(Second hand) Electric car. SO MUCH MORE FUN to drive, even in traffic, than petrol or diesel, and so much cheaper to run (by a factor of five or six) because I have cheap overnight electricity, but it’s not the money, it’s the joy of driving. Never going back.
I hate driving, but my EV is miles ahead of any gas car I’ve driven
A house. Fuck moving every couple of years. Fuck landlords (especially the corporate kind). Hell yea having the ability to make changes and improvements. Obligatory: https://m.xkcd.com/905/
Simplehuman lidded step-open trashcan.
Why in the fuck would anyone spend over $100 on a damn trashcan?
We got tired of the plastic ones we were buying breaking, and they were around $60 to begin with.
It holds the bags properly with none falling in. It has built in storage for empty bags inside. It is easily cleanable. The lid opens and closes smoothly, no slamming open or shut. When closed, it keeps any odors inside.
It’s been the main trashcan in the central area of our home for four years and is still going strong. So many others we had would only last maybe half a year.
Omg I had two of these cans and loved them so much
On the other hand, I’ve been using a cheap garbage can without the lid and it’s been good. Mind you, my home is sealed well against flies and if flying bugs become an issue, I’ll probably grab the lid. But since water is able to evaporate out of it, it doesn’t stink that much. It also helps that I leave food in the fridge until I’m ready to take the garbage out.
Heck yeah. I don’t know what brand mine is, but we also splurged on a fancy trashcan. Foot operated. Metal casing, so it’s heavy and doesn’t shift around when you’re trying to use it. Like you said, it holds the bag properly. I’ll never go back.
I had my house renovated to make it more like what I want. The cost was mind boggling. But holy hell, I really like my house now.
What kinds of renovations did you do?
The big change was I had the stairs moved.
Without making a huge story of it, my house has pretty darn large pull-under basement that you access by a garage door. But, the space was cut in half by the stairs. One the one side you could mostly squeeze a car in, but the other side was largely wasted space. So I had the stairs moved to the other side of the house. Now I have a pseudo 3-car garage (2 bays to work on project cars, and room to pull a 3rd in behind them in a pinch).
Mildly interesting, those stairs were moved on purpose by the original owner during the design phase. I actually have the original blueprints, the stairs were supposed to be off the kitchen. Makes me wonder if the next owner will move them again. hah.
I’m 100% behind this. You spend enough time there, make it perfect
Running my own storage and personal media server.
I’ve been debating trying this but I’m not an IT expert, so feeling overwhelmed and nervous to even start. Do you have any guides or websites that you could recommend?
If you go with a out-of-the-box solution you don’t really need much expertise. You just click through a series of almost self-explanatory installation steps and it just works. I’d recommend Synology. It’s very simple and just works flawlessly with minimum effort.
Now, this is lemmy and the foss/privacy people will probably have me crucified for saying that … so if you care about that, I’d suggest scrolling/asking in [email protected].
Thanks
I second Synology. Have similar background (no IT experience). Bought a d923+ and have been setting up different options. Within 6 months I have setup:
- a self hosted Immich account for all my photos (downloaded everything from Google Photos)
- Plex for all my media (unexpected benefit, no longer paying for several streaming apps)
- local backup for home/exterior video cameras
I highly recommend Marius Hosting for simple, step by step, guides. For example: https://mariushosting.com/how-to-install-immich-on-your-synology-nas/
Yeah I’m stuck on the “expensive” part still. I built one, but very quickly ran out of storage. I’m looking to buy some 18tb drives but holy hell they are expensive.
I’m looking to buy some 18tb drives but holy hell they are expensive.
Well, I’m running 9x 20TB drives …
How much were they? And any regrets?
Around $340 each. Not so far, but I did just hit 70%, I have to think about expanding soon …
without asking you to incriminate yourself…
I always wonder: what the hell is everyone saving so much of?
like I do photogrammetry sometimes and even then, if I backup all source imagery, I still won’t fill a couple of terabytes…
Piracy. I have around 50TB of TV shows, 8TB of movies and 1TB of music.
Got a list of suggestions?. I have 50 tbh free and slowly doing a big clean/replace with prefered groups, would love ‘forever’ reccomends. Little tinfoil hat but looking to buffer the enshittification of commercial services.
ah. that would do it. yarr matey
What’s your configuration, if you don’t mind sharing?
That’s useful thanks
Geothermal heatpump
Holy shit where do you live??
Urban setting in eastern Canada.
It was about 30k all included. Maybe 23k after subventions.
Got rid of the oil furnace, and it now costs me about $650 for heat and AC for the whole year.
And the old furnace did not do AC.
It’s been about 4 years and the return on investment was initially planned at around 10-12 years in… But that was when oil was $0.80/L and it has more than doubled last I checked.
Rather simple really… vertical well routed to a heatpump installed where the old furnace was.More than the savings, it is much more comfortable as the temperature is more stable, we now have AC for the summer, there’s no smells, no refills, barely any maintenance other than air filters… 10/10 would recommend.
So the geothermal part is needing access to a well and using ground water for cooling?
Isn’t there a risk or liability for if there’s a leakage?
Sounds amazing though nice going
I’m looking at heat pumps for houses. Using those outdoor radiator things powered by electricity. Geothermal sounds fancy but it makes sense.
TL;DR: It’s kinda like a watercooled heatpump that uses the earth as its heatsink.
It’s not actually using ground water though. Although such systems exist (open loop), mine is a closed loop.
They dug an 8 inch wide hole, 300ft down.
They then put a loop of polypipe that goes down to the bottom to a heat-fused U joint and then back up.
The free space in the “well” is then backfilled with bentonite (clay) to maximize thermal exchange between the loop and the ground.
The bentonite also swells when in contact with water, so it might help mitigate smaller leaks, but don’t quote meon that.The pipe is filled with a mix of water and glycol to make sure it can’t freeze and a pump takes care of circulating that to the heatpump, but there’s no fluid exchange between the loop and the environment.
AKA Closed loop.A traditional heatpump is an air-air heatpump, a geothermal heatpump is a water-air heatpump.
Basically, the advantage of the geo heatpump is that the liquid comes back out of the loop and into the heatpump at about 7 degrees C all year.
It is much easier for a heatpump to heat your inside air to 22C by extracting heat from a 7C liquid than from -30C outside air.
Similarly, cooling your inside air by dumping heat into a 7C liquid is easier than by dumping it into +30C outside air.The heatpump itself is installed inside where the old furnace was, which means it’s also more protected than a traditional heatpump that’s installed outside, hopefully increasing its lifetime.
Don’t get me wrong, traditional heatpumps are also great and might a great fit on lots of places.
Having (some) pretty cold days up here, we went with the geothermal and it is more than sufficient year round. The only times the aux heat kicks in is when I test it manually.Modern geothermal heat pump systems are almost always closed loop, you just run a bunch of loops of tubing in a big trench that’s deep enough to not freeze over the winter, or if you’re space constrained you use a deep borehole or 2 with a tube running down and back up again.
those outdoor radiator things powered by electricity
A.k.a. air conditioners. (With an extra valve to allow bidirectionality)
My house probably. By far the most expensive thing I own.
Meds I guess 😔
But also PPE for riding a motorcycle
I got my husband a water kettle for his birthday the first year we were dating, and it’s been a great investment. It’s got a gooseneck spout, heats water to multiple temperatures and is worth every cent of the ~€45 I paid for it. We have great, consistent coffee every day, thanks mostly to the kettle
I recently got a kettle when I switched to drinking more tea and less energy drinks. It is so convenient and easy to use. It’s faster than my old tea pot I used on the stove.
Is a badass computer an adult purchase? 🤔
Water heater probably? Having hot water when we need it is really nice.
Heat pump water heater in the garage is a blessing in summer months
Dehumidifier. Best thing I’ve ever bought for the house I bloody love it
Opposite here, I live in the desert and a humidifier adds enough thermal mass to the air to make cooling reasonably cheap in the summer.
What do you mean by “a humidifier adds enough thermal mass to the air”? I would think that increasing the heat capacity of the air would increase the cost of temperature regulation.
When it’s as dry as it is here the air heat up super fast, adding humidity will cool a room instantly (swamp cooler effect) and reduce the rate at which the temperature changes, making cooling affordable.
Swamp coolers/humidifiers can maintain temps in the low to mid 23C ish range in the desert but will push humidity to around 50-60% to do it.
Winter tires on their own set of wheels. Expensive upfront, but easy to switch out twice a year at zero additional expense. I run summers half the year and winters the other half, so I’m usually on the best tires, temperature wise. Safer and more fun driving all around.
- Chamber vacuum sealer.
- Espresso machine with E61 group head and flat burr grinder.
Reald… oh wait, that’s not what you meant, right?
