So... What are YOU doing? - Part 8

[tango]

Lots of fog today so my run can wait until the afternoon. Even wearing a bright orange top seems like a suboptimal situation when I can go later on. It also means it will have chance to warm up a bit before I run. While I wait for the fog to lift I can enjoy filling lots of gaps in the wall.

 

[Lamb]

It's a warm day today so I'm going out for a second walk soon.

 

[tango]

Today I got a load of holes in the wall patched. The biggest one was so big it could have taken an entire bucket of cement to fill it and was in a difficult location to get at, so I stuffed it with fiberglass instead. Then I got polystyrene cut to size for most of the gaps, and cut some fiberglass strips for the others, and got that put into place.

The next step is to wire a new light for over the sink, which I want to do before I cut a hole to mount it just in case I have any problems with it working. I bought it a couple of years ago expecting to use it in a different place, but ended up leaving it in a bag since then so if it doesn't work the chances are my only option will be to dump it. I can probably find something else the same size but it would be nice to know before cutting the hole if I'm going to need to do something different.

And once that is done I can put the coving back in place, and the kitchen will look like I was never there. Except that the parts that were once freezing cold won't be freezing cold any more....

 

[tango]

The kitchen work is done and everything is put back in place. Aside from a couple of minor imperfections in the wallpaper where I had to cut it to get the coving removed you'd struggle to see what I'd done there. But the nasty strip light is gone and a new downlight is in place and working, and the room is much warmer.

Now I can get back to the previous work in one of the unused bedrooms. I need to cut the floor so I can replace a section of it, then I'll have a clear run at the length of wall I need to finish studding. I just need to figure exactly how I want to go about replacing the floor. I like the idea of using red oak but that means about $200-250 worth of wood. I could use wood salvaged from the attic floor but that wouldn't necessarily match the stairs leading up to it, and would mean much narrower strips of wood. But then it would also mean using original wood from the house, which would be nice in its own way.

 

[Lamb]

I'm getting all my Monday chores done and now am trying to get more steps in. I noticed yesterday my FitBit isn't recording my steps properly.

 

[tango]

I dumped Fitbit nearly four years ago and haven't looked back.

I had a Fitbit One that I really liked but when it became unreliable I wanted to replace it with something similar. Fitbit "support" constantly pointed One users to some new thing they introduced that didn't track floors and, despite being endlessly told that something that didn't track floors wasn't a replacement for the One, similarly endlessly pushed it as a suitable replacement.

My wife liked the look of one of the Garmin watches so I got her that for Christmas. I liked it, so got myself one later. We've been in the Garmin ecosystem ever since. The only thing I miss about Fitbit is that I'd challenge few friends to some of their games, and Garmin doesn't do that so well.

 

[Stravinsk]

I have literally spent the last 3 days, a good portion of them, doing experiments with a different diy battery setup, using a very cheap anode (aluminum) and a copper cathode. This actually involved a wet cell where the electrodes stick out of the simple container filled with electrolyte and Al foil/tin and are connected to the dry portion of my multimeter.

It's been enlightening, to say the least. I've tried just simple urine as electrolyte (nothing but that and a little baking soda): 500mV @ 500uA. Just wood-ash solution as electrolyte: 550mV @ 7mA - massive increase in current compared to just urine/baking soda. NaOH and wood ash electrolyte - 1.3V @ 100mA - even more impressive...but had to stop. Way way way way too much hydrogen production. Essentially waste if I'm not capturing the hydrogen to use as well.

Interesting thing about these cells, they are chargeable. I tested the urine electrolyte and charged it from 500mV to 1.6V using a battery pack. So I assume they can be charged with the sun. Not sure I want to do that with NaOH solution though...because besides producing heat just by itself, it also speeds up the H2 action/degredation of Anode with applied heat.

In basic electronics, each cell can be stacked (called a series connection) to multiply Voltage (like one stacks batteries in a flashlight), while keeping current the same. Stack them in parallel and multiply current while keeping voltage the same. Do a combination to get the V and I you need.

Anyhoo. I suspect that given a month or so, I'm going to have a way to replace most if not all of my electricity usage with cheap materials...and I'm excited about that.

 

[Lamb]

Going to get some groceries and then off to a local garden to walk around and see the Christmas lights.

 

[tango]

Hoping to get a decent run in today. The last couple of days have seen the kind of cold that feels like it sticks to me, so no fun even trying to get out to run in that. Today is supposed to be fairly cold but I'm not feeling like the cold is sticking to me, so maybe a run will work out.

I still need to pry the window trim off the windows in the kitchen where I was working. There are nasty air gaps between the window frame and the brickwork that I want to fill with foam. One window was kinda-sorta-possible to stuff with cellulose from above but the other one was much less so because of where the wall studs were. That's also the window that's less accessible because of wall cupboards, so I just hope I can do the work without making an ugly mess of paintwork etc. That really needs to wait for a day when my wife is out, with the intention I can do the work and put everything back by the time she returns. Even if all I get done by the time she gets home is to get the trim off and the foam sprayed that works well enough, but it would be better if I have time for the foam to set and get the trims back in place.

 

[tango]

It felt chilly today but I decided to deal with it and go for a proper run rather than doing seemingly endless laps of the church hall. My suggested workout today was a base level run, which was strange since the last couple of days the suggestions have been for harder workouts than I could manage in the hall "to keep my training load balanced". So I decided to do something a bit harder than a base level run, but left it open so I could decide how hard to run once I'd got warmed up. It turned out to be harder than I originally planned, although most of it didn't feel overly hard while I was running it.

Now I'm sitting in my recliner. Not a great night last night, so I'll probably take a nap later.

 

[Lamb]

I'm going to be baking more Christmas cookies for an event at my church on Saturday. We're having a holiday party for the community.

 

[Messy3]

My rabbit got sick Saturday. Late and in the weekend when the already expensive vet is 3 times as expensive as normal. Now I had some extra money for this month, but my ex bought the kids jackets, so that was gone. I could borrow some from my mother, but the other rabbit I had had it too and that costed me around 300 during the week, but he had it bad and it was worth the money. He got injections and it was over. Head tilt.
I saw her turn her head to the left and back continually and the eyes were also going in circles. E cuniculi. Now I kept all the old meds and I had 2 unopened panacur, which is just anti worm stuff for cats you can buy anywhere without doctor's advice, so I could give it immediately and it immediately got better and 6 hours later after the 2nd dose it was gone. If you look it up,normally it at least takes weeks. I also prayed. Asked dr. Google and gave the pain meds for the nerves too. Massage her belly, force feed, bought basil, carrot leaves and all that stuff and she's doing great. I'm not going to the vet. All they will do is look, ask to come back and give the same meds I already have for at least 150.

 

[Stravinsk]

I've been continuing to do homemade battery research and I thought I'd share this one as nearly everyone can do it, and it's decent:

Materials: 1 piece of rusted steel/iron. It must be rusted. I used a tiny, thin rusted washer
1 piece of aluminum foil
1 piece of wet paper (tap water is fine)
NaOH solution. AKA caustic soda. Strong solution 80-90% (This is the only material you need to be careful with, it's a very strong base and can burn your skin.

AL foil, wet paper, rusted washer. To this add a few drops of NaOH solution. Make sure the foil and rusted washer are fully separated by the paper, so they aren't touching at all.

Voltage: 0.9V
Current: 1.7mA

Interestingly, before this I just used rust water to dip the paper in (again adding NaOH drops afterward), without bothering with a piece of rusted metal. Similar result.

 

[Lamb]

It's Monday which means laundry day for me and cleaning the house. It's raining outside and we're in a flood watch, so I'll be inside all day long.

 

[Romanos]

Getting ready for work.

 

[tango]

I've been continuing to do homemade battery research and I thought I'd share this one as nearly everyone can do it, and it's decent:

Materials: 1 piece of rusted steel/iron. It must be rusted. I used a tiny, thin rusted washer
1 piece of aluminum foil
1 piece of wet paper (tap water is fine)
NaOH solution. AKA caustic soda. Strong solution 80-90% (This is the only material you need to be careful with, it's a very strong base and can burn your skin.

AL foil, wet paper, rusted washer. To this add a few drops of NaOH solution. Make sure the foil and rusted washer are fully separated by the paper, so they aren't touching at all.

Voltage: 0.9V
Current: 1.7mA

Interestingly, before this I just used rust water to dip the paper in (again adding NaOH drops afterward), without bothering with a piece of rusted metal. Similar result.

I have a bucket containing a load of metal, most of which has at least some rust on it. But most of it is rusty nails rather than nice neat washers.

How long does your battery last before you need to top something up? If you put three of those together and end up with 3V you've potentially got enough to power some low-level lights.

 

[Stravinsk]

I have a bucket containing a load of metal, most of which has at least some rust on it. But most of it is rusty nails rather than nice neat washers.

Obtaining rusty steel/iron anything is pretty easy. I came across a handful of small screws/washers from old computer hardware I took apart some time ago. Submerged them in water in an open container placed besides an open window. Within a day or two - rust. Like I said in the previous response, one can even use the rust-water instead, if it's concentrated enough. Simply saturate a piece of paper in it and you've got your electrode.

How long does your battery last before you need to top something up? If you put three of those together and end up with 3V you've potentially got enough to power some low-level lights.

Good question. I have no idea. I'm just doing a lot of experimenting at the moment. The rust idea spawned from a somewhat unrelated video clip I came across that uses rust to enhance electrolysis (I tried this too and it worked).

Since this is an open air battery, it would depend on things like:

How long does it last before the paper dries up
" " before the anode is consumed.

That being said, I've recently learned that Calcium Chloride (sold as dehumidifier) can be applied as an electrolyte - as it will take in moisture from the air.


Currently experimenting with taking carbon (in the form of charcoal) and making it more conductive so it can be used as an anode. So far I've had some success in reducing it's internal resistance by getting it glowing hot then submerging it very briefly under water. This allowed me to produce a cell that was 200mV and around 300uA. Not impressive, but I thought it was interesting as I was just using carbon and rust, and the carbon's resistance was still in the 70-90ohm range. That can be lowered.

 

[Lamb]

My allergies are bad today but I need to get to the grocery store, so that's what I'll be doing soon this morning.

 

[Jazzy]

I'm running sump pumps in my backyard pond. I need to lower the water level so it doesn't overflow into my backyard. The fire department used to pump out basements and ponds but they no longer do this.

 

[Lamb]

I'm running sump pumps in my backyard pond. I need to lower the water level so it doesn't overflow into my backyard. The fire department used to pump out basements and ponds but they no longer do this.

Maybe ask the fire department to come take water from your pond the next time there is a local fire?