dehumidifiers and blatent ignorance

The basement's a bit damp even when the downspout works and the water doesn't seep in through the walls and flood the floor. And a friend tweeted a reference to an article about dehumidifiers. So I start browsing.

One of the things I find is this article, which includes:

... since we're setting it up to drain automatically we can buy the smallest one they make. The pint size is only relation to the capacity of the tank and has no bearing on the compressor size. They're all the same. So at least we saved money buy getting a smaller one this time (30 pint).

Oh, for *#@'s sake.  Is it something about the web that encourages people to make categorical pronouncements that are demonstrably wrong, or does the web just allow people to expose their ignorance to a wider audience?  The "pint size" is a dehumidification capability measure indicating the number of pints extractable by the unit in a 24 hour period.  It's related to the reservoir capacity only in that something that sucks out 70 pints in a 24 hour period probably should hold more than a quart.  See this, and download the Energy Star spreadsheet from that site to compare the efficiencies of different models and manufacturers: .  Look at the Lowe's web page to verify that the 50 and 70 pint/24h models from Frigidaire both have a 17 gallon (136 pint) reservoir.

Assume she needs to remove 20 pints (9.5 liters) per day, about right for a "wet" basement of 1000 square feet (see the calculator).  Her model does 1.4 L/kWh; there's a 45 p/d model of the same humidifier that does 1.8 L/kWh, which would save 1.5 kWh/day or about $4.60 per month.  Could be as much as $55 per year.  For my case (12.3 L/day, 8 months per year), the 70 p/d Frigidaire model would pay for the $96 price difference from the 25p/d model in less than 14 months.

This sort of thing makes "expert" an expletive.  At least it irritated me enough to learn something, though the value of the time I spent is probably nearly the value of the cost savings the knowledge enables.

poem

So I wake at 530am on the first day of a business trip with a poem (of all things) half-formed in my head and screaming to be written down.  Huh.  Well, it's here.  Might as well deal with it.

The sun won't look at you any more.
She buries her head in the fluffy white clouds
and all the cheerful calls of the birds
and industrious buzzing of the insects
will not draw her forth.

I envy her resolve.

Cost/benefit analysis: contracting lawn services

Shelley asks:

So what's their hourly rate? Nine minutes is an awfully small divisor.

Fair question.

Nine minutes to do the yard.  This is probably a best case; it was the end of the day and they undoubtedly wanted to get home.  You need to assume travel time as part of the cost; if the customers are closely located, it's reasonable to estimate that doing my yard added fifteen minutes to their task list.  They do it weekly, so let's say one hour per month.  They charge $175 per month; that includes special cleanup during spring and fall, which certainly takes longer.  Still, with two people, let's say it's about $85 per hour.

As long as we're analyzing:  By invoking the Google we can conclude that a standard residential mower has a swath of about 21".  Commercial ones that seem to be about the size I saw through my window are about 52".  Given overlap, it'd take me three passes for every one they took.  Furthermore, even if I bought a mower that diverted power to its wheels, I'd still take a lot longer to traverse the yard once: the guy really flew.  So say I'd be pushing (2-3mph) at a quarter the speed he was driving (8-12mph).  Round down to be conservative, and in combination of the width and length figure it'd take me ten times as long to cover the same ground.

So: 1.5h per mow.  Add a half hour for trimming the borders and scraping the impacted grass off the mower for storage.  4 mows per month says 8 hours per month, absolute minimum.  My time is worth more than than the $23 per hour plus hayfever I'd get by doing it myself.

Plus, they actually do the job; I'd put it off as long as I could, be grumpy when I knew it needed doing but didn't want to, and resentful when I finally forced myself to do it.

Seems like a deal to me.

The power of professionals

The house I now live in in Roseville is on a quarter-acre lot (0.26 acres, according to the flyer).  The house itself has a footprint of about 1300 square feet, and there's no garden, so there's an awful lot of grass.  I tend to allergies and hayfever, so the thought of mowing that just sent shivers up my spine.  I contracted it out to a company called "Worry Free", who helped me last year with shoveling the snow at my previous house (another task I'm not thrilled about, but in this case really couldn't do since I was gone 3 out of 4 weeks).

The other houses in the neighborhood have similar sized lots, and I see the poor bastards out there on the weekends.  The renter to the east, toiling away.  The husband to the west, same.  Both pushing their nice gas-powered mowers with about an 18" swath, back and forth, forth and back, for the better part of an hour.  Imagine doing this thirty years ago with a manual rotary mower.  Life these days is better, but still: No.

My guys?  Nine minutes.  Timed it.  Pickup pulls up with the trailer.  Guy 1 gets out, grabs the weed whacker, and takes off toward the fence and the shrubbery, trimming.  Guy 2 pulls down the back gate, disappears inside, there's a roaring noise, and out he shoots on a self-propelled mower with a good 4-foot diameter swath, him standing on a little two-wheeled platform that drags behind.  Thing's gotta do ten miles an hour on the straightaways.  Turns on a dime; reverses same.  Three minutes in the front; just under five in the back.  Back and forth, forth and back, out the side gate to the street and up the ramp.  Pull down the trailer door and off they go.

Nine minutes.

Awesome.

good grief

Quote's too long for a tweet, but just can't be left to pass without comment:

From this article:

8. Do something simple to surprise people. At the d.school, they painted the women's restroom lipstick pink, and hung disco balls. "That makes people realize that somebody cares about your experience," Kembel says.

Actually, never mind the comment.  There's nothing to say in response to that.

twiblog

I said I wouldn't touch Facebook again for a while, but as long as I'm wasting a perfectly good Sunday morning sitting at the computer instead of making cornmeal blueberry pancakes (sorry, Shelley, not that into bananas):

For getting notices of new blog posts tweeted, the instructions are here.  Do they work?  We'll see.

A limited application of the other direction would also be nice---viz., a button that points to my twitter feed (not auto-posting tweets, which is just (a) wrong, (b) pathetic giving how rarely I twit, and (c) a complete conflation of conceptually different media). There's probably a gadget that can be added.

But no: for now, baby steps. Especially since I seem to have obtained my first unknown follower on twitter.  In the words of Morris Day, "Hello; do I know you?"

in my face...

Fine. I give up. Facebook rules the world. What the heck. I'll sign up.

I've followed the Sophos recommendations on security settings, which took quite a while to wade through.  If Google's mantra is "Do no evil", I think Facebook's is "G'head, it's just a little apple".

It's a actually a little scary, seeing the "Who you might know" list.  A couple (recently) former co-workers: ok.  A close friend or two: fine.  A woman I went on a couple dates with: weird.  But a guy who worked for one of our subcontractors off and on a year or two ago?  Somebody who, if he's the Murray I think he is, came down from Phoenix twice to play with a Taiko drum group I was in four years ago?  WTF?

I think those privacy settings are Good Thing (tm).  And that this is enough Facebook adventuresomeness for a while; let's just let it lie fallow and see what sprouts.