Randall's Blog

Dave drove from Cleveland to visit for the weekend. He drove out on Saturday and met us downtown for dinner. We tried a Mexican place that Beth recommended called El Mariachi. It was good and I was able to park right in front to get my mom in with relative ease. Debbie gave Dave a tour of Albany Law on the way home. On Sunday we went skiing at Gore Mountain. The conditions were really good and it was perfect weather. I had not been to Gore in many years. It's a great place to ski and it's less than 2 hours away. We also lucked out because someone sold us lift tickets for $21 off the going rate. We were a bit sore the next day but it was fun.

The view on the mountain is pretty good - not quite as nice as Wildcat but certainly a clear, long view of the Adirondacks.

On Monday we got a little snow and we mainly hung out at the house. I have digitized a lot of old photos lately and Dave spent a while looking through them on the computer. It was a fun visit - a long drive for Dave but I'm glad he was able to get away.

On Friday afternoon I drove to Boston for a quick visit. The main reason was Kevin's surprise 30th birthday party at Grasshopper (photos are on my Facebook page). I made a stop by the Peabody to visit with my Anthro friends as well. Amanda caught me up on the goings on of the Ruvolo lab. and I ran into Maryellen as well. Beer hour seemed very lively as there was an anthropology-themed pictionary planned. I got to see many friends and have a beer before the party.

The dinner at Grasshopper was very nice with good food and friends. We hung around until late talking and having vegan birthday cake.

I stayed over at Blakely & Kevin's new house in Dorchester. It's a nice place with lots of potential. Kevin is working on finishing the kitchen but is running into lots of hassle from the city. Hopefully it will be finished soon.

Saturday morning was devoted to shopping. Costco first and Trader Joe's next. Rebecca met me at TJ's and helped me buy over $200 of yummy TJ's food & wine. We were able to chat over some coffee for a while as well after the TJ's shopping orgy.

On a different note, our solar hot water system seems to be working very well - better than I expected. On cold but sunny days we get lots of hot water. We have run into one issue with the system, though. It seems that the new storage tank is an ideal environment for the growth of sulfur bacteria even though there is filtration and UV treatment before the tank. This has the unfortunate result that our hot water now smells a bit like rotten eggs...

Yesterday I finished up the installation of the solar hot water system. We bought the system last July from a company called Solar Components but I was so busy with various projects that it has taken a while to finish it up. It's also NOT a one man operation. Chris helped me install the panels on the roof and bring the storage tank into the basement (see earlier posts). I figured I would work on the "inside" stuff when the weather was cold - good thing too as this is what the outside system looked like on December 21st:

The recent work has been mostly plumbing - hooking the big storage tank up to feed warmed water to our existing electric water heater and hooking the panels to the coil in the tank. I originally was going to place the circulating pump on the wall opposite the tank:

However, I saw in various web photos of installations that it could be mounted on the tank and I switched it so it sits on the storage tank. I have to say that this system (which is made in Germany) seems to be well made but it is NOT set up for easy homeowner installation. It's not sold this way so I'm not complaining, I knew what I was getting myself into here. I was told that an installation of this kind might cost $2,500 so I am saving a lot of money by doing it myself. The company that sold it does provide English translations of the various manuals but some of the German symbols and abbreviations are not that familiar. Anyway, the plumbing went pretty smoothly - sweating pipes isn't that hard. This is the hot water heater piping before:

And this is the after:

These are the pipes coming in from the roof:

In order to sweat these collector pipes I had to get into the cistern (through the hole to the right in the above photo - not an easy task) and once I was in I had to call on Debbie to hand me stuff because I didn't want to get in & out more than once. The cistern might make a nice bomb shelter (the walls are almost a foot thick) but it's pretty claustrophobic.

The next part was hooking up the controller. This turns on the circulating pump when the panels are warmer than the water in the storage tank. It has two temperature sensors I had to attach - one on the tank and one on the panels. I used a long extension cord (I cut off the ends) to connect the sensors to the controller (the green cords) and another (orange) extension cord to hook up the electric.

The final task was to fill the system with the 50/50 glycol solution and test it. The glycol is a bright pink:

I thought I could just use the pump to get the solution into the panels but it turns out that they are too high and the pump is not able to get the liquid past 16 feet. I had to go up to the roof and pour the solution into the panels. Once I tightened a small valve that was leaking glycol on the roof there didn't seem to be any leaks outside. Unfortunately, it was a little sunny yesterday morning and this made the procedure a bit more difficult. I did get it done and after running the pump a few times to get the air bubbles out it started working - I mean heating up the water in the tank! I wasn't expecting it to really work until the Spring - yesterday was a pretty warm day though.

I added some insulation to the pipes after I was sure there were no leaks. I did have two small leaks inside but these were easy to fix. This is the circulating pump with the expansion tank off to the right.

I do have one last vexing leak in the pipe that brings cold water into the storage tank (bottom left in the above photo) - I guess I didn't tighten the connection enough and fixing it is going to be a pain. At the moment it just drips on to the floor and into the sump pump so I can wait a while - sometimes leaks will seal themselves.

I'll report back the next warm sunny day about how well it works.

We had another fun groundhog party this weekend! Thanks to all those who ventured out to the party bringing wonderful food, drink and gifts. We had people from ME, MA, NJ and NY. Andy drove out with Victoria and Al came with Blakely and Kevin. Kris also drove out from Boston as did Rebecca & Ali. Chris & Shannon came from Western Mass. Lorene came up from New Jersey and we had lots of friends from this area as well, many who didn't make it out for our parties in Epping that often. It was great to see Owen & Sharon, Heidi & Daniel and Jennie & Dan. Debbie's friends Tracy, Lela and Rachel from Albany Law School came over too. Jennie Moak (the woman we bought the house from) came by in the afternoon with her husband to see what we have been doing with the place. She was impressed with the changes - especially the attic.

Here Debbie is making some seitan for the party.

We had the movie on downstairs and in the attic.

Our new place is small but we had a good number of people.

The attic was a nice place to talk and play cards.

Happy Birthday Darwin!

Debbie was dressed up for the party.

Debbie made pancakes Sunday morning for our overnight guests.

I have been reading a lot of articles and essays trying to figure out what's coming next for the economy. I'm not any kind of economist but I can usually tell if someone is on to something or is full of s*#t. The broad consensus seems to be that we are mostly done with phase one of the "crisis" and we will be moving to phase two soon. Exactly what this means is not that clear. Recovery is NOT around the corner and things may get a lot worse. This is not a stock market prediction as stocks don't always reflect the overall health of the economy, as the spiral of job losses and resulting decline in spending continues.

Banks that have received billions of our money are still on the brink - of something, failure? and may require a lot more money. Why it makes sense to give money to failing banks so they MIGHT lend this money to actual people and businesses never made much sense to me but I guess bankers have to get something for all the money they have given to politicians over the years (Republican and Democrat alike). I say nationalize them and start throwing CEOs in prison. The term "financial services" used to be thrown around as the future of our economy (since all the manufacturing jobs were sent overseas). It all looks like Ponzi schemes and financial shell games to me at this point - why should we reward this kind of crap?

The big bail-out package (which is not big enough) is waiting final touches before a vote. The Republicans will mostly vote against it even though Obama put in some lame provisions to appease them. What fool thinks that lowering taxes will jump start the economy? The problem is not that taxes are too high it's that the whole economy is built on a foundation of sand. Do we really want to return to the crazy scheme where we use credit (mainly from our homes in the past) to buy an endless stream of disposable STUFF made in overseas factories? This is an "economy" structured by multi-national corporations who have no loyalty to communities, states or nations. Profit is the only goal - greased by cheap fossil fuel energy. The consumer economy was flawed even before corporations decided that they could make a larger profit by moving manufacturing to countries with "low labor costs" and no environmental standards. This trend made it pathological, unsustainable and certainly not something we should want to return to.

There are voices that envision a different way of doing things. Listen/read this interview with David Korten on Democracy Now!

This is a similar viewpoint by Benjamin R. Barber.

Real change is what's needed; massive investment in efficient public transportation, green sources of energy and a sustainable economy. We won't get this with bank bailouts and allowing the "marketplace" to handle planning for the future. All these people care about is the next quarter's profits. Unfortunately, we are just about broke, thanks to Bush's wars and tax cuts for the wealthy. How long will the rest of the world continue to finance our deficit spending? A sizable number of economists believe that the dollar is poised for a tumble with runaway INFLATION following this period of deflation. It's going to take people with a different vision and some serious backbone to chart our path to a better future. I don't see that Obama has put together the right people for the task.

The Republicans are well known for using every crisis to further their extreme right-wing agenda. How about using this crisis to push for a single-payer health-care system? If we are going to throw billions at the problem let's get something for it. Let's demand the "real change" we voted for, not bailouts for bankers and multinationals.