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About Brewbeer

- Birthday 01/01/1968
Profile Information
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Four Letter Airport Code For Weather Obs (Such as KDCA)
KCEF
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Gender
Male
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Location:
Near Springfield, MA
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Interests
Working, drinking, cooking, yard work, skiing sometimes, whitewater canoeing dreaming, sailing again someday, mowing the lawn, raking leaves, snowblowing snow, paying for grown children, cleaning, grocery shopping, home repair & improvement, science, engineering, math, technology, human social progress & justice, whirled peas
Recent Profile Visitors
7,790 profile views
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30/10F with a persistent breeze, good indoors day
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we need the rain, esp. those who use wells for water supply
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it was perfect and just what I needed after a 14 hr work day no peepers yet
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62/49 quite nice here before the rain, gonna go outside with my beer and listen for the peepers
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B+ prolonged cold and near continuous snow OTG and two decent 1'+ storms make this winter well above average in my book more frequent storms would have pushed it higher
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some sleet on the tops of cars in the driveway, otherwise nada OTG here 28F clear and calm
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+1, if I had more time and money, I would have put in radiant
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You are right, the baseboards aren't works of art, but they were manufactured in Westfield at Mestek, and sold under the Sterling brand. They were $15 per foot and I installed 130 feet of them, so they weren't cheap, about $2,000. I think I spent that much again on copper pipe and fittings. This was 10 years ago when copper was cheaper then now. What they are is comfortable. And when the heating season is 210+ days long, that matters. Before I ditched the forced air system in my current house, this was my reality. It was "fine" while the blower was running, but as soon as the heat cycle was over, right back to being cold and uncomfortable. That system was noisy too, you needed to turn the TV volume up while it was running. I can't place all the blame on the forced air system, my house is a split and was originally built with electric heat, the forced air system was added in in the mid 1980s, and they didn't size it correctly or get the required returns in the right places. It was a disaster, and I'm glad it finally failed because what I have now is 1000% better. The two best features of my baseboards are they are completely silent and provide constant heat without cycling. The system circulates continuously providing warm water to the baseboards at a temperature inversely proportional to the exterior temperature using a modulating boiler and a buffer tank. The heat put out by the radiator matches the heat lost by the house, keeping the house at a constant 68-69F without cycling. While it is convenient, it can be a compromise in comfort. In the winter, most of the heat load is in the bottom of the building, in the summer, most of the cooling load is at the top. If you have proper ductwork that can accommodate the differences in heating and cooling loads between seasons that helps, but as our collective experiences indicate, forced air systems are prone to improper duct design and installation.
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temps jumping up here, little bit of fog too
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Sergeant Sublimation has been replaced by Major Melting
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did you keep them ? 42/39, stayed above freezing all night
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nothing professional about that platform, it's all entertainment
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Wow it’s nice out, might have to take a break and wash the car
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At least the weather isn’t delayed an hour.
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that you are, mine are two stories above a concrete patio, I'd need a pole 30 feet long, I'm not going up there on a ladder. It's doesn't really matter much in December or January, there is a big pine tree to my south and it's shadow crosses the array midday, but by early-mid February the sun is above the tree and sunny day production really takes off. Typical winter consumption for my family is about 19-20 kwh/day, summer it's 16-18/day if AC isn't needed. For heat, a typical 30F day the house uses ~10k BTUs/hr on average, on a 0F design day it's about 30k BTU. I'm curious what a water heat pump in that output range looks like from a cost and equipment footprint perspective, gas boilers don't last for ever.
