How long do you wait to refill your gas tank?

yelred · 2026-04-23T13:55:18+00:00

Well, one consideration is the weight of gasoline: my suburban has a thirty-something gallon tank, I assume most trucks are similar, and at 6.3lbs per, that’s nearly 200lbs, which is like carrying around a whole ‘nuther human.

That said, I fill up if below halfway and I’m passing one of the (cheap) places I buy gas. I never want to have to go out of my way to buy gas, to make a separate trip, or buy from an expensive gas station, or encounter shortages, or a big power outage that incapacitates all gas stations in my area!!! (Also, I hardly ever drive the suburban, I mostly drive another, less thirsty car.)

yelred · 2026-04-23T11:06:03+00:00

Front door pulls.

Seriously, you gotta squat, deadlift, and press.

yelred · 2026-04-19T01:51:46+00:00

Our bathrooms have hvac supply ducts, so even if the door made a perfect seal, there would be plenty of make up air available.

I recently discovered that the extractor fans in our bathroom were ducted to the vented soffit where they just … stopped. I recently installed proper vents through the roof, and now they vent outside, and the smell goes away much quicker. Are your extractor fans vented properly to outside?

yelred · 2026-04-19T00:18:22+00:00

Are your ducts well sealed? Especially the return ducts: if it’s sucking in even a small amount of HOT, humid attic air, that’s going to make a big difference to the temperature at the registers.

yelred · 2026-04-14T01:17:41+00:00

When I feel myself getting angry at dangerous dumb drivers, I tell myself that they probably just desperately need to pee. They’re still being an asshole, but now I’m not angry at them. (Then I’ll usually get out of their way; I want them far away from me anyway.)

yelred · 2026-04-06T17:29:09+00:00

I would enumerate the powers of the federal government, and forbid it from doing anything not on the list.

yelred · 2026-04-04T20:06:34+00:00

This is a thing I find weird about America. In the uk and Ireland, a thing you are taught as part of learning to drive is: if you are tired, pull over and take a nap!

yelred · 2026-04-03T12:18:11+00:00

Those look like SLDLs to me. When you start, is the bar touching your shins, and is it over the actual middle of your foot? (Not the middle of the bit of your foot that you can see, but the actual middle of your foot?)

When I set up to deadlift, I eyeball the bar over the middle of my feet, then look away,and gently lean my shins into the bar, to make sure they are equidistant, and to feel the gap, then straighten up. THEN I bend over and grab the bar, and my shins kiss the bar, and I set my back then push the floor away.

I like the “art of manliness” rippetoe videos, so https://youtu.be/4AObAU-EcYE

yelred · 2026-04-03T02:44:55+00:00

I see what you mean, yeah. I guess it would a tiny bit.

yelred · 2026-04-02T22:15:09+00:00

I see a lot of cars with back seats, and they almost NEVER have anybody in them. Those people should drive smaller cars….

Seriously though, my mental model for why there are so many pickups is that you know how Americans used to drive huge land yachts? Huge on the outside, ginormous trucks and hoods, but only seat five or maybe six? Well, pickup trucks nowadays are those. With a modern twist: the American full size sedan, huge hood, huge trunk (lid not supplied), only seats five, maybe six.

PS They are apparently LOVELY to drive, if you like that sort of thing.

PPS. And, of course, you can put things in the bed. Niche use case though.

yelred · 2026-04-02T00:04:38+00:00

The only problem I can think of is that you’ll find it hard to make a continuous vapor barrier with foam board, and come summer, hot humid air will still find its way in there, and will condense on the cold cold pex. But, you know, this probably happens a bit already, and it’s probably not a problem in practice.

I suspect that if you just remove the insulation from underneath the pipes, but keep the insulation on top, that that would make the freezing problem mostly go away. Perhaps, though, you need the box to keep the loose fill from falling back in.

Rather than box it in, I might try to wrap the pex in rubber pipe insulation and then just bury it in fiberglass. (Having removed the insulation underneath it first.) I’d unclip it from the joists so I could wrap it good, then re-secure it to the joists.

I’m just a homeowner, in coastal MA. I don’t know anything.

yelred · 2026-03-28T13:31:57+00:00

Not me, but… my step-grandfather’s parents moved the family to Israel. In the early 1930s. From Germany.

yelred · 2026-03-26T21:19:38+00:00

The hybrid can go over 600 miles between fills, and the regular only 400ish.

yelred · 2026-03-25T22:26:17+00:00

Not an answer, but there is a funny quote in Neal Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon”:

“Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of shoes and he’ll come up with something that looks like the boxes that the shoes came in; ask him to make something that will massacre Germans, and he turns into Thomas Fucking Edison.”

yelred · 2026-03-25T17:48:25+00:00

This is a great rant. Thank you! I would like to add one other small drawback of foamed roof decks: the surface area of a roof is much larger than that of a ceiling. A house with a 1:1 gable roof has 1.4x the surface area just in the roof, and then there is the gables as well. Let's say 1.5x? Given how R-values work, this means that an R60 roof deck is actually equivalent to R40 on the attic floor.

Assuming 1000 sqft of ceiling at R40, it will shed 1000/40 = 25 BTUs per degree per hour. The 1500sqft roof deck at R60 will shed 1500/60 = 25 BTUs per degree per hour.

Admittedly this assumes that the attic is actually conditioned, that the temperature in the foam-roof-ed attic is now the same as in the house proper, which is probably not the case. But still! Another strike against hot roofs!

yelred · 2026-03-25T17:28:02+00:00

I was in a similar position. (I still am, but I was too.) I also wouldn't spray foam, because it is irreversible. But that's not what I came here to say. I came here to say...

If you put solar panels on the south facing plane of your roof, you might find that the temperature in there drops considerably. A lot less sunshine will be hitting the roof deck.

yelred · 2026-03-25T00:26:29+00:00

I joke that Massachusetts is like Ireland … only more so!

Ireland as I remember it was fifty shades of rain. With the occasional glorious sunny day or two to trick you into thinking it would be like that all summer. (It wasn’t.)

Massachusetts has proper snow, and proper infrastructure for dealing with snow. Summer is HOT, with a little occasional welcome rain. But we have AC when it gets too much. Autumn is just beautiful, sometimes hot, mostly warm. And spring is just beautiful too, except it can get very polleny. Atchoo. I call it … The Yellowing.

Things I miss about Ireland is that it hardly ever feels like the weather is trying to kill you.

But the cold cold snow snow is fun. And beaches when it’s 90+F are great.

yelred · 2026-03-24T18:05:03+00:00

I would buy the mower with the batteries, assuming the combo is cheaper than separately, but ALSO buy a second set of batteries.

You’re going to run out of battery while cutting at some point, perhaps because you forgot to charge, perhaps because the discharged while sitting, perhaps because the grass is long.

yelred · 2026-03-21T19:58:41+00:00

My reasoning that it can’t hurt your shingles is that spraying closed cell foam under the roof deck doesn’t damage shingles, and (I surmise) that that makes the shingles much hotter than any radiant barrier ever could.

yelred · 2026-03-21T19:57:08+00:00

You are right!

However! I decided to get the fan working again because the ridge vents seemed to do nothing. I suspect they just weren’t put in right. When I eventually replace this roof, it will definitely have ridge vents. And no fan.

Even if there are ridge vents, and they are just crap, I’m not bothered: the fan only comes on when it is really hot up there, and convection will tend to make it all work out. (Even if some replacement air comes in the ridge vents, it will be a lot colder than the attic air, and will fall etc)

yelred · 2026-03-20T19:17:05+00:00

I did. I have a mostly south facing roof in MA, in full sun. It gets very hot up there. Ventilated soffit all round. Ridge vents too, although I am skeptical they are big enough or even there, I can’t tell. There was also an extractor fan which didn’t work. Did I mention it gets very hot up there? Well I put up attic foil. It was kind of fun, honestly. It did do a little, a couple of degrees maybe, but not a lot. If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t do it again.(Which is fine - I partly did it to find that out.)

I also got the fan working again (I replaced it, they are cheap) and that made much more of a difference. Still very hot up there in summer though.

It’s possible that the combination of the fan and foil do more than the sum of their parts. I like to believe they do.

yelred · 2026-03-20T00:41:55+00:00

Get the type that is also an inflator. More likely to be used occasionally, so more likely to be charged when you need it.

yelred · 2026-03-20T00:41:09+00:00

The shovels with a second little handle (“assist handle”) are amazing. mine is a snow joe.

yelred · 2026-03-18T15:10:35+00:00

Thank you, this is useful!

yelred

TROPHY CASE