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Comment Re: Grundfos? (Score 1) 55

What you describe makes perfect sense in a commercial setting. Our house really is that large, but we still don't need hot water 24/7 at all fixtures, and there are only 2 of us. Our showers and baths in the master bathroom are served by the larger 80 gallon water heater which does not have a recirculation pump. The delay is about 1 minute and tolerable.

The smaller 50 gallon water heater serves the other 3.5 bathrooms, but the showers are only used when we have guests. The rest of the time, the hot water from that water heater is used only by the dishwasher and clothes washer. We cook with filtered water, and thus boil it separately on induction. Therefore, the water heater is on the lowest setting, and the circulation pump is off 99.9% of the time. My previous Miele dishwasher actually specified colder water inlet. The newer Bosch says to connect to hot water, so that's what was done. The LG clothes washer requires both hot and cold inlets, and I don't know what would happen if both were cold. If they could really function on cold only, I could just turn off that water heater altogether.

Comment Re: Grundfos? (Score 1) 55

There is no known safe level of PFAS. I don't know for sure that I "need" to filter my tap water. I do it anyway because the cost is fairly low, and there is no downside to filtering. I did a few searches on PFAS standards in water in Europe, including Netherlands, vs the US, and did not find significant differences. If anything, the standards appeared to be stricter in the US, and the Netherlands had a similar "advisory" which was not legally binding. In any case, the devils are in the details - enforcement. And various pipes between the utility and your faucet could still introduce additional stuff. As I said, I don't see much downside in filtering drinking water.

No such thing as a cheap 3000W electric kettle in the US due voltage being 120V on most outlets. Most plug-in appliances are thus 120V, and normal circuits are 15 amps, which means they max out at 1800W. 240V is available. My induction cooktop uses 240V/50 amp circuit, but is hardwired. Wall oven is 240V/40amp and also hardwired. The only plug-in 240V appliances are typically clothes dryers, and EV chargers that plug-in to dryer plug.

I don't think it's worth bothering with a kettle. Some day, I will upgrade my induction cooktop to one that has a zone auto-shut off cooking timer, since I can barely hear the beep now, and 1 minute too long in the pressure cooker with induction means the rice is completely burnt. The only model I could find with this feature is a $4000 Miele, so I'll wait ! I understand some newer induction cooktops support the entire surface, can ad can autodetect cookware. I don't know if any could work with a mug, if a ferromagnetic one existed. That Miele doesn't have that feature, though. I'll probably wait until my cooktop dies. It's 16 years old and shows no signs of failure.

Comment Re: Grundfos? (Score 1) 55

In my kitchen, I have an undercounter reverse osmosis filter, to filter out things like PFAS. I only drink water from that faucet. So do my cats, who eat food and get enough minerals. Ice cubes from my fridge also come from the RO line. I use that water for cooking, too. My induction cooktop is extremely fast and efficient at boiling water. I cook rice under 5 minutes in my pressure cooker - less than one minute to boil the water before closing the pressure cooker, and 4 minutes cook time.

For beverages such as tea, I have to use the microwave oven, and that takes longer than to boil the rice water with induction. The smallest induction element is 6in and 1500W on boost. That would be at least twice as faster as my microwave oven. Alas, ferromagnetic induction compatible mugs don't appear to exist. The only mugs advertised as induction compatible come with transfer disks, which defeats the point. They would need to be quite wide also, minimum 5in diameter to be detected on the 6in element, otherwise the cooktop won't turn on the magnetic field.

Comment Re: Grundfos? (Score 1) 55

I have already replaced it. Same issue. There may well be quieter models, but I'm just very sensitive to the pump vibrations. There is a bedroom adjacent to the utility room where the pump is located, and while it is a guest room, it can interfer with sleep, depending on how sensitive the guest is - probably not my mother, since she can just take her hearing aids off. The home theater is also adjacent, and I want silences in movie to really be silences.

100W constant load is 876 kWh per year. The average kWh cost in the US is 17.65 cents. That is $154 a year. PG&E charges about 45 cents/kWh, so that is closer to $438. This is ignoring the additional energy cost, which will depend on many factors, such as the size of your water heater, heat setpoint, whether your pipes are insulated, and the length of your pipes. My pipes are very long - likely as long as 300ft, which explains the 3 minute delay without the pump at some fixtures. Running the pump 24/7 might add 100 therms of gas a year, which is around $280/year with PG&E currently. It would be even more if the 50 gallon water heater was conventional electric - as high as 2930 kWh/year or $1318/year at PG&E's rates.

Comment Re: Grundfos? (Score 2) 55

In my very large home, some of the fixtures take 3 minutes if the pump is off. It wasted a lot of water.

The pump is loud, and vibrations can be hard in the entire home. It also wastes a significant amount of electricity. Constant unnecessary recirculation also wastes a lo of energy in the water heater.

I put the pump on a smart switch. I added home automation, with motion sensors near showers, and energy monitoring plugs for appliances, that trigger the pump only when needed. There is still a delay to get hot water, but it is shorter, and I don't have to suffer the noise and energy waste.

There is also a second water heater which only serves the master bedroom with a huge tub, and has no recirculation pump. The delay with that one is about a minute.

Comment Re: Propaganda (Score 2) 91

It's the Washington Post. Bezos owns it, and he has an agenda. Do not believe the headlines. When USAID cancellation killed 1 million people, most in Africa, Wapo went with "U.S. cut aid to Africa. The continent proved resilient.". They wouldn't know genocide if if it them in the face. Economic news ? Who are they kidding.

Comment Re: I don't believe in 'lifetime support' (Score 2) 89

Me either.

However, Plex isn't just a software license. It is also a service. The lifetime subscription offers OTA EPG for my DVR. That is a service that typically costs $20 - $50/year. DVR is hardly usable without an EPG.

OTA DVR is main reason i have a Plex pass. It only cost some $120 during a black friday sale years ago. I'm watching OTA content on my Plex media server right now. There are a lot of bugs that haven't been fixed. Subtitle corruption especially. Hugely annoying.

Plex also requires cloud login, even if you are self hosting your PMS. That needs fixing. My OTA never goes down, but my ISP does.

Comment Re: Meta: The model for America going forward (Score 1, Interesting) 46

I have written a bunch of code with LLM that I trust in production. One is a project i have been running for 2 months with no known issues. It uses the Yolink local hub API to interface with 110 LorA radio (non IP) sensors. I just made it public on github yesterday as I'm satisfied that it sufficiently reliable for others to try. Is the code pretty ? No. Did I write a single line of code myself ? Also no. I don't really know Python syntax well enough. And indentation based logic is a real mindfuck with my vision trouble. I hope someone else does try it and find issues. See
https://github.com/madbrain76/yolink-local-ha .

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