I’m just north of you and it was amazing how good that new heat pump is now.

Check out multi-head mini-splits too. You can zone your home and have different temperatures in different areas. And it was cheaper than one big unit of the same power.

For my shop a pair of mini-splits was not only more power efficient but it offers redundancy in case one shits the bed. Always have a backup.

For a larger zoned houses, running 2 separate smaller systems means less pipes, quieter outdoor units and better overall system efficiency.

A note about swapping a furnace to a heat pump. Heat pumps need more air flow. The heat isn’t as hot but they make more heat by volume. So that can mean redoing ducting. Sometimes adding a multi head system and programming your old furnace to just act as a fan and stir the air in the house is a possibility. Plus our furnace is now the backup in case the heat pumps go down.

Check out the Rav4 prime instead. There is a reason it costs more.

I won’t buy a Chinese vehicle myself but I welcome the competition. China is the biggest auto maker in the world and they don’t fuck around.

GM is ready to go nuts on EV’s. Would you believe they are the top EV seller in China? They sell a $5000 EV under the Wuling brand. But they are busily building 4 gigafactory sized battery plants in America and are converting 24 of their 42 factories to be pure EV by 2025. Check out the new electric Silverado. That starts shipping within the next couple of months and it is primed to mop the floor with Ford. 640km (400mi) of range and 250kW rapid charging in an aluminum chassis. They aren’t fucking around anymore. Their proprietary battery is repairable, 24 swappable modules and is rated at 2000 cycles. 2000 cycles x 640km is 1.28 million km.

I work with industrial machinery. Cars are ‘insanely cheap’ by comparison.

However China is coming for the the Canadian and US auto markets. China bought Volvo and polestar is a Geele. The Chinese electric cars are actually getting good and the domestic makers are running scared. The round of 10-20% price cuts you just saw in electric cars won’t be the last. China is bringing price competition.

Your car is probably full of Chinese parts now.

Needs a NSFW version.

I’m all over flow batteries because the transportation industry will gobble up every lithium battery we make for the next decade or two. There will be limits with how much lithium we can process and flow batteries represent a totally different stream.

This. Unless you are making out with your battery, 12v is incredibly safe unless you arc come metal across the contacts. Doing a more powerful PV system right these days means stepping up to 48V and even that is pretty safe to handle with bare dry (not wet) hands. Maybe thin skinned baby hands will feel it? Caloused man hands don’t give 2 shits.

My solar PV array is 48v. A lot of the electric forklifts I work on are 48. It’s fine. Electrical Code changes at 60V and then you need to take it more seriously.

And if you don’t feel like fucking around spot welding a battery pack you can buy off the shelf LFP batteries that are a drop in replacement for lead acid including the BMS baked right into a plastic shell. They even look like a lead battery but are 1/3 the weight. Motorcycle versions even have a low battery protection system and will shut off at 20% life left when the bike is parked. Press a button on the battery and it wakes right up again.

As your lawyer, I strongly advise you to smuggle in some self adhesive googly eyes on your next visit.

If you can’t find peel and stick eyes, glue on elastoplast bandaids and peel when you are ready to stick.

If you get a free standing heat pump, get a 2 hose model. 1 hose models are for stupid folks who don’t understand that they are vacuuming out the very air they are trying to heat or cool.

Media makes one with a fake giant single hose that is actually split into 2 hoses.

But a warning. As good as the modern inverter based (!) portables are I don’t think they deal with condenser icing very well. The smallest mini split heat pump you can buy is by far the best solution. Aging Wheels on youtube went through the install of a mini-split. He’s pretty inept but overly confident and still figured it out just fine. It will outlive the portable unit, is quieter and is far more energy efficient.

Whatever you buy, make sure it is an inverter model. I can’t stress how big of a deal that feature is. It’s half the power consumption by the time the dust settles.

I am heating a 3400 sq fr shop to 70F with a pair of 24k BTU mini splits and they are brilliant. I’m pretty sure one can do the job at the freezing mark. I am monitoring the power consumption and they average 800W continuous draw each. It’s nothing. The inverter allows the compressors to turn slow. The ‘low’ mode is super efficient because you have a massive amount of radiator area per cooling or heating. All the fans throttle down and it just pours the heat out.

This is the correct answer. It is cheap and simple.

I specifically look for hackers and inquisitive minds when I hire. I always tell people to bring in photos of DIY projects they have done and to not worry about how bad some of them are as I understand how ugly prototypes and junk building is.

Keep up the stupid shit! It will get you far and you don’t know why yet. But you’ll find out.

If you own a small business, for the love of god pay someone else to do your taxes. It isn’t worth it and it is probably ‘free’ when you factor in the tax money, time and/or headaches they will save you. Plus there is a far less chance you’ll have an audit when the government sees that you are hiring a certified independent organization to deal with that crap.

I made this mistake for a few years before I wised up. Once I went fully paperless and outsourced it was easy.

If you work for someone else, taxes are easy. Do it yourself unless you have complex investments.

'It's hard to win an argument with a smart person. It's damn near impossible to win an argument with a stupid person.'

-Bill Murray

Yes I have. Did it when renewing my drivers license but it varies based on state or province. Took 30 seconds.

Damn, I wouldn’t give up a spare kidney.

However I am a motorcycle rider. Always encourage all your rider buddies to ‘check every single donor box’. If I am splattered all over the front of a Mack truck they can do whatever they like with the leftover bits. I’m not using them anymore.

Thailand has a lot of jagged coasts.

And according to the local tour guide, every single island is James Bond island!

Crypto was never an ‘investment’. It was gambling in a pyramid scheme that generates no value. It’s money is simply generated by the biggest idiot in the chain. And the biggest idiot is left holding the bag.

Who knew a 1920’s style unregulated financial market would end poorly? History is repeating itself in a hundred year cycle. Pandemic, depression, oligarchs, financial implosion looming.

I for one am looking forward to the return of art deco.

What a nothing article that explains little about the actual motor.

I used to always go straight to MAYDAY on the discover channel. Air disaster show.

It’s about fucking time.

The rest of just bought toaster ovens that have infrared heaters top and bottom. It works just as good but it’s also a convection toaster oven.

I can’t drive to Rupert st without pronouncing it Ruprecht

Airbus seems to think Hydrogen is quite viable in aircraft. But what do aviation engineers know?

https://www.cnn.com/travel/amp/airbus-fuel-cell-engine-rolls-royce-easyjet-engine-c2e-spc-intl/index.html

Liquid H2 stores down pretty small. Not as small as Jet A, but given that it is half the weight of diesel even the most die hard engineer takes interest in a massive weight savings. It does require a rethink of current aircraft configurations but as soon as you start talking electric motors you can move propulsion into all kinds of new places. Blended wing designs are likely. (See the render in the article).

And you don’t need any refrigeration equipment with liquid H2 as long as you have a jet/fuel cell running just boiling off the liquid keeps it plenty cold.

It’s a materials question. Unless you can pull a lithium astroid in from orbit, there just isn’t enough materials to build high efficiency green energy storage. We will see if these flow batteries scale and they aren’t meant for more than a couple of days of use.

We already HAVE power plants. A lot of them. And owners vested in not shutting them up forever. Converting them to run as backups and just putting a shit ton of tanks out back is easy and fast. One day we’ll figure out something better. But when you need 21 gigawatts quiet cold night it is hard to beat.

And you aren’t getting a ship, train or plane to move on batteries very far. Crossing oceans needs something potent like H2.

Fuel cell efficiency is over 60%. But so is a power plant stationary turbine with heat recovery.

Here’s the thing with green energy storage. Round trip efficiency… actually not that important. Because green energy is so plentiful and easy.

We need 95% of the lithium batteries for the transportation grid. Batteries are an ‘hours’ solution for the power grid. Flow batteries, liquid metal batteries will be king and yes they are an ‘hours’ solution.

Tank farms full of hydrogen are a ‘weeks’ solution for the power grid. We ALREADY have the machinery to make H2 into energy. Existing gas fired power plants. You can even convert a coal power plant. It’s all heat to energy steam systems and it is around 60% efficient.

There isn’t enough pumped hydro. And it’s hard to install in 99% of the areas. Plus the massive environmental backlash and NIMBY’s. Unless the ‘underwater spheres’ reverse pumped hydro systems prove themselves cost effective. It’s too spendy right now.

THIS. Tune the door first. Also examine the spring. You’d be amazed at how many 2 spring doors have 1 broken spring.

Change those in pairs and unless you know what you are doing hire a pro.