Texas Winter

Relax in southern comfort on the east bank of the Mississippi. You're just around the corner from Beale Street and Sun Records. Watch the ducks, throw back a few and tell us what's on your mind.
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JR.
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Re: Texas Winter

Post by JR. »

I seem to recall some simple ICs from microchip on one of their development boards I have,,, while i could just about measure some simple diode junctions... I could calibrate them in an ice water bath for 0'C boiling for 100'C and do my own conversions. While using dedicated chip solution works too...

Another bucket list project that probably won't get finished. :D

JR
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mediatechnology
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Re: Texas Winter

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Those high night time lows we had - particularly last year - were brutal on pool and power plant owners.

And the cedars...

This year isn't too bad. We'll be bumping along 101 for the rest of the week or so but that's expected in late July and early August.

John - I have a bunch of the Oregon Scientific wireless remote sensors for the weather station. I've learned a lot for them though you can't really interface them to anything. Roger might have some suggestions for low-cost remote sensing. I think he posted that over in the weather station shelter thread: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=476&start=7
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JR.
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Re: Texas Winter

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Yup I recall the thread but I don't need any big dog industrial sensors... I'll probably throw a few diode junctions in series, hit them with a current source, and read them with one of the several A/D inputs on a cheap micros.

A diode junction forward voltage tempco is something like 2mV per degree C, A few junctions in series, read by a 12bit A/D should give me OK temperature resolution. I can calibrate them with an ice cube and boiling water baths.

First things first, I need to patch the leak in my roof...

I have a huge whole house exhaust fan that sucks hot air from the house and blows it up into the attic, but i rarely use it because it is so powerful it sucks small insects through the screens into the house, Sometimes right after a summer shower when the air temp is 20' cooler than inside and bugs are knocked down I'll run the fan for a few minutes to swap out the air.

I probably need to close it off and throw some insulation on top of that fan opening.

JR
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mediatechnology
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Re: Texas Winter

Post by mediatechnology »

Most all of my probe thermometers are diode junction-based.

We used to have an attic fan too. It was awesome at times.

We finally got air and color TV in 1963 and still occasionally used the attic fan which, come to think of it, is probably why the house had vented gables.

We ended demo'ing out the attic fan and used the opening for an additional air return.
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JR.
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Re: Texas Winter

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I guess I don't value myself at $10 hour... I do mow my own lawn too... :oops:

=====

That is interesting, who exactly is spraying what where... ?

Economists have proposed that it would be possible to alter planetary heat gain with very high atmospheric particulate dispersion (like from volcanos). I recall concerns way back when about high altitude aircraft exhaust... Maybe we need to just run all those jet engines richer... :lol:

Dispersing particles from/at lower altitudes would not be very efficient.

Changing surface absorption is cheaper to execute at ocean surface (for example iron seeding stimulates algae bloom that absorbs more heat) but i am not very comfortable fooling mother nature. Our weather is already messed up enough by el Nino and la nina. I have though about large scale solar energy collection with large area ocean surface pools, and making electricity from the temp differential to deeper water. But again on a large enough scale, who know what unintended consequences this might reap... Pulling some energy (heat) from the ocean surface around the equator might actually remove energy from hurricanes and similar destructive weather systems, but who knows how that all balances out.

I worry that we mere mortals are not smart enough to manage complex systems we don't understand.

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JR.
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Re: Texas Winter

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It seems like it might be useful to so some experiments. to get a handle on things in case the arm waving is real and we actually need to actively cool, or warm the planet. I'm old enough to recall warnings of both scenarios.

Mt Pinatubo threw 20 metric tons of sulfur dioxide aerosols into atmosphere 20 miles up... metallic oxides only 6 miles up would probably settle out in days like ash, not months like aerosols. While I don't know if this is an application for nano particles where solids might act differently with very high surface area to mass.

I'd be suspicious they were seeding rain clouds but they generally use silver iodode and/or dry ice.
=====

Speaking of gray water, my RO filter water bypass to fill my toilet flush tank has been working for a few months without issue. I bought a small stainless steel spring to put in series with my flapper valve to damp out the strange oscillation.

We waste huge amounts of water, and heating/cooling energy , etc... It's kind of nice that we can... but as resources get more expensive we will waste less.

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mediatechnology
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Re: Texas Winter

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John - Have you never seen "Chem-trails?"
Many of us are being sprayed with something: Have been for years.
They don't dissipate like upper-atmosphere moisture ladden normal jet contrails. We see them on and off throughout the year.

I took this over the house in Desoto.

Image
Desoto Chemtrails December 2007

Ice doesn't dissipate like this. People who have sampled them have found an oily component:

Image
2001 Chemtrails over Desoto Texas

Returning back to the Roof Decking I measured the temp about 1 foot below the apex of the ridge.
With a 99 degree F ambient (outside) temperature the peak rise at the ridge inside the attic was 111 degrees.

I went up there today to change an AC filter and would have usually been sweating big-time by the time I walked down the cat-walk and reached the unit.
I never broke a sweat in the couple of minutes it took to change it.
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JR.
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Re: Texas Winter

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I ran 5 miles today and managed to sweat quite a lot, despite it only being in the low '90s if I take the weather channels word for it... probably several degrees warmer on the black top, i ran around 2pm. but it was seriously humid today... worse than monday.

Those greasy vapor trails were probably put up there by google maps to make the lines that show up on their maps when you zoom out. :lol:

Or maybe it's the military mandate to develop alternate fuels... I think I read about a bio- aircraft fuel. Maybe it doesn't burn completely.

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Re: Texas Winter

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I've seen them draw some elaborate grids that lasted for a very long time. Aerial tic-tac-toe.
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Re: Texas Winter

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While this is just a WAG. if I were trying to test or calibrate optics in say a satellite camera for linearity, laying out a grid on the ground would be very very expensive, most likely impossible.

To establish a useful grid in the air, the smoke/vapor trail needs to be persistent (greasy? (Perhaps oil based.) Since air movement could alter the grid pretty quickly, using multiple planes that could establish the grid in a couple passes seems logical.

=====

I have heard of seeding clouds to reduce lightning risk, while I don't completely understand that mechanism.. Lightning can act strangely considering how simple the mechanism is. I used to think that rainfall contributed to lightning strikes, but over the years I haven't found any correlation in the sundry explanations I read. Just what I see. :lol:

If this grid making behavior could be proved to have started fires that damaged property and/or cost lives somebody would be responsible, unless they had super secret get out of jail free cards. Even the military cancelled tests on seeding hurricanes after some modest short term success because they were fearful of liability issues, if they were actually successful and altered the path or strength of a major storm.


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