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couldcareless posted:Those look real similar to the Feit lights at Costco that are regularly on sale PO of my new house set up five strings of these back and forth across the back lawn, zip-tied to a wire. They're the old incandescent version but Costco sells a 24-pack of Feit LED bulbs specifically to convert them, so I've got a few more of those coming. I'll never be the kind of person to buy Subzero, but this house is turning me into the kind of person who no longer buys "cheapest appliance that meets the minimum requirements". PO also put some serious money into a full set of Kitchenaid appliances. They took the $4000 fridge with them but everything else is nice. The dishwasher is so quiet you can only barely hear it run when you're literally standing in front of it.
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Apr 4, 2021 19:14
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The thing about fridges is that all but the really lovely brands seem to last 10-20 years. If you buy a subzero fridge that lasts 40 years the question is: 1. Do you actually make your money back (assuming you live there 40 years)? I am not convinced that these appliances make any significant change in sales price. Sure, maybe you'll get a few bux more but no one is giving you an extra new sub-zero fridge money for your house with a used sub-zero. 2. Do you actually want a 40 year old fridge. 30 years from now energy prices are going to be loving wack compared to today. Hopefully, fridge technology will have improved by leaps and bounds. I'm generally of the buy the durable and repairable appliance crew, but I'm not sure fridges are a good focus. It is the only appliance you have that is on 24/7. A 30 year old maytag washer and dryer will use substantially more energy, but you only run it what, 2-4 times a week? Plus you can chose to run said washer/dryer during non-peak times. A fridge always has to be on. Also, I actually think fridges have improved in the last few years. They've gotten bigger and better designed from just side-by-sides with smaller freezers to french door to the resurgence of fridge over models. If you have an 80s sub zero, you have a really small, poorly designed (not mechanically, but in terms of space use) fridge. My parents didn't make quite a big a mistake, but when they did an extensive reno of their kitchen in the 80s they had very high end custom cabinets made. It had a wrap around that fit an 80s fridge. This has been a massive pain in the rear end because when they eventually had to replace their fridge 20 years later, only the lowest end fridges were made in that size. They have since had the cabinets redone, which wasn't cheap, but it's still better than dealing with your old high end built in fridge. If you're going to spend gently caress you money on fridges, at least do undercounters. They have all the same potential issues as a subzero, but man, it looks slicker than a giant cabinet and everyone wants more counter space.
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Apr 4, 2021 19:36
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nm posted:The thing about fridges is that all but the really lovely brands seem to last 10-20 years. I’m not a lollipop guild member, gently caress kneeling down to go see what’s in an undercounter.
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Apr 4, 2021 19:46
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I'd imagine it's a drawer and you access from the top. The good thing about Sun Zero type of friges, in my opinion, is that they're actual counter depth and wider. My dream fridge would be like 18" deep and 6' wide, no one wants to be digging behind poo poo to find what you're looking for..
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Apr 4, 2021 19:55
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nm posted:2. Do you actually want a 40 year old fridge. 30 years from now energy prices are going to be loving wack compared to today. Hopefully, fridge technology will have improved by leaps and bounds. I doubt they'll be able to improve the efficiency much more, or at least enough to matter. A decent French-door fridge/freezer uses about 700kWh a year. At least at current rates, that's about $85. What they will do is put more screens/computers in it with lame apps and stuff that are unsupported and outdated 3 years after you buy it, if it even still works.
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Apr 4, 2021 20:54
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B-Nasty posted:I doubt they'll be able to improve the efficiency much more, or at least enough to matter. A decent French-door fridge/freezer uses about 700kWh a year. At least at current rates, that's about $85. Agreed. I think running an inverter/variable capacity compressor is about the most efficiency you'll see for now until some related fundamental technology has a significant breakthrough.
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Apr 4, 2021 20:57
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You're going to feel pretty dumb when they bring out the fridge that has a stasis seal and your food simply doesn't experience the passage of time when the door's shut.
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Apr 4, 2021 21:06
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Also works to keep you safe when a reactor seal blows and the radiation is at deadly levels for 3 million years.
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Apr 4, 2021 21:08
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I have a Subzero that the previous owner put in. In all it's very nice but I doubt I would have ever made that initial outlay if they didn't. It really does a great job keeping things fresh, but no amount of saved vegetables is going to recoup the extra cost. It's not one of those "pays you back over time in savings" appliances. It's really just whether having an integrated/panel-front fridge is something you deem mission critical to the design of the kitchen, and even then, there are some cheaper integrated alternatives such as Liebherr. In my case, it was because the kitchen is still mostly original to the 1920s, and installing an integrated fridge into a correct-ish looking set of cabinets is a common compromise for old house geeks tying to keep things original.
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Apr 4, 2021 21:32
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Bioshuffle posted:The wall next to my shower was crumbly to the touch. I scraped away all the problematic area, redid the drywall and painted it and redid the caulking. I made sure to turn on the shower and ensure nothing was leaking from the inside before patching and painting. A few pages back, but see if you can find some Zinsser Gardz to prime it with. It's for priming damaged drywall and prevents the bubbling you're seeing.
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Apr 4, 2021 23:52
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Motronic posted:Agreed. I think running an inverter/variable capacity compressor is about the most efficiency you'll see for now until some related fundamental technology has a significant breakthrough.
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Apr 5, 2021 00:57
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nm posted:It's also a long time for the price of a kw to go way the gently caress up. I'm more optimistic here. Solar, even residential solar, has created a ceiling on how high this can go. Panels are already cheap enough that it's typically the install labor that makes up the majority of the cost. In the Winter-having region I live in, panels are close to break even, even without the tax breaks and at current grid rates. If the grid rates doubled or tripled, I'd be covering every flat, sun-struck surface I could find with panels. Storage will also largely be a solved problem in the next decade or two as lithium cells (assuming no battery revolution) fall to dirt-cheap levels. My bet for the next 40 years is solar/storage becoming cheap and common, not a huge focus on wringing out the last few percentage points of efficiency for a fridge.
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Apr 5, 2021 02:12
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B-Nasty posted:I'm more optimistic here. Solar, even residential solar, has created a ceiling on how high this can go. Panels are already cheap enough that it's typically the install labor that makes up the majority of the cost. In the Winter-having region I live in, panels are close to break even, even without the tax breaks and at current grid rates. If the grid rates doubled or tripled, I'd be covering every flat, sun-struck surface I could find with panels. I hope you're right but man do I not want to gamble $10k on it. Like if sub-zeros were like speed queens where they were $1000 more per pair than other w/d's I'd be more on board.
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Apr 5, 2021 02:38
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B-Nasty posted:I'm more optimistic here. Solar, even residential solar, has created a ceiling on how high this can go. Panels are already cheap enough that it's typically the install labor that makes up the majority of the cost. In the Winter-having region I live in, panels are close to break even, even without the tax breaks and at current grid rates. Exactly what winter-having region is this? Because that math doesn't work for me. Nowhere close.
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Apr 5, 2021 02:42
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Motronic posted:Exactly what winter-having region is this? Because that math doesn't work for me. Nowhere close.
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Apr 5, 2021 02:47
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falz posted:Yeah that hot take is really missing the time span to pay off, which I'd guess they meant a decade or so? That varies a lot too. The math doesn't even work out over pretty much any span of time when you consider the loss of efficiency of the panels as they age (i.e., maintenance). Double lol if that calculation still counts on net metering. I really really wish it was a correct statement, but it's just not. It's nowhere close.
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Apr 5, 2021 02:50
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I intend to do real research sometime soon, but all I know is this, and this is in a great lakes state with real winters where my summer is mid May to September. also, the original hot take implies crazy politicians don't create laws that inhibit the uptake of things like solar, fairly sure several states already have. Edit: added details. Idk what net metering is.  
falz fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Apr 5, 2021 |
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Apr 5, 2021 02:55
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falz posted:I intend to do real research sometime soon, but all I know is this, and this is in a great lakes state with real winters where my summer is mid May to September. This is a net metering calculation. The likelihood of that existing in the current form in the payback period quotes there is basically zero.
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Apr 5, 2021 02:57
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Motronic posted:Exactly what winter-having region is this? Because that math doesn't work for me. Nowhere close. This is outside Philly, cash purchase, assuming 20+ lifespan for the panels (most are guaranteed to be at 80% until then), all-electric house (1500kW system), good SW sun exposure. It would also just break-even after 15+ years. I agree completely with your point, and that's why I'm not interested right now. Assuming the capital tied up in buying the system would make money elsewhere at 4%, the NPV calcs have this system as a money loser. However, that's at current panel prices and $0.12/kWh electric. I expect panels to get much cheaper, by at least half, in the next decade, once the gov subsidies stop distorting the market. Likewise, many municipalities are trying to simplify install requirements to reduce install labor costs. In the near-term, I'm mostly bullish on utility or community-scale solar, though.
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Apr 5, 2021 13:52
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So exactly in my market, if you have exactly the right exposure and even then it loses money. Yeah, so we agree on the calculations after all. Utility scale is and continues to be worth it. My mother has been running project management for various commercial and utility scale panel array installs for years and the business shows no sign of slowing down. FYI, I can't even make the numbers work for my house with that "in" for cheap panels, etc.
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Apr 5, 2021 13:59
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Hopefully closing on my new house in Phoenix this week and I will be getting solar because hey 350 days of sunshine a year. I see people with panels here in New Hampshire on similar plots to mine surrounded by pine woods and I can’t even grow grass let alone make solar worth it.
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Apr 5, 2021 14:03
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BigPaddy posted:Hopefully closing on my new house in Phoenix this week and I will be getting solar because hey 350 days of sunshine a year. I see people with panels here in New Hampshire on similar plots to mine surrounded by pine woods and I can’t even grow grass let alone make solar worth it. Also could someone ELI5 "net metering calculation" and why website like the one I posted are wrong? falz fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Apr 5, 2021 |
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Apr 5, 2021 14:17
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falz posted:Also could someone ELI5 "net metering calculation" and why website like the one I posted are wrong? "Net Metering" is where the power company buys power back from your panels at the same retail rate they sell it to you at. All of those payoff calculators count on that, when it's really obvious it's unsustainable. In fact the more people who get solar the sooner that poo poo is gonna goes away. You're essentially using the POCO as a free storage battery. So when your best possible case scenario for a payoff is a decade or more out when your panels have already lost 20% of their efficiency and relies on you getting paid full boat for excess power you should curb your enthusiasm. There is almost no way net metering will be a thing in <insert yours area here> that far in the future. Solar could still work for you if you also install sufficient storage batteries. But now we're running into an even longer payout.
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Apr 5, 2021 14:29
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Net metering is amazing and governments should mandate it for all utilities.  starve the beast. (I am advocating killing investor owned utilities, I would hate to be misunderstood here.) Basically with more and more net metering expect things like localized grid outages to go down in peak summer season because hopefully hyper local generation takes load off the distribution networks. You're also going to see rate cases shift to flat hookup and distribution fees, with overnight eventually becoming a huge issue with electric cars and peaker plants. Storage is lagging far behind demand. There is already teeth gnashing by the poco's who stupidly built non-renewable plants in the last two decades about not getting their monopolies worth of profit out of them. This winds up on your utility bill in states with non-competetive energy markets. (I don't know what happens in say Texas here but I'm also not really worried about them having enough smarts to put in huge renewable projects. California already has 1 surcharge for that on SCE bills iirc.)
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Apr 5, 2021 14:46
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H110Hawk posted:Net metering is amazing and governments should mandate it for all utilities. I'm with you on this in spirit, but I'm looking at actually spending money on solar panels as a realist. Most of the state level programs around here that used to make the payoff timeline feasible (no more than 5 years or so) have been gone for......probably 5 years. More in my state. Gimmie a cost competitive saltwater storage battery or whatever other technology comes along to make that work and I'll have panels on my house in a matter of months.
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Apr 5, 2021 14:59
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Motronic posted:I'm with you on this in spirit, but I'm looking at actually spending money on solar panels as a realist. Most of the state level programs around here that used to make the payoff timeline feasible (no more than 5 years or so) have been gone for......probably 5 years. More in my state. Yeah where you live without some kind of net metering guarantee for the useful life of your setup (20+ years) I wouldn't install solar either. Check the 100% green box on your utility bill and call it done if you want to be green. Are you allowed to self install a micro inverter system? Is there any net metering available to you right now?
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Apr 5, 2021 15:04
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The only way the net metering credits continue is with aggressive time-of-use adjustments and market rate. Really, that's how electricity pricing should be done anyway. There has to be incentive for consumers to spread their demands and to not encourage everyone to hookup their 10kW Tesla chargers at exactly 7PM every night because who cares, it's always $.12/kWh 24/7. It certainly hasn't gone unnoticed by me that PA utilities now charge more per kWh for distribution then is typical for generation/transmission. The latter is what they're 'buying' from you at in NM.
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Apr 5, 2021 15:04
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H110Hawk posted:Is there any net metering available to you right now? Permitted, not required. And my local poco is the very same one who did this: B-Nasty posted:It certainly hasn't gone unnoticed by me that PA utilities now charge more per kWh for distribution then is typical for generation/transmission. This is a move that can be pulled even in states where net metering is required. FYI, this isn't because of net metering necessarily. It's been increasing ever since the power companies in PA were "deregulated" meaning you can choose to buy generation from someone other than your local poco. Obviously you can't choose distribution from elsewhere. I want to make it clear I'm not trying to rag on solar in my last several posts. I'm cautioning any of you who are interested to not rely on payoff calculators made by people who want to sell you a solar setup or sell advertising to people who want to sell you a solar setup because.....well, you can see how that's just one gigantic conflict of interest. Motronic fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Apr 5, 2021 |
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Apr 5, 2021 15:07
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B-Nasty posted:The only way the net metering credits continue is with aggressive time-of-use adjustments and market rate. Really, that's how electricity pricing should be done anyway. There has to be incentive for consumers to spread their demands and to not encourage everyone to hookup their 10kW Tesla chargers at exactly 7PM every night because who cares, it's always $.12/kWh 24/7. Chargers are eventually going to need to be networked in, and people are going to need to accurately say when they need their cars by, or close enough. ("I need the car no later than 6am." Then the charger sets your charge rate to get you there based on TOU rate kick in, higher if you plug in after it starts.) Some recent electroboom video where he got a tesla showed they can intentionally reduce charge rate - that sort of interconnect where the slower you charge the cheaper the $/kwh I imagine will become the norm. It should be trivial to automate, and it could even increase charge rate based on near instantaneous demand/wholesale pricing on the market. So far all we can do in our house is run the dishwasher at 1am. There is no world where we're doing laundry after the kids go to bed. That's our free time.
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Apr 5, 2021 15:11
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H110Hawk posted:Some recent electroboom video where he got a tesla showed they can intentionally reduce charge rate - that sort of interconnect where the slower you charge the cheaper the $/kwh I imagine will become the norm. It should be trivial to automate, and it could even increase charge rate based on near instantaneous demand/wholesale pricing on the market. This is why I only ran 2 drops of 10/3 for 2 future car chargers (24A @ 240v) while I was messing around in the garage attic. It avoids having to hand-wave away the load calcs for a 200A service, and I personally don't get any life satisfaction by bragging about how big my... circuit is.
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Apr 5, 2021 15:22
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Motronic posted:well, you can see how that's just one gigantic conflict of interest. I love seeing houses where they current owner signed a multi decade lease for solar and have to transfer it to the new owner. Because what I really need when buying is more hoops to jump through. Currently in AZ the “export rate” I.e what they pay for power I put into the grid is 12c/ kwh which is changed annual based on demand which also means based on supply so as soon as more people get solar then as we are discussing the pay off period extends because you are not getting money back for the excess and just saving on your monthly bill.
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Apr 5, 2021 15:35
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Last year, I flopped a big long piece of good old black corrugated pipe down parallel to our fence so that my downspout didn't go directly into the neighbor's garden. My wife also wanted it to go farther down the fence line so as not to interfere with her garden either. After a year of looking at the ugly pipe, we decided to bury the pipe to the natural low spot that the downspout water was ultimately flowing. Of course, when I called 811, the location we selected for the pipe was exactly where our gas line is. So, I got to spend my weekend hand digging a 40 foot trench. I feel like I'm going to die this morning, which I'd be completely ok with.
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Apr 5, 2021 16:18
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I use solar power right now, I built it myself. It's just a black box that heats the air (oversimplification). Gives some additional heat for my shop and saves on electricity bills. I am planning to expand it so I hope I could cut my electricity consumption a noticable degree.
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Apr 5, 2021 16:23
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Motronic posted:So when your best possible case scenario for a payoff is a decade or more out when your panels have already lost 20% of their efficiency and relies on you getting paid full boat for excess power you should curb your enthusiasm. There is almost no way net metering will be a thing in <insert yours area here> that far in the future. It's worth noting that any panel worth buying has a 25-year warranty guaranteeing performance above the 80% mark. High quality panels like LG and Panasonic have started to reach that EOL mark and are often still 90-95% efficient. Panels in a utility setting often get replaced earlier because the increased efficiency of newer panels PLUS the reduction in efficiency AND the continually dropping panel costs means it makes sense on the margins to maximize the watts per foot in their installations. This is not to say it clearly makes financial sense to do a residential install, I think a lot of your other points are valid. I have wondered idly about second-hand panels. Places like SanTan solar sell big used panels that are still pretty efficient at a deep discount. They rip the stickers off them, so I guess they're no longer UL-compliant, although the parts were probably originally UL-listed. There are probably big hurdles to getting them inspected and signed off on, but they would make residential installs way cheaper. As it is I think they only get used in off-grid contexts.
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Apr 5, 2021 19:35
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Re: Net metering. It is currently law in CA. There is a law proposed to get rid of net metering, but it grandfathers in old solar setups. If this isn't a reason to do solar now, now, now in CA, I don't know what is.
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Apr 5, 2021 19:40
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nm posted:Re: Net metering. If they don't codify keeping CA power companies from switching to overwhelmingly large distribution fees it's not gonna do much more than what's happening here.
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Apr 5, 2021 20:00
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Motronic posted:If they don't codify keeping CA power companies from switching to overwhelmingly large distribution fees it's not gonna do much more than what's happening here. I don't know the exact rules, but CA power billing is extremely highly regulated after than whole Enron poo poo.
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Apr 5, 2021 20:49
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Hey there home zone, what do I need to know about water softeners (and RO systems)? Are there certain brands to favor or avoid? Is there any consideration beyond capacity? The city I moved to recently has incredibly hard water but the house we bought didn't have a softener system installed already.
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Apr 5, 2021 21:45
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nm posted:I don't know the exact rules, but CA power billing is extremely highly regulated after than whole Enron poo poo. This is hilarious. All it means is they send a ton of documents to ratepayers and get rubber stamped on whatever they want. They pay whole teams of lawyers to handle it. CPUC makes it hard for exactly enron to happen again, but not for them to gently caress over rate payers in a very calculated way over time.
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Apr 5, 2021 21:45
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You could also put solar on your roof not as a monetary savings, but because you can afford to offset some of your own carbon. (Ticking that green box does the same thing assuming the poco is doing that as well)
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Apr 6, 2021 14:58
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