Flatballer

Regretting my electric snow blower today. I hate gas powered stuff and the maintenance and emissions and noise. But my cheap electric plug in was never meant to handle 18+ inches of heavy snow. Spent 1.5 hours and only got about a third of what I needed done.

The stuff I have left is mostly where the plow has covered, so it's like 30 inches of super thick, heavy stuff. My electric doesn't cut in very well at all with plastic blades so I'll probably have to break it up with a shovel some first

Or borrow the neighbor's real one. I'd be happy to pay to use it. My grandfather used to own one snowblower, that stayed in his garage, but all the neighbors around had chipped in, and they all shared it.

Hermes

My newly calibrated SRM with the new rechargeable battery indicated low battery at the start of my ride yesterday. I look for the recharging cable and initially cannot find. I proceed to systematically tear my garage apart and the last place I look found the cable. My garage and bike parts management is out of control.

Flatballer

Anyone know any good shoulder/clavicle stretches/exercises?

My clavicles bother me a lot (especially when I sleep on my side, although its gotten better with a new pillow I got). My left was a little bad, and now all this shoveling and snowblowing my left shoulder is really bad today.

furiousferret

We found hopefully the problem with the espresso machine, but I've always learned just because you found something broken doesn't mean that's the only thing. We'll know in a few days.

The fuse going from the plug cord (same as a computer) into the machine isn't responding. So the espresso guy said he'd order the part and for good measure, I ordered that part online since it was only $2. Although it was hard to find that 'exact' model, it was lke 'FSFSDF234-S' and there were a bunch of 'FSFSDF234-U' and '-V' with the same electric stats I think probably would work as its just a later model of the same thing.

ART or Graston may help if its muscle related and filled with scar tissue. Its essentially a therapist rubbing off the scars; Graston is a metal tool, ART uses the fingers. You can have someone try and do it for you (I have my wife work on my leg).

kensuf

Of course you found it in the last place you looked. Why would you keep looking after you found it?

gsteinb

gsteinb

How many TSS?

ridethecliche

Flatballer

Depends. Is that all by hand? If so, you're a madman. I cleared less than that and at least had a terrible electric snowblower doing some of the work.

My neighbor also lent me his gas powered to do the sidewalk, and even that struggled with the depth and the weight, couldn't get traction.

gsteinb

The plow guy plowed three or four times, but I had three hours of work today to clear the cars, paths, widen and clean things up.

Flatballer

Ooh la la, mister moneybags over here has a guy for that.

gsteinb

When you live in a place that regularly sees -15 and less and your driveway is few hundred feet long it kind of is part of the cost of living there. I don't think anyone I know that lives up here shovels their whole driveway.

waterrockets 

Dang.

Flatballer

I want a long driveway with our next house, lots of woods around, possibly in Maine is our dream. I can work literally anywhere now, as long as I can get to an airport in a reasonable amount of time occasionally, and we can put in a nice office. If we get a long driveway I'm allowed to get a truck and a plow, which I've always wanted. Until I was 5 my parents lived in state game land, 1 mile of dirt road to the main. If it was gonna be bad my dad would take the plow truck, chains, and the chainsaw to work so that if there was a storm he could plow and cut his way home. It sounds like an insane amount of work, but also really cool.

Pretty jealous of your place.

gsteinb

I looked into getting a plow, but by the time I got done with all that I'd have to plow my driveway a lot over a long period of time. Plus I'd no doubt bang into something.

It's a good place to live. We have dreams of moving to a bigger piece of property with a view (this is just an acre, with the acre behind us also) with a couple of houses on it, and separate office spaces instead of a shared building, but I kind of doubt that'll ever happen.

Flatballer

My wife would love if I had a completely separate building for my office, maybe next house.

We also want a rooftop platform that we can put a telescope on, and a clearing around the house with no trees. In a dark, rural area. While we're dreaming.

Doge

I'm really into walking my kid's cat.

Enthalpic

My friends farm house has a dog door that leads into a fenced yard. When I first house sat for him and took his dog for a walk I was surprised his three cats went through the dog door, jumped the fence and tagged along for the walk.

gsteinb

From behind where this is taken there's a shared bathroom that walks through to my wife's side of the building. If I could do it again I'd insulate the walls in between for sound proofing. But when it was built her side was a wood shop / art studio and now it's finished office and craft space. This is an older photo. The jerseys have been stored, and I added a mini split in the meditation room so I can train in the heat and humidity. I set my trainer up next to the sink.

topflightpro

I've long dreamed of building my own house with a heated driveway so instead of plowing, I can just turn it on and the snow or ice would just melt away.

Flatballer

Yeah, they're pretty popular in some places. I was curious how much it would've cost gsteinb or myself to melt our snowfalls, so I did the math.

G: 300 feet long, 11 feet wide, 3630 sq feet, 30 inches of normal snow, for 9075 cubic feet, 257 cubic meters. Say 75 kg/m3 roughly (50 is fresh light stuff, 150 is heavy packed, the lower levels of a 30 inch snowfall get compressed, we're just very rough at this point). 19275 kg (this is not going well so far, I'm scared, that's a lot of weight).

Latent heat is 334kJ/kg, so we get roughly 6500 MJ. 1800 kWh. About $180 or so if your electricity is normal/cheap, $400 if it's not. Approximately $0 if you have solar or geothermal. So back to the original, $180/257m3, is about 70 cents per cubic meter. Oh, and this is if the snow is already at 32F/0C. If it's pretty cold, and the ground under it is pretty cold (where your pipes/cables are) probably add another 25% or so. Let's call it $1 to be safe.

For your own rates, we could say maybe 2200 kWh/257m3, or very roughly say 8.5 kWh/m3. In Cali it'd cost you like $3/cubic meter. Here it's 50 cents or so.

I also didn't do his parking area, just the driveway.

My driveway would've been about 85.5m3, so $45 or so (electricity is very cheap here). Not terrible for a once in a while snowstorm. I would've paid $45 to not do all that work (I lost way more money than that taking time off work to shovel).

gsteinb

Just stretch it out afterwards. It'll be fine.

Enthalpic

My condo has a heated driveway, it runs off glycol lines connected to a natural gas boiler. Natural gas is much cheaper than electricity.

Flatballer

Good point, I have natural gas heat, and generator, and pool heater, and water heater. But I didn't think about it. I'm an electrical engineer, so I'm required to use electricity as the first option for everything.

So it's about 30k BTU/m3. Around 10 cents per m3 here, assuming perfect efficiency. Say 12 cents.

Doge

It depends :-)
We were visiting Wenatchee, WA a couple years ago. Everything was electric. Heaters, stoves etc. I was trying to look it up, but at the time I recall they were paying 3 cents a kWh. All hydro power.

I was please the above was from memory. Now 3.22cents. We pay around 16-20cents per kWh in both CO and CA while we lived near a nuclear power plant.
https://www.electricitylocal.com/sta...8%C2%A2%2FkWh.

I have heard it said nuclear is much cheaper (San Onofre was 4 miles from our San Clemente house) but after all the regulation, maintenance it is way higher. If you toss in the kelp reef they had to make locally, higher yet.
So they shut the plant down because they could not afford to operate/maintain it, but they still kept building that reef. Just that, without the warm water from cooling the ocean in the area is now 1-2 degrees cooler, so it is just a bunch of cement and tires and too cold for kelp and tropical fish that used to hang out around the cooling (warmer) vents. They were still building reef last year while the plant had shut down a year earlier and will just add it to the electrical bill.