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Month: July 2020

I’m not a civil engineer, part 2, post loading

Now that we have a defensible way to calculate wind force per square foot of fence we need to put that to practical use.  The main load bearing part of a fence is the fence post.  We’re interested in the load generated on the post above the ground where the fence attaches to it.  This will also play into the footer design later. The way fence post loads are calculated, and I swear I saw Read more…


I’m not a civil engineer, part 1, wind force

One of my next substantial projects is building a fence.  Because of the type of person I am (insufferable) I want a fence that’s better than the standard ‘stick a 4×4 in the ground and nail some wood onto it’ type of fence.  Not that there is anything wrong with that type of fence, I just want better.  As part of the project I though it would be fun to go through and do the Read more…


We did it, boys

Well it has been done.  110F has been broken bbb_hvac=> select * from data.home_data where attic_temp = (select max(attic_temp) as attic_max from data.home_data) order by time_stamp desc; row_id | time_stamp | ac_compressor | ahu_fan | ahu_heater | ahu_return_temp | ahu_supply_temp | attic_temp | space_1_rh | space_1_temp | outdoor_temp | outdoor_rh ———+—————————-+—————+———+————+—————–+—————–+————+————+————–+————–+———— 8725659 | 2020-07-12 17:09:10.715058 | t | t | f | 73.6723 | 57.9939 | 113.597 | 57.2703 | 71.1624 | 94.1 | 59.5273 Read more…


News flash: math verified by real world observation

At the time of writing this post the outdoor temperature is 96F.  This is according to the Google and verified by my personal temperature/humidity probe.  It’s also very sunny with not a cloud in the sky.  So what’s the attic temperature?  I’m expecting a fairly high number due to high outdoor ambient temperature and lots of sun.  Drum roll please … the system measured attic temperature is 106.1F.  Not as high as I had thought Read more…


Math + facts = suck

In the last post I did some basic arithmetic to see if the system as designed should be able to measure 110F.  This post is about verifying the physical reality to see if matches the pristine mathematical theory. To turn the VICTD into temperature in Kelvin the function is below.  We know this from the previous post. $$T_K = V_{ICTD} \times 10^3 $$ Measuring the output of the probe I get a reading of 0.30111V.  Read more…


But can math actually help in the real world?

  My home AC has been operating (fitfully) under the control of my system for a few weeks now.  While doing so it has also been logging various parameters at one second intervals.  I thought it would be interesting to look at the data.  The first question was: what is maximum attic temperature.  Since all of the data is in a Postgres database, that’s a very easy question to answer: bbb_hvac=> select max(attic_temp) as temp_f Read more…