bobmacliberty

Sydney is high on my list of places I've never been to. Scotland first (home of golf and my ancestors), then Australia.

I think a better comparison would be against HughesNet, the primary satellite service provider.

My answer would be...more than you want to sit in a plane, but worth it (for both cities).

Thanks for confirming the answer. Don't know why I missed Nevada/Vegas. Seems obvious now that I know. Hawaii surprises me a bit. It does get a lot of visitors but it's just so small. One of the reasons that I like Hawaii is that it never seems too crowded, other than around Honolulu.

Here is what Greg posted (I immediately saved it 😉). No amounts listed. I tried 1 oz ginger syrup, 1 oz lime juice, 2 oz rum, 2 cups ice in a blender but it was too much liquid and/or not enough ice. I might try freezing the ginger syrup in an ice tray to help it freeze better.

Current RC internet is from high orbit geosynchronous satellites. Starlink uses a constellation of thousands (currently 2,000+ but planned for 10,000+) low orbit satellites. Faster speeds and much lower latencies.

Bunnies are not at all welcome in our yard. It's amazing how quickly they will mow down flowers.

I think you are correct JC. Tankless heater exhaust gases are acidic and will quickly rust the existing tank vent galvanized pipe. Tankless vents need to be a different material. Unless you want to run a new pipe up through the house through a roof penetration, you're better off exhausting horizontally. That will involve making a penetration through the foundation. The other option is to get an outdoor tankless heater and extended the water pipes through the foundation. Not sure what limitations exist in mounting outside in a cold environment. Wherever you install the tankless unit, you need to run gas piping as well. All of that combined with the large extra price tag had me just retrofitting on Ohio with a bigger tank. It would have taken several years to recover the added tankless installed cost in energy savings. I think.

Our AHU is on the main (only) floor of the house, in a little closet off of our laundry room. The condensate drain is gravity fed.

Very helpful reply @twangster. My understanding is that Starlink dishes are self aligning (i.e. will physically move) but also use beam forming to ensure an optimal link. The boat owners in the video that I watched completely removed the mounting and rotating parts that came with the dish and actually modified the back of the antenna casing to attach a new mounting plate (certainly completely voiding the warranty...don't try this at home). The beam forming seems to adjust quickly enough as the boat bobs up and down. It would seem that Starlink has the hardware and software things needed to ensure that their antennas do not cause problems with other satellites. Maybe the FCC is just waiting on testing, or perhaps some fixes from previous tests that have already been run, before ensuring that Starlink antennas are safe on moving vehicles (or at least for exception cases like a cruise ship). Starlink is certainly expensive when compared to what you and I pay for our service, but it's a god send for people in less urban areas. My BIL lives in an rural part of Pennsylvania. His satellite internet service was slow and unreliable. He loves Starlink and I don't think it's a whole lot more expensive than what he was paying.

I remember many years ago being at my parent's house in Savannah for Thanksgiving. They lost power Thanksgiving day. We managed to make an entire Thanksgiving dinner using just the outdoor gas grill.

You win Cruise Critic today (yesterday). Or at least you would have won if I had listened to you. That was exactly our problem. For those who don't understand what @Vibe is talking about, the air handling unit (the blower that moves air throughout the house where your air filter is located) has a drain line to keep condensation out of the system. If the drain line gets plugged, condensation will back up in the line. There's a little chamber near the top of the drain line with a float switch in it. If condensation backs up enough to cause the float switch to rise, it sends a signal to shut off the system so that you aren't blowing condensate through your ductwork. When the switch gets tripped, there will be no power on the Rc wire at the thermostat. When the condensation slowly drains, the float eventually drops and the system turns on again. As @Vibe said, my A/C guy hooked up a shop vac to the end of the drain line to suck out the water and the slime/gunk in the line that was causing it to drain slowly. It was clogged enough that he had to also blast the line with compressed air on the other end to push to clog through. We are no set up for twice a year service checks which include cleaning the condensation drain. Costs us $165/year for two system checks/cleanings per year. Good peace of mind.

We don't have natural gas here. We have a large propane tank buried in our yard. Our tankless heater runs on propane, although it needs electricity also for the electronics to work.

I have no idea why the stationary restriction exists but it doesn't matter if a ship is outside of FCC limits. Starlink needs to follow FCC rules no matter where the customer is located. Dumb. I can't think of any technical or safety reasons to limit customers to being stationary, but maybe one exists. I recently watched a video of a couple who lives on a houseboat in Seattle and they installed an antenna on their boat. It works great for them but they can only use it when in their home marina. The antenna makes adjustments (electronically, not mechanically) as the ship bounces up and down. They turn it off when moving or even when they're stationary away from their home site. Starlink apparently tracks if you're moving and disconnects service, to satisfy the FCC. If they are stationary for too long in a new location, Starlink changes their "address" which causes some sort of problem for them.

We have one in Florida. No issues at all so far. I can take a shower while we're doing laundry and have all the hot water that I want. It's mounted on the side of our house and is very much out of sight, out of mind. I looked into installing one when we lived in Ohio to replace an old tank heater. There were a couple of problems that prevented me from doing so. First, the cost was at least 2X when compared to a tank heater. Second, it required a different lining in the exhaust vent pipe. Our tank was in the middle of our basement and it would have been tricky (not just expensive) to make the exhaust work. We had no good place to mount it outside of our house. I ended up buying the largest tank that I could get. I don't remember exactly but I think we previously had a 50 gallon tank and would run out of water. I replaced with an 80 gallon tank and that was no longer an issue.

This would be great. It's just a matter of time (and probably some of Elon's money) before the requirement to be stationary is lifted. Dish is trying to stop that so that they don't have competition.

Tankless water heaters...one of the greatest inventions ever.

Ours is off the garage entry also. Works as a mud/sand room, place to hang jackets/hats, utility sink, ironing station, storage cabinets, access to air handling unit, etc. It shares a wall with our master closet and would be really nice to have direct closet access, although we'd have to give up some closet space which is a hard no.

Like most things in retirement, I give it about a 10 minute try and if that doesn't work, I call a guy. One of a few ways that I've reduced stress in my life

Any drink with just an alcohol and a mixer (Jack and Ginger, Dark and Stormy, G&T, etc.) I free pour everything. I use pour spouts and have gotten pretty good at measuring by counting. Any drinks that involve multiple ingredients, I will still measure to ensure consistent taste. Sometimes, making the drink is as much fun as drinking the drink. 😉😏

We were billed separately for water and sewer in Ohio but did not have separate meters. They automatically gave us a sewer credit when we filled our pool (based on typical usage) and gave us a credit somehow during the summer to reflect watering the lawn. Made sense to me.

We get rid of all of our winter stuff.

Interesting. First 3 must be NY, Florida, and California. What's the 4th? Illinois because of Chicago?

I don't use simple syrup in my Mojitos. I muddle a cut up lime, a tablespoon of powdered sugar, and 12 mint leaves (mint leaves at the bottom so that they don't break up). Fill glass with crushed ice and then add 2 oz rum. Top with club soda. Probably less minty than using the mint syrup that you made.

A few seconds (literally) after I hit the submit button on my last post, the A/C kicked on. Who knows what's happening. 🤷‍♂️