Injector Line Heaters

[SteveU.]

Good Morning glort
Well written seniment. Please leave this up. As a born here, North American PNW "native" here in the Big, Green and Clean I have experienced and continually see exactly these same trendy, lofty, schizophrenia disconnect between what is desired to be done, versus what actually IS, and can be done for 40 years now.

Last gross case in point was about two years ago I worked in a developemental shop dealing with woodgas and it's useages.
'Nother much younger fellow there was out of the Portland Occupy movement. Yes. An actual active "Enviromentalist" who had actually snuck in with "teams" and spiked trees at chainsaw level. Smart guy. Pretty decent machinist and could weld too. He was forever using his Gen 2 smart phone as his pocket flashlight to peer into the equipment dark corners. I gave him a nice use for years machined aluminum double AAA battery pocket flashlight like I evoled to using as an Auto Tech. O-H-o-o-o! Bad for the disposable batteries and the only 50 hour life old tech halogen incandescent bulbs! O.K. That was only $13. USD. US of A made. He of course eventually scratched up the face of his made in the US Smart phone and had to upgrade to a newest made now in Japan Gen 3 smart phone. New 2 year service contract and all of that. This time I gave him a latest 4th generation LED $40. USD penlight - really excellent - except for the poor color rendition and the made in China origin. NFG for auto wiring harness work with lots of tracer colors - but a thousands of hours life light emmiter cel. With now hunderds of hours of life out of the same two AAA batteires. I was still the enviro slug for promoting one-use batteries!
Ha! Ha! Years later now I still have this light given back  working on the same set of batteries. STILL using my same old analog capable dumb flip cell phone without the GPS spy on board and NO service contract obligations. And still using my "only 85% efficient" needs no electricty or tech support woodstove fueled with grown wood off of our own property. Ha! We annually sequester enough atmopheric CO2 for 10 normal American families.
He's now onto a Gen 4 personal cell phone. Still heats with out of the region imported "Clean, Pure Natural Gas".  - which ain't.
He did move far enough out of the Urban core onto one acre to now have goats though - so some hope maybe he will grow into the light of practicality. I think I got to him with the gifts of rich ornaged yolked home grown eggs and full flavor grass fed beef. Both not claimed to be organic. Would have to apply to the State government to claim say that anymore since thier take over of the name. We do this Just 'cause we can. Retain the abilty to do it. The grass fed because it is cheaper.
Sigh. Next I see him I am sure he will be onto a plug in hybrid for driving. These are now trickling down to the 10+ year old used levels here now and can be had for o-n-l-y $10k. I'll stick with my 15 plus year old dumber, simpiler, been Banker man free for decades stuff and just drive/use less thank you.
Ha! Get curst for decades now not being Green enough.
Get curst for not supporting the New Economy pixilated with the bright shiny, and the newest, must haves.

Keep up with the Practical man
Steve Unruh

[millman56]

Great stuff Glort !!  Cutting through the crap as only a "down under" can,  after a couple of paragraphs I started to read it with an Aussie accent, can you believe that?

Mark

[Hugh Conway]

Glort: Re your "rant".     
I say "Amen, brother."
Cheers,
Hugh

[glort]

Thanks for the support guys.  It is very much appreciated.

As you can tell, the dumping thing gets my back up.  Here in Oz the gubbermint brought in a carbon tax which is a complete crock as it's impossible to find out how much if any money actually goes to environmental restoration but by the gubbermints own figures, it's less that 6%. It has caused all sorts of problems and price rises in what is just lip service to the greenies and keeping the makers of red tape working 24/7 to keep up with demand.
I think it's most effective change has been to drive manufacturing away from our country with 1st world emissions standards and take production to 3rd world countries like India where they have little to no rules on what can be emitted in manufacturing.  We are all stuck on the same big blue ball so once it's out there, there's no brining it back no matter where it came from.

What burns me is if the Gubbermint put a ban on dumping of new products except for say safety issues ( and then it could be mandated such products HAD to be recycled) It would cost next to nothing to implement but make a huge difference to the use of resources, energy and the environment.

I guess because Gubbermint like to be seen to be doing something rather than actually do anything, they always take the most complicated, expensive and ineffective action instead of doing the simple, cheap and effective. It staggers me how you can't buy a basic incandescent light bulb here because they are banned in favour of those  resource hungry in manufacture Compact Fluorescents that supposedly save energy but you can write off hundreds of tons of perfect stock against your tax and dump it in land fill creating as much enviro damage as what was done making it in the first place.

I wonder how many hours an incandescent light bulb could burn for with the energy that went in to making just one mobile phone let alone shipping it around the world only to throw the thing in land fill.

It's disgusting.

[vdubnut62]

Aw gee whiz Glort! Why I just love the POS compact fluorescent bulbs. Especially since one in a table lamp darned near burned down my house a few days ago. Needless to say it was replaced with a halogen incandescent.
Ah yes the best "gubbermint" money can buy!
Ron.

[BruceM]

Loved your post, Glort.

I'm all incandescent here at my off grid home, have a lifetime supply of soft white incandescent bulbs in 60 and 100W. The finest light quality money can buy.

I can't tolerate the compact or other fluorescent lights, and can't tolerate the fluorescent light from the "white" LEDs (dab of phosphor excited by UV LED).

I use most of my 120VDC  lighting in the winter, where the "waste" heat helps heat the house.  Phillips Lighting sure pulled a fast one.  They wrote it and every single one of their specialty incandescents and halogens is exempted. Of course they are $4-$8 bulbs instead of $0.25. They promoted this globally, and all the politicians world wide swallowed it whole along with their contribution checks.

[scrapman]

Glort
Where abouts in AUS are you (Reagen or city) I am in north west Tasmania and fined it strange that metal is being buried in land fill as the days of that was over approximately 15 years ago , rubbish going to land fill in last 5 years has to be segregated eg metal, oil, plastic oil containers, batteries, tyres, hard fill -bricks concrete,timber -trees garden waste, recycling eg glass, plastic, paper, cardboard, +$8 fee to get in gate ,also new good or usable items diverted to tip shop to be sold ,this was really tightened up 2 years ago and not willing to grade load you get charged for doing it.
Stock of incandescent light bulbs will see me out ,also purchased 10 compacts 8 years ago ,Chinese, installed 6 had 1 fail after 2 years and paid $2-15 ea at el cheapo shop.
I am surprised that loads of extruded metal being dumped with out being diverted and sold to local scrapers ( cash payment to driver for going out of his way ) 
Peter

[uber39]

Veg the power supply I use/used is from those 12v hellagin  lights that sit flush with the ceiling, everyone here knows them as "down lights" cause they only point down, very little light spread so you need at least 4 to a room .
     I will save my rant about the stupidment for another day although we do all seem to think the same,and yes I'm in OZ as well ( central Vic )

[glort]

Scrapman,

I'm in Sydney.

Everything that goes to the waste transfer station ( privately owned) goes to landfill unless they sort out the metal when it comes in. This now only usually happens when a clean load comes in which isn't too often.  Perhaps the driver do take that to the scrapyard but don't bother when it is mixed in with other stuff.

They do have some scrap bins at the station but they don't get used a lot. The company took on some local garbage contracts and the place is usually very busy and so are the staff.  There are trucks coming in the front door dropping stuff off and trucks coming in the back taking it away to the companies landfill site.  They have a huge full size loader putting it in to semis and a Dozer just pushing the pile up.  I reckon you could easily get a Jumbo jet in the place and to see the pile when it is high is quite a sobering demonstration of how much waste is generated especially when you consider this would be a drop in the ocean for the city let alone any where else.

Our local garbage collection comprises of a red general rubbish bin, a Yellow recycle Bin and a green garden waste bin. Every year the local council spends loads of money on educating people what can and can't go in the recycle bin and encouraging people to use it instead of throwing suitable materials away.
The great irony is all the contents of the recycle bins go to the exact same place as the rubbish bins. NOTHING is recycled at all, it all goes to land fill.

How do I know? The brother in law works for the company that recently got awarded the contract and my nephew is a garbage truck driver.
My BIL told me that when the contract came up for tender, his company gave a quote for recycling the yellow bin contents and one for just collecting and disposing of it.
Guess which one the council opted for?
The red and yellow bins are collected separately for appearances sake but they all go to the same place.  My wife was always very particular about making sure we put the right stuff in the right bin but the fact of the matter is there is no point what so ever.

The last time I went to the council tip which is now a local waste transfer station some distance away which was at least 10 years ago, it cost me $40 for a trailer load of light materials.  They too want you to sort it all out but the current charge is over $100 a ton.

Just to have a whinge about that as well, ( am I never happy?)  I think this is wrong.
When I go out collecting veg oil and scrounging factory skip bins, I always see piles of dumped rubbish everywhere. Go to the outer suburbs and the Bush is littered with all sorts of rubbish.  It's bloody wrong but not without reason.  When it's going to cost someone hundreds of dollars to do the right thing, you can see why they take the soft option and do the wrong thing.
Someone has to pay more to clean this stuff up and remove it so why not make doing the right thing affordable in the first place, say $20 to dump whatever and make doing the right thing less of a slug to the hip pocket and such an UNattractive option.

It's all well and good to say put the rubbish in the recycle bins or whatever but you can't renovate a house without creating rubbish and things you buy these days are so over packaged it's not funny. My wife bought me a BBQ for christmas and after I assembled the thing, The amount of cardboard, foam and plastic bags completely filled one 240L bin.  Imagine what people have when they buy a load of stuff to move into a new home!

There are a lot of resources in waste that a lot of countries make use of They don't have the space to dump everything in landfill so they recycle what they can and burn the rest to generate power and heat greenhouses, homes or public buildings.

Seems that's too practical and clever an idea for other places to adopt though.