John's space

Well, the AC Evaporator cleaning seems to have worked properly.
Delta T --> Register temp - Cold AC temp @ vent

Before was 14-degrees. (74 - 60)
After is 19-degrees. (75 - 56)

It also "Feels" less humid in here.  I think the verdict is that it actually worked.

This is a good thing -- as it has been nearly 100F here all week.

There is another experiment going on in the Truckjohn household.

Today, I cleaned the AC evaporator coils.  Cost = Free.
This is an older rental duplex.
The current AC unit is probably 15 years old or so.  Doubt it has gotten much maintenance.
It seems to cool the place OK, but the house was stuffy feeling.

I had already taped up all the cracks and seams I could find before..... that was not the problem.
I also cleaned out the condensate drip line.... Didn't do anything in particular.

Going to see how it does over the next few days....
Does it cool any better?
Does it dehumidify any better?
I am thinking I will probably end up buying a dehumidifier.

Another thought on too much trash.
Tried an experiment.....
All the boxes, cartons, newspapers, magazines, "Shiny Paper" -- meaning junk mail, office paper, etc was piled into 1-pile.
Trash actually went into the trash bag.

Probably 90% of the trash we generate here is packaging materials and paper waste.
Think about if we actually *Use* less "Waste" stuff by buying stuff with less packaging...  What would happen then?
The scary part is how much of this underpins our economy.  That is the dirty little secret -- say if 5% of our economy is busily making wrapper film, styrofoam trays, shiny cardboard boxes, etc...
Then... 
5% of our citizens are paid to make shiny cardboard boxes, junkmailings, and throwaway styrofoam blocks.

What happens to those people if we stop some of this waste?
See why the politicians don't push too hard....
Those are voters who will loose jobs.
Remember....
5% vote swayed the last Presidential election in 2004
5% vote swayed the Senate and House elections in both 2004 and 2006

My Dad, brothers, and I were having one of our lively email debates (Arguments) about Ethanol production, foreign oil, making "Food" into "Fuel", agriculture, and all the world's problems.

Pretty much, we found a workable solution to world peace...... but I won't blather on about that here.

Anyway, an interesting side-discussion started about how much waste we generate vs how much energy we use.

I really don't think we have an actual idea of how much waste goes on -- it slides right under the radar screen..... but it is still incredibly expensive.
I am an Industrial Engineer sort of person, so I am supposedly trained to "See Waste" and root it out.
Think of all the things that we pay for in the stuff we buy.... without even knowing we are paying for it.

Such as:
Packaging materials -- Cardboard, foam, plastic wrap, stickers, shopping bags, etc. 
Companies make all this stuff.  It is used ONCE.  The purpose is actually waste material.
I think estimates are that over 1/2 of the cost of our goods go towards packaging materials.  WOW.

Shipping, transportation, storage, and delivery -- Not just the boat ride from China.... 
Forklifts, cranes, and transfer trucks at the port. 
Trucks over the road to the warehouses. 
Forklifts at warehouse facilities. 
More trucking to more warehouses, more forklifts until it gets to the store....
where there are more forklifts to move it around in the store. 
Each stage has separate packaging.  A product might be boxed and re-boxed a couple of times.

I think I am starting to see the sheer scale of waste that under-pins our economy.
Waste is the proper term.... because I don't particularly want the cardboard box, plastic wrap, inner boxes, labels, and all  for my cookies....
I want the cookies.

No wonder stuff is just so expensive -- we are paying for layers and layers of packaging and hours of handling for each item we buy.

Then consider the 100,000 people involved within this chain --
Farmers, fertilizer makers, tractor makers, mechanics, lumber jacks, truckers, lumber mill employees, more truckers, pulp mill employees, more truckers, paper mill employees, marketing people, sales people, printers, boxers, shippers, loaders, more truckers. more loaders and stock people, more truckers, more handlers, boxers, etc....... just to get an envelope.

Anyway, it really will give you a headache.

So....

How can I personally actually have an effect on generating less trash?
I am going to have to see what actually makes up the trash.
Then use that information to try to GET less trash in the 1st place.  Fun fun fun.

I bet everyone out there is curious about our new washer performance....   Those new Front loaders sure are hyped as "Better than sliced bread"

Here goes:
Whirlpool Duet Front loader....
10 lbs dry, 17 lbs wet after normal wash, 14.5 lbs wet after extra high speed drain/spin cycle.
12 lbs dry, 15 lbs wet after normal wash + extra high speed drain spin cycle.
So between 3 and 4.5 lbs of water left behind in a 10lb load -- equates to about 6-9 lbs of water left in a 20lb load.

These loads take about 1-hour to dry, so there is quite an improvement in performance.

Notice, it was pretty easy to get 20lbs of laundry into the old washer.  Not so with the new Front Loaders.  They just don't seem to be able to spin cycle properly with more than about 13 lbs of wash in the drum.  It has a hard time balancing properly with a huge load.

The biggest improvement we immediately notice is QUIET.  They run quiet -- no smashing, bashing, grinding, clanging, etc.  There is some vibration during the extra-high speed spin cycle as it spins up.  It also has a high-pitched jet engine noise, but it is not particularly loud..... especially compared to the old washer.

I am really interested in the performance of the high-speed spin dryers.  They spin up at about 3x the spin of this washer.
Just like Star Wars, it can't just end that easily..... you knew that all along.

So, I was out of town on Business....
Got a Toyota Prius as a rental car.  It is an interesting little car.... once you figure out how to start the thing.
1.  Set parking brake
2.  Insert puck into ignition switch hole
3.  Push power button to boot up the car
4.  Hold brake pedal down
5.  Push power button again.  Ready light blinks then turns solid.
6.  If car doesn't start, push Park button -- park turns green, car starts

BTW, if you want to drive one of these..... the starting instructions are on Page 130 of the manual.
and NO, it doesn't come with a nice little "Quick Reference Card".... like every toaster and VCR in the world.

Once you get through the myriad of buttons and instructions, it is pretty nice...

And on gas -- 2.5 gallons for 130 miles.... or about 50-mpg for mixed highway and city driving.
That is pretty good if you ask me, especially compared to the Jeep's 13 city and 17 highway.

So.... it turns out that Washing machine water extraction (spin cycle) is the driving factor in getting clothes dry.  It is obvious, but not -- because the dryer has to dry all of the water the washer leaves behind. 

Performance: 
Our standard top load washer:
20 lbs dry laundry, 33 lbs wet after washing is finished.

A couple friends high efficiency front loaders:
20 lbs dry laundry, 23 - 25 lbs wet after washing is finished
This is approximately equivalent to the big Laundry-mat centrifuges.

As you can see, there is 8-10 lbs (1 - 1.25 gallon) more water left behind after an old washer than after a new high efficiency washer.
This is the difference in the spin cycle performance.  This is also why your power bill drops so much after you get one....  The washer itself only uses between $10 and $20.00 worth of electricity in an entire year (washer + hot water.)  The dryer, on the other hand, adds up $20 - $40 per month.

Time for a new washer.

More pondering the Clothes dryer efficiency problem.
Didn't feel like fooling around with the dryer venting -- the hose is brand new and nicely run as-of October.... so lint shouldn't be a problem.
And it's cold outside..... and the crawlspace is still full of crickets and spiders....

As an experiment, I centrifuged a load washed in the old standby GE top loader (1990's vintage, cheap-o "Heavy Duty" model).  Turns out the Laundry mat has a big Bock centrifuge -- runs at 1700 RPM (at least that is what it says on the name plate....)

Dry laundry weight:  20 lbs
As-washed weight: 33 lbs --This is as-washed from a completed cycle, includes all spin and rinse cycles.
After centrifuge weight: 25 lbs. -- A full gallon of water extracted.  Still had over 1/2 gallon of water to dry left in the fabric.

This load was 5-pairs blue jeans, a couple flannel shirts, some towels, socks, shirts, etc.  A nice full load.

Dryer time was 75 min after centrifuge.  Just over 3-hours is standard with this type of load.... so cut the drying time by 2/3.

So.... The washer is the culprit.  No amount of efficient venting or powerful dryers will compensate for evaporating 1 1/2 gallons of water out of a load of laundry.

You guessed it -- we are now lusting over a brandy-new High Efficiency Front Loader washer and dryer set.

So, I did a little informal testing on the window open vs window shut vs drying time.

Window open produces a nice draft from the kitchen window to the dryer.  You can feel the cold air rushing in the window..... Unfortunately, it
doesn't seem to change the actual drying time.... at least not by any significant margin.  Apparently, the house is "Leaky" enough that this isn't the limiting factor.

Then, the next step to figuring this out will be to try a shorter vent hose.  That will test out if less restriction = better performance...... meaning the dryer performance would be limited by the ability to pump hot wet air out.

If this doesn't make a difference.... the only thing that makes sense is that the washer is leaving clothes too wet..... and as we all know -- water takes lots of energy to evaporate.

This reminds me of College laundry -- they had a big centrifuge that cost a quarter.  You could fit 3-loads of laundry into it, and then it would only take 15 minutes to dry after the water was extracted.

I wonder how good those "High Efficiency" washers are at extracting water back out of a load?

Some more thoughts about dryer venting.

So, I replumbed the dryer vent hose about 3-months ago.  I don't think it really made a difference in actual time to dry a load of laundry.

One thing I did notice is that it seems like when the windows are open, clothes dry faster.  I haven't timed anything, but this is my impression.  If this is the case, it could be caused by the dryer fan not having enough juice to suck air through closed windows and doors..... Of course, if a house is properly sealed (Which ours really isn't), it should be fairly hard to pull a significant amount of air out of a closed house...... so where could all the air be coming from?  Maybe the bathroom vents, leaky windows, etc.

I think overall, this points to poor house design tradeoffs for convenience -- Dryers should not be located inside of air-conditioned spaces.... because a properly functioning dryer is a giant fan that pumps huge quantities of air back out of your house.... which logically has to be replaced by new outside air somehow..... so either you are actually sucking huge quantities of outside non-conditioned air into your house, or your dryer is not pumping air back outside very well.

More to come on this -- I am going to do some testing with window open vs window shut on drying time to see what happens.

Life is pretty well back to normal at the Truckjohn household.  Christmas brought a couple new appliances to replace melted ones.  We still have not replaced quite a few things -- sometimes it is good to see what you need and don't need.....  If you don't notice an appliance gone after 6 or 8 months.... good riddance.

On other notes, things are progressing along.  The match barrel in the 1911 is a success.  I was out shooting it on Saturday, and was delighted by both the accuracy and function.  It really does run that much better than the standard barrel that came in the 1911.  Published target loads shoot exactly like they should -- accurately.  This is an improvement that is really well worth the money.

I was driving home from the store Saturday.....
I saw a bunch of fire trucks, a smoking house, and a bunch of people standing around outside.

I sure do feel for those folks.  I really doubt they know what they are in for.  I sure did not.

No one has probably told them anything about a monthly rental house, a storage unit, or that they will be out of their house for 2-months or more.

I could smell the smoke from my Jeep.  Burnt house smoke is an unhappy smell.

Been gone for almost 2-months now from the blog.

Had a little calamity that consumed time at the Truckjohn residence.
Specifically, we had a kitchen fire.

Before this happened, if you would have asked me what I would do in case of a fire.... I would have said something like "Make sure you have a fire extinguisher, for kitchen fires a good lid, salt, or baking soda will also do the trick."  I was a boyscout once -- I lit many fires out while camping and put out even more.  NO worries..... right?

Unfortunately, I found out "What would you do in case of a fire?" has a totally different meaning in real life.  It ACTUALLY means "What will you do after the fire is put out and you have no place to live?"

I got home from work to find a fire already put out by the fire department.  In the 20-minutes between talking to my wife and arriving home, the fire was already out.

It turns out that some 30% of fires are kitchen grease fires.  It also turns out that a fire doubles every 3-seconds or so.... meaning a small fire on the stove burns up about 1/2 of the kitchen within the 3-minutes between 911 call and the fire dept showing up.

We were very lucky.

We finally re-enter the apartment at about 10:30 PM.  NO power, just dark, sooty greasy, acrid smoke stink and black soot covering everything in sight.

You would not believe the mess a house fire makes.  Every single item you own is now covered with black soot.  Every article of clothing... even the ones in the bottoms of closed drawers stink of smoke.  Everything made of steel is now rusty from the smoke.  Stainless steel utensils in the kitchen were etched.
Everything is covered with a layer of stinky black soot.

Now, what does "What will you do in an emergency" mean?
1.  Immediately.... Figure out what you will do for the next 7-days.  Relatives?  Hotel?  What about the dog?
2.  Get Organized.  Plans to clean it up?  Cleaning up is a perfect example of more hands = more done.  We found that a good wipe down with Windex gets rid of most of the soot.  An "Emergency Cleaning and Restoration" company will charge about $5,000 for a 1,000 sq-ft apartment.... that is empty.
3.  Place to store your semi-cleaned up stuff? Do you know the local storage units?  Do you have a truck to ferry it back and forth?
4.  Place to live beyond the 1st few days?  A motel will bankrupt you at $75.00/night  You gotta find some sort or month to month rental quickly.  What about the dog?
5.  Money.  You gotta have cash available because all of this costs lots of money.
6.  Friends, relatives, and anyone to give a hand.  Cleaning up your stuff after a disaster is really depressing.  It absolutely drains the will to continue out of you.  More hands = more done.  More bodies also = people to talk to so you don't get more depressed.

We didn't loose much by fire standards.  Talking to people at work who lived through a fire -- we got off easy.  We probably spent about $1,000 at WalMart, another $1,000 in other appliance and home stores, and about $4,000 in furniture.  It is still not over, as we will have more expenses coming in and more things to buy.

Our dryer vent hose came loose last week..... It got me thinking about another energy saving idea.....

Here's the scoop.
Old dryer, cheap model, probably about 20-some years old.
It takes about 2-hours to dry a load of colored clothes, and about an hour to do whites.
This is status quo.

When the vent hose came loose, I noticed our color clothes were dry in 45-minutes.
DID YOU SAY 45 MINUTES FOR A LOAD OF COLORED CLOTHES?
Now that is some sort of record for this dryer.... so it got me thinking.... something in the venting system must be way wrong.  Up into the crickety and spidery crawl space goes John, to sort out the dryer hose.

1.  Replaced the dryer hose itself.
2.  Replaced the squirrel catcher on the outside too... just in case.
Improvement.... Hardly any if there is one.

So... it could be one of a number of different things...
1.  Dryer hose is just too long for the dryer.
2.  Too many bends in the hose
3.  Hose is too "Rough" on the inside -- causing backpressure on the dryer.... which reduces airflow.
4.  Standard 4" dryer hose is too small for the length.

I can't really do anything about #1.  The dryer is where it is.
I can straighten out the hose more to try and help #2.
#3 will require about 15 feet of hard pipe, AC ducting, or chimney pipe.
#4 would require bigger hose and some way to adapt them to eachother.

This also makes me wonder about the efficiency of AC ducting itself.
Rectangle shaped duct has a large surface per volume.  Surface area is where you get friction.
BUT rectangle duct is easy to fab out of sheet metal, make to specific sizes, fit into spaces neatly, and fasten to things that are also rectangular.
Round ducting would maximize the volume per surface area, but it is not so easy to fit into a square hole.  Round duct also needs some some sort of ribbing to strengthen it against "Flopping" shut.... which adds more turbulence and thus friction.

So now, there is a quandary.  What to do about the dryer?  Then, what to do about the AC ducting (Which is all made of soft flex hose?)

Unfortunately, this seems like there might be at least one more trip into cricket world for John.

An interesting window into the past....
I dug up old project records from the previous team that worked to improve the same problem with the same equipment I am currently working on.  Circa 1995..... same problems as we are having now.

The interesting part is reading through the old meeting minutes, action items lists, and results summary..... as in they had lots of theories, but didn't actually accomplish anything.  They had lots of ideas, but never did any actual studies to confirm or quantify the magnitude of the problems.  No doubt, each item on their list was an actual problem...... just not the BIGGEST problem.  As a result, they never actually fixed the Big problems blocking up the entire system....

See, the problem is that productivity related issues.... The effect of the problems seem to follow an RMS type model of variation rather than an Arithmetic type of model of averages.....  What this means is that by pure averages, problem #1 is 75%, 2 is 10%, 3 is 8%, and all the rest are the remaining 12%.  By Root Mean Squared methods.... the 75% piece accounts for 97% of the actual problem...  Cutting the 10% piece in half only yields an improvement of 1% to the system.  Reduce the 75% piece by 50%..... and you get about 45% at the bottom line, though.

As I said, it is an interesting look into the past, and and excellent lesson to be learned.