Commuter Car Pollution

It is said that commuter car pollution output is greater than industry pollution. Now I have a hunch that some of the data is left out of that statement, such as whether this data was restricted to urban areas, which means there would be a low industrial presence. However, anyone looking over any city's horizon would agree that vehicle pollution is a nasty reality.

But then the eco-simpletons take a huge leap of logic into absurdity! If commuter pollution is the problem, then just tax the commuters until they stop commuting. That should solve the problem.

Now I have a hunch that the people who came up with this idea are either " too special" to use public transit, or have nice convenient nests, close to where they work.

Let's take a close look at your typical commuter:

• They have been forced far away from their work in order to find suitable affordable housing for their families. ( Don't even think about getting me going about Eco Density!)
• They get up an an ungodly hour. Grab a hunk of food and a huge thermos of coffee. Plug all their computers etc in the car's outlets. And head off for a multi hour hell ride that elevates their cortisol into " guaranteed heart attack" levels.
• They pay as much for parking as some renters do for a single room apartment.
• They work all day and head home, scrambling to squirm through traffic. Every five minutes counts, since they have family obligations, or would just like to see their kids awake for once. Every short cut is used..along with a certain middle finger.
  
• The short evening is spent either doing all the essential family chores, or feeling guilty about not doing them because of exhaustion. Forget sex...candlelight and lingerie are for the commercials.
  
• Then it is up to bed, and set the alarm for before the birds. Ready to start it all over again.

Do the Eco Idiots think these people want this?

Do the policy planners actually think people sit down and say, "I'll buy a big gas guzzler and pay a gazillion dollars in fees, and spend half my life in a fume filled road!" Really! They have been reading too much of their propaganda.

Most commuters use their vehicles because public transit will either add even more commuting hours to their long days, or is non existent.

In a matter of fair disclosure, I should state that I am at home and my spouse does use a commuter train. But also in fair disclosure, I should tell you that she is in an envied elite! I have to drive her to the train station. There is no shuttle bus. And for those areas with shuttle buses, they frequently arrive late to the train station, or randomly fail to appear. ( Describe that to your boss for the hundredth time and see how long it takes to start up the car for the commute). We are also near the end of the line, which means that she actually gets a seat. Most public transit is jammed in bodies, armpit to putrid armpit. And then transit boards complain about low ridership and refuse to add rail cars or buses.

I have friends who get up at 3:30am to beat the rush hour. I have talked with others who have mobile offices installed, and start work in their vehicles, hours before they take a step into their physical office. Do you wonder why people buy spacious vehicles? The reason is simple. It is because they live in them!

The commuter is exhausted. They don't want the life they are forced to lead. But instead of answers, the Eco-ideologists and politicians fine them with extra taxes, squeeze life out of them with restrictive policies and dump guilt all over them.

Quite the solution.

OK so tomorrow, tell everyone not to use their vehicle to commute anymore. Tell them that the Gov't will protect their jobs with legislation and that they are guaranteed to spend the same or more time with their families. And tell them that everyone is guaranteed a seat for commuting times of over 20 minutes.

I don't think you will so many people on the road.

Taxes and guilt are easy. Solutions are hard. But the average person being squeezed, knows who is for them and who is against them.

Every penny and every second counts in commuter hell.

Airtight Housing Insulation is Unhealthy

TV renovation shows and government ads are preaching about making our houses airtight. But they are only telling part of the story and could be harming our health! If you just follow their guilt inducing preachy instructions you could soon be living in a toxic swamp. Think about the following points:

• If you seal up your house and still have furnishings which give off toxic fumes, aren't you being forced to spend hundreds of hours in a home made gas chamber?
• When you turn your bathroom or stove exhaust fans on to purge moist and oily air, how can they effectively work if no fresh air is allowed into the building? And what kind of air are they drawing in? How about the carbon monoxide laden air from your furnace and fireplace vents!!!!
• You and your family are expelling body waste with every breath. Your lungs are a one of the filtering organs in your body. Each one of you is spewing unhealthy gasses at least 20 times a minute. More if you exercise at home.

This is the environment the green police want you to live in so that they don't have to update the energy grid or give you cash incentives to retrofit your home with proper ventilation equipment.

A proper housing ventilation system would include a heat exchanger which continuously takes the warm fetid air from your house, strips the heat from it, and adds the heat to the cool fresh air it pulls in (and the opposite in summer). This is an essential element for most commercial HVAC systems. But like a lot to things in the building code, they are not part of regular residential construction.

Also, a heat exchanger is only good at providing healthful air in a forced air heated building. You can use a heat exchanger on liquid based radiant heating, but this does nothing about the stagnant air. Do you see how this poses a problem for bureaucrats and builders? If they put radiant heating in your house to encourage you to only heat one room at a time, and want to give you a healthful environment, they would have to build a separate ventilation system thereby doubling your HVAC ( Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning ) costs.

It is much easier for Environmentalists, Bureaucrats, Builders and Energy Providers to preach about sealing up your homes to save energy demands on an old energy grid. You are then expected to live in a toxic zone where you get mysterious headaches, sensitivity to a wide variety of things (MCS) as you liver backs up and rebels, long drawn out chest infections, fatigue, listlessness.....and on and on. Do any of these things sounds familiar?

Don't believe me? Then do this experiment. Seal up your house and spend a weekend in it ( most guys won't have a problem with this during the playoffs). Then, go outside to a lush green area just around sunrise and breath in. If you are in a dense urban area, you may have to drive to a local nature reserve. Notice a surge in vitality? That is your lungs saying thank you.

This is the kind of environment you were meant to live in, but have been encouraged to lock yourself away from. Think about it.

Colin

Tankless Inline Hot Water Heaters Incompatible with Low Flow Fixtures

This post is a clarification on the development hot water heating devices and the lack of a unity of standards.

If you are thinking of getting an inline water heater, or " tankless" hot water heater, you had better do some serious research first. Do not just go in and tell your local plumber to install a unit without going through some serious calculations.

The first glitch I came across is that you need to run the water full out to activate the system. So if you have flow regulators installed on your taps and appliances you won't get any hot water. The specs on the tankless hot water heater call for a flow rate of around 1 gallon/ minute. So, to have your shower in the morning you have to turn the shower and sink on full hot and let them run until the unit turn on and the water feeds through your lines. ( Remember to do this before you run your dishwasher as well.)

During this warm up period, the tankless heater is burning 4 times the amount of gas as a regular heater. This may mean that you need to get a larger gas supply line put in. If you choose the electric version you may need to get a special high demand electric line. This means that you are using huge amounts of energy during these peak demand times.

A low flow shower head reduces the water flow to about 2 gallons per minute. The tankless water heater can only produce hot water (70F) at about 3 gpm. This means that you will most likely have your tap nearly on full hot. So remember this if there is anyone else wanting to use hot water at the same time. Notice that the ads for these units show a line up of people waiting to have a shower, NOT everyone having a shower at the same time.

So where is the saving coming from? Time. The tankless hot water heaters are supposed to have a 20 year lifespan. You would go through 3 standard tanks by that time. Also there is a saving on the energy used to heat the standard reservoir tank.

BUT! What if you just made a habit of turning the dial on your hot water tank to " vacation " when you head out the door each day? If you are really keen, you can even turn it down at night and then back up when you are making your breakfast. It only takes about 20 minutes for mine to reach full capacity. We have automatic thermostats, why not on our hot water heaters? They have them on commercial units.

In summary, if you have a steady demand for hot water, then a tankless hot water heater makes sense. This is for convenience more than ecology. The energy savings seem to be calculated during the resting periods since the inline hot water heaters use huge amounts of energy when in use. Standard tank heaters can be modified to be more economic and ecological.

So do your research and be sure to ask some hard questions when it comes time to change your hot water heater.