Environmental News

My favorite clothes dryer discovery was just that after the spin in my front loader, I don't need the dryer at all. I can hang clothes right up and wear them tomorrow. Reserving the dryer now just for occasional things like pillows, towels, or things I forgot I need to wear today.

 

I know it would work on my lighter fabrics. If I were more confident in not having excessive moisture building up in the house, potentially leading to a mold problem, I'd try that on the heavier ones. Or if the house was better built to avoid such problems.

Or maybe I would just need greater partner buy-in. The spouse gets some sneezing issues that made her suspect mold. Mold tests all negative so far. Bathroom exhaust fan program time increased. Several homemade MERV13 room air filters now in use to control dust and particulates. I need to learn more about heat recovery ventilators with humidity control.

Meanwhile, in warm season, I do use an outdoor line for a reasonable amount of the drying. But it is very easy to get lazy on this.

I don't think it was hard, just expensive, as in on the order of a kilobuck. Not something that stove makers of that time were willing to try to bring to market at the expected low demand.

That was well before I was Priused. Now, the Prius 12V system should be able to handle a battery backup version easily enough, if appropriate stove selection is made.

 

Couldn't you just get a small UPS that would handle most outages?

Mike

 

Sounds like a typical UPS only has enough energy to perform a proper shut down. You need deep cycle type batteries for a run time measured in hours.
Battery Backup For Pellet Stoves - 3 Ways To Keep The Heat On

Sounds like a stove can be modified to run on a modified sine wave inverter, and there are inverters with built in chargers for the battery.
https://www.harmanstoves.com/shopping-tools/blog/winter-storm-outage-no-problem

Then there appears to be stove models that have battery back capabilities.

 

I do tend to take mine out of the front-loader and hang them on a shower curtain rod first, rather than just packing them right into the closet. And there's an HVAC register in there to keep the air moving. And the central HVAC takes care of humidity, both in the winter (adding) and summer (subtracting), and the occasional load of laundry doesn't seem to give it any challenge in the summer.

I do have to pay a bit of attention when unloading the washer. It uses an amusing bit of applied statistics to get the load balanced for spinning: it just tries a spin, monitors the vibration level, and stops if too much. Then it just tumbles the load slowly back and forth a few times and tries another spin, and keeps trying until random tumbling eventually gives it a spinnably balanced load. It almost always eventually works, though sometimes it will spend ten minutes or so doing retries.

Every once in a blue moon, randomness never works out in its favor, and it finally gives up. Then I'll go down to take the load out and think "hmm, that still feels pretty damp." Then I can manually shuffle the stuff in the drum and put it back on the spin phase again.

 

I mounted a hangar rod above the washer and dryer for that purpose. For things that shouldn't be machine dried, or are 'almost' dried, or to get wrinkle-prone items on hangars immediately as they come out of the drier. The rod fits well in this particular laundry closet. Certain dripping wet items get moved to a shower instead.

I didn't really expect any spin cycle to gets things dry enough to be immediately packed away, at least in normal humidity environments.

Central HVAC and active humidity control make all the difference here. My house has neither.

 

A UPS will cover only short outages, short enough that a decently insulated or energy efficient house doesn't really need any heat. Just throw on some warmer clothes.

I'm thinking in terms of the longer power outages, such as after the Big One or the Big Blow or the Big Snow/Ice. State and local government preparedness agencies here very strongly encourage planning for 3 days minimum, with 7 days being much better.

My personal longest power outage was 35 hours, but plenty of coworkers experienced 3-5 days. For the Hanukkah Eve windstorm of 2006, my brand new officemate had just flown in from the opposite coast, and arrived at the house where he was renting a room, just a few hours after the power went out. Despite being in an urban core, his abode didn't get power restored until the 8th day, a very chilly 'welcome' for a new-comer.

 

I'm seeing several claims that Hurricane Maria in 2017, also in Puerto Rico, was worse than Georges in 1998. But my general planning is being held to a couple weeks, not many months.

 

sad how far downhill things can go in four years

ruth-etzel-epa-whistleblower-hearing

 

we rarely eat beef, but quite a bit of chicken. i suppose we could supplant some of that with legumes and more fish if necessary.

 

Fried okra(*) and buttered corn today.

Bob Wilson

* - It’s a Sourthern thang, you won’t understand.

 

I have good opinions of things that both Greeks and Indians do with okra, and I probably wouldn't turn my nose up at some of it fried.

I've been amazed at what a slimefest it is to wash a knife used for slicing it, though.

 

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