Rick's b.log - 2023/07/01
It is the 21st of November 2024 You are 3.145.8.2, pleased to meet you!

No bodies

Let's break this down. Water is heavy. We, standing on the earth, have the weight of the entire atmosphere pressing down on us. This is called, not surprisingly, "one atmosphere". In terms of pounds per square inch, it's about 15.
We are used to this, we are built for this. It's why we get light-headed (or die) at the peaks of mountains. This is our normal.

Something like a ten metre column of water exerts the same pressure as the entire atmosphere. Which means that the Titanic, which is a little under four kilometres down, has a psi value of around 6,000. Which is four hundred times what we are used to, also known as 400 atmospheres.

The Titan submarine wasn't at full depth when it imploded, so the pressure would have been a little less. But do note well that "a little less" is like a 20 megaton nuclear explosion rather than a 30 megaton one.

Now, there are many stories and rumours floating around. Was this an instantaneous failure, or did they know they were going to die? This depends on whether or not things were being jettisoned to reduce the weight of the craft. They may have heard the hull cracking.

As for the actual implosion, in a word, no. When the point of no return was reached, given that it was a carbon fibre hull, there would not have been any bending or flexing. Carbon fibre is a good strong material that is notorious for one primary weakness - if it is too stressed it shatters. So a part of the hull is likely to have fractured, leading to water ingress. By water ingress, I mean the water, under about five and a half thousand PSI would have filled the crew compartment in, let's say, about a millisecond. This would have rapidly compressed the air inside causing it to superheat. You know how the bit on bicycle pumps where the rubber tube screws in heats up as the compressed air passes? Well, consider the effect of compressing whatever air is inside the submarine in one thousandth of a second. Various sources suggest it would have momentarily heated to be about as hot as the sun. Whether or not that is accurate is irrelevant, mind you.
Because that rapid ingress of water would not only be super-compressing the air, it would have been doing the same to the occupants. Essentially they would have been turned into flash-cooked purée, including crushing bones. As an extra side effect, the rapidly collapsing carbon fibre hull may have shattered at the point of failure leading to a mass collision of pieces of wreckage flying around in the midst of the chaos.
They might have known they were going to die, but they would not have known it happened. Because it takes time for the pain signals to travel up a body and make it to a brain. It's fast, about a centisecond between stimulus and the brain responding. A centisecond is 10 milliseconds. Which is nine times longer than the implosion took.
Now, you might (correctly) say that the human brain is adapted for vision, so maybe they saw it even if they didn't have time to feel it. Well, not really. It's true that most sensory input is visual and it's also true that the brain is exceedingly good at dealing with visual stimulus. It takes, on average, around 13 milliseconds for the brain to get an image of something seen, but even then it's twelve times longer than the implosion (and slightly slower than the pain response).
When people say "catastrophic implosion", they are using the word "catastrophic" in the sense of "unrecoverable failure", but given what actually happened, the "kaboom!" sense is also valid.
Plus, technically, your brain doesn't respond immediately to visual input. What you actually see when you are seeing is a composite of bits of scenery captured by the eye over a period of time. This is why walking gives a gentle bobbing action (strap a GoPro to your head, you'll notice the actual movement is a lot shakier). Some parts of what you're "seeing" could be several seconds old, as you'll be concentrating on specific things of interest and periodically filling in the rest.
If you've ever been in a potentially life threatening situation, like a car crash (or a car that was at risk of crashing into you), you may have noticed that time went gonzo and your vision started to flicker oddly. This wasn't you losing your marbles, this was your brain trying to override the normal visual processing to try to dump as much visual information as possible directly into the brain for analysis to try to speed up reactions. Time didn't slow down, what you are experiencing is a combination of the brain jettisonning all unnecessary tasks and working as fast as possible, coupled with the jerkiness of sight because the normal background "filling in of less important information" was abandoned, and you'd be literally seeing how long it takes the eye to get visual information into the brain and processed. It takes around 120-150ms in order to fully process, and that with the brain running faster than normal will produce some weird effects.

Anyway, the occupants would not only not have felt the implosion, they would not have been able to have sensed it at all. The implosion would have pretty much instantly converted their bodies into purée, along with the violence of the event.
The end result? Pretty much akin to diarrhoea in the ocean, it will have mostly dispersed when things settled down afterwards.
When the media reports upon "human remains" being found, we're talking maybe some strands of muscle identifiable as organic in nature. In other words, it'll require DNA analysis to tell who it was.

The pieces of wreckage that have been recovered so far, as I have seen, have been the forward dome (without the porthole glass), the rear equipment section, one or both of the hoops that join the sections, and various bits of outer shell (the white stuff with the company logo on it). What you see in pictures is not the pressure area. That's inside. The outer shell is a non-pressurised wrapper that is intended to protect the inner (pressurised) shell from minor damage.

This event is not, in any way, like the explosion of the Shuttle Challenger that led to debris being scattered across America. There is a very good reason why we've had more success exploring other planets than the bottoms of our own oceans.

What I don't understand, other than the hubris and bravado element, is the attraction of going and visiting the wreck of the Titanic. Okay, maybe it made sense for James Cameron to visit given the dude is a perfectionist and made a film about it, but as a tourist attraction? It's a bit morbid, plus I can't really see you'd get much of a different view peering out of a tiny porthole than if you send down a remote sub with a decent camera and, you know, watched it on a screen in a remarkably less dangerous environment.

What I do understand is don't piss off the Old Gods. As you may know, the Titans were the gods in Greek mythology (Gaia, Hyperion, Pheobe, etc) before they were overthrown by the Olympians (Zeus, Poseidon, Hestia, etc).
The fact that the wreckage of the Titan lies next to the wreckage of the Titanic is......oddly poetic.

Loi Eckert

There is a flip side, by the way. Banks were under no particular obligation to notify people of their accounts, so some may have been forgotten and others may have been missed during inheritances. Plus, banks and insurance companies (who are also implicated) may have carried on charging fees while holding onto the assets. Now banks are supposed to identify inactive accounts annually and make efforts to notify people of them.

To date, the Caisse has received nearly 3.7 billion euros. The average refund claim is €570, so there were literally millions of accounts with smallish sums of money floating around forgotten.

I, apparently, had such an account. Having received a letter from the bank telling me of such an account. It was listed as "COMPTE BLOQUE" in my name, with an account code I didn't recognise, and a credit of €0,98.

I immediately got in touch with my advisor who replied that it appears to be an account that was created around the year 2000 (strange, I came here in 2002!), and he has taken the necessary steps to transfer the ninety eight centimes to me and close the account.

I can't help but think that the letter and his time likely cost rather more than the less-than-a-euro that this was all about.
I still have no recollection whatsoever of another bank account.

I know I opened an account at the Crédit Mutuel de Bretagne when I came here. Mom had to co-sign as I had no credit history, and it wasn't until she died that they stopped sending mail to me care of her (like, guys, I'm an adult now! jeez...).
I got annoyed back around 2006 or so when I was unable to make a deposit into my account at a nearby town in a Crédit Mutuel. Because that was a Crédit Mutuel d'Anjou, not a Crédit Mutuel de Bretagne, despite the same logo, the same branding, the same parent... but the banks are highly regional and run as a sort of co-operative.
In response to that, I got myself a La Banque Postale account (Post Office bank), not because I had no money (the post office tends to provide banking services to those other banks don't want) but because La Poste is La Poste regardless of where I happen to be. Living on the corner of the region... I've been out shopping in my little car at a town called Craon, and Big Town Châteaubriant. Both are in different counties, neither of which is mine. Both are in a different region to mine.
So having an account at a place that didn't fall into this regionalistic crap was a good idea.

I keep the CMB account for two reasons. The first is they manage the various insurances. The second is they provide a service called "Virtualis" which is a fake debit card. I start up the app and say I want a one-time card for a maximum of €n and it will give me a card number, expiry date, and CVV. I can then use that in place of my regular card (which cannot be used for online purchases) so I can buy stuff online without worrying about my card details getting ripped off. The first time it is used, it is associated with that vendor so can't be used by another, and it is limited to the amount specified by me. Depending on the site's reputation and the purchase value, I might have to also complete some sort of additional verification such as enter a code sent by SMS.

A virtual credit card.

I love the fact that it even has the little arrow indicating which way to insert it, despite the fact that it's not real!

It is useful for eBay and the like. PayPal's site gets a bit shirty as it's a different bank card for every visit, but they haven't blocked my account as there's no money in it and I'm hardly dealing with stolen cards given the extremely low rate of use. It's a pretty useful thing to have for online shopping when you don't want to be handing out your bank card details to everybody. Indeed, I think it's only Amazon and FDJ that I use my real (La Poste) card with. I don't use my real CMB card online, it is blocked.

A night cake

I have savings. I have a job. There's nothing in particular to worry about. I don't even have an existential crisis as I long since came to terms with the fact that life is a joke and we're the butt of it. So I don't know what it's about, but it's been something that has affected me all my life. If I could, I'd sleep best between 7am and 11am - so it's as if my circardian rhythm is running to the timezone of my mother's childhood...

So, Monday. I went to bed at around quarter past eleven, to get up at quarter past six.
My switch flipped at half two. No further sleep was going to happen.

So...

Whisk this.

Measure this.

Bake this.

And then I went to work, which was really weird as it seemed like I was a fraction of a second offset from reality. Enough to notice. The joys of sleep deprivation.

Came home, found a big knife, stabbed myself repeatedly cut a big ol' chunk of cake. Instant gratification sugar rush. ☺

Ahhh, now that's better.

There are few situations that can't be improved with tea and cake.

Summer sales

I stopped by the supermarket. I was going to anyway, but also took a look at the sales. Well... two sections of assorted junk marked down.

The first bit of junk I got was an anglepoise lamp. The 25W (well, LED so more like 2W) warm white bulb cost more than the lamp. It's about as bright as a fridge light. That's perfectly bright enough for those late night debugging sessions.

Enough light to see the keyboard without being too bright.

Other stuff? Here it is.

Other random stuff.

At the bottom, a metal plaque with crabs and a little serving tray of the same design. This is probably a bit of Mom leaking out. Growing up near Baltimore gave here a bit of a thing about crabs. There's a ceramic one on the mantlepiece, a rubber one by the bath, and a plastic one suspended on a big spring by the front window.
Upper left, a metal bowl with holes and a metal bowl that that sits in. A sort of strainer. €2.
The metal capsule in the middle is a tea infuser. €0.50. To the right is a different type of tea infuser, also €0,50. At the top is a big mesh ball for putting herbs into stews (to stop picking out bits of rosemary from the food!). It was bashed to hell and back, but pretty simple to open up and bend back into shape. And finally a gizmo to help open uncooperative bottles and jars. This was expensive - €1,50.

I didn't bother going to Big Town today. I could have gone in the morning, the washing machine is supposed to be coming some time this afternoon, but for recent years I've not really found stuff of great interest in the sales. I think the internet has ruined sales and vide greniers. One would buy something at a good mark down and list it on eBay/BonCoin...so now everything is more expensive and the cheap things are the stuff that would be probably otherwise have been tossed as non-conformant or end of line.

My splurge purchase? Went to Lidl and got a screwdriver set, which is now fixed to the side of the bookshelf in the living room. When one has a habit of voiding warranties, one can't have enough screwdrivers handy...

Easy access screwdrivers.

My new washing machine

He seemed quite impressed with how remote I was. His logic was that I had no neighbours so could crank up the music. Well, I'm listening to Beyond The Black right now on Antenne Symphonic Rock, but it's barely loud enough to be heard outside, never mind by any neighbours. I would like my music loud enough to hear, but loud enough to feel is too damn loud.

Me? I was impressed that his solution for getting the washing machine out the back of the van (it had been securely strapped in) was to wrap his arms around it and pick it up. The service manual for the similar TDLR 60230 gives its weight as 58kg.

He carted it inside and unwrapped it for me. Then he removed the bracket around the back that holds the drum in position during transportation. After that, the water pipe was hooked up and the plug plugged in. He didn't seem bothered by the extension lead. I said the plug down there was huge, and he surmised that I had tapped off a three phase. Well, actually no, but clearly he's seen old houses like this before... it's one of the few places where I don't have three phase sockets.

Aside - annoyingly the one under the table in the living room is three phases and earth, so I can't tap off of it.

It's a Whirlpool TDLR6030. Here's the control panel.

Washing machine control panel.

The big knob in the middle, turn to the 'O' (off) position, then turn to the selected programme.
On the left, "Prélavage" (prewash) can add some extra washing.
"Départ différé" (delayed start) can select a start time in the future. If you look at the row of LEDs across the top, you'll see it says 1h, 3h, 6h, 9h, and 12h. Pressing the delay button will step to the next increment so you can pick when to start, if not "now".

On the right, "Rapide" (really?) will make some trade-offs to speed up the wash programme.
"Rinçage plus" (extra rinsing) will add two extra rinse cycles for sensitive people, babies, etc.
"Energy saver" (why is this one in English? couldn't fit "Economisation d'energies" on the panel? ☺) will modify the chosen programme, generally to wash at a lower temperature for longer. Because it's the water heating that consumes the most energy. Clearly this and the rapid option are mutually exclusive.
"Essorage" (spin) lets you pick a spin speed. None, 400rpm, 600rpm, 800rpm, and 1000rpm.

Centre-right, the "X" button is to abandon. It will immediately cancel the selected programme, spit out the water in the machine, and after an eternity it'll unlock the lid to allow access.
The Play/Pause button can be used to start and modify the programme. Pressing it will begin the washing. If you then press it again, the programme will be suspended and you can choose a different option (like altering the spin speed), and press it once more to resume.

LEDs across the top provide status. On the left: "Arrivée d'eau" (water inlet) lights up if the machine detects there's no water entering, while "Nettoyage filtre" (clean the filter) lights up if the machine detects the water in it isn't leaving when it should.
On the right: "Ouverture porte" (Door unlocked) lights up when the door can be opened. When the machine is powered and this is not lit, the door is locked.
"Service" (I'm just going to guess this is red) lights up if the machine detects something is seriously wrong, such as telling the drum to turn but getting nothing back from the tacho to say that it is.
Finally, the band across the top shows the current part of the selected programme - Prélavage (prewash), Lavage (wash), Rinçage (rinse), A.C.P., and Essorage/Vidange (Spin/Empty).

ACP means "Arrêt Cuve Plein", it is a mode where the machine will pause in between the last rinse cycle and the spinning, so you can take out the more delicate things. In theory you'd then restart the programme and it would go into the spin cycle.
However, I have played with the controls a bit and I don't see any way to get ACP to become active. I wonder if it's for a specific programme, or if it's just not supported on this model?

It looks, annoyingly, like there isn't an option to open the door once the programme has started, if something was forgotten. The Play/Pause, as far as I can tell, doesn't unlock. For that you need to cancel, which has the side effect of throwing away the water and restarting will misweigh the clothing in the drum as it'll all be wet.

The first thing I did was run the machine on a 95°C cycle with the drum empty - the instructions said I should.
Following that, I washed my work clothes on the "Magic 40" programme.

What follows are my observations, written into Google Keep (a notes app) as I was watching the machine do it's thing.

Wash cycle started at 16:35, 95°C, empty.
Heated by around 17:05.
Many relay clicking noises, this must be switching which way the motor rotates. 8 seconds on, 4 off.

Spat out water at 17:11.
Seems to be draining for about 30 seconds, then turning gently (without draining). 8 seconds on, 4 off.

At 17:22 advanced to rinse cycle, is taking in water. It took the old machine 8-9 minutes to take in 25l (not a powerful flow!). This machine took 2 minutes (17:24) which suggests it thinks about 5(ish) litres is enough?
17h30, drain. Not a lot of water came out!

It'll now do the intermittent drain thing for about ten minutes.

17:42, already an hour, doing the second rinse cycle. Weirdly, the inlet valve buzzing is louder than the drive motor! Ah, it's a different one isn't it? It'll be the fabric conditioner inlet this time.
I'm just glad it doesn't get upset over the low water pressure.
17h50 water ejection. Then we go to spin mode at 17h51, which begins with the tumble and intermittent water removal. This machine seems pretty gentle, but it's certainly not fast! The motor is doing 4s on, 4s off.
That's a lot of relay clicking!
I don't hear any clicking for when the motors kick in, are they using triacs? I suppose careful switching could allow for speed variations. So the relays will simply be choosing which winding is connected to the mains and which via the capacitor, to permit direction changes.

It's worth noting that the drain cycles don't appear to do any fast spin to throw off excess water. Perhaps the machine doesn't if the thing is empty? In which case why is this final drain taking forever? Or maybe it should be spinning now but in the absence of anything inside it isn't going to bother?

This final drain cycle lasted a lot longer. Stopped at 12h29?

Yup. No spin and it is done.

Measured at the Linky: 112VA everything else in the house. Going up to 280VA with the motor spinning slowly. 430VA motor starting up.

Now I've put in some clothes on the Magic 40 cycle, with a wash tab. The clothing weighs ~1.3kg dry, should should pass as a small load.

My first load in the new washing machine.
(and lots of Epic Cool Sexopis!)

Started at 18:25. It turned a few times before starting, possibly determining the load size? Now it is filling and turning constantly, and being quite noisy about it. It sounds like I'm washing rocks, but I think that's the buttons on things hitting the drum. It'll be aiming to tumble things effectively inside. Certainly the motor sounds different, so I think this is going faster than the previous wash did. I suspect the reason I find this to be noisy is because my previous machine took in a lot of water and that would have acted as a cushion for stuff sloshing around inside.

Heater cut out at 18:47 (15-20m? I didn't note when it turned on). I've just noticed, there's no relay clicking, so this programme turns the drum in the same direction (12s on, 8s off).
The motor seems to be drawing around 500VA now it's under load and running faster. Unfortunately the Linky's display updates are a bit haphazard and only happen roughly once a second, so things that vary can be hard to keep track of.

19h01, it spat dark water out (that was only about 27°C). Jeez, I didn't think my stuff was that dirty! I guess it's a different level of cleaning than my old machine.

Now it's the intermittent drain routine, at 19:03. Good grief, 19:06 the spin motor kicked in for 30s. Sounds like a flipping power drill. How fast was that going?

19:07, over to first rinse. Once the water fill has stopped, I'm going to pop off to wash my hair, I've been standing here writing these observations since half four. I should have thought to bring a chair!
Which is 19:14, so it is taking in more water for the rinse...

(19:19 spat out the water, so it's only rinsing for three minutes?)

Okay, I'm back. It's 19:32 and the machine is emptying from the second rinse. Then straight over to the spin part for intermittent spins.

It's probably used around 30-35 litres for the entire programme, which is just slightly more than my old machine used just for the washing part.

Okay, damn, at 19:37, this must be the 1000rpm spin.

Umm, nope, WTF? 19:38 it's kicked up a gear.

What's surprising isn't the fact that this thing is spinning the crap out of my clothes (and somehow only drawing about 200VA to do so), no what is surprising is that there is very little vibration. Sure, there is some, but it's not like it's bouncing around the place or shaking itself apart.

19:40, it has stopped spinning, now we're back to the occasional tumble (without drainage). Why?

19:42, it's done. So about an hour and a quarter? For a "slow" machine, that actually did it, I think, faster than my old machine.

Okay, I see the point of those tumbles after the spin. The clothes are sitting in a heap in the drum, and not plastered to the sides.

Most of my clothes are "damp", but my fleece jacket thing? Damn near dry enough I could put it on. I don't feel any residue from the wash pod, I'll need to see how it feels wearing the shirt on Monday.

Oh, and the money and bolts that I accidentally left in my pocket? Didn't exist. That racket was just the shirt buttons hitting the drum. There was nothing in the drum except two shirts, a pullover, two socks, and a jacket. All, of course, in my preferred colour. ☺

And my underwear? Yeah, well, that would be the thing I wanted to add after the programme had started... 🤦‍♀️

Your comments:

David Pilling, 2nd July 2023, 13:06

Gordon Brown invented a similar system for taking money from dormant bank accounts in the UK - money goes to charities.  Someone came op with the bright idea of putting water tanks in washers, making them lighter to transport. Normally they have blocks of concrete. So you'd locate the machine and then fill the tanks with water.  In my experience a new machine runs wonderfully, and then as the years roll by the bearings wear and it starts to vibrate. They need the mass to damp vibrations.  Did anyone ever make a machine where the punter can write their own program. I've never felt inspired. The machine has spent its life on a single setting - maybe the occasional excursion when it has been used as a spin dryer.

Rick, 2nd July 2023, 14:20

I think part of the slowness of my machine is in ensuring the load is balanced well so it can go nuts (1000rpm is a mite over 16 turns per second 😱) without failure.  It would appear, from the instructions, that spinning will be abandoned if it is too out of balance. That's possibly what did in my old machine, it might only have spun at 500rpm, but it would have done so to the point of destruction.    It's possibly the same sensor that is used to weigh the load?    I don't think a completely programmable washing machine would ever pass type approval. That big bang you heard? That's what happens when you tell the motor to turn both ways at the same time. 😉    That being said, I think programmable gizmos are pretty much a niche product. People don't want the hassle.  Look at my pressure cooker. It has loads of buttons on the front for all sorts of foods. Strictly speaking they aren't at all necessary - they just predefine a heat level (none, low, high) and a time. But prodding buttons to set that sort of thing up is "complicated", so instead there's a friendly "Rice" button on the front, alongside an equally friendly "Vegetables" button.    Yeah, I rather suspect my machine will spend most of its life on the "Magic 40" option, especially as it looks as if it gets the water hot enough in about 7-8 minutes, and does smallish (normal) loads in about an hour and a quarter.    I note that the Rapid and Energy saving buttons don't work in that mode, so I think it puts extra effort info doing that automatically.    One day I'll try the Eco 40 programme with energy saving, but I bet a similar sized (small to medium) load would take more like three hours. If I come home on Friday after shopping and want to wash my clothing to hang out over the weekend, the less time it takes the better.    I also note that I can no longer fill the drum with water in a bucket to save energy by using water already heated. The machine is basically a control freak and won't tolerate any human interference. Thankfully it doesn't take in much for the washing, so doesn't need to heat for as long. I mean, imagine how long it would have taken to heat up 25 litres!    There's also a thermistor, so the machine knows what the temperature actually is, rather than "heat for this many amounts of three minutes and hope for the best".    I used the machine to spin a T-shirt that I hand washed. Bright yellow, prone to bleeding, didn't want it to upset the sextopi, so I did it by hand and asked the machine to spin it for me.  It did a very good job. It just took about a quarter of an hour to do so. So gone are the days of "give this a quick spin" where quick is defined as a three minute segment on the dial and a minute for the door latch to release.

David Pilling, 2nd July 2023, 16:26

Specmanship - the washer here has a 1600 rpm spin speed. Such high speeds are not as popular as once. There are spin only programs but stuck with times.  The "Halting problem" foreseen by Turing, can you stop a washing machine, can you open it if you do...     When I was a lad, early adopter neighbours had a hoover washer which took a square plastic card - perhaps inspired by computer cards. Anyway you could insert it four ways around to get four different programs. Presumably someone with a file could have shaped the bits that protruded to make the machine do their own program.  This latest machine only has a cold water input, the previous one had hot and cold. Maybe energy saving, because it cannot be fed with water that is too hot.

Clive Semmens, 2nd July 2023, 17:24

We bought a new washing machine a year ago - a Hoover - because we moved from one house to another just down the road, leaving the old house, complete with washing machine, for our son; the new house had a washing machine but it was DEAD.  The new machine does vibrate a bit - when it's spinning at 1600 RPM, which Grace likes it to do. Its 90minute wash usually takes a little over two hours - because it spends about half an hour doing little jerky spins to try to get everything balanced before doing the bonkers spin. So far it's always managed eventually - even with a winter sleeping bag. Not sure what it would do if you put something in that it couldn't manage at all.    Your description of the implosion of Titan is exactly what I thunk on the subject. Another friend spotted, in the pre-dive video where the boss was showing off how it was controlled with a games console, how there was a monitor's mount screwed into the wall. Did the sub have an inner lining robust enough to screw a monitor mount into?? Or had someone put screws into the pressure hull???

Clive Semmens, 2nd July 2023, 20:21

Oh, and a centisecond isn't 100 milliseconds... 8~) (not that it makes any difference to the argument...)

Rick, 2nd July 2023, 22:15

David/Clive - 1600 is nuts. Sadly, like with processor speeds, people want bigger and bigger numbers. This puts mechanical stress on the parts, the bearings, and so on. And for what?  The amount of water extracted from a spin increases as the spin speed increases, but only up to a point. My 1000 rpm spin got my clothes a lot dryer than my old machine that only spun at 500 rpm. That's because the sweet spot is around 850 rpm. After that, the gains tail off, and above about 1200 rpm, the difference for a regular load can be measured in millilitres (seriously, 1200 vs 1600 equates to about 20-25ml). Yes, it's drier. But at what cost to the fabric, and at how much extra energy consumption, wear on the machine, and if you're going to hang the clothes out for an afternoon and not spaff cash up the wall with a tumble drier, it'll make exactly zero difference in the end.    It would be madness to screw a monitor mount into a pressure hull, but, then, it would be madness to take paying passengers sight seeing on an experimental craft made of composite materials...    Clive - yeah, I realised after uploading, but got distracted by a noisy pile of fur so never went back and corrected it. Mea culpa.

Rick, 2nd July 2023, 22:33

David - as mentioned above, fast spinning was a numbers race with not enough benefit to justify the speeds.  It's like vacuum cleaners, 1kW, then 2kW, and I even saw a 2.2kW vacuum for extra sucking power.  Dude, no. Just no. That's as much as a kettle takes. A >2kW vacuum ought to be able to tear the clothing off a girl, the tiles off the floor, and strip paint from the wall.  In reality, shoving a more powerful motor in it allowed them to cheap out on all of the other parts of the design, and hey, it's a big arse number that looks great on the box.    Best damned vacuum cleaner I ever used was the Kärcher at work. I need to open the air valve in order to vacuum lino, or it'll just stick as the suction is all that and then some. The rating? 800W.    My own vacuum is similar. You don't need a big motor if the thing is properly constructed.    Ditto washing machines. What will likely make a bigger difference to the ability to extract water from clothing is not the spin speed, but the number and pattern of holes in the drum. But then, drums have to be lightweight to reduce load on the motor and bearings, which means a more fragile material such as aluminium, which means fewer holes so it doesn't distort at speed.    I've seen one of those machines. They had one at a B&B in Cornwall. I looked in the slot with a torch and it was a set of switches. Most likely activating features that would otherwise have been either front panel buttons, or set up by the position of the rotary knob.    Hot water inputs faded away when 30°C washes became commonplace, as it wasn't possible to accurately measure the incoming water temperature with a mechanical system. It was perfectly fine when stuff was washed at 50-60°C as that was about what would come out the hot tap. Now it's more ecological to do stuff cooler. Hell, my new machine even has a 20°C option! Twenty!

David Pilling, 3rd July 2023, 00:35

The chap who delivered it said he didn't know what a 'spin dryer' was. Indesit, does 2800 rpm...

Clive Semmens, 3rd July 2023, 07:19

Is the Indesit drum quite a bit smaller in diameter than the typical washing machine drum - and is it top loading? Either or both would reduce bearing problems and vibration.

David Pilling, 3rd July 2023, 12:44

Clive - yes the standalone spinner has a relatively small diameter drum and is top loading. Presumably the smaller path radius makes the forces on the washing greater.    Getting a washing machine to spin fast is more difficult than a standalone device. Like washing machines with built in tumble drying.

Clive Semmens, 3rd July 2023, 13:34

Yup. Centripetal acceleration = rω² = v²/r - so the higher angular velocity more than makes up for the smaller radius.    Built in tumble drying is a disaster in hard water areas - a guaranteed recipe for dead bearings in double quick time. "Calgon" or similar descaling concoctions help, but don't solve the problem completely.

David Pilling, 3rd July 2023, 16:11

Don't tell anyone I got that wrong - if constant speed is in ones head, then yes smaller radius greater acceleration. When driving it is more comfortable to go around the outside lane of a curve. But with a spin dryer we're talking angular velocity and as you say the roughly three times ((2800/1600)^2) angular velocity squared bit makes up and more for the roughly 2/3 smaller radius.

Clive Semmens, 3rd July 2023, 16:39

You didn't get it wrong, not discernably anyway...wording left it unclear whether your *thinking* was wrong or right... 8~)

Rick, 3rd July 2023, 17:16

" smaller radius greater acceleration "  Hmm, like ice skaters when they're spinning, pull their arms in, gets a lot faster.

Clive Semmens, 3rd July 2023, 17:22

Yup. Conservation of angular momentum there though, rather than anything to do with acceleration. Angular momentum is conserved there, but they're actually adding energy to the system - or at least, converting chemical energy into kinetic energy via muscle force x distance.

Anon, 3rd July 2023, 17:35

I've always had a washing machine with a 1600rpm spin speed. The faster the spin, the more moisture is extracted, and the less time it has to spend in the tumble dryer.    It uses less electricity to spin the drum in the washine machine at 1600rpm for a few minutes than it would to run the dryer for several minutes longer (remember the dryer has a heating element as well as the motor).    (I have a solar PV installation here, which, during the daytime between the beginning of May and the end of August, generates enough power to operate the washing machine or tumble dryer, but not both. If I do one load of washing, then drying, the electricity is free.)    @DP - mine has a "memory" setting, I've programmed it for extended wash, heavy soil, anti-allergy rinse (I have quite sensitive skin and any washing powder / liquid residue irritates me). The program runs for about 4 hours, but it comes out spotless. Then 2 hours in the dryer...    I make extensive use of the "time delay" setting on the washing machine. Load it up the night before, add liquid and softener, then set it to delay the start until an hour after sunrise. That way the solar will cover the electricity use. When it finishes, if I'm home I put it straight in the dryer, if not then it goes into the dryer in the evening, which is also set for a time delay so will be running off solar power.    The dryer is one of those fancy ones (bought about 17 years ago but still working fine) with the sensor, so you set it to "automatic" and it stops when the humidity goes lower than a preset level. Works for everything except towels which need the manual override!

Clive Semmens, 4th July 2023, 18:33

On dry days we dry our washing on a line outside. On wet days any output from the solar panels we don't have probably wouldn't be up to running the tumble dryer we don't have. If there are so many wet days in a row that we have to do some washing anyway, they dry on a clothes horse in the house. We do have a dehumidifier and occasionally need to use it to prevent the house getting damp, but usually the air indoors is dry enough to absorb a bit of moisture without causing condensation anywhere. Obviously a bit of ventilation, especially on dry days, helps.    Grace is prepared to experiment with lower spin speeds, particularly when the weather's good for outdoor drying. Thanks for the rant, Rick!

Rick, 4th July 2023, 19:34

There's an old tumble dryer in the shed, it came from the UK, so probably rusted by now.    I'm afraid I just can't justify burning that much electricity when a bit of forward planning can save €€s.    Here's the thing. On warm days I have a rotary line in the shade in a breezy place and clothes there dries quickly.    Out back in the big hangar, there's one of those A shaped drying racks, and a line strung across from one side to the other. As long as it isn't foggy (and thus damp), stuff there dries, even in the winter (unless below zero in which case it freezes 🥺).    Haven't had a tumble dry in over twenty years... can't say I miss it.

Rick, 4th July 2023, 19:40

Clive - how much experimentation? ;)    I tend to wear the same things for work (soft black trousers, black shirt, black pullover...) so my Friday load is often that (plus the underwear of the week). If I had a machine that did all sorts of fast speeds, I'd be inclined to check that I'm washing *exactly* the same things, and then weigh them immediately as they come out of the machine (plus a reference weight being the clothing when clean and dry).    As you know, 1g is 1ml of water, so the weights can tell you how much water remains in the clothing for each spin speed.    And then I'd use the 1000 setting anyway as I don't think going faster makes much difference in the end.

Clive Semmens, 4th July 2023, 19:52

Oh, it's just a way of describing what she'll do. No measurements, just giving it a try and seeing how things go. My strong suspicion is that once she realises things aren't noticeably wetter she'll stick to 800 or 1000 rpm. We already know that slowing the beast down reduces the tendency of things to vibrate off the kitchen worktops...

Rick, 4th July 2023, 19:55

David - 2800rpm? That's odd. A 2 pole 50Hz motor ought to be running at 3000 rpm, so it must be something more complicated inside.    My old washing machine had two sets of windings (slow, about 40rpm) and fast (about 500rpm).    My new washing machine? Well... Apparently these things are brushless DC motors!

Clive Semmens, 4th July 2023, 20:12

"A 2 pole 50Hz motor ought to be running at 3000 rpm"    I very much doubt it's a 2 pole motor - is the drum even straight on the motor shaft?

David Pilling, 5th July 2023, 03:11

Experiments are a great idea - all we're interested in is the cheapest way (in a reasonable time) to get things dry, combination of spinning, air drying and tumble dry. Martin Lewis the UK money saving expert had a phase in the Winter of suggesting to a mass audience that dehumidifiers were cheaper than tumble driers.  Here drying outside in Winter is just not an option, it's cold, it's wet, true it is windy, salt laden winds that are too strong. Indoors is not much fun either, humidity is a problem.  The Winter 2023 technique was leaving things drying for a few hours near the dehumidifier and then finishing them off with a few minutes in the "devil appliance" (TM Martin Lewis) (aka the tumble dryer).    I'm not so sure about the common idea that the tumble dryer has to run for hours - it has a 120 minute timer with the last 10 minutes not powering the heater. Five minutes of heat make all the difference.  Drying towels so they're like boards is not desirable they come out of the tumble dryer soft.    It would be fun to pull the spin dryer to bits and find out if the speed rating is correct and how it works. I'm not going to do it, not even for science. The UK history was from standalone to "twin tub" and then back to standalone. The "twin tub" had belts in, which would have meant the drum did not go at motor speed. I doubt the modern ones work like that. Plenty of AC motors available that have a rated speed of 2800 rpm.   There is a wikipedia page on clothes dryers, lots of ingenuity - microwave dryers, ultrasonic dryers. "A hand-cranked clothes dryer was created in 1800 by M. Pochon from France".    "Mangle was the only word used in the UK in the past. Before the arrival of spin dryers around the 1950s, all but the very poorest of households had a mangle. It was used on washday to remove the majority of the water from the wet clothes and sheets after each rinse." US usage "wringer".

Clive Semmens, 5th July 2023, 06:33

"Here drying outside in Winter is just not an option, it's cold, it's wet, true it is windy, salt laden winds that are too strong. Indoors is not much fun either, humidity is a problem."  We're in Greenock, yet we mostly manage to get things nearly dry outside even in winter. True we're 100m up a hill, so the salt doesn't generally get up here and we've got plenty of wind. Even in winter it's generally only the final stage that's indoors.    Humidity in the house rarely gets above 60%, and the dehumidifier fixes that easily. Most of the excess moisture goes out through windows and doors, the dehumidifier's only doing the occasional bit of finishing off so it's not costing much to run - in fact since it contributes heat to the house it's reducing our central heating bill by nearly as much as it's costing. (Whereas a tumble dryer with a vent to outdoors throws the heat away. Not so a (more expensive...) condenser dryer, of course.)

David Pilling, 5th July 2023, 13:09

"Humidity in the house rarely gets above 60%", here it is rarely below 60% - 68% as we speak. Here is very close to the sea and one walks uphill to the promenade. Dampness in houses is a general problem in the neighbourhood. It is the land of sump pumps.

Clive Semmens, 5th July 2023, 13:45

Ah...we're almost exactly a mile from the sea as the gull flies, and as I wrote, 100m up...and the "sea" is only two miles wide at this point, so the waves aren't very big and don't generate much salt spray.

Rick, 5th July 2023, 18:06

Sixty? *SIXTY*?  I dream of 60.    Literally, it's the middle of flaming summer with the windows open *and* a dehumidifier running and the humidity meter in the kitchen reads 67.    In the winter? No dehumidifier (it freezes up) so it gets to figures between 89 and 93.    The humidity outside, for reference, is 52 right now. When it went low (mid-30s) was when the temperature went high (also mid-30s). T'was insufferable.

Clive Semmens, 5th July 2023, 19:40

Does your house have no damp proof course Rick? And a water table centimetres below ground level? Where does all that moisture come from??    Yup - when the temperature's high, either high or low humidity is HORRIBLE. I've experienced both in India.

Rick, 5th July 2023, 20:28

Damp proof course? I don't think they were aware of such things back in 14-whenever...    It's built on schist (one of the reasons I don't have a septic tank, they'd need to smash through the rock to install it). Water table? It's there somewhere.    But remember there's the remains of a pond just out back, plus the stream, and out front the well and the other well...    Yeah, it's a damp place. But I think many of the properties like this are equally damp. They tended to be built in close proximity to some sort of water source because back in the Middle Ages that sort of thing was very important.

J.G.Harston, 5th July 2023, 22:36

In Hong Kong we have three seasons: hot, cool, and mildew.

Clive Semmens, 6th July 2023, 06:57

"But I think many of the properties like this are equally damp."    Yeah, and not just in your neck of the woods. I expect Mr Pilling's patch is similar. Our house was built as a council house in the 1960s, and the added insulation since was done competently. The old house in Ely was a 1930s council house, also upgraded with competently done insulation. Funny thing is these houses are the cheapest in the UK, but* are better built than most stuff built before or since.    * size and room size possibly excepted, if you're rich and like lots of big rooms

David Pilling, 7th July 2023, 02:08

Here dig a modest hole and you will find water, the water table is high. The houses were OK for a long time, concrete rafts, but eventually cracks appeared and then LIDL built a big shop and destroyed the ground water drainage in the area. Result underfloor water. Things can be fixed at some cost.  Is that why it is so humid, well the neighbours roof top weather station that is on the internet often shows high humidity, maybe it is just being so close to the sea.

Clive Semmens, 7th July 2023, 06:01

Our outdoor humidity is often way higher than indoors - but the quantity of water in the air is often roughly the same...because the temperature indoors is higher than it is outside... (sounds as though that might not be the case at Rick's place? Or even yours, David?)  Humidity isn't a measure of the absolute amount of water in the air, it's a measure of the amount of water in the air as a percentage of what the air could hold at that temperature.  Being close to the sea (and not much above sea level) does pretty much force the water table to be very shallow, of course! (The groundwater isn't salty though, unless someone's been pumping a lot of water out of the ground locally.)

David Pilling, 7th July 2023, 12:40

Clive - yes to the point about humidity being relative. You dry a house out by heating the air inside and exchanging it with colder, dryer air outside. The outside humidity is a consideration though. In Summer the target temperature can be whatever it is outside. High humidity is a problem in Winter when the result is condensation. Temperatures inside are a lot greater than Rick's, in the range 60-70F, alas not higher which would dry the place out.

Rick, 7th July 2023, 13:11

60-70F? What's that in measurements the rest of the world (*) uses?    * - except America because they're "special".

Clive Semmens, 7th July 2023, 15:52

About 16-21°C in real money. Our central heating normally holds ours at 19.5°C all day, except when it's warmer outside when the temperature indoors will slowly creep up. How much it cools down overnight depends obviously on the outdoor temperature and wind speed and direction, but even in the dead of winter it rarely drops below about 15°C.

Rick, 7th July 2023, 17:39

Mid winter. 7-8 in the bedroom, 3-4 in the kitchen.    Mid summer? 20-25 in both, but I keep the windows open a lot when I'm there to let airflow do its thing.    Has price? €0  Leccy price? About €30/month and half of that is standing charges. Slight bump in winter, but not much.    (there was a central heating system, oil fired, I don't even wanna know how much a tank full of oil (1000 litres?) costs!)

Clive Semmens, 7th July 2023, 18:06

Yeah. We spend a bit more than that on gas & leccy. But luckily this house is VERY well insulted. Probably more heat goes out in the ventilation than through the walls, floor or roof. If we had the space I'd make a counter-current heat exchange ventilation system, but we've nowhere to put such a beast.  I'd just put more clothes on, but I share a house with a wife who spent the first 27 years of her life in India. She's acclimatised pretty well, but one still has to make some allowances...

Rick, 7th July 2023, 18:19

Mom grew up near Baltimore. A place that army grunts sometimes refer to as "a tropical hardship" due to its eccentric summer weather (baking hot, high humidity). She was only too happy to move to Dunblane, and then after a short while (<cough>and me</cough>) move far south to Hartley Wintney, which is like Scotland without the midges. 😉

Clive Semmens, 7th July 2023, 18:55

The part of India where Grace grew up can just about get down to freezing around dawn in January, but most days in January it'll be up to 30° by mid-afternoon - but only 15° or thereabouts if it's cloudy. Then getting hotter until mid-June - over 40°, possibly over 45°, in the afternoons, with humidity ~40%, sometimes a fair bit lower. Then the humidity goes up to ~100% and it's hell for a few days before the monsoon breaks in mid-June, temperature comes down to ~30° and it RAINS, then it's like that until mid-September. Then it's really nice for the rest of the year.

David Pilling, 8th July 2023, 01:27

Quoting the NHS website    "  Keeping warm over the winter months can help to prevent colds, flu and more serious health problems such as heart attacks, strokes, pneumonia and depression.    Heat your home to a temperature that's comfortable for you. If you can, this should be at least 18°C in the rooms that you regularly use, such as your living room and bedroom.  "

Rick, 8th July 2023, 09:01

Meanwhile... if you heat your house too much, as the English are wont to do, it weakens your immunity due to giving good temperatures for germs to thrive and makes you vulnerable to colds, flu and more serious health problems.    I'm used to cold. At boarding school a dorm window was open, even in the middle of winter. We used to do PE, a two mile (guesstimate) run around the woods *in the snow* wearing shorts and a thick t-shirt.    Interesting that they lump depression in with the serious health issues. Have they, like, opened their eyes and looked at what's going on? Well, some have, they've been on and off striking over their pay and conditions...    I wouldn't be surprised if a good half of the country wasn't depressed (in the clinical sense) right now.    Anyway, the method I use that is quite pleasant and energy efficient is to heat *myself*, not big uninsulated spaces that I'm not in and only pass through. The difference in energy costs is... phenomenal.

Clive Semmens, 8th July 2023, 09:51

"Anyway, the method I use that is quite pleasant and energy efficient is to heat *myself*, not big uninsulated spaces that I'm not in and only pass through. The difference in energy costs is... phenomenal."  That would be my approach too, but I share the house as aforementioned. And luckily this one isn't uninsulated!  The house in India where Grace grew up was uninsulated - and didn't have the kind of thermal mass yours probably has, to even out the day-night temperature swings.