Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: When the Weather is the News, in reply to Lilith __,
Shredding is probably more secure. ;-)
There are some things you can't make more secure by shredding them. Burning them down to nothing at all, however, is pretty hard to glean much from. You can't know how much stuff there was there in the first place.
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Hard News: Is that it?, in reply to giovanni tiso,
And so you might as well hire somebody with experience, since you can fire them at will anyway and treat them in all ways like most other nations treat school leavers and young apprentices.
I've noticed a heck of a lot more elderly people working in fast food recently. From an employer or customer point of view, it's great. They work much better. From a societal point of view, it's just a bad sign. Why are they even needing to work, and what's left for kids? When even working in Subway requires a lifetime of experience....
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Hard News: When the Weather is the News, in reply to Che Tibby,
and, they need electricity to run. we pretty much discounted them immediately once we saw that.
You can still save electricity using things that require electricity to run. Unless your complaint is that it won't work when the power is out?
Not that I'd get one. To me a major point of a fireplace is to be able to burn things you want to get rid of. I'd save a lot of money and time and get land back if I could burn off a proportion of the organic waste that grows here. I had to fill an entire skip with it not so long ago. And I like tending fires.
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Hard News: When the Weather is the News, in reply to Che Tibby,
buy a cheap greenhouse thermometer. run the cord up to the "outdoors" (ceiling), and you can monitor when it's too cool to vent into the house.
That's all automated in HRV. It ups the airflow during those short periods where the air in the ceiling is in the direction of the temperature that you want to go. So if it's warmer up there than inside, then it starts pumping down the warm air and you're getting solar powered heating. In the evening during summer the reverse happens, it cools the house down fast, without having to leave windows and doors open, so it keeps the mosquito factor down.
But! Most of the time the heat in the ceiling is the opposite to the way you want it to go. At night, it's mostly too cold. In summer, during the day, it's too hot. At those times, it switches to the lowest air turnover it can. You can turn it off altogether, but I do believe that the dryer air has been beneficial to our health. We don't have any mold issues any more. It is not free, though, that actually costs money, because of the requirement to heat the air. Hard to say if the cost of mold damage outweighs this - having clothes rot in your cupboard can be expensive. But it's definitely gross and unhealthy.
As far as solar power goes, I'm pretty sure that solar water heating is a better cost saver by a long shot than HRV is. But insulation had an immediate noticeable impact on power bills and the subjective feeling of comfort.
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I'm very dubious about the power savings of HRV alone, which is what I had for the first year. Yes, it does use wasted solar power, which is of some value. But it turns the air over rapidly, which cools the house down any time the air up there is colder than inside, which is pretty much most of the time you most want heat. The main advantage is the dryness of the air, which can be heated more efficiently, and it's healthier.
But the insulation has made an instant difference. I got the government partial subsidy, and bought the thing on tick, and it's still saving money. No brainer, really, don't know why I didn't do it sooner.
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Hard News: When the Weather is the News, in reply to Emma Hart,
I was going to describe the depth in our front yard, then got distracted by wondering why snow is one of those things only ever measured in inches.
It's not what you're thinking. In the Warm Room, inches are king, but in the snow, centimeters sound a lot better. I've only ever heard it in metric. I wonder if I just unconsciously filter out imperialist measurements.
All around the world, the kilo is the king
as I was heard from American gangsta rappers last night. It took me a while to work out why they were evangelizing the metric system, until I realized what substance they were measuring, and how much bank they had to work out in their heads, that made metrics so compelling.
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Hard News: When the Weather is the News, in reply to David Haywood,
Well, I think perhaps that post was written at a low moment, when I had lost my usual optimism.
Sick kids will do that to you. I know, cause I saw Cinderella Man the other night. Actually, I know, because it's happened to me. There's nothing that saps optimism like suffering children.
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Hard News: When the Weather is the News, in reply to David Haywood,
So, unless CERA can do a deal on our special circumstances, it looks like we won’t be able to stay in Christchurch.
Well, there is always renting, I guess. Could be a good option until the earth stops shaking your assets to pieces.
The four-year-old is sick, and the seven-month-old fractious (possibly getting sick).
Poor little things. How awful.
In its pre-earthquake state, the house was insulated above code, so I guess the polystyrene that I duct-taped over the place where the house has broken in two isn’t helping much.
It's probably making a huge difference over what it would be if you hadn't done that. Your spirit through this has been amazing.
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-1 celcius in the roof of my house this morning. First time the HRV has shown a negative reading. Inside, 16. No heating was on. We had the place insulated this year. It really works. Big power saver.
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Hard News: Is that it?, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
I'd struggle to find a good argument for why the government should subsidise employers to discriminate against young people.
As a small step towards something better from an already fucked system, it makes sense. But for sure there's no way I'd have ever thought that youth rates were a good idea. I grew up with them, having my pay adjusted at every birthday through my teens, on the paper round I did, despite the fact that the round never changed. I was delivering the same papers to the same houses when I was 13 as when 16.
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