Lessons Learned About Solar Power During Hurricane Helene and its Aftermath in Western NC.
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Category Archives: Practical Info
Backpacker Fact-Checker, #1: Shoe Weight
Newer Whirlpool Dryers Have Thermistors and Not A Thermostat
I recently had a problem with a dryer that was tumbling and not heating. Being lazy I immediately assumed it was the ignitor. When I went to school they taught me to do all the troubleshooting steps all the time and not make any assumptions. But the real world rewards cheaters nine times out of ten and so mostly I don’t do that. But if you play that game, you have to be willing to pay the price when the 10th times rolls around. In this case, it was not ignitor but I was not too upset about that.
I did a little checking with my meter, found that the thermostat was bad and moved on to order the new parts. The problem is that even though the part is called a thermostat, it is not a thermostat. At least in my education, a thermostat refers to a complete temperature control unit. Historically, this is a switch connected to some kind of temperature control. As the temp rises (or lowers depending on the type) the switch opens and visa versa as it closes. You can have other things that meet the definition of a thermostat but regardless you should not call something a thermostat unless it has all the control elements contained in it.
What the new Whirlpool dryers have is a thermistor. A thermistor is a resistor that changes voltages based on temperature. This voltage is in turn interpreted by a computer that is usually located some distance away although a lot of modern residential HVAC electronic thermostats have everything in one wall mounted package (and hence why they are called thermostats). However, in a dryer, the board that interprets the signal is separate from what they are calling the thermostat and so I don’t think they should be calling it a thermostat. It is a thermistor and should be trouble shot like one.
I am just throwing this out there because I did not recognize this just by looking at the part (in retrospect I should have but I have been running a desk for a long time) and I got confused by what my meter was telling me. It was a lot harder then a lazy person like me wants to work to figure out what was going on. All my normal google and youtube searches kept giving me instructions that took for granted that I had a thermostat even though that is not what I had. In the end, I figured it out it was no big deal. But in the off chance that google will work for somebody, I thought I would throw this post out there to help anyone who might be puzzled by what their meter is showing them when they go to check what they think is a thermostat.
The below is how you check a thermostat.
The below is how you check a thermistor.
Scho-Ka-Kola
Lately, my source of caffeine at work has been Scho-Ka-Kola. Half a tin of this stuff gives you a little more caffeine then a cup of coffee. If taken first thing in the morning, it can make a bad day a lot better. Since I try not to get too hooked on caffeine, I limit myself to two times a week (i.e. one tin). I am a little ashamed of this given the cost but I have not got up the willpower to kick the habit yet.
I first discovered this heavily caffeinated dark barely sweetened (the description calls it bitter but I think that is over-selling it) while searching for a source of contingency caffeine. The idea was to find something that I could take when I had been dragged through 20 miles of the high peaks by people younger and in better shape then me only to leave long past bedtime with nobody in my vehicle who could stay awake enough to drive. Being a history nerd, I thought that chocolate that the Germans issued as part of their “Iron Ration” might fit the bill but who still made that?
A quick internet search indicated that the stuff was still made but at first my research indicated that it is way to expensive for anything other then a novelty. On Amazon it sells for $9.96 a can. But for some reason Varusteleka (a company in Finland of all places and the link at the start of this post takes you there) can sell it for $3 a can if you buy 10 at time. At first the goal was only to try some to see if it was worth keeping around for contingencies but I got hooked on it and so now it has become a twice weekly habit. The primary advantage for me stems around how lazy I am and the fact that I don’t like coffee.
What would happen before Scho-Ka-Kola is that I would try to make myself a cup of tea. Odds are, I would not be able to do that first thing in the morning because I would be too busy. Then I would get some time to heat up some tea in the microwave and then I would get busy again. The microwave would be forlornly beeping at me and annoying the office assistant who was closer to the microwave then I was. Eventually I would get the tea and work on it between crisis. Most of the time I would drink the bulk of my tea cold and often later then when I wanted to get my caffeine in me.
With the Scho-Ka-Kola, I can wolf down half a tin down while reading emails and in a few hours my whole day will be better (I don’t metabolize anything fast). Varusteleka will tell you that it is “Not recommended for children, pregnant women, or those with a high sensitivity to caffeine” and I normally consider myself highly sensitive to caffeine. But if you drill down into the numbers, a tin of Scho-Ka-Kola has 200mg of caffeine in it. According to my sources, an average cup of coffee has 95 mg of caffeine in it. So if you only eat half a tin per day you are barely getting more caffeine then by drinking 8 fluid ounces of coffee. In other words, Varusteleka is overselling the caffeine just like they oversell the bitterness of the chocolate. That is all right for me. I don’t need it any stronger then it is. But I suspect that people who drink a couple of cups of coffee a day would find that it is pretty lame fare.
For my purposes, Scho-Ka-Kola is pretty much perfect except for the price and the tins. At a $1.50 a day, there are much cheaper ways of getting the same amount of caffeine. As for the tins, they are awesome but it seems like a shame to throw them out. And if you use a can a week, soon you have so many cans you don’t have much choice. I would rather it come in a cardboard box and be cheaper over all then come in the tin. But these issues have not been a deal breaker for me so far and I suspect that I will keep buying it until it gets so expensive I can’t stomach it or the supply dries up. It just works so much better for my life and tastes buds then all the alternatives that I am aware of.