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bart6453

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Everything posted by bart6453

  1. You should post that on an Alopecia board....might get a better response....ok...I am horrible...sorry God.
  2. I agree academic at best.....but interesting. on a hair net...I would have to wrap myself in cheese cloth...I am a furry fat beast. I agree on the max time frame with CD consideration. I believe I will be on a 90 day max cycle while keeping an eye on CD if it goes over 45% I will clean the filters. Kind of an fun study...though.
  3. The best test strips I have found are the ones in the garbage. Get a drop based test and make your life easy. If you want to get your wife/teenager involved....make them get involved in a process that will actually work. Nothing more frustrating that not knowing what the hell is going on and not having the ability to get clear answers from your tools. If you use test strips, you might just as well guess.
  4. That would be an interesting test to wash regularly before getting in the tub. I can say that as part of this test we did, for the past 90 days it has only been my wife and I in the tub. We rinsed our hair of products and removed underarm prior to EVERY soak. Also at no time were any fabrics introduced into the tub. I am very reasonably sure that the contents of the filter were simply body oils and stray hair. I inspected the filter pleats and found much more hair than I thought I would. There was also a fine grime layer that I am reasonably sure is dead skin and body oils. In short, the filter's performance truly impressed me. By virtue of them catching all the crud they do a very good job. Now the question is to how often to clean? should one clean the filters more regularly, or as with shocking...should one clean the filters as indicated by water maintenance instead of the day of the month? I have two sets of filters, so it really is not a problem for me to change them more frequently. Just more of an educational thing for me.
  5. So I keep a log of my chlorine demand every week just to keep an eye on it to make sure that my tub is not infected. I noticed since the last fill that my CD continued a very consistent climb from 20% to nearly 50% over a 90 day period. I shock my tub regularly with MPS when my CC climbs close to 1ppm. After doing a filter change (I know I should do it more often, but I was testing my hypothesis) at the 90 day mark, my CD went from nearly 50% to 20% in 1 day. My hypothesis was that the filters trapped organic matter and of course it builds up over time. The very structure of the filter makes it difficult for the chlorine to oxidize the organics that are built up on them. This in turn contributes to excessive CD. Very interesting that a clean set of filters can take my CD down 30%. I will continue to log my CD and my filter changes to see if this continues to hold true. I guess what I am getting at is that cleanliness is next to godliness in the hot tub filter world.
  6. I don't think you are going to find many opinions on a 30K spa anywhere. That is a very high ticket item that most cannot afford so by price alone excludes many from having one. Secondly, for that amount of money, a nice in ground pool can be had, thereby excluding even more from the swim spa. These forums are great, but you cannot expect people to answer questions that they do not have answers for.
  7. I just use my daughters plastic shovel. Yeah, I know it's doing damage to my cover...but it's not going to last forever anyways. It might as well be saturated with water AND look like a total piece of crap in 4 years or so when I get a new cover.
  8. Not to echo my post on November 24th saying you need to dump the strips and get a taylor test kit......but YOU NEED TO DUMP THE TEST STRIPS AND GET A TAYLOR TEST KIT.
  9. One benefit would be that you could poach some eggs and make some eggs benedict.
  10. The BBB rating does work quite well. Just because you get a complaint does not give you an F. You get a formal opportunity(as a business and as a customer) to address the problem and move forward from there. We have had many (about 8 or so) unreasonable customers who demanded we take their bikes back when there was a small problem or a problem that could not be repeated regularly. Of course we are not in the business of taking bikes back so it is clearly a NO when customers ask. We have been able to maintain a A rating even though customers have on occasion pushed the envelope. The rating system does give you a general idea of a businesses quality. The lack of information on the particulars of a complaint are to protect both the business and the customers privacy concerns as at a certain point a lawsuit or settlement may require nondisclosure. The system seems very fair and balanced. Of course hands on experience is always better.
  11. +1 My daddy said that to me too, either we are brothers; or it's a Minnesota thing
  12. You don't need to use an IV bag. Pump straight from the clorox jug. drill the cap and install nipples (google RC fuel can fittings) for a clean install. Use santoprene, tygon(?), or similar bleach safe tubing for connections. Use 12% bleach solution in cold climates (freeze point much lower, may mitigate freeze problems). I think IV tubing is fairly inert. if you're going the IV pump route, check on lifespan and costs of replacing the pump tubing from time to time. I don't know much about them, Infusion gear is generally disposable (lifespan?), and med supplies ain't cheap. Surplus IV pumps are all over ebay btw. I'd be curious how effective timer-based automation is. The sanitizer demands of my spa seem highly dependent on bather load. When i go down the automation path, I'm going the ORP route for a full closed control loop. So the tub stays in balance whether 6 pre-teens spend the day in there, or it sits unused for a week. +1 I am game for a proof of concept more than anything. Automation would be nice for daily maintenance and then have a override amount to squirt in during or after a soak and after you test your levels. Would be nice to not have any spilled bleach anywhere.
  13. I think the wir system could work, although I could also see downsides. I really don;t think this is that tough of a system to set up. I think we should design/propose some more systems on this thread with estimated costs. I've built an air driven dosing system using the methods you describe as an auto-top-off system for a reef aquarium. The problem is that you're getting into some $$ to get an air pump that will provide suitable lift to get the bleach over the wall. It worked on a very small aquarium, but the costs of the air pump for a larger tank quickly exceeded the $$ for a more traditional powerhead to directly pump water. The reef guys have a good head start in this field, we pump alkaline solutions into tanks to stabilize PH, alk, and Ca at very precise levels. The most reliable, cost effective approach is a quality peristaltic pump with a bleach resistant assembly (avoid latex). These systems totally isolate the solution being pumped from the drive mechanism. They are as safe (or safer) than the big pumps in a spa. In the early days reefers were picking up surplus IV pumps from hospitals, but now there are purpose-built systems at very affordable prices (see the bulk reef supply link in this thread). The ORP controllers are out there too, but you need to find one that has a suitable control range for chlorination/bromination. Some of the controllers for reef applications only work up to 500 mv or so (low level ozone dosing), and I've read that adequate sanitizer levels equate to a 600-800mv reading. Most of these controllers use a standard BNC connector equipped probe, and there are probe mfg's out there that produce inline devices that thread into a nipple inline with the plumbing just like a pressure or temp sensor. I think you could build a full control system for $2-300, including controller and dosing pump that would automatically maintain an ORP level off the shelf. For DIY with the ability to design and program IC, prob half that. Purpose built pool/spa systems seem to start at $2k and go north from there quickly. Drive the system from the 120v ozone circuit on your spa controller to dose only when the spa has flow (e.g circ pump running), and make sure the pump rate is adequate to keep up with sanitizer demand for whatever cycle your system uses. (My balboa VS is set to 2hr 2x daily). By driving from the spa controller, you also enjoy the benefit of the GFCI if voltage were induced into the vessel somehow. Freezing could be a problem as hrustar points out (my clorox was slushy the other cold night), so ideally the system would be enclosed in the skirt of the tub. (may still not be adequate for very cold climates). This project is definitely on the "to do" list, especially if I can pick a used pump or controller up. You bring up a very, very easy solution. I have a couple of friends who are doctors so I asked them about the IV pumps. well...even very old IV pumps have timers and dosages built into their programming. So all you would need would be an old surplus IV pump and set it to pump say a quarter ounce 8 times a day or whatever...and you are done. The freezing issue could be handled by putting the bleach beneath the skirt of the tub, or you could put it in a cooler with a thermostatically controlled heating pad in it that would turn on when the temp is below say 20 degrees or what have you. Assuming you could get the IV pump for next to nothing, you would still have next to nothing invested.
  14. A guy could very easily make a timer circuit to run a pump for a desired time/frequency. I make electronic clocks for a hobby, the circuit for this would be super easy. My problem would be that I usually use a 12VDC supply but step it up to 500V on the board.....hmmm...it won't kill you but it will startle the hell out of you. I suppose a guy could pot the unit inside a capsule....now you have me thinking. What about an air over hydraulic type system???? You could use a circuit board to run an air pump (think small aquarium) which dumped it's air into a sealed system that contained bleach. The air pressure would push the bleach up into your tub. If there was a failure of the pump or the circuit board there would be no contact with any liquids that could zap your arse.
  15. Wait a minute now!! Use some air for insulation and see how good it works!!!! I'm not talking about air inside a sealed chamber or air between two panes of glass or small air pockets in foam insulation...I'm talking AIR all by itself no matter what it consists of will not insulate. Here, take a garbage bag and fill it with air and measure the temp of the air inside the garbage bag. Then measure the air outside the garbage bag and tell me what your findings are!! Put your remote sensor inside the bag, tie off the top and place it outside. wait an hour. Now just put the sensor outside the bag and tell me what the difference is. You may be suprised that the insulating value of air is R-0. Argon slows convection between hot on one side and cold on the other but does not insulate. Put it outside and it will instantly become as cold as the outside air. It WILL NOT retain any heat. Read my statement carefully and maybe it will become clearer. Roger, a material's value as an insulator is determined by a property called thermal conductivity. Bart is just quoting the facts. Air has a very low thermal conductivity, which makes it an excellent insulator. It is better than most common solid materials, it is better than most liquids, it is even better than most other gasses. Bart pointed that out, and he is right. You are right in that a mass of air is not as effective and a well designed insulation system such as foam. You however should not be comparing a single material, be it air, argon, water or whatever, to a system such as a piece of foam, which exploits the excellent thermal properties of air and uses the foam matrix to defeat the convection currents. Different animals - and that was, I think, Bart's point. You might want to think about the effectiveness of a foam cover that becomes saturated with water. Water is actually a very much worse thermal insulator than air (better thermal conductor) so when water replaces air in the cover, the performance becomes unacceptable. Get the point? You said air was the worst thermal insulator, but in fact it IS one of the best. Your example is not really relevant to demonstrate air as a poor insulator. What your thought experiment demonstrates is a different property, namely, the low heat capacity of air. It is true that it doesn't take a lot of thermal energy to bring air up to temperature. That particular property is very important in some designs such as the perimeter insulation spas, since as cabinet air gets close in temp to the shell, very little heat flow takes place. So, you are really demonstrating a property of air that can be taken advantage of to make an even better insulting system, not demonstrating at all that air is a poor insulator. Your suggested experiment points out a big reason why those designs - using air as one element of the insulation system in concert with the perimeter foam - can work very well. This and your comments on argon indicate that you're not fully understanding the concepts of heat conduction, insulation and heat capacity, all of which are different. In other words, don't jump on Bart... he's right. +1 You are getting specific heat confused with thermal conductivity. You can wiki both. Lets not beat this dead horse any more.....we all know that damn cover is not going to work. Now that we all agree....lets put it to bed.
  16. well...now we are talking about two different things. Air is a very good insulator...but if there is nothing at all...well then there is nothing to transfer the heat. So yes...a vacuum is much better than air as an insulator. However...it is extremely difficult to get a vacuum in larger spaces. The reason why your old stanley or aladdin vacuum bottle works so well even though it has a relatively large chamber is because there is very little in the chamber. so little in fact that currents and convection are of no consequence because there is nearly nothing to convect or to flow in currents. Do a fun experiement (i just did as I had two vacuum bottles, one which performed well, the other did not at all, and they were identical units.) Take your nice shiny vacuum bottle, and put some hot water in it. Take the temp and set it outside (in minnesota right now that means cold) for an hour and check the temp. Then drive a nail through the side and let air in...now do the experiement over again. In 1 hour I had a 24 degree temperature difference. So there is a significant difference from a vacuum to air. But in most cases...air is what we have to work with. (think fiberglass matting)
  17. How any advertising could convince anyone how air (the absolute worst insulator in the world) could do any insulating is behond me. While I agree it's a crappy product....Air is by far not the worst insulator in the world. Silver is about the worst...air is well....about the best.....argon is a little better. For the record air is about 17,825 times better at insulating than silver. For air to be an effective insulator one needs to keep it confined to an area where convection and currents cannot occur. Typically about the size of a pea. Large air chambers will begin to have convection currents and this will cause heat loss. Silver is the worst insulating metal (highest thermal conductivity). But actually, diamond is by far the worst thermal insulator, having the highest thermal conductivity of any material occuring in nature. Diamond is one of a relatively few materials that is an electrical insulator and a thermal conductor. Not really relevent to spas... but an interesting factoid nonetheless. But as Bart says, the problem with this spacap deal is that the chambers are large relative to the boundary layer that forms due to the convection currents. I had to laugh at the argument that conventional covers lose heat due to evaporation. Spas are kind of amazing because so little water is actually lost (i.e., you don't add water very often) as long as the cover is in good shape and making a decent seal with the lid. The only really significant evaporative loss happens when the cover is off and you're in the tub.... all that steamy vapor. That is interesting about diamonds, I never knew that. I bet that is why they feel so cold when you hold them in your hands....hmmm....very good factoids.
  18. How any advertising could convince anyone how air (the absolute worst insulator in the world) could do any insulating is behond me. While I agree it's a crappy product....Air is by far not the worst insulator in the world. Silver is about the worst...air is well....about the best.....argon is a little better. For the record air is about 17,825 times better at insulating than silver. For air to be an effective insulator one needs to keep it confined to an area where convection and currents cannot occur. Typically about the size of a pea. Large air chambers will begin to have convection currents and this will cause heat loss.
  19. I had -23 this morning and -1 when I went for a ride on my 4 wheeler. Damn balmy at 5 PM at 1 above you guys have it easy up there....strangely enough.....it's colder in souther MN than northern MN. Woke up to -29 F....never got above -11 F all day....and it's looking like -25 F again tonight. The house is just groaning and popping.....damn roof boards kept me up all night! Heading to the ice house first thing in the AM...hope I don't freeze to death on the walk out to the house. There driving to there fish houses here and north of here. First trucks on the ice today....18". been slow to get out there due to the warm snow we had...created a 3" water pocket between a 10" slab of ice and a 2" skim of ice on the top of the water....froze solid now.
  20. I had -23 this morning and -1 when I went for a ride on my 4 wheeler. Damn balmy at 5 PM at 1 above you guys have it easy up there....strangely enough.....it's colder in souther MN than northern MN. Woke up to -29 F....never got above -11 F all day....and it's looking like -25 F again tonight. The house is just groaning and popping.....damn roof boards kept me up all night! Heading to the ice house first thing in the AM...hope I don't freeze to death on the walk out to the house.
  21. Things are cooling down in Minnesota... -20F tonight.
  22. Is this a question or a statement?
  23. I would read Nitro's guide to water maintenance and follow it. The best source of unstabilized chlorine is Clorox bleach, but you must use stabilized chlorine (like leisuretime or GLB) at first to build up a residual stabilizer level in your tub. This is described in much detail in Nitro's guide. Get yourself a good reagent type test kit and you will be all set.
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