The All Purpose Advice Thread - Part 2

Here's a potentially dumb question, also related to living spaces:

What are folks' thoughts about hifi equipment in an open-space kitchen/living area? I think it's nice to be able to rock out and cook dinner, but am also concerned about a fine layer of cooking oil settling on everything, even with proper ventilation/venting.

Same question/deal with records, too.

Maybe I'm thinking too fussily....

 

possibly legit concern depending on where you gear is in relation to the stove. You can probably tell where the oil accumulates by just looking around. I don’t keep anything regularly stationed near my stove. When I play tunes while cooking, I use my Sonos Move. May not be “hifi” but my hood/vent is quite noisy.

 

My level of hesitation will be directly proportional to how "hifi" my gear is.

Stuff worth a couple mortgage payments, speakers behind cloth grills, mostly not super hot solid state? Sure no problem.

Magnetic levitation belt drive turntable, speakers with urushi lacquer and exposed ribbons, hot hot tubes, worth more than my salary? Maybe not. Or at least spend some of that money to renovate the kitchen and drastically improve the ventilation...

 

Over time even cabinet tops 10 feet way from stove have lots of accumulated grease over the years (no outdoor venting). My desktop speakers at my main listening room desk 20 feet away and the main stereo at 35 feet way do not have any kitchen grease accumulation. It is all open, so my advice is it will depend on how close to the stove everything is.

 

@gsanger

I put new air system in a house about a dozen years ago. First you will be using the new really expensive coolant, the old stuff is long gone.

Second, whatever you do get at least 5 bids. Yes, Seems like a lot but the spread for me was over $5k from low to high. Even Costco was two bids higher than the low bid, and the winner did a great job.

 

Thanks everyone for adding your thoughts - definitely helpful with some things to consider!

Good question - it's more of the first one, the "wind rustling". I'm not sure how much room there is to to increase the size of the ducts, but it sounds like @Slade01's suggestion for a variable speed unit might help get the right match between our ducts and how much air we're pushing through.

Bookmarked - thanks!

Good to know! We actually have two A/C units - the second one is going on 30 years old, and only cools a garage conversion. It's s wildly overkill for the space, so it never works hard at all. We recently had to refill the refrigerant, and it was the old stuff. We're hoping it can keep hanging on for a long time, but wonder if finding refrigerant might be what makes us replace it next.

Funny enough, we talk about this from time to time! We built and lived in a tiny house for a few years, and used a mini-split there, and liked it. We occasionally wonder "what if we just put in a few mini-splits" like you did. I think we could get away with three, my wife thinks four, so, at some point, it might being cost effective, but, definitely helps solve some of the noise problems. Thanks!

Also - I personally hate ceiling fans, and my wife loves them. I told her that the "super best audio friends" are on her side on this one.

Good call. We have a go-to company, but we'll get some quotes for sure - especially since we already had that company out to look at something else, and we asked their opinion on the noise (this was before the whole thing up and died), and they said "yeah, that's just how it is.". Had no clue Costco offered this kind of service, so we'll check that out, too.

 

I will make a quick note that you do not want to oversize your AC for the space. Yes it might cool down the space quicker, but then it will not dehumidify properly and actually leave you cool and damp which can be damaging to the building. Oversized equipment also tends to cycle on/off more rapidly and wear itself out faster.

 

We've had a lot of trouble with our mini-splits. PA is a high humidity state and multiple units drip a stream of the condensed water, several times a year.

One of the units just stops cooling after a while (the one in the master, annoyingiy).

The HVAC guys have been out several dozen times to try and figure it out with no success.

Is there some rule of thumb for how long an AC needs to run to avoid this problem?

Also, how bad is it that I can hear the air-handler whine? Makes TV watching, music listening and working a bit painful because having a noise like that going for a while gets under the skin.

 

I would say you want the AC to run at minimum 15-20 minutes, preferably longer. The idea is that you want all the air in the house to run through the device, so that it extracts the moisture. This has to be done kinda slowly so all the air gets it's "turn" to go through. If your device is too strong and pumps out super cold air, that super cool air mixes with the warm air and lowers the overall temperature too quickly and shuts off the machine before it can extract the moisture. This is the whole "conditioning" part of an AC, otherwise we'd call it air cooling. This basically raises the relative humidity in your home which you typically do not want.

Wait wait... your head units drip water? Those mini splits are supposed to be plumbed to a drain. If they aren't draining, either the drain wasn't hooked up or it is plugged.

If you can hear the air handler/fan, it could be:
- the fan/furnace/air handler needs to be serviced (could be the belts, dirty fan, bearings, etc)
- motor working too hard (dirty filter, something else plugging the ducts, dirty blades)

If you can hear the air whistling:
- air speed is too high or your ducts are too small

 

The drain for ours in our tiny house would back up easily, and need to be cleaned. If we didn't do that regularly, the head unit would end up with a big chunk of ice in it that would slowly drip.

 

Yeah :-( They are. I believe those "pipes" get plugged "all" the time.

I hear a whine, not a whistling. Probably bearings, iirc how bad bearings sound...

 

Later this year we'll be replacing the windows in the condo.

Any wise words for us as we start this expensive journey?

Most expensively, we have some river views to serve and protect

 

Just replaced all the windows in our house this past summer... 26 of them, and 2 were huge. I'd recommend getting a quote from Renewal by Anderson first. After their quote, everyone else will seem like a stone cold bargain.

Serious words:

• avoid vinyl windows - they don't hold up, move too much with temperature changes, and big windows are a problem (especially if you're in a high wind area)
• Aluminum clad can be problematic - they are typically made tight to the wood with no where for water/condensation to go if it gets behind the aluminum. Will eventually (or quicker) rot out the wood... especially can be a problem with casements if you leave them cranked out when it rains
• Fiberglass clad typically have a channel behind the extrusion that doesn't allow water to get at the wood. Also the most thermally stable.
• The installer matters more than the window (even for vinyl windows).

 

What's your climate?
Up here in winterland, triple-paned windows are practically standard for homes.
If you have large south/west facing windows, I highly suggest getting an e-coating window that reduces solar gain. This will significantly reduce how hot the room feels and lower your air conditioning bills.

 

If you’re in colder climate and your house isn’t well insulated, be careful with too well insulated windows. Normally, the windows are the coldest objects on the walls, so this is where humidity condenses. If the walls are colder than the windows, they’ll become humid during winter, which leads to mold. (Not sure if this is true for wooden houses, but it is for the stone houses usually built in Europe.)

 

ty!

This would be Maryland, USA, slightly north of Baltimore.
No southwest, just slightly north east overlooking the Susquehanna/Chesapeake junction.

Triple pane seems overkill other than the west-facing / HVAC-hearing bedroom.

 

If it doesn't get too cold, then double pane is fine but I'd still get the e-coatings.

I applied an aftermarket window film to a sunroom a couple years ago. Three walls mostly glass, I only applied the film on the south and west walls. On sunny days the room dropped from 95F to 77F.

 

Quality linear PSU I can get in 16 volts ?

 

I've been rearching LPSs lately. The range from cheap and uknown quality (myriad of Chinese LPSs on eBay and AliExpress), all the way up to huge, insanely expensive audiophile units.At least for the me, the candidates worth pursuing are somewhere in the middle.

Two questions:

• What application would you use the LPS for? Specifically, is the load device a critical, expensive one, or something cheaper and less critical?
• And what is your budget?

 

@Pharmaboy , this will be for testing an audio streamer. Wanted to get 'best case scenario' sound from it.

Budget is maybe 1K, less if possible.