Comments by "SeanBZA" (@SeanBZA) on "Two Bit da Vinci" channel.

@riznliz He is talking about the feed water to flush, not the water with sewage. No need to use potable water for a toilet if you already have grey water available to use in it.
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Saddest thing is that so many areas will pull up ancient ground water, replenished only over centuries, and then use it to irrigate grass with fresh potable water, while at the same time dumping the clean grey water from the sewage system into rivers, because it is "dirty", and then also mandating that people must have these lawns to "keep up the appearance of the neighborhood" as well.
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You are one of perhaps 0.0001% of the population of the world who is this lucky, the rest are not able to gain access to fresh water so easily. Desalination can work for them, and solar desalination is about the cheapest, all it needs is large areas of otherwise unusable arid surface to work.
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@skeetsmcgrew3282 For me watering the lawn most of the year not really needed, the rain does it.
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@WileHeCoyote Well for the flush grey water, for the bidet function shower quality water will do, just does not need to be drinking water.
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@ICDeadPeeps Yes I like the clover in my lawn, and just regard the weeds as extra green cover. If they can survive being mowed they are welcome.
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@TwoBitDaVinci Drilling a deep well will be better energy wise over trying to condense water out of the air. Your dehumidifier can be the house AC system, with condensate water going into your grey water system, but just cooling air to condense water is a massive energy hog. Better to drill down a deep well, get the local (probably polluted with all the industrial waste residue, if you are in an area that has had any heavy industry nearby in the last century) water table, which is stored in the soil from rainfall, and clean and use that. Otherwise you will simply double the energy you will need from solar panels, for only a small amount of water, that will still need to be filtered and cleaned to make it drinkable. Deep well with a pump requires a lot less power per litre of water than any AC condenser can ever achieve, and even with solar power it works out cheaper. If you want water from air put in a solar distillation unit, to get fresh water from the grey water instead, which will be much more energy advantageous to do.
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@TwoBitDaVinci It uses the magnet inside the meter that is rotated by the positive displacement pump in the meter. The pump turns one roatation for ever so much volume of water that goes through, and then this is divided down by a gear train to drive a rotating flag, blue on your meter, red on others, that turns the main gearing of the totaliser. The flag typically rotates 10, or some whole number, of revolutions per gallon of water. Here by me the metric meter is 200 revolutions per kilolitre (1000 litres, roughly 285 gallons US) on most meters. Sensed by either a reed switch or a hall sensor, outside the case, there for smart meter use, and then sent via the wireless link to some server, to update your account every few minutes as to water use.
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By me no natural gas, you have a choice between electric or LPG, and by far the more useful is the LPG unit, as it is a lot more effective cost wise than electric, and more importantly also works when you have rotational load reduction, which is a very big reason for it being so popular. The induction cooker I have sits in the box most of the time, it is so rarely used, but the portable gas cooker is the most heavily used thing.
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Induction cooker you lift the pot 3cm off the top it turns off immediately, and in general it stops at 2cm away. Smaller pots the common induction cookers shut off to half power, when they sense the pot is not using the outer element, and thus only provide power when the pot is close to the top. They are all pacemaker safe now, the only time you need to worry is if you go into a large industrial smelter next to the furnace, the home induction cookers are perfectly safe.
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Electrolysis works best on the salt once it is dewatered and melted, simply because otherwise most of the energy goes to dissociate the water instead. Better to separate the trace elements out using supersaturated salt solutions, so the other material drops out of solution, and you remove the supersaturated sodium chloride solution and replace again with fresh, evaporating the water away all the time. That way you eventually get the other material concentrated into the deposit, where it is easier to collect and refine further, as instead of being present in trace quantities, it now is in volumes that make it easy to process and sort out.
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Thing is by me the metro estimated more than half the water they receive is lost to either illegal connections or leaks. For my place I do look carefully at water use, and make sure to hunt down and fix any of them immediately I find them. Saves a lot of money even short term, in that you also become aware of just how easy it is to ignore a small drip from a tap, but it all adds up.
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@TwoBitDaVinci All of them. I am currently without water, because the pipes feeding got destroyed in a storm, along with the pumps. But still better off than the people to the south, who have not had water for over 50 days and counting, from the previous tropical storm. At least I still have a house, there have been quite a few who lost everything.
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GM is going to go the way of the dodo soon. not because of EV's, but because they just make junk, and those competitors, who they use for manufacturing under the GM brand, are going to decide that they do not want to get all the work and worries, and none of the profit, and start doing direct sales. Then they will also stop supplying GM, and they will vanish as a footnote. Same with Ford, they are deciding to go with compensation size trucks, and that market will be eaten soon, and with the next round of fuel increases, simply evaporate. There will be huge lots filled with brand new Ford trucks parked next ro the rusting brand new Hummers, and GM cars, waiting to go to the crusher to come back as a Chinese made vehicle.
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If you have a nuclear plant, you can use the waste heat to boil water, to desalinate it, though you will only boil off enough to double the salinity, for technical reasons, but this will still use the waste heat and produce all the fresh water the reactor needs, plus a lot more for export along with power. Not enough energy in the low temperature steam, you want steam at 300C plus to gain useful work, and will condense it down when it is at around 150C, which will still allow you to boil sea water, though as above, with less efficiency. Not enough useful energy in that steam, which will be very wet, to actually do useful work, and you will be needing to use heat exchangers on the incoming salt water to both condense the reactor turbine steam, and the evaporated steam, so as to actually gain efficiency, by using the first heat exchanger to boil the water, and the second one to warm the incoming water a little, with a third one to cool the outgoing water and add some of the energy to incoming water, so you lessen the energy to get it to boiling, though the biggest heat need is to evaporate that sea water to a wet steam. Basically making your inlet water be at 90C, close to boiling, so you get maximum energy transfer, and you get 95C primary water out, which uses another heat exchanger to cool down to around 50C, for the run through the boilers again. Complex, lots of pumps but will give large amounts of reasonably low salt water, not going to be distilled, but definitely equal to river water in salts in it.
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Portable induction is great for going out, as living in a country with 230V power, it will work anywhere, and is a lot faster than any other cooker, though the gas cooker is also going to go with as well, because electricity is a very hit or miss affair.
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Friend has been buying newish GM vehicles, and then dumping them when they start to cost money. Paying 20% of the new price for a 3 year old vehicle, and then use non GM parts as spares, or cheapish GM parts till it needs expensive repairs, then it gets tossed. Working out for him, he generally gets a reasonable vehicle for 5 years at a time.
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Salt water is about the same osmosity as your blood, so drinking it does not gain any nett water in the body, so you will dehydrate from simply sweating and urinating.
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For clothing how about that free drying that a clothes line provides. Pretty much zero running costs, and you definitely have the room to put the lines up, plus an added benefit that your clothes come off the line almost wrinkle free, less of the ironing chore, and for many fabrics no ironing at all, plus longer clothing life. Clothes lines last for decades, with almost zero maintenance costs other than the occasional line replacement, and by me the sun shines all year round as well, so zero operating costs as well. BTW clothes also dry on the line at night, even without the sun, so hang in the evening, and fetch next mid morning all dry, unless it rains.
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@TwoBitDaVinci Well, 10 year old black shirts, not the best quality, just cheap ones for work use, are still surviving, they wear out from use before fading much. As well simple to fix, dry inside out, that way no chance of bleaching. Dust is not a problem either, just a shake out gets it off, plus sets the fabric, and you fold it before putting in the laundry basket, so that it is almost ready to put away, and thus no creases. Less wear with a line than a drier, as the drier turns your clothing into a thick layer of felt in the filter while it is running. Just have to buy clothes pegs, preferably bamboo ones, as they do last longer. plus sheets and such are so much nicer after a sun dry, and you can also have rugs washed by hand as well, then hang to dry. Sold the drier years ago, seeing as it was last used last century...... and only then if the cloth nappies could not be dried in time because of rain.
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@TwoBitDaVinci Very simple because almost all water meters do have on the metering register a small cylindrically polarised magnet, which is readable outside the case of the meter. There are standards for the number of revolutions per unit, and also standards for location of the reed switch or hall sensor to actually read the rotating magnetic field as well. Done so that you can have standardised remote meter reading for a metro, irrespective of who actually made the meter, it has to conform to the spec for placing the sensor head, and for strapping the head to the meter. Flat spot on the side of the measuring head is there for that exact purpose, you aligned the reader with it.
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Where do you think the electricity you use comes from? Good chance it comes at least partly from either coal or gas being burnt, with a small part coming from solar, wind, hydro or nuclear plants, but the vast majority of electric power comes from burning fossil fuels in some fashion.
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