[Doofrat]

Actually, the Do Not Call list is a good source for phone numbers for these scammers. DNC only needs to be honored by domestic companies whose assets are within arms reach of the US. These scammers obviously operate out of reach, so reporting them to the authorities will do absolutely nothing except waste more of the excess time we apparently all have.

[Doofrat]

I remember it was always called Independence day (which kind of clues you in), now it’s just called July 4th or the 4th of July. Maybe that leads to people forgetting the reason for the holiday.

[Doofrat]

Here’s what I do to avoid this. I’m on call pretty much all the time, so I can’t just turn off the ringer on my iPhone. So when I would get a call with some Pakistani saying a bu daba or something like that at 3am it would really piss me off.
What I do is record ten seconds of silence then add it to my iTunes library. You can then convert this to AAC in iTunes (There are a bunch of articles on how to do this for different platforms, or you can just buy a silent ringtone for 99cents). You then set this silent ringtone as your default ringtone and set all your contacts with non-default ringtones. Your phone will never again ring unless it’s from somebody you know. If it’s important enough, they can still leave a message. I hate to say it, but I even have a family member on the silent ringtone since they forget they are in a different time zone and sometimes call at 7am on a Saturday.
The only issue is that any time you update your iPhone, it removes the silent ringtone for some reason, but it’s pretty easy to set up again.

[Doofrat]

Prescription dive mask.

[Doofrat]

He’s better than the last two figureheads, much less evil it seems.

[Doofrat]

When it’s overcast, as long as it’s not too windy, you’ll get a very marginal increase in the pool temp with solar – Maybe a degree or two throughout the day if you’re lucky, but when it’s sunny, you’ll get around a degree an hour from what I’ve seen.
I have a pool cover, but haven’t used it yet and I’m losing about 4 degrees a night in the last week.

[Doofrat]

I meant Watts in the beginning and KWh at the end. I was calculating out what all this equipment was going to cost for electricity (haven’t gotten my first bill yet), so I had KWh stuck in my head 🙂

I need to run the filter for 8 hours a day in the summer.

With my equipment, to run everything (Solar/Pool Monster/Skimmer/Filter) at the same time seems to use about 1200 Watts of power, or 9.6 KWh per day on an 8 hour schedule. This would cost about $129 on the 4th tier.

I broke down what each component was using power wise:

When I run solar/filter, it uses about 500 Watts.
When I run Monster/filter, it uses about 600 Watts
When I run solar/Monster/Filter, it uses about 1200 Watts

Instead of running all this together for 8 hours a day, I split it into two groups:

1) A shorter solar period with just filter/solar/skimmer (3 hours)
2) A longer pool monster period during the evening(5 hours)

Running the Solar/filter for 3-4 hours during peak sunlight hours uses 2 KWh each day.

running the cleaner (the pool monster) at night for 5 hours uses 3 KWh.

So 5 KWh per day is used as opposed to running everything for 8 hours together which would use almost 10 KWh per day, this should only cost about $60 a month in the 4th tier of pricing.

I still get 8 hours of filtration, but only 5 hours of pool monster, which still gives it a chance to make several passes over the bottom of the pool, and 3-4 hours of solar which keeps it a toasty 87 degrees right now.

So I don’t think TOU restrictions will cause much harm to the wallet if you just run solar during the day and then run the cleaner during the night.

[Doofrat]

I’ve done a lot of work tuning the schedules on this pool and here’s what I’ve found:

Luckily, the controller lets you set the exact RPM for whatever task the pool is doing at the time and reports back the KWh being used.
To run the cleaner or to run the solar are about equal in RPM.

At 2300 RPM / 635 KWh , I can run either the solar with skimmer or the cleaner with skimmer.

I can get the solar by itself down to about 2050 RPM /500 KWh if I run it with no skimmer or cleaner

Solar by itself seems to require about 300-400 RPM to get the same flow as without.

If I run the Skimmer, cleaner, and solar together, the required RPMs jump up quite a bit to near 3000 and you push up to 1000 – 1200 KWh. I might be able to get this down a bit by priming the system at a higher RPM so the return doesn’t suck air, but I don’t think I will.

The schedule I’ve set then is:

1. Run just solar during the day at about 500 KWh. I run it for what is needed, which is only a few hours a day, I just change the schedule each night depending on weather the next day (That’ll get old real quick), but it’s only 3-5 hours required, but once I change out the system’s thermometer (It’s broken), it can handle the solar automatically.

2. I run the cleaner at night (currently 6:30pm to 11:30pm)

Total energy usage is:
2000 KWh for solar during the day
3000 KWh for the Cleaner at night

Remember that the water is still going through the filter while solar is running, so I’m currently getting about 8 hours of filtering a day.

[Doofrat]

They are of course staying. At least I’ll get my $10 from my co-worker I made a bet with about this, that’ll make a tiny dent in the cost to me to build a new stadium.

[Doofrat]

But, but, the stadium will draw so many more people, we’ll need more hot dog vendors and stadium sweepers. That’ll bring in at least $150 billion dollars or something. And my tattoos, I got Bolts on both arms, what am I going to do about that?!?

[Doofrat]

You can get the death penalty for corruption in China, not sure if we’d send them back.

[Doofrat]

It actually has a bypass valve with a thermostat on it, but the temperature on it is reading way off (I think it says the pool is 54 degrees), so I need to find the time to change out the thermostat so I can set it and forget it.

[Doofrat]

Well I just got a house with solar already set up (so I don’t have a lot of experience with it) but yesterday, the solar heated it from 74 degrees in the morning (it cooled down during the cold spell, and I also turned off the solar for a couple of days as a test) to 82 degrees in one day. This is a 5 ft deep around 15,000 gallon pool. Before I turned it off, it had gotten to 88 degrees on May 1st and was evaporating water like crazy and was starting to grow some serious algae. I’d guess it’ll be near 86-88 tonight with a day like today.
In the townhouse complex we used to live in, the solar didn’t have a regulator, so it’d hit the 90s by July and stay there until September.

[Doofrat]

Again, no recommendation, but have you tried pool covers, they heat the pool pretty well during the summer and stop the loss of water and chlorine and also help control algae.
You can buy a cheap one for about $120. The more expensive ones last longer and work better in colder climes, but are much much heavier.

[Doofrat]

Cold murky water

Seagulls

Travelling to remote locales and hearing people complain about the cost of everything in the grocery store and they’re the same price as back home in San Diego

Paying more for gas here than in Arizona, even though it’s shipped from San Diego to Arizona.

May Gray

June Gloom

The terms “May Gray” and “June Gloom”

Allergies all year long

[Author]

Posts