Recent content by ericm

Yes. Ring has been allowing it for a while. I don't know if the end user has a choice. They also set up a system to scan all the cameras with "AI". They advertised it as way to find lost pets but the implications for tracking people are chilling, especially when combined with warrantless LE...

I'm served by the same power company. The electricians used Homeline panels for house, garage and shop which is what I wanted. With the shop being 550' away the electricians advised me that it would cost less to have PacificCorp run the wires from the pole to the shop. They would only go about...

You can use loadcalc.net or similar to model the building's heat requirements with and without slab insulation.

None of my mini splits (Mitsubishi in the shop and Daikin in the house) blow cold air when in heat mode. Sometimes it's not much warmer than ambient, sometimes it is. It's never like a gas heater blowing on you. Both makes have a ton of settings for air direction. I set those so there's not...

For Stanley fans try the 10-499. Same traditional shape and size but has a quick change blade and tool less spare blade holder.

I had the rollers fail on a 10'x10' door on the 1890s barn at the old house. I could not find the same style replacements and the originals were so rusted there wasn't much to repair. I wound up adapting modern door hardware, which had different spacing above the door so I had to build a new...

I'll be able to answer that in a year! We moved in and the solar was turned on last fall, just in time for winter. So far the panels are not keeping up with what the PVwatts model says we should get. But we have some shading from a tree we'd like to keep, and we may have had more cloudy days...

You can use the PVwatts tool from NREL to get an idea how much solar you can put on your roof and how much power it would make. Hopefully it has data for Canada. The problem with solar is that you're using the most power for heat in the winter when there's the least sun. We have 1:1 net...

The barn on the property we had in California was also an 1890s dairy barn. A lot smaller than this one though. It had a center raised area about 20'x20' with a ramp up to it. They even cast feed troughs into the edges. On each side there were spaces the cows would stick their heads in to get...

When I started dating my wife she lived in a small house with heated floors. I mostly noticed it when I went to the bathroom at night barefoot. It was really nice! But I don't go barefoot in the shop. It gets into the 20s at night here but rarely lower. I went with no insulation under the slab...

There's a lot of force on the arms trying to tip the columns over towards the centerline of a car raised on the lift. I'm finding conflicting information about whether the beam across the tops of the columns is structural. Some sources say it's just there to hold the cables, hoses and shutoff...

We expected some of that but we were surprised that groceries are cheaper. Even produce, and in California we were close to some of the biggest produce growing areas in the country. I picked up my 56" HF bottom and top chests today! They called me yesterday and wanted me to do it yesterday...

Our old house was in a place where in summer you could cool the house in the evening by opening the windows. When we replaced them I picked windows to make that work better. We put in a lot of casements. They can open 90 degrees and flow a lot of air. Some openings were too wide for casements...

You can post your loadcalc and I or other people here can look for missing fields. Also you're supposed to use the Manual J data to run a Manual S to size the equipment. S bumps up the size over the number from J. I put in two 24k units for 2240 sq ft with 14f ceilings, R21 in the walls and R60...

Rather than guessing you could do a load calc (Manual J in the US) and sizing (Manual S) for your building. Or have it done. Then you'll know. I used l leoadcalc.net to get the sizes of the mini splits for my shop. It's a bit tricky in that it won't tell you when you have left a field blank that...