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I'm not looking for a PHEV because I see it as inefficient to lug around an internal combustion engine for the 99% of trips that can comfortably be done solely on battery power (in fact our family now operates only two nissan leafs, no hybrids or fuel powered vehicles any more). What I was...

I've never had a situation where the range was really a problem - in fact this year I sold my last ICE and now our family only has EVs (a used 2016 and a new 2022 Nissan Leaf in our case). The direct running costs are 1/5th what petrol used to cost per mile, the annual road tax is €10 instead of...

We're all engineers here. What are some creative ways we can think of to temporarily increase the range of an EV to make it comparable to a regular car when needed? (Speaking for myself, we live on an island and only own nissan leafs, which are perfect for us in every way except with successive...

TugboatEng - thanks for reminding me. From Dyno tests we did on engines during my university days I recall for a petrol engine the energy flows were about 33% mechanical energy out the flywheel, 33% heat energy out the radiator and 33% out the exhaust. In my mind heat energy was power output x3...

I actually did build a battery-operated inverter unit like the one Will did in the linked video - but since I'm in Malta, LiFePO4 batteries are immensely difficult to source unless you can afford to pay 2x their cost in shipping. After 6 months searching I gave up and built mine with a...

Yes, I will cycle appliances (only one on at any one time). And yes I'd be running either inverter or generator, never both at the same time. And the minimal headroom is why I quickly abandoned the idea of trusting the neighbors to operate only one low-wattage appliance if I offered them free...

I'm in Malta (Europe) so things are a little different. Power cuts (for now) tend to last about 2 hours. The longest we had was 12 hours when the 40-year old connection between the house and the overhead power lines failed and we had to wait for the utility company to have workers available to...

Littleinch - thanks for the link. Calculating temperature rise with a known forced flow rate looks to be simpler than I thought, but conduction through brick still eludes me. Anyway key takeaway is that as I suspected, things won't go well if I run it in the outhouse. Well, unless I find a way...

Because of the way the world is going, I just bought a portable generator for emergency power. It's a Chinese clone of the Honda eu2000i . I measured about 70dBa from two car lengths away. I will be running this to power my ground-floor apartment but I'm concerned about the annoyance it will...

Relative humidity inside the garage is 65%. Not air-conditioned, electricity is eye-wateringly expensive in Europe, I don't know of anyone using it for a garage. It wouldn't be possible either, because the area above the door has very large open air vents installed for copious air exchange with...

Update - I've done some quick calculations (I haven't touched this in over a decade so correct me if I'm wrong). The compressive strength of brick, hollow concrete blocks, and limestone are of the order of 5, 8 and 10 MPa respectively. That's 50, 80 or 100 kilograms per square cm. So my...

You have a point, those angles might look a tad small. I don't have exact dimensions, I trusted the builder on this one. They will rest on pockets in the walls of the garage. The walls are a combination of solid limestone and hollow concrete blocks. Right now the beams are stacked vertically at...

That's what I was thinking - I could caulk the area where it joins the wall on both ends, and caulk or paint the sliding joint in the middle as well as the bolt (since it won't need to slide ever again after installation). Would that arrest rust development, or make things worse due to keeping...

I'm having a storage floor (raft) installed beneath the roof of my garage, consisting of plywood sheets resting on mild-steel hollow square joists. The joists have welded right-angle flanges at the ends. The end flanges don't completely seal off the hollow section at the extremities, so air can...

Aha! See, that's what I meant about them being sneaky. The number of fins (ribs) is about the same, give or take a few. But they made the entire heater smaller, including the front panel. Since everything is scaled down on the heater and the pictures only show them in rooms without a proper size...

And they were slightly sneaky about it - the appearance didn't change. You've still got a stamped structure with a couple of stamped ribs, and welded circular joints top and bottom. Looking at pictures when you buy online, there's no way to visually realize how much the size has changed - you'd...

Thanks! Mine has the same issue. It has two elements, one 800W and one 1200W. In heat setting 3 it turns on both elements for 2000W. When it hits the upper thermal limit (independent of the thermostat), the large heating element turns off. So in setting 1 it continues to deliver 800W until the...

Watched that video already. In fact I've been a subscriber of Technology Connections for years, mostly for his videos about 1990s hifi equipment :)

I'm in Malta so the electrical supply is 230V @ 13A (circa 3000W maximum). Though usually they keep heaters to 2000-2500W max. Interestingly, modern oil heaters are much, much smaller than the ones from 10-20 years ago despite having the same power and the same general appearance. On this one...

I've looked at and operated oil-filled electric radiator-style heaters (image shows an example) and I'm wondering what the benefits are for manufacturers to go to the trouble and expense of increasing their thermal inertia by filling them with mineral oil instead of heating the fins directly...