Recent content by voyager

See my post in the above thread for more info. I had to chuckle a lot seeing the pics here. Either It was a lousy job of blowing it in or it has been very badly disturbed by people moving around there. Probably a combination of both. The blow-in should be even and smooth across the attic floor...

Cellulose insulation, assuming nothing has changed with it through the years, is nothing more than ground up newspaper. Calling it cellulose comes from the fact it is a wood product (from paper), with an attempt to make it sound like something exotic. Blowing it in, even with a 2 man crew, has...

Kitty litter was a good idea, not perfect yet, though. I should have thought of it. Will look for some TSP too. I scrubbed some in with a block of wood. It lifted some of it. By sweeping and not removing all the fines from the ground in litter, it was very hard to see the stain. The color of...

A couple weeks of winds and heavy rain filled and overflowed the grease pan on our BBQ grill out on the back lanai. The grease, and carbon char in it, have left stained spots on the lanai's concrete. I've soaked liquid soap and detergent on it a couple of times while hitting it with a scrub...

I received the following email from HRT. Went to the thread and couldn't find the post. The poster didn't have a listing in the members section. Not sure exactly what happened, but since I've just finished the floor for the seconed building, I decided to post an update. From email: Been...

@Steve123, The answer is not as simple as you've made it sound. Florida's NextEra had made a bid to purchase Hawaiian Electric a while back. At the time, NerxtEra was notoriously anti solar in its Florida operations. To sweeten the pot for them, HE made some changes. It changed its PV...

The greatest problem with LEDs and other electronic components, as I understand it, is that China has become a major, if not the major world supplier of the rare earth minerals used in their manufacture. They were, and are probably still trying to leverage that to their advantage by charging...

We no longer have any incandescent lighting being used around our property, only a few CFLs are left while we wait for them to fail. We have LEDs everywhere else, replacing 7watt night lights, 60, 90 and 100 watt equivalents, solar power security lighting, etc. With the cost of LED lights...

@bud16415, I've been thinking of doing something similar for our spa tub, with a coil on the roof of its pergola. We only use it for cooling down on hot summer days, keeping water temps at ~92 to 94°F, warm enough to not get chilled sitting in it for an hour or more. Unheated and with the cover...

Here on Hawai'i Island there is a large off-grid population, especially in the more remote areas. They usually run 12 volt or there-abouts systems, [maybe 24 or 48 volt too?], and many use propane also,. where applicable. We chose a grid connection because of convenience. We use 120 and 240...

Hawai'i has some of the highest electrical costs in the country. The last time I checked, 4-1/2yrs ago, we were paying $0.42/kwh. We had an 8kv PV system [16 panels/inverters] installed 4-1/2 years ago on our home. We are grandfathered into the net-metering program, more payback for us than...

The back lanai is finished! The shading from the lattice boards makes it like dappled light under a tree when the sun is overhead. The amount of IR passed by the carbonate panels is made negligible by the lattice panels. M'Lady wanted a porch swing. She ordered it. I hung it. We are again...

I made a breakthrough today for info about using cinders as an aggregate for concrete. I appears that the correct term for cinders is scoria. putting "scoria concrete aggregate" into a Google search bring out engineering papers like coins from a nickel machine jackpot. I have only scanned some...

Relocated the retaining wall to allow the slabs for the 8x10 sheds to be built in front of the Samoan Palm. When I began this [ordered the cinders] it was before the eruption, evacuation, etc, about 10 months ago. I had planned to allow placing a beehive or two behind the sheds. I have gone back...

Hi bud16415, Using the cinders as aggregate can be compared to a standard mix using sand and gravel. Engineering studies have been made for the use of pumice and other volcanic materials. I do live on a volcano. Soil here is either lava rock, lava cinders, or pig mud, the rotted organic...