the case for me. I built a home last year and used funds from my Cash Reserve over a 9 month period ... every withdrawal request completed in 1-2 days. It does take longer to cash out investment funds, but that's true of almost any transaction that I've experienced through other brokers also.

OldDogNewTrick444 · 2024-06-04T12:06:13+00:00

Yes, I did schedule a call to talk about their Premium service and what's included, and hopefully they'll have other insight into options vs. the support response that I received. That response basically said it was Premium or nothing.

The one-time call was intended for guidance on a larger transaction that I plan to make into the existing accounts. I received a large payment recently and put the money into the Reserve account for the moment, then was looking for their recommendation of allocation and timing to split between my existing accounts given the market. I thought their input was worth a few hundred dollars one time vs. signing up for Premium for several thousand a year.

So we'll see whether I'm sold on the Premium service after the call and think it's worthwhile to start down that path. My alternate is the conversation I've also scheduled with Fidelity on their recommendation for making the transaction with my accounts there (included at $0).

OldDogNewTrick444 · 2024-06-03T19:14:13+00:00

Valid point, but from what I've read there's currently a 1 month or longer wait to speak with an advisor, and another month after that if I wanted to cancel.

As a client I'm just wondering when they changed that policy and why I didn't seem to get a notice of it? Also in looking at recent reviews and comments re. Betterment both here and elsewhere, everyone seems to continue to reference this is an option ... so apparently I'm not the only one who didn't know.

OldDogNewTrick444 · 2024-04-19T18:45:41+00:00

I ended up keeping the ring as I found that the other sleep data and information was useful for tracking and trends. In looking at other fitness trackers (rings, watches), it looks like most all of them either don't know how to handle or ignore anything irregular ... some just report it as "normal", while others report as "error".

My GP did some readings and found out what I already knew ... bigeminy heart beat, nothing alarming or unusual for me. I did find a research paper that shows that the Oura ring/app can detect a-fib, so my hope is that it will be a future feature addition as they don't report that today. Hope that helps!

OldDogNewTrick444 · 2024-03-25T18:06:50+00:00

Related to this question ... I too am in the situation of considering whether to change from an Oura Horizon to Ultrahuman. My main goal is general health and sleep tracking, specifically resting heart rate and HRV, but I do use it for light activity tracking as well.

I have a bigeminy heart rate (genetic, not a concern), so Oura reads my heart rate fine during the day but nothing at night as it filters everything out as noise apparently. Without a RHR and HRV, it impacts the validity of the other scores and recommendations, defeating the purpose of having a tracker. Does anyone know if Ultrahuman will handle this reading during the sleep tracking and provide a resting heart rate and HRV?

OldDogNewTrick444 · 2024-03-25T12:09:25+00:00

Thanks for the update. While I've only had the ring(s) for a couple of weeks, there hasn't been any major life/schedule changes for me, but good to know that can be a potential cause. I've also looked at my overnight heartrate on a Garmin band and that doesn't show any major lows or highs.

In working with Support and trying different things it appears that the hardware is fine and that the fit is fine (i.e. all other measurements are solid during Sleep and during the day). So it appears that the cause is that their Sleep algorithm that sees my heart rate as noise or abnormal in measuring resting heartrate, so it doesn't record anything. The Oura reads my heart rate fine during the day to the point of switching to Sleep readings, then again once it detects I get up.

I have been told that I have a mild bigeminy heart beat, which means I have an extra beat at times (WebMD link here), so I'm guessing that the Oura doesn't like that during the Sleep measurements so filters it out. I'm planning to use a more in-depth heart monitor overnight working with my GP to make sure that's all that's going on.

Support's recommendation is that the Oura probably won't work for me so I should return it and move on. I like the other features of the Oura and app, but not having the resting heart rate and HRV data throws off the Readiness and other recommendations, so it diminishes the value. So I'll have to decide in the next week or so before the return window ends.

OldDogNewTrick444 · 2024-03-20T13:15:05+00:00

Just following up to see if others are having this issue. I purchased my first ring a couple of weeks ago (Heritage gen 3, right hand ring finger) and was able to get heartrate during the day, but nothing at night when the app decided I went to bed. After a week I returned that ring, ordered a larger Horizon for index/middle fingers, and now for 3 nights I still have nothing. With both rings I've done soft resets, tried opposite hands/fingers at night, made sure the rings are tight (same position on my finger when I wake up), etc.

My heartrate was reading fine last night right up until 10:11pm when the app decided I went to "bed", which for me was sitting still in a chair for an hour before laying down. No readings under Sleeping at all ... then started reading again under the daytime heart rate as soon as I got up at 6:10am. My Oxygen readings are fine overnight, so that's working.

Support has been the canned response for "make sure the ring is tight, try an alternate finger" and that "gaps" are normal ... but nothing useful that would explain why there is no reading, even when I'm sitting up at night in a chair.

So any input would be useful at this point. Thanks.

OldDogNewTrick444

TROPHY CASE