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JJM - Thank you

TRB on Mon December 31, 2007 12:16 PM User is offlineView users profile

Happy New year and thanks for the support!

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Chick on Mon December 31, 2007 1:57 PM User is offlineView users profile

Hope you don't mind, but I'll just jump on your thread....

Wishing "all" a very Happy New Years, stay safe, and hopefully everyone will be here for the NEW YEAR!!!!

And a BIG THANKS to Tim for giving us all a great place to "hang out" all year, ... Never been in such good company.... Even karl....

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Chick
Email: Chick

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Freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose

TRB on Mon December 31, 2007 2:21 PM User is offlineView users profile

Like I have stated a thousand times. I could not run this site without all of the members help, even Karl's. We had a few more issues this past year with people tying to use this site to promote Ebay crap and the likes! But we have some great moderators which catch this stuff before I even get up for the day most of the time. No doubt in my mind we have a very helpful place for our readers. Hecat has directed a good amount of no a/c flushing sales our direction. So I thank them for their support also.

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When considering your next auto A/C purchase, please consider the site that supports you: ACkits.com
Contact: ACKits.com

NickD on Mon December 31, 2007 4:23 PM User is offline

JJM is not posting like he use to. Is it because he doesn't have anymore R-12 vehicles? Or because he got married? Or was it he purchased a new Cadillac that is consuming all of his time with problems?

Ah, NYC with Times Square and dropping the ball at midnight, ha, 11:00 PM our time, but what such excitement! In WI, we just kick a can at midnight, have to make do with what you have.

JJM is a very gifted and eloquent bitcher, ha, miss those bitches, certainly there are other subjects to bitch about.

TRB on Mon December 31, 2007 4:33 PM User is offlineView users profile

The reason for stating thanks for the support to Joe. Is he clicked the link and sent the forum a few green backs. I was not singling him out for his written support over others. Just saying thank you is all.

-------------------------

When considering your next auto A/C purchase, please consider the site that supports you: ACkits.com
Contact: ACKits.com

NickD on Mon December 31, 2007 7:51 PM User is offline

If Joe sent me a few greenbacks, would do more than thank him, probably would lick his face too, LOL. On second thought, would get my dog to do that for me.

TRB on Mon December 31, 2007 8:02 PM User is offlineView users profile

Quote
Originally posted by: NickD
If Joe sent me a few greenbacks, would do more than thank him, probably would lick his face too, LOL. On second thought, would get my dog to do that for me.


I think you are thinking about that other a/c website. They are the ones with the "licking" posts!

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When considering your next auto A/C purchase, please consider the site that supports you: ACkits.com
Contact: ACKits.com

NickD on Tue January 01, 2008 8:50 AM User is offline

That is not the faces, I assume, LOL.

JJM on Thu January 03, 2008 1:21 AM User is offline

Gee Tim you're making me blush here...

But the thanks is all mine. I am fortunate indeed to be part of such a wonderful group here.

Sorry I haven't been "b_tching" as much as I used to, but you know what they say, "be careful what you wish for." Don't worry, I'll be starting in soon once I'm not able to buy normal friggen light bulbs anymore. I mean really, is this not the most asinine thing you've every heard... your light bulbs will have an effect on the weather????? AND IDIOTS ARE BUYING INTO THIS!!!!! Remember what Adolph Hitler said about the Big Lie.

I had to laugh at that new green "environmentally friendly" ball in Times Square this year. I was so hoping it would malfunction. But if city and this IDIOT mayor really wanted to be green, they should do away with the whole New Year's Eve celebration altogether. Talk about the carbon footprint for that thing. I mean really, all the electricity, the trees cut down for confetti, hats, streamers, and what not, police and sanitation vehicles running, cars, taxis and public transportation moving everyone down there and back for what... to see a sixty seconds of a ball dropping??? I have two balls they can see without all the fanfare and waste.

See... you got me started already.

And I do have one R-12 vehicle left, the '84 Olds 98 Regency... and it's stayin' that way!

Joe

NickD on Thu January 03, 2008 6:12 AM User is offline

Several years ago, I did buy one fluorescent light bulb when I commented about regulator incandescent bulbs constantly burning out in my trouble light, heck, isn't that why they call it a trouble light? The so called heavy duty bulbs for trouble lights cost around a couple of bucks a piece, but the the light fell six inches, that bulb was history. Have to admit the fluorescent bulb in this application is far superior and cheaper as I have already dropped this thing a zillion times, still works. And I don't get burned when I touch the metal, runs cool.

I just purchased two 100 watt equivalent fluorescent bulbs for my garage ceiling lights, claim they only draw 23 watts, but surprised I didn't test them. One reason is the regular bulbs are always burning out at full power, I don't have a dimmer, but the main reason, they were on sale, a package of two for around five bucks. When I first switched them on, could barely see the opposite wall, what the heck. But after about a five minute warm up period, the garage appeared much brighter than the standard bulbs, just have to wait. Maybe they will work quicker in the summer, it's cold out there. When you first turn them on, they barely glow. Son wants to install spot lights on the front of his garage like I have, but the 150 watt equivalents were ten bucks a piece. I asked him if he really wanted those as the normals were only $1.50 each, and what about that warm up time? He said they last longer, just said they say they last five years, mine are already 23 years old and I have never replaced them, and if you want to switch on your spots, you want that light on bright now. Well he took them anyway, half way back to the check out, he says, no, I will get the normals. If you have a prowler outside you want light now, not six months from now.

Heard a climatologist blast out that Russian scientist for saying the temperature on Mars is also rising due to increase sun spot activity. This idiot claims that our global warming is man made and is carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is not even a greenhouse gas! And the increased CO2 levels are helping plant life that we need to survive in our over crowded planet.

A more interesting comment I heard is that plants are controlling us by producing delicious fruits and vegetables, by doing that, they are assured that man will grow them, and that they will continue to survive.

How about a national sales tax to get rid of income tax? It's unbelievable what the government puts us through every year. Wife was commenting that she had to work all day New Years eve, in Venezuela, everyone got a full week off with pay, a time for fun, celebration, and relaxation. The USA has the fewest paid holidays, unless you work for the government and the shortest vacation periods of most western nations, Americans are also working the longest hours each week. What for? So we can help other nations and defend them? Screw them, let them defend themselves, we also have the shortest life spans, are getting worked to death, can remember all those years working till midnight on Christmas and New Years eve to get the last dime out to make the stockholders happy. And when you work your can off, have to pay a much higher tax rate, pay a bundle in SS taxes only to die a couple of years later, but do get 200 bucks for someone to dig a hole for your body. Then they have the nerve to say, SS is going broke!

Wife was referring mainly to the pre-Chavez days, get the wrong people in power and life can be hell, feel we have the same thing here.

Ha, do we even need leaders? I personally do not like being led.

Edited: Thu January 03, 2008 at 8:15 AM by NickD

TRB on Thu January 03, 2008 9:51 AM User is offlineView users profile

You know what bugs me even more is the lawsuit filed in Arizona by some attorney for the music industry. They filed a suit that we can't "buy" a CD and then copy it to our computer and import our purchased music to a MP3 player. Claim states the CD was not an MP3 format so you are breaking the copyright laws.

-------------------------

When considering your next auto A/C purchase, please consider the site that supports you: ACkits.com
Contact: ACKits.com

bohica2xo on Thu January 03, 2008 1:07 PM User is offline

Nick & Joe:

I am still looking for the hard data, but I suspect the CFL bulb is just as big a hoax as a hybrid car or solar cell. Watts in / Lifetime is but a small part of the story. How much energy & oil went into the production is another matter. I guess I will just have to render a current CFL, and weight the components. But a quick look makes me wonder...

Plastic housing.
Plastic is all petro-based. Anyone that has ever seen a moulding shop knows that the process is energy intensive, and a thermodynamic nightmare.

Lamp-worked glass tube.
Rather than blowing a simple globe in one step, that corkscrew shape requires much more work - at high temperatures.

Internal circuitry.
Some sort of circuit board lives inside. All of those components are encased in more petro-products, mounted to a fiberglass/epoxy board. We already know how energy intensive the silicon in the semicinductors is, I will have to look at the rest of the components.

Cost of production is always linked to the price of energy at some point...


Happy New Year!

B.

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"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."
~ Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi, An Autobiography, M. K. Gandhi, page 446.

NickD on Thu January 03, 2008 2:27 PM User is offline

I did it, took a 23 watt, 100 equivalent fluorescent bulb and plugged it into my digital wattmeter at room temperature. Started off at 20 watts, slowly built up to 26 watts as it got brighter than tapered back down to 23 watts as it reached operating temperature. Then I checked the VA input, was 41 VA for a power factor of 56%, didn't realize these things were that inductive. Power companies can't be too happy with that low power factor as the power generating equipment has to be about twice the size to supply the VA, but they are only getting paid for about half of that. So I am sure they are going to increase the rates when these things are more widely used. Plus when a device claims to save energy, there is a strong tendency to use more of that device, what the hell, leave it on, ain't using that much kind of thing. Ha, could try one with a light dimmer to see if it blows up, maybe tomorrow.

Started off with Edison wax cylinders, then 78's, 45's, LP's, reel to reel, 8 track, cassettes, CD's, now MP3 or *.wma, same old stuff, neither Beethoven nor Mozart came out with anything new in my lifetime. Wife wanted an MP3 player for Christmas, ha, finally got her one this morning. Had to do some research, this stuff is all new to me, but an after Christmas sale, and a 30 buck coupon finally led me to the purchase. Not only an MP3 player that handles *wma formats, but has a color viewer for photos, FM radio, is a personal recorder, plays videos, and I think it also washes dishes. I have quite a stack of LP's, cassettes, reel to reels, and CD's, but not sure if she likes my taste in music. She likes the 80's music if you can call it music. Ha, we rented that Hector Lavoe DVD, El Cantante, she gets up off the couch and starts dancing. Wow can that woman dance, shocked me, if she wants Lavoe, that is what she is going to get, LOL.

I get on the internet and look at all these MP3 sites, about a zillion of them, the trusted ones charge a buck a song, I have purchased used CD's in the past for a couple of bucks, came in like brand new except I didn't have to spend an half a day trying to get that skin pack wrapper off. So I ordered a bunch of those. Is suppose to be legal to copy off the air, with the latest trend to add distortion to music, another 0.2% doesn't make that much difference, can record to a hi-fi VCR, make a .wav file, convert that to digital, then to MP3, but have to be glued to the computer to do that. Have better things to do, with a CD just plug it in rip off the songs you want, click the mouse button, and walk away. Cable company promotes copying stuff, will even rent the equipment to do it, if you have the time, we get some odd 50 channels of continuous music if you want to wait a half a day for your favorite songs to pop up. Suppose to be legal to back up your CD's as well, I have all backups in my car, it gets hot in there, and CD's do melt.

So sue me.

bohica2xo on Mon January 07, 2008 3:43 PM User is offline

Nick:

There you go again with facts! 41VA for 23 watts? LOL - I guess I need to buy some more, and get "something for nothing" from the power company. I will have to check the VA on my outdoor CFL assembly - it is rated 65w.

I wonder how the frequency drives on my pool pumps look to the power company? It runs a 3 phase motor from single phase 220v ac, and provides a huge savings on the bill... Now I am really curious.

I am still looking for for a dead CFL for rendering - a friend had one crap out, but it caught on fire so it is useless for analysis.


B.

-------------------------
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."
~ Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi, An Autobiography, M. K. Gandhi, page 446.

NickD on Wed January 09, 2008 7:58 AM User is offline

With sales and rebates, can be as cheap as two bucks a bulb, but to destroy even a two buck bulb to learn what makes it tick seems extravagant. I really don't understand this warm up time, but they do come on the instant you hit the switch. Lot's of time I go out to my garage to grab a tool, but can't see well enough so have to bring a flashlight unless I want to wait a couple of minutes. Even the ones I put in my basement have that warm up time and a lot warmer down there than in the garage.

Another thing I am tempted to go back to is my Viewsonic 20" CRT monitor, gosh that thing is a back breaker, but crystal clear picture. Do like having an LCD monitor that I can pick up with two fingers, but no matter how I play with it, the scroll bar to the right is always washed out. Wife would like me to get rid of my Panasonic CRT projector that is really a back breaker, but what a picture that thing projects even in a well lit room. CRT's are know to last over 40,000 hours, beautiful picture, crystal clear even with way outdated NTSC. Not sure what's going on next year when NTSC is suppose to be history, but I look at these overpriced HD LCD things in the store and they look like crap to me. She did ask about these LCD projectors, just said it would cost us about 50 cents an hour to watch due to that way overpriced light bulb, what a rip off, damned bulb, about the size of a 194 automotive bulb costs about half the price of the projector. Has a couple of pigtails on it that mounted in screws, but they make you buy the entire reflector, nothing wrong with the old one. And the picture you get is nothing like the old Panasonic, so much for progress, still say we are going backwards.

What really needs an overhaul is the programming, saw an interesting sign at our library, tired of scanning through 250 channels with nothing to watch? Read a book.

NickD on Thu January 10, 2008 4:44 PM User is offline

One of those days, go out to my Supra, the battery is stone dead, had a maintenance charger on it, it outputted 0.49 volts, took it a part, the reference zener diode was short circuited, nothing else was wrong. Got the charger working again. My battery is sulfated, won't take a charge, well, it's kind of old anyway. Grabbed my trouble light, it slipped off and landed on that protective grid, breaking the tube on the CFL. It has been in there some time now, a Westinghouse 23 watt.

Well the good news is now I have a broken CFL to take apart, it's in a thermal plastic base, after breaking off the rest of the tube, I squeezed the base in my vise that popped off the cover with a bit of help from a screwdriver, this is what is in the base. I thought these would be epoxy sealed, the PCB is just laying in there.





That black lead went to the base of the bulb for neutral, the red to the tip for 120 VAC, the remains of the tube are sticking out with those four white wires. Ha, at DigiKey unit prices, has to be about 30 bucks worth of parts in there. Appears to be all hand assembled, but what the hell, labor in China is around 17 cents a day, but it was wave soldered with the leads routed off and cleaned. This bulb is around five years old, sure they are making them different today, surface mount even.

JJM on Sat January 12, 2008 2:41 PM User is offline

Here you guys go again with all your engineering talk...

I'm trying to understand power factor, and despite spending a good part of my morning doing some reading up on it, I still really don't get it. What is so funny about 41VA for 21W... is that a good thing or a bad thing and what are the implications of it?

Nick, in the photo you provided, I see a green wire that appears to be soldered to the TOP of the electrolytic (I assume that's what it is) capacitor. I have never seen that done before. Aren't there two leads on the bottom of the cap, positive and negative? What could possibly be accomplished this way, and electrically, is that "kosher" so to speak?

I agree with Bohica there's an awful lot of components in there, and I wonder what the production energy input versus energy savings really is. I bet it's negative too like solar cells... not that the jackasses who buy them thinking they're saving the planet would know (or care to know).

Joe

mhamilton on Sat January 12, 2008 4:45 PM User is offlineView users profile

Quote
Nick, in the photo you provided, I see a green wire that appears to be soldered to the TOP of the electrolytic (I assume that's what it is) capacitor. I have never seen that done before. Aren't there two leads on the bottom of the cap, positive and negative? What could possibly be accomplished this way, and electrically, is that "kosher" so to speak?

That's just a trick of the light. The "solder dot" on top of that capacitor is actually the top of the gray line that points to the negative lead. The black wire just runs down next to it.


Edited: Sat January 12, 2008 at 9:32 PM by mhamilton

NickD on Sat January 12, 2008 7:38 PM User is offline

My wife's cell phone barely two years old with good care was worn out already, a 200 buck piece of crap in my opinion, we had to buy a new one as millions of others have to, plus MP3 players, digital cameras, computers, etc. Causing a lot of grief in landfills so they claim and want to charge an additional recycling fee to get rid of this crap. They claim the lead in the 60/40 lead tin solder is going to contaminate the ground water, though they haven't any proof of this. As further protection, lead tin solder is soon to be outlawed, already in Europe with a replacement lead less solder that doesn't stick worth a crap that cost four times as much. The CFL is going to add billions of units to this problem.

That circuit is still good, works fine, if the tube were an very inexpensive replacement that wears out, leaks gas, or breaks, and plugs into the PCB, billions of these circuits could be reused if you could just plug a new one in. Would add about 3/4 cent for rivet type sockets. Just more waste.

Power factor explained in a sentence or two, only applies to sinusoidal AC voltages. If you apply 100 volts AC to say a 100 ohm resistor, the resultant current flow will be 1 ampere using Ohms law, I=E/R. The resistor does not cause a phase shift between the voltage and current and the current and voltage are precisely in phase. So if you put an ammeter in series with this resistor and a voltmeter across the resistor, you will measure 1 ampere and 100 volts, the product of these two parameters is called, volts amperes or VA for short or would be 100 VA. If you added a wattmeter to the circuit it would show exactly 100 watts and is also known as true power. VA is called apparent power.

Power factor is the ratio of true power to apparent power or in this case 100/100 or unity, a power factor of one where the actual power dissipated in watts equals the VA product, by the way, P=IE which is exactly the same formulae, I is amps and E is volts, but V and A are used instead to avoid confusion even though they are exactly the same thing.

Now if that same voltage were applied to a coil of wire wrapped around an iron core, you get the property of inductance and depending upon the amount of inductance and the frequency of the applied voltage you get an impedance or reactance that is essentially the same as resistance a parameter that opposes the flow of current.

An inductor can be would to have an inductance of say 0.266 henries, the unit of measurement of inductance, symbol, L. The formula for inductive reactance, Xl is Xl=2 pi F L that would be 6.28 times 60 Hz times 0.266 henry or a reactance of 100 ohms, using Ohms law again, but I=E/Xl this time or 100/100= 1 ampere the same as the resistance circuit.

But the huge difference in the inductor circuit is that the current will lag the voltage by 90*, for now, take my word for it, the mathematical proof for this is extremely involved. Put in another way, an RMS voltage of 100 Volts has a peak voltage of 141 volts, and with a 90* lag in current, when the voltage is at peak, the current will be at zero amperes.

This results in a true power of zero watts, in like matter, when the current is at it's peak of 1.41 amperes, the voltage is at zero, and zero times 1.41 is zero.

Dividing TP/AP or 0/100 equals a power factor of zero. With a power factor of zero, even though you are drawing 1 ampere, your electric bill will be zero, but the power company still needs the equipment to supply you with that one ampere at 100 volts.

But adding a resistance in series with the inductor, the power factor can increase from zero to unity depending on the ratio of resistance to inductive reactance. Power companies do not like low power factor numbers for this reason, they are supplying voltage and current, but not getting paid for it, we only pay for true power used.

In other terms, the inductor is not actually consuming power that does any work, but it is actually returning that energy back to the power company, no laws of energy conservation are being broken here. I like to check my power meter for zero KWH used when it is just applied to a pure inductive circuit, not that I don't trust the power company, but did get a new meter when I complained when the old one was showing that power was being consumed.

Just opposite to the inductor is the capacitor, while current lags voltage in an inductive circuit, current leads voltage in a capacitance circuit. In industrial applications using many large electric motors that have the property of inductance, large capacitors can be connected across the lines to cancel out the inductive effects. Some companies do this if their power company charges them a premium for having a low power factor. Kind of what the capacitors would cost compared to how much extra fee they would have to pay. These capacitors are not cheap, of the oil bath type, very low dissipation factor, meaning a very small resistance and have to be quite large in value to offset the inductance of those motors.

Households rarely if ever have their power factor measured, there are meters for this. I was out with my son looking at air compressor, what a bad joke, while the one I was recommending had a GE motor on it, the spec label was empty. Motors made in the 20's and 30's when the cost of electricity was very high had a high power factor of better than 0.9 even as high as 0.95, this also translates into using the electrical power to run a machine rather than to heat the plant.

Quite a contradiction in most of our appliances today with low PF's, use less steel and copper to keep the price down, but suck up electricity in a very wasteful fashion, this whole world is becoming a F___ing joke.

Hope this explains a little about a very complex subject, matrix algebra is used in complex reactive circuits with imaginary numbers.

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