I live in Glen Park, an obscure quiet neighborhood, with a small village down the hill with a few good restaurants and a dynamite bakery. Glen Canyon is two blocks away, with a stream and raccoons and coyotes and hawks and stuff. There are googlites moving in here and there. Nice people, but they are driving up house prices.
San Francisco is a collection of villages, mostly separated by geographic features. Different parts are very different.
Mold was once a big problem for me. When I bought the house, I discovered that the roof leaked. I patched it as best as I could, but standing water on a flat roof is never a good idea. The heat from the wood burner would evaporate the water that leaked into the carpet, raising the indoor humidity. The water condensed on various surfaces promoting mold growth. I knew what it was like to live in a terrarium.
In 1995, I did some remodeling which included replacing the flat roof with a 1:12 not-so-flat roof. That and re-roofing mostly eliminated the leaks. I then emptied half the house at a time, and went on a mold hunt. Unfortunately, some of my old books were lost during the mold purge. My built in mold detector (runny nose) signaled success.
The one remaining mold factory is the shower. It's a primitive all sheet metal affaire, with some rust around the edges. The rust seems to attract mold, especially behind the shower curtains. I use bleach to remove the mold when it becomes visible, but will eventually replace the shower with something more modern.
Other than these, there is no mold anywhere else in the house. That's one of the side benefits of a drafty house. Where there's air flow, there's no mold. That's why mold accumulated on surfaces behind furniture and curtains, where there's no air flow.
I was referring to his vacation getaway. All the houses in my neighborhood were once vacation homes and not intended for winter occupancy. Incidentally, I program Motorola radios on the side, which I guess makes me an "illegal programmer".
I think he was referring to his office building, which would have a slab foundation and floor, like all commercial buildings. If you were rolling around your house with a loaded fork lift, you might appreciate the merits of a slab floor somewhat more.
Thermal conductivity of concrete is about 1 W/m-K while kiln dried wood is roughly 0.1 W/m-K (varies with moisture content).
That's bad. Really bad. I was referring to outside, though. Trees that close to frame buildings aren't a good idea. I had problems with moss on my driveway in Alabama. ...and that was a completely open area. The only trees on the lot were a few Crepe Myrtles (the bushy type) and a 10' Cherry that I'd just planted. The problem was on the North side of the house, though.
Nah, you're not crammed fourteen to a house and shuttled back and forth from the dorm to work.
Sure, but you were mentioning temperature being an advantage. I didn't find it so, at least for a smaller building. Perhaps a large building (more constant sub-slab temperature) would be different.
Yes, you can feel the difference with your feet. ...and it's rare to use wood as insulation.
I have some moss or algae (not mold) growing on the roof and in a dark outside corner. I control it by spraying the area with dilute bleach twice per year: There are a few redwoods leaning against the deck and part of the roof. I try to make room by cutting back the roof and deck, but the trees just keep growing. The north side of the trees sometimes accumulate some moss but conveniently, that side is not in contact with the house.
I have a cot, sleeping bag, and some survival supplies in the office. However, they're not for the occasional all night writing exercises, data recovery exercises, or last minute taxes. They're for when the roads are closed due to flood, mud, or crud and I can't drive home.
Just before I bought this house, I lived with some friends in a crowded apartment building located about 20 ft from a major freeway. The traffic noise was so bad that everyone had mattresses blocking the freeway facing windows. Actually, I didn't live there as all of my stuff was in a cramped storage locker.
How was the slab in the summer? I would expect the slab floor to be cooler, especially if there were cold water pipes inside. An acquaintance built a thermal sink near his house consisting of an underground water tank containing about 500 gallons of water. The water is not for drinking (but can be used for fire suppression). Instead, it is pumped through copper and plastic pipes in the walls and floor. During the summer, it keeps the house at ground temperature. During the winter, the water is heated by his wood burner. It is then slowly pumped through the walls and floor to heat the house at night. It's not intended to heat or cool the house, but rather to moderate the temperature swings so that minimal heating and cooling will work more effectively.
I've seen wood laminate over foam board insulation (underlayment) used on slab foundations. However, I have no personal experience: Delta-FL moisture barrier, EPS foam, 3/8" OSB (oriented strand board),
3/32" underlayment foam, and laminate sandwich. The end result is allegedly better insulated than a 2" elevated sub-floor on the slab. The catch is that the slab should be perfect as wet spots (leaks and cracks) and lumps will wreck anything you put on the slab. The underside of a laminated wood floor is quite sensitive to moisture so the moisture barrier also has to be perfect.
We bought our property about 25 years ago. We're about 10 miles out of town, up on a mountain, and was surrounded by thick forest everywhere. The county road ends a half mile past our place. We really felt like we were getting away from it all to enjoy nature, our privacy, and peace and quiet.
Over the years the developers moved in, and immediately logged off most of the forest.
Now we are surrounded by private gated estates with 4000-5000 sq/ft mini- mansions. Despite having 5 acres to build on, they built one right across the road that sits up on a hill overlooking our property. It's less than
150 feet from our house. Yay... So much for privacy. To make matters worse, their landscapers show up every Friday with multiple mowers and leaf blowers. :)
We used to have beat up pickup trucks and the occasional weekend partiers driving up and down our road. Now it's mostly BMW's and Mercedes.
I miss the remote feel we used to have. We have tried to keep as much of the forest on our own property as possible, but with less than two acres there's only so much we can do.
Actually I'm not sure what this is saying, but it when you used the word "fraction" it seems to imply that there is little heat produced in the room. The opposite is true. Drawing say 200 watts from the outlet will warm the room by several times that amount. The difference is the latent heat of evaporation from the moisture when liquified being returned to the room at the hot coil. So a dehumidifier is much like running the AC and a heater to remove the moisture. You heat the room by more than the power drawn from the outlet which in turn makes the AC run longer to remove that heat.
When my house is not dry enough I turn the thermostat down another degree or two. The AC runs a little longer removing more moisture and a happy comfort level is achieved with a balance between being dry and being cool. I'm looking for comfort, not a fixed temperature. Once the air is wrung out I can turn the thermostat up again if I want. Much easier than dealing with extra equipment and likely more cost effective to boot. An AC is a great dehumidifier.
I've been dragged to plays in Manhattan and that was enough. Oh, then there was the iApx432 launch (three days). That was *way* more than enough. SF was much better (parking was the same - nonexistent). The hookers a couple of blocks from the hotel were funny, far better than those in Manhattan (even the trannies).
You might want to string some copper wire across the roof. They also make copper and zinc strips for the purpose.
I don't like any growth in contact with the house. Any wind and there's more work to do. It's good to keep the exterior dry, too.
Sounds like a regular occurrence. Ugh.
Like the Winter, it worked fine for a month or two into the season. Late in the season it got to be the wrong temperature and would work against the heat pump. Most people have this mistaken idea that only a few feet down the ground is a constant temperature - not true. Just notice the position of the mixing valve when you take a shower, during Summer and Winter.
Yes, a foam board probably would have made all the difference. Much of the downstairs of our house was tile or bamboo flooring, with the master BR carpeted, directly on the slab. All of the floors were noticeably warmer/colder than the upstairs floor.
I'm leery about putting anything over concrete (whether floor or wall), for exactly the reasons you state. Concrete is porous and moisture *will* come through. I really don't want to stop it on the inside. My current basement has an unfinished basement and I'm not sure what to do on the floor. I'm only planning on using it for a shop and storage but I want to sheetrock the walls, at least, if not put in a ceiling (though may not for tax reasons). Most of it is carpeted now, which I'm tearing up (sawdust in carpeting is a PITA). The problem is that the floor is dusting. Not sure how to handle it.
Ridiculous. To do so would require energy to be mysteriously created, which of course it's not. Assume the room is perfectly insulated. If
200W is all that's going into the room, then that is all the heat that is being created. Physics says so.
The difference is the
It's not much like running the heater and the AC at the same time at all. As has been explained to you about 5 times now, when you run the AC, you're pumping heat from inside the house to the OUTSIDE. Then, to replace that heat and keep the temperature of the house from dropping, you're proposing to run the HEAT. Whether that heat is gas, oil, electric, etc, it's being used to REPLACE heat that you just pumped outside. It's very inefficient compared to running a dehumidifier. With a dehumidifier, you're not pumping heat outside the house.
If by turning the thermostat back up again, you mean just raising the set point for cooling, so that the AC goes off, then I agree it's what normal people would do, it's cost effective, and fast. It's what I said many posts ago I'd do if my house was 78 and too humid. However that is very different from what you claimed, which was that turning on the AC AND THE HEAT is exactly the same as running a dehumidifier. It's not, because, one more time, by doing that, you're pumping heat out of the house, then using the heat system to replace it. A very inefficient process compared to a dehumidifier.
I remember a story about a Canadian Mounty knowing his man, responsible for murder robbery, mayhem, etc, was one of two inside a saloon. But did not know which man. He went in, severely kicked a dog lying near the bar, as the dog yelped loudly and one of the two came to the dog's aid with "poor puppy, etc" the Mounty arrested that man, and had the correct man.
Plus, Lizzie Borden gave her money to an animal shelter,
The iApx432 event must have been a hoot. Ditto Itanic. What I don't understand is how Intel introduced those architectures (super CISC and then super RISC) and somehow managed to make them slower than x86. There's got to be stories.
SF was much better (parking was the same - nonexistent). The
NYC is all concrete and steel and steam. Central Park is much praised but still awfully civilized.
SF has a small downtown, like a bit of New York, which is what most visitors see. But it has views, trails, stairways, beaches, cliffs, tunnels, mountains (well one, almost) if you get a couple of miles from downtown. We passed Proposition M some years back, which established height limits that keeps downdown from spreading. I park on the street at home, no problem.
You've got to be a people-person to enjoy New York. You have to actually own two or three tuxedos. Hang out in art museums.
We get the Sunday New York Times. It doesn't have comics, but it does have Style and The Arts, which are even funnier.
Zinc doesn't work at all. Cooper only works for about 2-3 ft downhill. "Copper / Zinc Strips Failure - Roof Life of Oregon" One of my experiments was to rapidly electroplate some copper onto a cathode, producing copper dust. I sprinkled it onto the moss and added some mildly acidic water. The most was mostly gone by the next day. I hosed off the residue, and in about a month later, the moss was back. Grrr. Diluted sodium hypochlorite bleach (Clorox) and a little TSP replacement degreaser in a garden sprayer works well enough for me, or just use the overpriced commercial stuff: or make your own concoction:
Not really. Once a year at most for road closures. Maybe 4 times per year when my car won't run, or I'm stuck with doing the computer work after midnight. I don't use the cot much because there's no room in my cluttered office. I just roll an inflatable mattress into the isle and use a sleeping bag.
There's only one road in and out of the San Lorenzo Valley. Drop a tree across it and everything comes to a screeching halt. Actually, the tree isn't the problem, it's the safety regulations. It used to be that when a tree falls across the power lines, PG&E, Ma Bell, Comcast, Davey Tree, Public Works, and the local fire department all arrive at once and work together. Lots of congestion, but the tree was usually cleared in a very short time. The problem is that it's not really very safe to have everyone working at the same time. So, it was decreed that parallel processing was out, and serial processing was better. Everyone stands around directing traffic until PG&E declares the power to be turned off and safe. Then, the tree and debris are removed by Davey Tree. Then the various utilities replace the lines. Public works clears the road and declares the road passable. Finally, the fire department opens the road to traffic. Using parallel processing, a tree fall could be cleared in about an hour or two. With the new improved method, I've timed the process at between 6 to 8 hours.
I know little about heat pumps. "Seasonal variations drop off with depth and disappear below 7 metres (23 ft) to 12 metres (39 ft)" That's more than a "few feed down". How deep did you go?
Part of my foundation is concrete and rebar filled speedblock, which is certainly porous. I used: and some long forgotten brand of vapor barrier on the outside. Something similar should work for a slab:
Well, that's the standard practice. If your water table is too high, something else will need to be done. I have zero experience with such slabs and can't offer any suggestions.
Dunno. Maybe just an overlay to seal it better? Again, I have zero experience with slabs:
What type of dust? Carpet dust? Concrete dust? Rubber pad dust?
In the video, he says it's copper, but it sure looks like zinc to me. No copper color that I see. And I can show you roofs here where it's obvious zinc works, just like whatever it is in that video. You can see it with zinc flashing on pipes coming out of roofs. For about 4 ft below there is no moss/algae. But I agree it's far from an ideal solution, you'd have to put strips every 4 ft.
True, but it's not always that humid. What counts is the energy savings over the whole season. It would be very easy to use evap coolibng in front of the condenser or traditional A/C. But A/C technology is still largely in the stone age.
I really like evap cooling but have a major gripe with the poor quality of much of that stuff. The motor in our Champion/Essick cooler did a spectacular smoke-out into (!) the house last year. Bought a new motor and now that one is staring to show signs of failure. It hasn't even run
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