The word “socialist” was strongly associated with the USSR in the Cold War era United States. Anyone advocating for socialism was dismissed as a commie.
See Joseph McCarthy, Hollywood blacklists, J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO and other domestic surveillance programs for a small slice of anti-communist efforts in the Cold War US.
I’d just throw an analog min/max thermometer in there and investigate if the max temp goes above 40F, sounds a lot easier than adding a temp probe and door switch to a residential refrigerator.
A bimetallic strip thermostat with a ‘cool/off/heat’ mode switch and ‘on/off/auto’ for fan control is all anyone actually needs with a fixed speed compressor and generic furnace with a fixed speed fan.
If you have a fancy modulating furnace and variable speed compressor or a variable speed heat pump, a thermostat that uses a PID would work better.
Fixed speed compressors are okay for AC condensers but for tighter applications like heat pumps a variable speed drive offers a good efficiency gain, the problem is there is no standardization established for the driving of say a variable motor since they are all redesigned and unique so when the controller goes kaputz you are out 3-4000 dollars for something that costs 30 dollars to manufacture
Aluminum wire is completely safe these days. Wiring devices and breakers have accepted both Cu/Al wire for the last 50 years.
There was an issue with aluminum wire and terminations, the wiring devices and breakers used for copper only wire didn’t work with aluminum (wrong coefficient of expansion of the metal where the terminations were made) and caused arcing and fires. Once the termination points were made out of an alloy that worked with both Cu/Al, it’s been safe to use.
> Wiring devices and breakers have accepted both Cu/Al wire for the last 50 years.
I agree with your general point, but be a bit careful here.
> Wiring devices and breakers have accepted both Cu/Al wire for the last 50 years.
It’s true that, for a little over 50 years, the UL has regulated what devices may “accept” Al wire. But devices have had markings suggesting use of Al wire for longer than that, and it was quite unwise:
Don’t get caught up in all the discussion of repair devices — AIUI this article is mostly about “repair” of old pre-8000-series Al wire. You can’t buy that stuff any more. As far as I know, modern Al listed building wire is only sold in 8 AWG and up, and this stuff doesn’t need “repair”: it’s perfectly fine in any appropriately listed connector.
A residential electrician would be completely lost on a data center site. Commercial electricians travel around to the various data center projects. Most of the trades are similar.
> You don't get, for example, datacentre electricians rocking up pretenting they can install network cable to spec and running away having (if you are lucky) only done a continuity test on the cable they just installed.
I frequently have my electricians pull and terminate network cable if it’s only one or a few (daisy-chained VAV controllers or a network drop for a BAS panel), if the customer needs a formal TIA-568 test then I’ll sub that out. My electricians are already pulling and terminating building automation cable, CAT 6 isn’t gonna stop em :)
Oh awesome! I’m glad there are others in the industry around here :)
I’d like to learn more about PLCs and SCADA, but that scope of work usually falls on another contractor, we mostly provide installation for BAS systems that control HVAC and chilled/hot water plants.
I do some water treatment plant projects and there’s a local contractor that handles the PLC and SCADA stuff.
Fiber was all installed long after we knew locating it was important. I suspect it all had a tracer wire installed with it. Of course sometimes the tracer wire can break.
Before fiber a lot of things were put into the ground with no thought how you would find it again.
Indeed, tracer wire is usually bonded to a (sacrificial) magnesium anode, but it’s a crapshoot whether the tracer wire is still intact.
I sometimes hire directional boring and excavation contractors and if there’s any doubt as to where an electrical conduit or natural gas pipe is, I opt for the hydrovac truck to minimize risk.
Always bring a length of fiber optic cable when you're in the wilderness. If you get lost or stranded, bury the cable. Within a few hours, a backhoe will stop by to dig it up, and the crew will rescue you.
Local people know where they are because once upon a time a D8 drove through pulling a big orange spool of fiber conduit and passers by chatted about how another fiber was going in. Also around here the contractors seeded the disturbed ground with a wildflower mix (presumably to discourage weeds) so you can also look for straps of wildflowers.
And of course there are marker posts that say "buried fiber optic cable do not dig".
Once you get out farther from civilization these signs become less common and there are more situations where they can get removed.
Most cheap hired labor doesn't realize you shouldn't dig up the market posts and throw them in the dumpster on construction sites. Add a little bit of rain and suddenly the contractor showing up with an excavator that was told everything was properly marked, and can see markings in other places but not where they are digging, and disaster occurs.
Also soils aren't static, I've been on sites where the midpoint of a buried telecommunications cable had drifted over 8 feet from where the markers were a few hundred yards apart. Just looking at the markers and assuming a straight line isn't a safe bet. Looking at the fence rows to the left and right of the cable and you could see a matching bow in the fence rows.
I see you've never dug into a cable way out of range where the utility thought it was. You've definitely never been on a project where the utility was there with you wondering how the wire they marked many many feet away out of the hand dig area was actually where you're digging.
I was on such a project once back when PRI was still a hot ticket. Part of the project evolved to mean that we needed to construct a small radio tower, and a part of that meant finding a spot where we wouldn't dig up anything important.
Reps from the local telco showed up to one of the meetings to tell everyone that they didn't know where their copper lines were buried and that they were unsuccessful at locating them outside at all. They knew where both ends were but the middle was a mystery to them.
This statement made the architect's face contort into strange shapes. I joked that they call 811; some people thought that was rather hilarious, others much less so.
Anyway, the building wasn't in service yet and the telco said they'd fix it if we managed to naff them up, so away we dug. No telco cabling was damaged in this process. (We did dig up some plastic drainage tile but that was a simple farm store fix.)
> You know it if you've driven past any road construction project. 90% of the people at any given time are standing around.
If 90% of the people onsite are unnecessary, a competitor will simply bid for the project without the extra labor and win.
Have you considered the possibility that you don’t understand how road construction works? I don’t fully understand how it works and I am a commercial construction professional.
The model in reality is “Hope the producers like you enough to write you into the show as the winner.” Survivor is hyperreality, not an actual competition.
See Joseph McCarthy, Hollywood blacklists, J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO and other domestic surveillance programs for a small slice of anti-communist efforts in the Cold War US.
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