Stuff about squigish
squigish’s awards
Comments
Questions
-
September 18th, 2008
Great Question (0
)
-
October 18th, 2007
Great Question (0)
-
October 18th, 2007
Great Question (0)
-
June 5th, 2007
Great Question (6)
Answers
-
1 month ago
Last night we flushed out the hot water heater. We turned off the burner for about 3 hours to let the sediment settle.
I was unable to turn off the cold water supply, because the handle of the valve was broken off, and it was totally calcified. I tried turning it with vise-grip pliers, and only managed to warp the valve.
So instead of draining the heater, which would have had to have been done with buckets, as the water heater’s in the basement and there’s no floor drain, we just ran a hose from the drain valve on the bottom of the heater to the kitchen sink, and ran it for about 45 minutes, which is about how long it took for the water to stop having a noticable amount of suspended sediment. I figure that we must have emptied the entire tank at least once, probably more than once.
The noise is still there. We took a lot of sediment out of the tank.
Also, I don’t really understand how sediment buildup could cause the water to be trapped next to the burner and boil. Could someone try to explain this?
It’s a gas water heater.
I made a recording of the noise, although the recording sounds more mechanical and metalic than the real thing. I’ll post again once I get it online.
The other thing we discovered is that there is no insulation whatsoever between the water heater in the basement and the bedroom floor, so even a relatively quiet noise will penetrate. Are gas water heaters supposed to make noise, aside from the hissing of the burner?
Thanks everyone for your help.
Great Answer (0)
-
1 month ago
@Val123 Writing down his life story is a great idea. If he’s not a writer, perhaps you could have him dictate it to you, or even just have long, tape-recorded conversations about his life.
My grandfather passed away 2 months ago, and he wrote us a long, detailed letter describing his life, especially the part that happened before his sons were born.
At the same time, just because the doctors say that your dad is going to die in 8 weeks isn’t a guarantee. The doctors gave my grandfather 6 months to live, and he lived for almost 2 years after that. After we got the news of his prognosis, we all made a point to spend a lot of quality time with him. He was modest to a fault, and about a year after receiving his prognosis, wrote us a letter in which he said “I almost feel like I have to apologize for not being dead.” Make it clear to your dad that whatever time he has left on this earth is precious to you, if it turns out to be a month or 20 years. I don’t know if you live in the same city as your dad, but my advice would be to never pass up an opportunity to visit him, because you never know if it’s going to be the last. It is incredibly painful to reflect after the death of a loved one “If only I had gone to visit him that one time.”
I’m sorry for your pain, and I wish you all the best.
Great Answer (2)
-
1 month ago
I guess it depends on what sense of infinity you’re trying to define. What is your motivation for trying to explain it to a lay person? All these definitions are good, although most are poetic. A mathematical definition of infinity (technically countable infinity, or aleph 0, the smallest infinite cardinal) would be a quantity that is bigger than every natural number.
There are also lots of weird things that you can do with infinity.
For example, there are the same number of even numbers as whole numbers, and even the same number of whole numbers as rational numbers. (A rational number is basically any fraction of whole numbers).
But there are infinitely more real numbers than rational numbers. If you take a number line and throw a dart at it, there is a 0% probability that you will hit a rational number; you will hit an irrational number every single time. This is suprising because the rational numbers are “dense,” which means that if you give me any real number, and any small number r, no matter how small, I can always find an infinite number of rational numbers that are less than r away from your starting number. Mathematicians describe the fact that there are infinitely more real numbers than rational numbers by saying that the real numbers have larger cardinality than the whole numbers. We call the number of real numbers “the cardinality of the continuum” and denote it aleph 1. There are also even bigger infinities, called aleph 2, aleph 3, etcetera. Even this sequence goes up to infinity.
Another fun problem is the infinite hotel. Say you have a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, which are numbered 1,2,3,4,5,etcetera. They are all full. However, the guests in these rooms are very accomadating of the management, and willing to move into a new room whenever asked. The manager has an intercom that talks to all the rooms and gives them instructions on how to move rooms.
So the hotel is full. You show up and want to check in. “No problem,” says the manager, you can stay in room 1. He then goes on the intercom, and tells every guest to move into the next highest numbered room. Room 1 is now empty, and you move in. This works because there is no absolute largest number.
This will even work if an infinitely large bus shows up with infinitely many people on it, and they all want to check in. The manager tells every guest to move into the room whose number is twice their current room number. Now all of the odd numbered rooms are empty, and there are infinitely many odd numbered rooms, so you can accommodate the whole bus.
Great Answer (1)
-
1 month ago
I am also having a problem with the water heater under my bedroom, which I share with @hannahsugs I’m quite confident it’s not water hammer, for two reasons:
First of all, I’ve experienced water hammer before, at other houses, and this doesn’t sound anything like it. It’s not nearly loud enough, or abrupt enough. It’s more of a gurgling noise.
Second, the noise seems to happen when the burner is on, not necessarily when there’s an open tap. Of course, when a tap has been open for a while, that usually makes the burner come on, but not right away. If I crank up the temperature setting on the heater to force the burner to turn on, without opening any taps, it makes the noise. To me, it sounds exactly like boiling water, so I’m inclined to go with @Harp‘s explanation.
So, assuming that the problem is sediment, not air, what should we do about it? Is flushing the water heater by opening the bottom drain with the cold water supply switched on enough? Or should we drain it?
Also, we’re renting, so is this something we should just ask our landlord to deal with?
Great Answer (0)
-
February 24th, 2009
Great Answer (1)
Browse all of squigish's answers…
hey! you got fluther without telling me! nice question, by the way...