Solar charged battery system providing electricity for audio system

[Nsxturbo]

Jeff Rowland’s designs in the late ‘80’s and early nineties had optional DC supplies. I new those models well because I was at the CES with Audio Artistry when their Beethoven was Stereophile’s speaker of the year, and the we’re sharing there room with Jeff and using His Model 6’s with the battery supplies😉 Today like Levinson and many others he uses switch mode power supply’s. Maybe the renewable energy trend will get some of these designers, like Rowland going back to DC supplys.

I still love those scalloped thick aluminum face plates on the Rowland’s, beautiful equipment cosmetically.

[Ralf11]

these??:

 

Jeff Rowland Design 625 S2 Stereo Power Amplifier

$15,900.00

 

 

[AudioDoctor]

11 hours ago, Jud said:

 

The wood burning fireplace is (a) a romantic idea, and (b) something I personally love to see.  But it also (a) requires cleaning vs. a gas fireplace (Jotul makes very nice gas fireplaces - they have furnace-rated blower systems that can keep a floor of your home from freezing if the rest of the heating system goes on the fritz), and (b) is energy-inefficient enough that I think I remember you can have trouble getting something like a LEED certification if you have one.

 

We have propane for in-floor radiant heat and hot water (one small - probably 2' x 2' x 10" or less  - tankless boiler supplies both), electricity for the rest. Use less than 400 gallons of propane a year (maybe $30/month averaged out), but then our winters are nothing like MN.  Got down to about 12F for the low one day this winter (we're at 5700 feet), and that's as cold as it's been in 2 years.

 

While yes a wood burning fireplace is romantic...  I think it is also an important safety backup in a Minnesota winter. Having an empty tank of propane and 4 feet of snow on the roads preventing a fill up is a real concern.

[barrows]

13 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

While yes a wood burning fireplace is romantic...  I think it is also an important safety backup in a Minnesota winter. Having an empty tank of propane and 4 feet of snow on the roads preventing a fill up is a real concern.

Indeed, same here at 9,300' in Colorado!  As well, sometimes there are power outages, and my boiler is electronic ignition, so it will not run if the electricity is out.  So a wood burning stove is an essential backup heat source.

[Jud]

3 hours ago, barrows said:

Indeed, same here at 9,300' in Colorado!  As well, sometimes there are power outages, and my boiler is electronic ignition, so it will not run if the electricity is out.  So a wood burning stove is an essential backup heat source.

 

Wood burning stoves can be made to be pretty efficient (and my wife back in the day loved to cook on one), but I think most wood burning fireplaces are another matter.

[Jud]

3 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

Having an empty tank of propane and 4 feet of snow on the roads preventing a fill up is a real concern.

 

Because we only use about 60% of our 500-gallon buried tank's capacity per year due to the relatively mild winters and a well insulated home, we have the luxury of only filling once annually but never letting the tank go below 30%. (Fills don't go past 90% to leave room for expansion.)

[Ralf11]

3 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

While yes a wood burning fireplace is romantic...  I think it is also an important safety backup in a Minnesota winter. Having an empty tank of propane and 4 feet of snow on the roads preventing a fill up is a real concern.

 

which one is Sven, and which Ollie?

[AudioDoctor]

47 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

which one is Sven, and which Ollie?

I’m Sven wife is Ollie. 
 

😂

[AudioDoctor]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

 

Because we only use about 60% of our 500-gallon buried tank's capacity per year due to the relatively mild winters and a well insulated home, we have the luxury of only filling once annually but never letting the tank go below 30%. (Fills don't go past 90% to leave room for expansion.)

Lucky. 
 

Pellet stoves and things like that are more efficient than just a fireplace would be. For example. 

[AudioDoctor]

4 hours ago, barrows said:

Indeed, same here at 9,300' in Colorado!  As well, sometimes there are power outages, and my boiler is electronic ignition, so it will not run if the electricity is out.  So a wood burning stove is an essential backup heat source.

I have actually seen emergency vehicles unable to go anywhere due to snow fall and freezing to death isn’t my preferred way to go...

[Ralf11]

2 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

I’m Sven wife is Ollie. 
 

😂

 

I meant wood vs. propane...

 

BTW, a neighborhood neurologist and her husband built a 'green' house (super-insulated, etc.) and bought a Swedish stove that burns twigs - it heats their entire house.  It has insulated walls about a foot thick.

[AudioDoctor]

2 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

I meant wood vs. propane...

haha, well I showed you...

[Jud]

1 hour ago, AudioDoctor said:

I have actually seen emergency vehicles unable to go anywhere due to snow fall and freezing to death isn’t my preferred way to go...

 

Having a couple of backups is great, in some climates essential.

 

In terms of the primary system, I like the in-floor radiant because each area has its own zone (total of 6), with each zone controlled by a Nest thermostat. All I had to do was adjust the temperature a couple of times, and they've got a nice little algorithm on their chips that keeps everything within about a degree F of what we like. (Can also set to allow lower temps when you're away, but with in-floor radiant the associated thermal mass means changes take hours, so for us that setting isn't worthwhile unless we're on vacation.)

 

Don't have to think about or fuss with anything, which is the way I like it.

[RickyV]

@thotdoc I thought this was a thread about Solar charged battery system providing electricity for audio system. 

It seem it’s gone OT to “the green American” thread. 😳

[Jud]

3 hours ago, RickyV said:

@thotdoc I thought this was a thread about Solar charged battery system providing electricity for audio system. 

It seem it’s gone OT to “the green American” thread. 😳

 

I like to listen to music in my "green" home. 😲

[firedog]

On 8/13/2019 at 9:38 PM, Jud said:

If you’re in the US (and very likely other developed countries), by law your grid power cannot be “atrocious.” It actually has to conform to extremely tight specifications, tighter than all but a very few inverters, and at least equal to the best available inverters (as of mid to later 2017, anyway). This isn’t some general average specification, it’s a minimum requirement.

 

So I’d look elsewhere. Perhaps due to no need for transformers or ac/dc conversion internally. Or perhaps the power actually measures worse but sounds better to you. Impossible to know, and in any case I’m certainly no expert.

Your grid power may be good at it's source, or an area transformer, but it can be polluted by a nearby source before it gets to your home. I found this out when I had excess DC on my line causing my amp to hum and determined it wasn't coming from inside my building (I'm in a semi-detached).  Never did determine the outside source, but it had to be relatively close to have an effect, and put a DC reducer on my line.

[RickyV]

16 hours ago, Jud said:

 

I like to listen to music in my "green" home. 😲

 

Absolutely nothing wrong with that. If I had enough money I would build my house off grid as much as possible too. Nice design, big audio room. 

[Ralf11]

off the grid also means far from fire trucks and ambulances - we see old people doing it all the time here, and later regretted

 

Firedog - are you interested in re-posting that interesting event in the Noise Source thread?

[Jud]

4 hours ago, firedog said:

Your grid power may be good at it's source, or an area transformer, but it can be polluted by a nearby source before it gets to your home. I found this out when I had excess DC on my line causing my amp to hum and determined it wasn't coming from inside my building (I'm in a semi-detached).  Never did determine the outside source, but it had to be relatively close to have an effect, and put a DC reducer on my line.

 

Remember, electricity is a circuit. To meet requirements, it has to be able to flow through everything in the circuit and not have its specs suffer much.

[firedog]

2 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

off the grid also means far from fire trucks and ambulances - we see old people doing it all the time here, and later regretted

 

Firedog - are you interested in re-posting that interesting event in the Noise Source thread?

I’m not participating in that thread, but feel free to quote whatever you want.

[fas42]

An interesting diversion for me, right now, is looking at a decent sine wave inverter - we're getting too many outages in the area, and with the weather patterns getting more extreme, ...

 

A reputable dealer had a high powered unit on a "what's left in the warehouse!" sale, and so grabbed one ... bad news is that it died, completely, on a trivial load for its size - making all sorts of spluttering noises, now - so, today, back to the shop, .

 

The point is that it was supposedly "pure sine wave" - and one of obvious uses of this was to trial music systems running off  'poor' power - but haven't even got to first base yet ...  .

[AudioDoctor]

On 8/15/2019 at 3:35 PM, Jud said:

 

Having a couple of backups is great, in some climates essential.

 

In terms of the primary system, I like the in-floor radiant because each area has its own zone (total of 6), with each zone controlled by a Nest thermostat. All I had to do was adjust the temperature a couple of times, and they've got a nice little algorithm on their chips that keeps everything within about a degree F of what we like. (Can also set to allow lower temps when you're away, but with in-floor radiant the associated thermal mass means changes take hours, so for us that setting isn't worthwhile unless we're on vacation.)

 

Don't have to think about or fuss with anything, which is the way I like it.

 

My parents have radiant floor heat in their house now as well, I like it a lot. They have a separate water heater than provides hot water for the system embedded in the cement.