party for the planet

My blogging has been somewhere between lame and empty momentum of habit the last few days and today it is even worse. I have a party to host today. Quit reading blogs and go to a party this evening. My party is oversubscribed but I hear there are 30,000 people signed up across the country so you could meet some of the cool people. There are over a dozen parties within 30 miles of our zip...put your zip code in and find the party nearest you. Your stupid country will not sign on to the Kyoto accords but YOU can make a difference.

I did hot wire it

I said I would not install and remove circuits in a live 200 amp breaker panel and I reasoned, at the prospect, along the lines of an old post in which I observed my own long journey into caution. But when I opened the breaker panel and looked at each step to be taken and the armamentarium of tools I possess it didn't seem so daunting.

maybe the over caution of a conservative attitude is not so much learned reflex or misfired cognitive development but a matter of what you do on autopilot and assumption vs what you do with your eyes open, with a simple consciousness of what is present before you rather than its history, its associations and your habits having the lions share of your thought.

I should face the fact that my handyman-foo and my hot water heater drama is the stuff of a haircut blog, but if I were that honest about the cosmic significance I try to milk out of my mundane doings there would be no blog at all. You may want to pass by the rest of this post as it really isn't anything more than you would see in five minutes of This Old House...during a writers strike.

The new heaters were set on a proper level slab of blue stone and plumbed as a subsystem. That allows pressure testing before turning off the old heater. The extra valving serves several purposes:

• cutting back to a single 30 amp heater when its just the two of us here. Either unit can be isolated from the house water system and electrical system.
• a bypass arrangement in the cold water supply. This can be used to preheat the cold water via a heat exchanger. Several sources or potential sources are available.
  
1. We have a "hot water bank" coolant loop in our heat pump which we have never hooked up.
   
2. We could exchange heat with the pool which typically is 20 degrees F warmer than our well water.
   
3. And there is 3/4 inch copper pipe plumbed up to the pitch of the roof which is oriented exactly south and pitched a fairly efficient 4-in-5 considering our 42 degrees north latitude. Yes, I new 15cents/kwh electricity was only a matter of time, even 25 years ago. So did your power company and the DOE but screwing you with profitable old technology is preferable to them. Our break-even threshold for solar collector with a 20 year life to preheat domestic hot water is around 13 cents/kwh and we just hit 11 cents.
   
• provision for draining either hot water or cold water side of the system independently
• from my software engineering, I know to always design for testability.

The last two were project savers because on the first test, water squirted every which-a-way and draining and resoldering were needed.
My plumber's nightmare turns out to be Home Depot's wet dream



The worst part of wiring a live breaker panel is how stiff, 8-gauge wire has a mind of its own. The rest is good tools, common sense and lots of practice. The 50-amp breaker was putting the children of the power company's shareholders through college. Its gone. The orange wire is the first of the new circuits wired to the 30 am breaker with the more tractable 10-gauge.

The wiring did not leak. So I cut the dying behemoth out of the system and sweated the final two joints that put the new heaters to work. The old heater was so tall it had to be tilted to get it to clear the floor.
So the bottom line is that we will save money now, go a little easier on the planet and, when penny pinching comes to shove, be able to alter usage to yet greener means.

Death watch for a hot water heater.

I once posted about the curious way in which a complaint can also be a boast. Its almost like we just can't stand simple and unlayered emotional observation but operate under an urge to spin advantage from all manner of adversity...it is our nature. You may want to turn away if immodesty does not fascinate you for this is definitely going to be a boastful complaint.

I blew off blogging yesterday and barely ventured out into the beautiful spring weather on a day reserved for idleness, barbecue and somber reflection on the human price of war, regardless what was gained for that price. I had, not better things to do, but things I had better do....


Our hot water heater has terminal corrosion. It is days older than its warranty. It had to be located as an obstruction to the hatchway to the crawlspace because it is too tall to fit elsewhere. Rot and dankness result from its increasing leakage. It is surrounded by 25 years worth of "stuff" every item of which was for a moment considered too good to toss and now merely adds its moldy weight to the musty entropy of things that must be sorted, hoisted and disposed prior to the real work.


Replacement by a pair of heaters is planned. Hand truck is adequate to move them horizontally. Vertical is another story...no stairs, ramp, or bulkhead since this house was let into a pocket in the bedrock. The vertical movement of heavy objects, when merely walking about the crawlspace induces injuries, has been a show-stopper. For instance, the carcass of the previous hot water heater has rested down there over ten years, shoved aside because no team of lifters and no rigging was available to extract it from that pit.


And the wiring will be thrill. I have to open up the main service panel to add a 220V breaker and the 10/3NM grounded cable, disconnects and junction boxes for the second heater. I used to hot wire those panels but this time around, I'm throwing the mains and working by flashlight. The older I get, the more vulnerabilities I know of and take to heart.


To solve the vertical challenge, I fashioned a gantry crane. Running along a beam suspended on threaded rods a tram on a phalanx of casters will traverse the load horizontally.


A block and tackle will move the load vertically. That looks like a rats nest but it is a chain stitch and will neatly undo itself with one deft tug.


A test load of 250 pounds of broken rock and dirt [from the Precambrian era of my mess-making...I had to get down to sound weight bearing strata] moved smoothly without a creak or a slip.


Out with the old


And in with the new.

To be continued...