OT heater controls

When I was still cutting firewood from the woods myself, I tried to fell the trees in mid-summer and leave them lay with the tops on for a fortnight or two. The notion being that the leaves remained alive and drew a lot of water out of the wood before drying up themselves, presumably hastening the seasoning of the wood. Never did a high-tech evaluation by measururing wood water content in those trees versus controls cut up immediatly as you do.

Not always possible as summer demands put woods work off into winter as often as not. Now I guarantee well-seasoned wood by staying a year ahead. I'm about to put this coming winter's wood, all split and in a pile, into a closed shed. Wood for the next winter is in the yard already; I'll start bucking it up and splitting it in November.

Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

----------------

I've taken a while to clean up a live tree that blew down, and didn't notice much change in how wet the ends felt. Normally I weigh the heaviest logs only once as I am concerned about overloading my equipment, the weights of the green log and cut lumber are what matter, i.e how much can/should I lift by hand. I have weighed and marked a few logs when green and then when fully seasoned, going onto the sawmill, about half the weight was water. The rapid change occurs when they are cut to length and exposed to sun and wind, then the ends feel drier after 3 days. I cut and stacked a recently deceased tree a few weeks ago and have been checking on it. A dark streak from embedded metal was initially black and has turned green, perhaps it's brass.

A hex nut on a spin casting rod works well for me to get baler twine up there which is usually suficient.

Back when I ran a lot of wire one of the tools they sold was a spring gun with a spin cast reel on it. I could run wire faster, further, and more accurately with push pull rods.

Might have been good for throwing a line over a branch though. LOL.

For pulling wires across T-Bar ceilings I used a RC buggy running in reverse (so the driven wheels hit the T Bar first) pulling a pull string. pulled over 200 feet across a 35 foot ceiling and dropped the buggy through a single lifted tile hole to the POS terminal below to run Cat5 network connection (from an upper mezzanine at one end of the building)

Back when I ran a lot of wire one of the tools they sold was a spring gun with a spin cast reel on it. I could run wire faster, further, and more accurately with push pull rods.

Might have been good for throwing a line over a branch though. LOL.

Bob La Londe

----------------------

I started with a casting reel and a slingshot, which worked well on isolated trees without a lot of foliage. The problem here is when the line passes through the upper branches of the target's and adjacent trees and the extra drag slows and stops the weight. 6" of 3/4" steel rod from an air cannon is usually enough to bring the line down anyway, I just have to be careful of what it could fall onto, near the house I use a soft arborist throw bag. The trees are mature red oaks around 100' high, most without branches below

40-50' so unless rotted or excessively curved they make good clear lumber.

Shortly after buying the house I found two broken chainsaws in a basket at a yard sale and combined them into one that worked. Looking for trees to practice on, I decided that three large oaks behind the house and leaning toward it were good candidates. I tossed lines through high forks and pulled them back to cut. Two were solid but the third snapped off and fell toward me when just past vertical, the base had rotted out except for an inch or so of wood under the bark. It could have fallen through the roof at any moment.

You are not supposed to lay wire on the grid most places, even if you do there are plenty of installations with glass insulation laying on the grid, and if you go into really old buildings you may find one of a few reasons why you are not supposed to lay wire on the grid. A mat of wires installed over generations of new technology upgrades. I've lifted panels in old schools where I had to get high enough on the ladder to lift with the flat of my back.

Its been a few years since I retired from being a licensed communication contractor, but I seem to recall that Cat5e certification also specifies that the wire not be laid on the grid or ceiling, but is run in wide j-hooks or similar supported every 48 inches. One of the reasons is of course the strength of the grid (individual support wires if installed properly are much stronger), but another is potential for noise from devices mounted in the grid like florescent light cans if wires run close by.

I have seen guys run a buggy (nobody who worked for me) and its relatively fast if you can see it for a single wire pull. The strain of a single wire being pulled across the grid isn't likely to damage the grid, but 40-100 pf them being pulled to a bullpen in an office or to a classroom will absolutely break grid if you don't hang a roller, or at least a hook (*not the old round cast hooks, d-rings, or bent wire bridle rings) so it doesn't run over the edge of the cross T.

If your local codes & job specs allow laying the wire on the grid, there is no insulation or mass of old wiring laying on the grid, and you are only pulling one or two wires I can see I can see an RC buggy being very fast.

(*not the old round cast hooks, d-rings, or bent wire bridle rings) They do not support the wire over a wide enough area to prevent a sub minimum radius kink from forming and causing your wire to broadcast like an antenna loosing signal strength.

P.S. My uncle Paul La Londe (rip) invented and shared the patent (among others) for the locking tabs on the most popular ceiling grid made by DONN Products, and later purchased by USG.

You are not supposed to lay wire on the grid most places, ...

------------------

Are there Do's and Don't for routing single pair thermocouple wires over suspended ceilings or through walls? The ceiling tiles are fire retardant around the wood stove. I have a spool of the shielded extension wire but haven't seen (detected?) a serious problem with the regular J and K unshielded pairs. The readout shows water boiling on the basement stove at

213F, within the tolerance.

The scrap dealer wanted $1 a foot but I talked him into the per-pound price because it wasn't selling. From $100 to $5.

It always best to maintain minimum 12" separation between low voltage and high voltage wire. When they must cross do so as close to perpendicular as possible. Avoid long parallel runs. Avoid running near noise sources such as fans, ballasts, motors, PA speakers, transformers, amplifiers, radio equipment etc. Always avoid locations that can damage wire and avoid sharp bends or excessive coils.

Coils are a choke. I have seen Cat5e fail a test (I still have a Penta Scanner + around here somewhere), because somebody had coiled up a huge service loop above the ceiling. Cat 5e actually specifies a short service loop above the jack (in the ceiling), but that just means one

1-1/2 to 2 10-12 inch loops. Not a 30 turns of excess wire piled up because the tech didn't feel like cutting it off and hauling the excess to the dumpster. On long runs it can also cause a test fail due to length for obvious reasons.

Plenums generally require plenum rated wire, and fire stop sealant when making penetrations through plenums or through firewalls (garage to house in residential). (Older homes may not have a fire wall between the house and garage). Generally you are not supposed to run wire in an air duct or air return (with some limited exceptions), but sometimes plenums, like a pressurized grid ceiling, are unavoidable.

If its low voltage most places will not even look twice at it (except as noted above) regardless of what the code might say. Fire alarm being the exception often getting rigorous inspections, and local AHJs making demands beyond what it says in the NFPA code book.

I don't know if noise would be an issue on a thermo couple wire. Would induced noise/voltage affect the reading of the thermister?

Yes, I know "technically" PA speakers are considered low voltage, but they can be 25V, 70V, or 100V line to the speakers with 70V being the most common. If you happen to be holding the wires when somebody makes an announcement you will notice it. Amplified analog voice is noise for electrical purposes. If you are tracing with an inductive amplifier you only have to be sorta close to hear a voice announcement made over unshielded PA wire. Shield and grounded at the amp is best for PA wire. You can still get noise near the speaker/transformer.

I specifically said low voltage, because there are some old line voltage thermostats out there. I didn't know that the first time I blew up a low voltage thermostat. Yes, I had an electrical explosion. I was stunned (not literally) when I double checked it with a meter and it read 230V. I replaced it with a power supply, two relays, and a "modern" thermostat. LOL.

Its generally bad form to lay wire on top of a ceiling, but its done all the time and usually nobody says anything. In an unfinished non storage attic it may not be a huge deal.

I don't know if noise would be an issue on a thermo couple wire. Would induced noise/voltage affect the reading of the thermister?

----------------------

A thermocouple is simply two wires of different alloys welded together at the sensing end. Iron and copper wire produce a temperature dependent voltage and both are used, but paired with other special alloys such as constantan, copper + nickel, to give a higher voltage that changes more linearly with temperature. The signal level is millivolts, at low impedance.

good ideas there.

The instruments that read them usually have high rejection for common-mode interference (the same on both wires) from adjacent power lines or electrical leakage into the heated metal being sensed. In my case the wood stove's metal chimney is grounded because I've heard a spark jump from it during a thunderstorm.

They gain some immunity from normal-mode interference (voltage difference) because the impedance is very low, it's just a shorted loop of wire, whereas a thermistor may have a resistance of thousands of Ohms.

They are simple to make with a spot welder or acetylene torch, relatively low cost and some (mine) are able to operate in flame at 2000F or more.

I have a couple of type K's that I use occasionally to check the temp in my forge and my foundry furnace . I've seen up to IIRC 2300 or so when melting brass/bronzes .

I have a couple of type K's that I use occasionally to check the temp in my forge and my foundry furnace . I've seen up to IIRC 2300 or so when melting brass/bronzes . Snag

------------------------ The TM-902C is an inexpensive display for Type K. It doesn't quite reach hardening temperature for steel but it's good for tempering. Multiple meters don't load down the signal, I have four on the stove box thermocouple, to show when to go down and feed it. The TP4000ZC multimeter can record Type K temperature readings on a computer, for instance the cycling times and temperature range of your refrigerator or water heater and how long a camping cooler will keep food safe.

On 8/28/2023 7:14 PM, Jim Wilkins wrote:

Of course. I can only blame a brain fart, or being in a rush to share what I consider to be the most important cliff notes about low voltage residential/commercial wiring. Yeah, more likely just a brain fart.

I could probably put together a half dozen lectures on the subject and not cover even the limited set of everything I know or have learned from experience about running communication wire, and I am now almost 7 years out of date.

One of the things I was always aware of is that people might in the future put higher demands on the wire I ran than its original intended purpose. For example. I once got a call to set up a temporary cable network for registration in a high school building (cafeteria or gym, I forget) with no network cable. Aerial and underground work were out of the question due to both time and cost. I found an unused telco with a Cat3 twist, found it would run 10mbps, and I strung some extra cable. When I was done it cable radared (Penta Scanner) at around 580 feet. Ethernet is only supposed to run 100 meters, and often it fails at higher speeds at not much over 100meters unless you run a hub or switch in between to divide the distance, or run fiber and a fiber translator due to timing issues. Basic multimode is rock solid to about 1.2 kilometers. Any, way putting a 10mbps ONLY mini hub in the room and hooking all the registration computers to that I got them up and running. I told their IT guy it would be slow, but since they were only sending simple data (mostly text records) it should be usable. Later I asked him how it worked out. He said there were no complaints. Not even about the speed. Obviously Cat3 is not rated for the same applications as Cat5/5e/6 etc, but who ever installed it did a good job and it passed 10mbps tests with a Penta Scanner (except that it failed distance), and it worked. It was originally intended only for a basic digital key phone system. I did a lot of work for them over the years. I usually had 6 or 7 open purchase orders for them for different schools. That wasn't even my best "schools" client.

One guy I worked for years (30 maybe) ago would always pull an extra wire whenever he pulled a wire for anything. It made him seem like a miracle worker sometimes. He'd send me on an emergency "add one" more and tell me exactly where I would find an extra wire above a ceiling or in a panel.

Whenever I had commercial clients (schools, warehouses, manufacturers, etc) add buildings to a campus I'd tell them run conduits for everything you think you might need, and then add an extra 2 inch conduit that will remain empty. You or your replacement will appreciate it being there. It will saves you thousands down the road over what it costs to just do it now. It did. Many times. Sometimes before they finished the new building.

Oh, and always try to vacuum a pull string through an empty conduit first before you try to blow it, if it doesn't already have one. Blowing mud and dirt all over somebody's office is bad form. What I would do if I had to blow it was have a helper keep a vacuum over the other end.

I may hit you up down the road on that. I was thinking about maybe someday making aluminum bronze. I have a shelf full of old burned up motors out back of the shop to maybe someday do something like that with. Metal is expensive these days. I hardly throw any of it away anymore.

"Bob La Londe" wrote in message news:ucl88d$2bbs9$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me...

I could probably put together a half dozen lectures on the subject and not cover even the limited set of everything I know or have learned from experience about running communication wire, and I am now almost 7 years out of date.

One of the things I was always aware of is that people might in the future put higher demands on the wire I ran than its original intended purpose. For example. I once got a call to set up a temporary cable network for registration in a high school building (cafeteria or gym, I forget) with no network cable. Aerial and underground work were out of the question due to both time and cost. I found an unused telco with a Cat3 twist, found it would run 10mbps, and I strung some extra cable. When I was done it cable radared (Penta Scanner) at around 580 feet. Ethernet is only supposed to run 100 meters, and often it fails at higher speeds at not much over 100meters unless you run a hub or switch in between to divide the distance, or run fiber and a fiber translator due to timing issues. Basic multimode is rock solid to about 1.2 kilometers. Any, way putting a 10mbps ONLY mini hub in the room and hooking all the registration computers to that I got them up and running. I told their IT guy it would be slow, but since they were only sending simple data (mostly text records) it should be usable. Later I asked him how it worked out. He said there were no complaints. Not even about the speed. Obviously Cat3 is not rated for the same applications as Cat5/5e/6 etc, but who ever installed it did a good job and it passed 10mbps tests with a Penta Scanner (except that it failed distance), and it worked. It was originally intended only for a basic digital key phone system. I did a lot of work for them over the years. I usually had 6 or 7 open purchase orders for them for different schools. That wasn't even my best "schools" client.

One guy I worked for years (30 maybe) ago would always pull an extra wire whenever he pulled a wire for anything. It made him seem like a miracle worker sometimes. He'd send me on an emergency "add one" more and tell me exactly where I would find an extra wire above a ceiling or in a panel.

Whenever I had commercial clients (schools, warehouses, manufacturers, etc) add buildings to a campus I'd tell them run conduits for everything you think you might need, and then add an extra 2 inch conduit that will remain empty. You or your replacement will appreciate it being there. It will saves you thousands down the road over what it costs to just do it now. It did. Many times. Sometimes before they finished the new building.

Oh, and always try to vacuum a pull string through an empty conduit first before you try to blow it, if it doesn't already have one. Blowing mud and dirt all over somebody's office is bad form. What I would do if I had to blow it was have a helper keep a vacuum over the other end. Bob La Londe

-------------------------------

Thanks. My conduit experience is limited to within machines for auto factories, required to protect UAW fork lift drivers from electrocution when they punctured the machine with the forks. I've used some in the garage and will need to put solar wiring in conduit once I decide where. Thanks to your reminder I bought a 1" bender at a flea market, completing my home use set. I have a wheelbarrow with legs of conduit.

The places I've worked that needed networking always had an IT department to handle it. They jealously guarded their jobs from the techs who were much better educated and could have done their work if we had the time. It was funny to attend an IT security lecture and then watch them crumble under questions they couldn't answer, not just from me though I was trained in top level military electronic communications security. I was once flagged for Googling "chainsaw", a common tool here in NH but a terror weapon in MA.

I'm saving the cast aluminum pieces from the Toyota motor I just had replaced to be melted down ... I seldom pass up a chance to expand my "scrap" pile . If it's metal , I'm savin' it . Al bronze is actually easy . Aluminum will dissolve the copper about as fast as you can add it . But ya gotta jack the temp as you add .

I may hit you up down the road on that. I was thinking about maybe someday making aluminum bronze.

-----------------------------

Good stuff. The earliest use of it I read about was non-rusting firing pins for the Trapdoor Springfield, a demanding application.

I'm saving the cast aluminum pieces from the Toyota motor I just had replaced to be melted down ... I seldom pass up a chance to expand my "scrap" pile . If it's metal , I'm savin' it . Snag

----------------------

It may be a high silicon alloy similar to this:

The silicon creates a very hard surface that substitutes for a steel cylinder liner.

I made some castings from a scrapped Chevy Vega block but didn't really understand what I was doing and they came out porous. I poured some of the excess molten metal into a snowbank where it solidified as shiny teardrops.

Was it Vega motors that had the nickasil (sp?) cylinder bores ? If so that might explain the porosity . I use a propane burner to melt , that can cause entrapped hydrogen porosity . It comes out of solution as the metal cools . There are a couple of ways to eliminate that . I use pool chlorine submerged in the melt followed by a borax-based flux just before I pour - Electric furnaces don't usually have this problem .