ACEmat's recent activity

  1. Comment on What are some professions, crafts, competitions, or activities in which being older is considered advantageous? in ~talk

    ACEmat
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    HVAC, because if you don't have gray hair, homeowners assume you have no idea what you're doing. Yet the guys with gray hair are also the least likely to adapt to new technologies and diagnostic...

    HVAC, because if you don't have gray hair, homeowners assume you have no idea what you're doing.

    Yet the guys with gray hair are also the least likely to adapt to new technologies and diagnostic methods.

    4 votes

  2. Comment on US Joe Biden administration grants California waiver to ban gas car sales in 2035 in ~transport

    ACEmat
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    80% of their comment was exactly what you asked for, and yet you chose to not engage with any of it.

    80% of their comment was exactly what you asked for, and yet you chose to not engage with any of it.

    10 votes

  3. Comment on US Joe Biden administration grants California waiver to ban gas car sales in 2035 in ~transport

    ACEmat
    Link Parent
    Oil executives everywhere are rejoicing that y'all were here to defend them from scroll_lock's painfully obvious hyperbole.

    Oil executives everywhere are rejoicing that y'all were here to defend them from scroll_lock's painfully obvious hyperbole.

    15 votes

  4. Comment on How a simple math error sparked a panic about black plastic kitchen utensils in ~health

    ACEmat
    Link Parent
    This has a weird Reddit vibe to it. Why is your first paragraph going after another user for just, not wanting to use plastic?

    This has a weird Reddit vibe to it. Why is your first paragraph going after another user for just, not wanting to use plastic?

    18 votes

  5. Comment on Is anyone planning to play Path of Exile 2? in ~games

    ACEmat
    Link Parent
    I am, after implying above I had no interest in it. Been playing Monk, and was surprised at vets of PoE 1 in the subreddit having so many issues apparently with melee. I've been schmovin. Just...

    I am, after implying above I had no interest in it. Been playing Monk, and was surprised at vets of PoE 1 in the subreddit having so many issues apparently with melee. I've been schmovin. Just cleared the ritual area south of the Hunting Grounds, and I've maybe died 3 times the whole game so far.

    From what I've gathered, based on their complaints, it seems like they're used to brain dead gameplay where everything just exploded when they touched it? Because again, I just haven't had issues. I feel...appropriately challenged is a good phrase.

    2 votes

  6. Comment on Is anyone planning to play Path of Exile 2? in ~games

    ACEmat
    Link Parent
    I don't deny the appeal of what it can do, but when the game just presents it as is at level 2, and doesn't ease you into it whatsoever, it's definitely a "Quit" moment for myself and others. It's...

    I don't deny the appeal of what it can do, but when the game just presents it as is at level 2, and doesn't ease you into it whatsoever, it's definitely a "Quit" moment for myself and others. It's unnecessarily intimidating and the only thought in my mind is "How long is it going to take me to understand this"

    1 vote

  7. Comment on Is anyone planning to play Path of Exile 2? in ~games

    ACEmat
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    Is PoE2 still gonna have that awful giant skill map that is an instant "Log off and never touch it" moment for me?

    Is PoE2 still gonna have that awful giant skill map that is an instant "Log off and never touch it" moment for me?

    7 votes

  8. Comment on Balancing self-expression and parents in ~life

    ACEmat
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    Imma be blunt with you, if it's between expressing yourself and having a roof over your head, it's really a no brainer until you can live independently. Don't risk sabotaging yourself. I was never...

    Imma be blunt with you, if it's between expressing yourself and having a roof over your head, it's really a no brainer until you can live independently. Don't risk sabotaging yourself.

    I was never allowed long hair when I was younger. Now I live on my own, have long hair anyways, and for a multitude of reasons have not spoken to my father in 10 years.

    50 votes

  9. Comment on Follow up on the username thread: What Tildes users do you recognize when browsing and, without being rude or inflammatory, what is your impression of them? in ~tildes

    ACEmat
    Link Parent
    <3 (Noise this if you want I'm still giving him a heart)
    • Exemplary

    <3

    (Noise this if you want I'm still giving him a heart)

    2 votes

  10. Comment on Morrowind doesn't have any rivers in ~games

    ACEmat
    Link Parent
    Glad one of us took the plunge, guess I have to now as well. It's just been there... Watching me...

    Glad one of us took the plunge, guess I have to now as well. It's just been there... Watching me...

    13 votes

  11. Comment on We spoke with the last person standing in the floppy disk business in ~tech

    ACEmat
    Link Parent
    I don't blame him at all, if I made something and it made me a millionaire, fuck that I'm out. Semi related, people got mad at the Valheim devs because they made a shit ton of money but didn't...

    I don't blame him at all, if I made something and it made me a millionaire, fuck that I'm out.

    Semi related, people got mad at the Valheim devs because they made a shit ton of money but didn't expand their team. Like, why would they want to? Sure, I'm sure they enjoy making games for a living, but really, at the end of the day, we're all working so one day we don't have to anymore.

    12 votes

  12. Comment on We spoke with the last person standing in the floppy disk business in ~tech

    ACEmat
    Link Parent
    I thinking using "writes" in the present tense is incorrect.

    I thinking using "writes" in the present tense is incorrect.

    12 votes

  13. Comment on Meta fires staff for abusing $25 meal credits in ~tech

    ACEmat
    Link Parent
    These are the kind of rich people I'm used to working with. They make ridiculous amounts of money, but they're cheap as hell, and will argue pricing with you over every nickel. They don't seem to...

    These are the kind of rich people I'm used to working with. They make ridiculous amounts of money, but they're cheap as hell, and will argue pricing with you over every nickel.

    They don't seem to stop being turds until they're making over a couple million. Then something happens after millions and millions of dollars and they turn into scrooge mcducks again, but that's a longer conversation.

    37 votes

  14. Comment on No one’s laughing now: ‘Joker Folie à Deux’ falls down with $39m-$40m opening: How the sequel went sideways in ~movies

    ACEmat
    Link Parent
    I thought it was a very beautifully written comment.

    I thought it was a very beautifully written comment.

    1 vote

  15. Comment on How to build greener, affordable AC for high humidity and hotter summers in ~engineering

    ACEmat
    Link Parent
    Absolutely, and Mini Splits are stupidly efficient anyways.

    Absolutely, and Mini Splits are stupidly efficient anyways.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on How to build greener, affordable AC for high humidity and hotter summers in ~engineering

    ACEmat
    Link Parent
    I'm an HVAC tech, not an engineer, so I only speak from having checked thousands of units' refrigerant pressures and compressor amp draws at all varieties of outdoor and indoor conditions.

    I'm an HVAC tech, not an engineer, so I only speak from having checked thousands of units' refrigerant pressures and compressor amp draws at all varieties of outdoor and indoor conditions.

    2 votes

  17. Comment on How to build greener, affordable AC for high humidity and hotter summers in ~engineering

    ACEmat
    Link Parent
    I always say if you have the know how to do it yourself, go for it. A lot of companies will use it as an accessory sell and charge a ton for it. Some manufacturers are even having them factory...

    I always say if you have the know how to do it yourself, go for it. A lot of companies will use it as an accessory sell and charge a ton for it. Some manufacturers are even having them factory installed now.

    And this isn't directed at you, but anyone reading this, if your AC stops working, and a company comes out and installs a hard start kit, your compressor is very likely on its last leg. Preventatively they're great, but reactively, they're band aids to limp a compressor along for a bit longer.

    2 votes

  18. Comment on How to build greener, affordable AC for high humidity and hotter summers in ~engineering

    ACEmat
    Link Parent
    It depends on the climate you're in. If your climate gets humid, like 70% relative humidity or higher, I don't recommend turning it off entirely due to long term mold issues. You can turn it up to...

    It depends on the climate you're in. If your climate gets humid, like 70% relative humidity or higher, I don't recommend turning it off entirely due to long term mold issues. You can turn it up to like 78 or so to cut down on morning and evening runtimes.

    The fact that you have a 10,000 BTU unit for just the upstairs and nothing downstairs, tells me it doesn't get super hot or humid where you live. You're probably fine turning it off, but you'll have to be the judge on that.

    4 votes

  19. Comment on How to build greener, affordable AC for high humidity and hotter summers in ~engineering

  20. Comment on How to build greener, affordable AC for high humidity and hotter summers in ~engineering

    ACEmat
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    There is...A lot to address here. Frankly you've disregarded a ton of variables, like AC performance, heat load, variable units, and real world application / everyday usage. In, well, basically...
    • Exemplary

    There is...A lot to address here. Frankly you've disregarded a ton of variables, like AC performance, heat load, variable units, and real world application / everyday usage.

    In, well, basically all AC contexts, we're talking about people maintaining a temperature lower than the outdoor temperature, and varying that setpoint, but still below the outdoor temperature. We're not talking about maintaining 85 degrees when it's 85 degrees and working down from there.

    Most people have a pattern with their setpoints, so we'll just use some anecdotal averages. If we take average Joe trying to save money on electric but be comfortable, they will sleep with their setpoint at 69 degrees, set it up to maybe 75 during the day while they're at work, then bring it down to 72 when they get home.

    But you have some people that do something crazy like have a setpoint of 80 during the day when they're not home, or turn it off entirely, then bring it down to 72 when they get home. Sure, the system wasn't running during the day if it was off, but now the house has spent all day absorbing that heat. And this is where most people's understanding of heat from their high school chemistry class disappears. Heat isn't just the heat in the air. It's an energy, it gets absorbed into everything in the home: walls, carpets, furniture, the water in the pipes in the walls, etc. So now the setpoint gets set to 72 / the system is turned on, and now the AC has to remove all of that excess heat. Since most people are getting home around 5/6, and the sun's still out for a few hours, not only is it removing the excess heat that's been stored in the home, it's also actively trying to remove the heat entering the home.

    Now it has to run longer into the evening than it originally needed to, and it has a much higher heat load running across it. When there's a high heat load, it raises the temperature of the whole system. A typically evaporator (the coil that gets cold) might run at 42-45 degrees, but that could rise up to 50 or even 54 degrees depending on how warm it got. When temperature increases, so does pressure, and when pressure increases, now the compressor has to work harder to compress that refrigerant vapor back into a liquid, which results in a higher amp draw, which also hurts the compressor in the long term.

    We haven't even touched on humidity yet. When it's humid outside, an ACs cooling capacitance can be as much as halved, so a 3T system is now only putting out 1.5T of cooling, because the other 1.5T is just taking water out of the air. And by leaving the system set high or off entirely, the house is now sitting around 65% RH at minimum --

    (which, although a separate issue, is still important, as most people don't realize 65 is the RH at which mold can begin developing depending on the dewpoint at the time, as the walls, floors, and wood in the house will begin absorbing the excess moisture in the air. This is a long term concern but it's one that a frightening number of people do not consider.)

    -- anywhere where it gets remotely humid. If there are crappy dehumidifiers in the house, or if the thermostat has a dehumidification setting, now there's increased energy draw to bring that RH back down.

    When we talk about maintaining temperature, we're talking about picking a temperature and keeping it there. An AC doesn't have to work harder to maintain 72 than it does 76 unless it's excessively hot and / or humid outside. When a temperature is maintained, all an AC has to do is remove the heat and humidity actively entering the building during the day, there isn't going to be excess stored heat or humidity in any of the furnishings or structure itself, and the amount entering the building doesn't change if the house is set to 72 or 76 (okay, technically the amount of humidity in the air will be higher in a building that's 76 vs 72, as warm air holds more humidity, but I'm not going to get into that level of minutia). This also means that setting an AC to just a high point during the day only means the system isn't running for a little bit longer while the house warms up, but then it will run just as it would have at 75 when it gets to 80 (again, more minutia, as a house gets to much higher temperatures, like 85 degrees and it's 95 outside, the amount of energy absorbed lessens marginally due to the decrease in temperature difference between the outdoors and indoors, but like the humidity above, it becomes insignificant for practical purposes.)

    Which, yes, for any onlookers, that means you're not actually saving money at 78 vs 72 (again, unless it's excessively hot, I will get into that later). An ACs runtime is almost exclusively based on how hot it is outside. Yes, it will turn on later in the day, and turn off sooner in the evening, but assuming we're talking hot hot days, which I typically assume is what most people care about, it's not a matter of hours, and it's not going to impact the middle of the day when the heat is bearing down on the house.

    This next part ties into your third paragraph as well a little, but the start up process of an AC is the hardest part on the system. If a particularly fiddly homeowner is constantly adjusting the temperature and turning the system on and off, they're putting a ton of wear and tear on their compressor (and thermal expansion valve (refrigerant regulator that actively adjusts) if the system has one, which most do nowadays). Amp draw on a compressor on start up can be 3-4x as high as its runtime amps, which on most residential system is 4-6A, so start up could be drawing 15-20A for a couple seconds. Best case is the capacitor dies early, which relatively speaking is a cheap fix, but if the AC is trying to run while the cap is dead, and the homeowner doesn't realize, because they're used to their home being warm af for their entire evening, this can damage the compressor and the condenser fan motor. Worst case is the start winding in the compressor gets burnt out and shorts (that's a new compressor by the way).

    The long and short of that is: ACs are built to run constantly. They're not made to turn on and off all day. Frankly if an AC can achieve a 1 degree drop with a 10% cycle per hour, the AC is ridiculously oversized, or it is very cool outside and it would be better to just open a window. I understand that's an extreme exaggeration on your end, but cycle rates are super important for mechanical health and maintaining humidity. Cooling starts much quicker than dehumidification does, and if a system is only running for 10 - 15 minutes at a time, it's not running long enough to dehumidify. At that point we would call that short cycling. That's a great way to get mold growing around the ducts and registers by the way, as the house is humid because the moisture isn't being removed, but the cold air from the AC across the metal duct system brings the surface temperature of those parts below that of the now very high dew point and generates condensation.

    Now for some niche caveats:

    -- Some ACs are two stage, so they literally have a low cool and high cool mode. High end communicating systems that have variable capacity might have 20 stages of cooling. They can adjust their capacity based on runtime, how quickly the temperature increases, it depends on the system, and that gets absolutely wasted if the system is being turned off or set super high during the day. A variable capacity AC may be able to run in a lower stage and maintain temperature in the house fine, but if the house is super warm and now it's being asked to cool off 5-8 degrees, it's just going to run in high stage, and there goes the money invested into a more expensive system.

    -- I also referenced a couple times that extreme outdoor temperatures can have an effect. ACs for example in the SE US are rated for 92 degrees, meaning anything above that and it's kind of hit and miss. Generally an AC can expect to get a serviced area (bunch of factors go into this, I won't get into all of them) about 20 degrees cooler than the outdoor, but if it's say 99 degrees outside, and the system is set to 72 during the day, it might only get to like 76. Well now the AC will need to cool a further 4 degrees once it's cooled off outside to reach the desired 72, so in that situation, keeping the setpoint higher would be advantageous, as one set to 76-78 would not have to run as long into the evening.

    -- If a house is going to be vacant for a while, like a weekend or longer, like I said above, keeping it set higher will cut down on the morning and evening run times, but I never recommend turning it off unless the house is located in a drier climate, as that brings us back to humidity and potential mold issues. I've had some customers that had apartments over top their detached garage that nobody ever uses, and I would still recommend keeping the AC set to 78.

    Forgive any typos or grammatical errors, I've been typing this up for about 2 hours and it's a little after 2AM at the moment for me. I probably forgot some stuff too. Obviously the climate a person lives in affects things a lot, this is just a general overview for most people who live in temperate climates with humidity and 85+ degree summers.

    7 votes