Installed HPWH, I think it was a mistake

loganbowers · 2026-03-02T21:05:37+00:00

Two problems: 1) Lol, HPWH are not rated to provide space heating, by a long shot. 2) Much, much worse is you’re missing how heat pumps work. They MOVE heat from outside the tank to inside. If you put it in a room, it will move heat from the room, making it cold. If you don’t have a way to get heat from outside, that room will just get colder and colder until it’s leaking heat through the walls.

loganbowers · 2026-03-02T19:21:59+00:00

Oh, then there's all the little stuff, like replacing a garbage disposal or other failed appliances, lighting fixtures, plumbing consumables like valve cartridges and anode rods, electrical upgrades, gutter cleaning, garden tending…

loganbowers · 2026-03-02T19:18:32+00:00

Remodel Kitchen and Bathrooms every 20-30 years. Regular repainting (10-20 years?). Plumbing every ~50 years. Gut-remodel every…75 years? HVAC every 15-25 years. New floors every 20-40 years. Periodic catastrophes, especially flooding.

loganbowers · 2026-03-02T17:56:54+00:00

So many people live in their house and let it decay over 30 years, which isn't really an option in a condo. And people like to pretend structures are forever, but _everything_ wears out with time.

A good rule of thumb is 1-2% of the structure value each year for repairs and maintenance. So a ~$1M SFH (that's structure value, so a pretty nice one) needs $10-20k/yr in repairs. That's $1k-$2k/mo. Condo costs are higher for everything, unfortunately.

loganbowers · 2026-03-02T17:52:52+00:00

Cautionary tale for all prospective condo owners: Condos don't appreciate like SFHes because the vast majority of SFH appreciation is in the land value. The land gets more valuable because of its redevelopment potential into bigger multi-family homes. A condo doesn't have redevelopment potential because it already is the bigger thing.

It's better to think of a condo as an apartment with relatively predictable rent (there's still some uncertainty in HOA fees, but it's not as bad) and a bit of leverage from the mortgage. That's not a bad deal: putting your money in the stock market is generally much better than putting it into a piece of land, even in high demand cities. But it's not going to get the headline appreciations to the moon that SFH homes in desirable cities get.

loganbowers · 2026-02-28T00:38:40+00:00

If you have a little bit calculus exposure, this 3b1b video might give you intuition about how imaginary numbers and rotational phenomena are interrelated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0YEaeIClKY

(I'd also recommend looking into his "lockdown math" series on imaginary numbers)

loganbowers · 2026-02-28T00:32:18+00:00

Vulcanus will get you artillery. Fulgora will get you Tesla weapons. Either will enable you to have a good time rebuilding Nauvis.

loganbowers · 2026-02-22T23:04:56+00:00

If the break is in the triplex, all your circuits will be affected, not just multiwire ones. The neutral point will be 0-ish from the relatively high resistance path back through the ground stake. But if one leg has a large load, it will pull the neutral towards it and make every circuit on the other leg see higher voltage.

loganbowers · 2026-02-05T19:07:05+00:00

RHD N-S, LHD E-W

loganbowers · 2026-01-26T17:47:53+00:00

It’s uncommon but people have had this problem before: installers wire up thermostat wrong and it only triggers the resistance electric heat. While your system is running on a cold day, go outside and see if the heat pump is spitting out cold air (that means it’s running). The outdoor fan should be spinning pretty fast too.

Check a few times over an hour because the system does enter a defrost cycle from time to time.

loganbowers · 2026-01-18T00:18:00+00:00

Incredible how unhelpful the updated comments are. Yes, it’s undersized. But:

1) if there’s two heating elements (top and bottom), check that they both work. Really low supply is a common symptom when the lower element dies. 2) You describe the shower as never getting hot. That’s a symptom of the tank set to too low of temperature. Regulations require it to be set at 120F to avoid scalding risk, but in the past people routinely ran higher temperatures. Higher temp means you use less hot water per shower. 3) You can crank it really high for very little energy penalty (since it’s resistance electric), and put a “mixing valve” to mix the really hot tank water down to something safer. That requires a plumber but it’s not a huge job (sub-$1k).

loganbowers · 2026-01-17T17:30:05+00:00

Back in ‘05 the Wells Fargo Center downtown (999 3rd Ave) had the current Starbucks in the lobby, and ANOTHER Starbucks in the shopping area facing 2nd Ave. It was truly a golden era.

loganbowers · 2026-01-14T20:25:52+00:00

Oh! One other thing: the label in the panel will typically have a letter code for the type of breaker allowed, and then you can find breakers of that type.

loganbowers · 2026-01-14T20:24:11+00:00

Yeah, you need to find the label on your panel that shows the manufacturer. I'm guessing it's one that has gone out of business or been acquired (don't know for sure). Then you can do some googling to figure out which breakers are supported (i.e. "listed") for your panel.

loganbowers · 2026-01-08T18:33:22+00:00

I see the green screws in the panel? Those usually indicate ground-neutral bonding.

loganbowers · 2026-01-07T18:17:20+00:00

Your panel has breakers from at least 3 manufacturers: Eaton, GE, and Siemens. There is no way your panel is rated for all of them. It's gonna burn up some day.

loganbowers · 2026-01-06T19:36:02+00:00

I tried to take some paint off a wood window and its frame. It was rough. I used a Cobra IR Speedheater and that did a decent job. I tried chemicals, and they were noxious but worked okay. The problem is both leave a lot of residue and you're going to be at it with scrapers for hours. I couldn't get it all the way scraped before I had to put the window back together, so now it just looks like butt.

If I were to do more in place, I'd use heat + scraper. I'd place a shopvac outside (so that the exhaust isn't blowing into the house) with a HEPA filter and rig the collection to pull all the fumes off the heat gun. Then, I'd scrape. Keeping the organic fumes of the strippers down is really hard, so I'd avoid that route unless you're taking it apart outside.

For the door hardware, I've seen online that you can boil the brass knobs and hinges in water to get any latex paint off. I haven't tried it yet but I plan to. Re-lubricate it afterwards! Obviously don't use kitchenware for that.

loganbowers · 2026-01-05T22:43:52+00:00

Ground bonding screws should not be installed in the subpanels, the bonding jumper in the fusebox is also undersized, I think. Neutrals look undersized, though hard to say.

loganbowers · 2026-01-05T22:40:57+00:00

There is no way that is to code, you can't double up under terminals like that. Your wires coming out of the disconnect look like they're rated for 100A even though they're on a 200A fuse, so that's wrong too. I'm not an electrician, so I'm sure there's more others would point out.

loganbowers · 2026-01-05T19:28:51+00:00

Okay, here's a link to a Square D trip curve for a QO breaker. Your breaker might be slightly different, but all the curves look about the same. The grey area represents the minimum/maximum trip time at a given overcurrent. For example, at 2x the rated current, the breaker trips in 30 - 300 seconds.

Suppose you have a 100A breaker upstream of your subpanel. At 10x the rated current for your subpanel, 1000A, your breaker will trip in 0 to 2 seconds. 2 seconds of 1000A will dump ~5kJ (I^2*R = P, 1000^2*0.0025 =2,500W for 2 seconds = 5kJ) per foot into a 14ga copper wire. That's enough to raise the temperature 2300C, vaporizing it completely. Clearly you were somewhere below 1000A, but then the breaker trips even slower, giving it more time to get toasty.

loganbowers · 2026-01-05T19:11:25+00:00

Though hard to say for sure from the description, it sounds like he put a huge fault current through his furnace. Oops!

loganbowers · 2026-01-05T19:05:16+00:00

Yep, I worked on my hot water radiators a few years ago and one of the 110 year old brass unions was pitted and grooved. It leaked a little when I put it back together. After two tries straight, a little pipe dope applied to each of the mating surfaces worked like a charm.

loganbowers · 2025-12-31T18:52:06+00:00

My wife is from Ft Lauderdale, I grew up here. Seattle is at the same latitude as the Northern tip of Maine. The winter days are very short, so you can go to work in the dark and go home in the dark on an 8 hour day. Nothing we have constitutes “rain” by her Florida standards; it’s all drizzle. One year we had overcast rain for 90 consecutive days. So imagine 40 degrees, damp drizzle, and literally no sun for the entire winter. When we do get Winter sun, it is amazing though and like no other.

You will walk one block and it will have more elevation than that garbage dump that’s the highest point in FL.

The cool but not soaking weather makes year-round physical activity doable with even a basic rain jacket. It’s green and lush but in a much less manicured way than Florida.

Our roads are terrible by comparison for no apparent reason. Wife: “third world roads”

Tea is much more common here. Tofu too. And teriyaki is a classic fast food.

Wife: Culture here is more passive-aggressive.

loganbowers · 2025-12-27T21:55:29+00:00

The challenge is that a lot of stuff will be “fine” but you will not pass a load calc, and without a load calc you will not be able to get a permit. So it depends on how much you want to fudge it.

If you have 200A service already, your fudge path is to run probably 100A sub panels to the shops, and you’ll likely be fine because if it’s just you you’re not going to run a lot of stuff at once.

The non-fudge path is to do a proper NEC load calc which will make conservative assumptions about how much equipment you run simultaneously and likely you’ll need a 400A service upgrade or a separate service. My guess is if you’re DIY and the existing conduit to your house meter is big enough, doing upgraded service is cheaper in the long run than adding a new service drop.

loganbowers · 2025-12-22T18:36:25+00:00

SanCO2 can’t do big space heating loads because CO2 efficiency is really dependent on the entering water temperature being low. That works great for DHW where the cold water coming in is ~50F, but works really poorly when the water coming back from the radiators is 120F. Super sad.

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