Shop Time w/T.W. Friends. Torque wrench on spark plugs, we need answers so cast your vote now

I'm not posting a picture of myself...

 

What software are you using?

 

haha I don’t post pics of me either!

 

Last night looking west on my way home, the red was much deeper in person:



Just now, day is looking good, maybe I can get some of the ice off the driveway:

 

That indoor temp is a little warm...

 

mines at 69?
Can’t go wrong doing 69!

 

Butt, no, I keep my heat set at 60°...

 

70 is still cold in this house, it is drafty and the floors are very cold.
How cold you ask? Sometimes the snow in the treads of my shoes won't melt overnight.

I grew up in a house with a steam furnace with the cast iron radiators, it was amazingly comfortable, 65 felt warm. The cellar and therefore the floor was always warm.

 

We have a 1800’s house done a lot of work to it. But it’s still an old house but paid for so I’m cool with an old farm house.
Forced hot air and a dirt floor basement with the beams only cut on 2 sides.
Still has bark on the other 2 sides.
I have vents that I can use to blow heat in the basement.
Pretty cozy I’m old and don’t want to be cold!
Having natural gas I do heat hot water dryer and cooking for about 100$ a month.

we actually used top burners on kitchen stove Friday when power went out to keep things comfortable. She had stuff to cook for our Xmas dinner Saturday anyway.

 

Oil heat here and it's some $$$$$$ to run anything above 63°

When I moved in it was the source of my hot water as well. I since then added an electric heater and changed the control to be a cold start boiler. I've used very little oil since I first started it up and probably added about 40 gallons to it. Started off with 3/4 of a tank and am just below the 3/4 mark now. It did get down to 5/8 when it got super cold, but I went to the store and filled all my cans which brought it back up.

 

She keeps ours on 66° and I sleep in a shirt, thick socks, long undies....and sometimes a sockhat (toboggan to my northern friends)

 

Past Tech with Rusty - steam edition

Steam heating systems are a marvel of simplicity, a multi story building can be heated with no pumps and a minimum of pipes serving several radiators on different floors. Our Wrenchmen forefathers were pretty darn smart.

These systems were commonly installed in more expensive homes until about the early 1960's. Many are still reliably working today.

One down side to a steam system is mild weather efficiency. If you only want to raise the temperature a few degrees you still have wait to heat all the volume of the system and will often overshoot the desired set point. A warm air unit on the other hand would cycle once or twice and be done. Obviously there is no duct work to add central air conditioning either.




Operation:
1) Steam at a very low pressure, about .5 psi, (yes 1/2 pound) travels through the vertical risers and fills the radiators, this purges the air out of the system in front of the steam

2) The temperature sensitive air valve closes when steam contacts it, trapping the (expensive) steam in the radiator, all the (cold) air is purged at this point

3) The steam condenses back into water as it heats the radiator which heats the room

4) As the radiator cools the air valve cools too, it opens allowing the system to vent as the condensed water drains back to the boiler in the same pipe it came up in as steam

Radiator air vent:



The small shutter controls how fast the air is allowed to vent out, this is how you adjust the evenness of heating the home. Radiators far away from the boiler need to vent quicker, closer ones slower.

What is inside:



There are a few different styles of vents, some will have our useful old friend the bi-metallic element inside instead of the bellows as seen above, as it heats up it bends and closes the valve. The bi-metallic style has a distinctive "tink" as the valve opens and closes.

 

I am at the opposite end of the heating spectrum. We just moved into our new house in late July and are heating/cooling with heat pumps. No fossil fuel bills at all but our electricity is getting expensive. For the last month it was $400 but that is for about 1800 square feet, ranch style home. We have the house separated into a living space for my wife and myself and a 700 sq ft apartment on the opposite end for my mother. So considering it is essentially a two unit the electricity bill is not as bad as it sounds. I estimate that we are probably paying about half of the electricity bill each month for household usage and half for heat. $200 a month for 7 or 8 months is not too bad. At least that is what I keep telling myself. We need to look into solar! I have read about a company where you can pay the solar company essentially what your normal electricity bill would be but you are paying the money to the solar company for installing a solar system instead of the electricity supplier. Sort of like the difference between renting and owning. Same price each month but in the end you own the solar set-up.

 

we did this kinda stuff when bought in 88.
A lot of upgrades now someone can flush the toilet while you’re in the shower!
I’m pretty happy with what we got now!

 

He said friendly...

 

Mine is set to 71 when we're at home and 65 when we aren't and when we're sleeping.

My wife hasn't complained at those settings for a few years but she will fire up the gas fireplace on occasion.

 

The shovel showed up and is assembled.

I opted for trying a blemished unit for $15 less ($55 instead of $70).

Small mark on the handle:



Marks on the bracket:



Slight discoloration on the blade:



I'm going to do worse to this thing the first time I use it so the blemishes are fine.

Now to go try it out!

 

All done with work for the year!

 

Christmas decorations have been taken down and stored until November!

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years guys. Been a while since popping in here.. been busy on an entirely new level the last 2 months since my Promotion.. and got a hefty raise recently to go with it. BUT.. its a lot more of this type of shit, daily.. Larger parts, max capacities, more engineering and fixturing to even make them work within our envelopes, pre/post weldments, +/- Tenths in multiple places, hand editing code to manipulate table rotations and tool changes, probing routines to skew parts, etc. This is just an example and all for this one PN, for this one family of parts, for this one customer. It's been a wild ride so far... here's to 2023.

wanted to show off some of the highlights of this project.