Welding helmets (Hobby use) (2023 Update)

2 of them: Electrodes and PRACTICE, in that order.

Very cool, George. Congrats.

Why didn't you leave the harness with the controller, duuuuude?

I love beating the price hikes. New vendors on eBay usually put stuff up for a song to get the feel of pricing, so if you buy one early, it's 20% of the end price. My backup controller was $13 delivered, but doesn't have an LCD.

Thinking about moving to a smaller water heater (20g) which can be heated with lower power elements fed directly from a 24v solar array. Hot water is nearly half my electric use, which now averages $41/mo.

Sounds cheap, how much is off grid power? I'm guessing you are US based?

We pay about $0.27 per kW.hr here in Australia.

I put them with this temporarily wired meter.

I heat water for laundry in kettles on the woodstove.

-jsw

Yes, Oregon, USA. It's not so much the cost of off-grid power, it's the concept of being entirely self-sufficient during the coming grid crises. 1) The increasing age/fragility of our electrical grid and 2) terrorism loom just off the bow of our future. The grid has suffered

362 attacks between 2011 and 2015. Granted, some of those are from kids wanting to see a transformer explode, but look at this article: (Crom, I hate listening to broadcast news, but it can carry tiny tidbits of actual information.) Metcalf wasn't a simple attack and cost over $15 million to repair.

Grid power is just $0.06 here. Thinking of adding another 400W to 1kW ($600-2,200) to the whopping 45W of power I now utilize. Selling unused assets for it.

Sorry the stabilizer cylinder one on each side... fairly small.

I blew out the crowd cylinder a few years ago. I took it to the local JD industrial repair shop, and it was a bit of a nightmare. It took them three tries (and a good part of the summer.) to get it installed and not leaking.

George H.

Those shouldn't be _too_ bad, but again, if it's been outside forever and they've been left "as-is" with the environment those tend to operate in they'll probably be pretty well "growed together"...

...

"Stuff happens" when things are old, particularly...

I'd have taken the lift straight to the hydraulics folks excepting I don't have a lowboy that'll take it nor do they while the Deere folk do and pickup/deliver repair work gratis (well, it ain't exactly free but at least it's in the shop bill :) ). We deal with them all the time anyway as well as are working farm....

Picked up one of the little $13 AODE aluminum-cased wattmeters you mentioned last time, thanks. It works well.

I can't stand wood heat, but may when the SHTF. Need to buy one of those little guys for $60, JIC.

Does anyone _like_ the smell of wood smoke in the house? Then again, having heat would be A Good Thing(tm), if the natural gas goes out. I wonder if they keep generators for the nat gas pumps, and how long they'd last once the pumps quit, if not. Delivery pressure is 1.5psi, so it may last a long while.

Don't trust the least significant digit of the Amps readout. Mine actually resolves to 0.2A and fakes higher sensitivity by dithering the raw value. The wires are too small for its full-scale Amp capacity. Otherwise it's a very handy gadget for checking and reconditioning older batteries.

I've found a DC resistance check while periodically topping off a battery to be a good, quick indication of when it needs attention. I haven't found a good Net reference to this yet, all descriptions of battery impedance testing I've seen are from companies trying to sell fancy equipment for it, just like desulfation.

The Bayite meter is more suited to a fixed installation, with the shunt in the battery cable and the readout at the control panel. I added a DPDT switch to reverse the (fused) shunt sense leads so it can read either charge or discharge current. My inverter is an APC1400 UPS which can draw over 50A continuously, probably too much for the Aode's wires.

A properly installed and operated wood stove doesn't emit smoke into the house, all leaks draw air in. I've learned how to set the draft for complete combustion with little or no visible smoke from the chimney.

That wasn't easy. I have thermocouples on the basement stove with readouts in the kitchen and bedroom and an outdoor mirror plus a night vision camera to observe the chimney top. It's very convenient to know when to tend the stove or the food cooking on it from upstairs.

These are cheap and good enough if you can't find (and fix) surplus lab instruments as I did.

-jsw

"A small portion of natural gas from the pipeline is burned to power the turbine."

"Commonly known as "recips," these engines are fueled by natural gas from the pipeline."

I never investigated how reliable or susceptible to sabotage the gas lines may be. Electricity on poles is demonstrably vulnerable but easy to repair. Our ice storms and distracted drivers keep the crews in practice.

My automatic backup is the house's original baseboard electric heat, set to come on at 50F. I have these on the wall thermostat wires to warn me if they turn on or I forget to set the bathroom back after showering.

In an unlit hallway the LED is visible at a much lower current than they list. There's no sharp 'turn-on point", they just get brighter as the current increases.

-jsw

This is true. Maybe Sunday...

Mine were NEVER good for 45 Watts. That was at the Maximum Power Point of 17V while real-world power is at 12V. I think I saw 32W from them once when they were new.

-jsw

I guess I'll have to remember to crank the draft wide open to load firewood, but I've never seen a house yet whose wood stove didn't blow smoke into it, regardless of settings.

Hah, that's cool! Self-surveilled. Are those remote t-coups?

I have a thermocouple available with my Mastech DVM.

I had to cut that posting short to go and listen to Lindsay Graham and John McCain speak, then mingle with the audience. The Republicans at least seem to like our NH style of face-to-face campaigning, rent a hall and let anyone in to listen and ask questions, rather than the big-money media circus of larger states. It becomes a good test of mental endurance that weeds many out.

Bush, Graham and Kasich are experienced leaders with solid plans and ideas, "policy wonks", any of which I'd be comfortable with as President. I haven't had a chance to meet Carson, Cruz or Rubio yet, and Jim Webb had to cancel.

Here's a list of the candidates.

You say you want more choices???

-jsw

Bloody mahvelous!

Transformers are far too susceptible to sabotage, too, especially "hidden" behind chain link fences.

I ripped all those out in 2002, less than 2 weeks after I moved in this house. CROM, those suck. 40F floor, 65F in the middle, and 90F at your head when you stand up, all while sucking 4kWh per unit. The

96% efficient HVAC cost me $6k, but it blows the air around and keeps everything mixed so the temp at the floor is the same at the ceiling, more or less. I like to stand under the vent when I come in from outside in the winter. How can you stand baseboard heat, especially when it's not on PV to pay for it?

I guess with -those- heaters, you can save money and buy the 1AAC setpoint units for the least cost. And each probably shines bright enough to light your whole house.

I see that you're a fellow gadget freak.

HUH? Y'mean to tell me that HF uses Searz Watts?

I can't say my stove -never- smoulders, catches and backfires but it's rare. Lighting it may be smoky until the cold draft down the chimney reverses. Burning one sheet of crumpled newspaper in the upper chamber is usually enough to get the air flowing up long enough to light the kindling.

When the stove is up to temperature the draft vacuum runs between 0.08 and 0.15 inches of water, enough to make the air inlet whistle.

I can remove the cleanout cap in the inside flue pipe without releasing smoke into the house.

I found spools of cheaper thermocouple extension wire at the surplus store and ran them from the stove in the basement to the kitchen and bedroom.

The X indicates extension wire which matches real thermocouple wire only near room temperature.

The dollar a pound price for regular wire was better than a dollar a foot for real thermocouple wire. Omega charges only a little more for high-quality new wire:

These panel jacks

snap into these wall outlet faceplates with only a little trimming

If my Tekpower DVM is like it the cold compensation isn't exact and the linearization is incorrect. The PC datalogging program corrects the linearization and shows a difference from the meter's display. The error is only a few degrees C. When I log the house's heating or cooling rates I record a few temperature points and times from the lab instruments for calibration correction. They read within 1 degree C at freezing and boiling regardless of room temperature.

-jsw

They may deliver that power into a large rheostat set to load them to

17V, but you won't get it from a 12V battery using the kit's PWM controller.

Said large (300W) rheostat showed that my monocrystalline panels put out nearly the same power at 18V, 17V and 16V, the current rising as the voltage drops.

-jsw

I forgot to mention that I checked the HF panels too. The three aluminum-framed ones from the kit I bought in 2011 and two newer plastic-framed ones that have had very little sun exposure all generated 0.5 to 0.6A at 17V, averaging around 9W each. Their reverse leakage is only a few milliAmps at 17V, less than 1/10 that of the old monocrystalline panels. Nevertheless I replaced the shorted blocking diode in my HF controller so battery voltage and possibly high fault current couldn't feed back onto the wires running out to the panels.

McCain on TV News: "You cannot buy a vote in New Hampshire, they have to hear you." He should know since his campaign went broke before he recovered and won the nomination.

I generally like McCain but TV doesn't show his occasional "senior moments".

-jsw