The Lance J. Technoweb

I have a Black + Decker dust buster vacuum.  It works fine, but it comes with a silly and hard-to-replace power adapter.   It's only hard to replace due to the funky DC power connector.  Otherwise, it's just a cheapo 15vdc power adapter. Here are the tech details if you're thinking of replacing yours. BLACK+ DECKER CLASS 2 POWER SUPPLY P/N: 90629039 MODEL: SSC-150015US INPUT: 100-240VAC, 50/60Hz, 200mA OUTPUT: 15VDC, 150mA Mine puts out a voltage of 16.4 VDC when idle.  As I face the connector, the positive pin is on the right, as shown in the picture.   If my power adapter were to break, I'd save this unique DC connector and solder it to an aftermarket power adapter that matches these specs, perhaps something like this one on Amazon.  

A friend gave me a Crate battery guitar amp that he used for busking. It is a nice 15 watt amp with an internal battery. Sadly it died, and its custom power adapter was misplaced. After several years the battery will fail, and it requires a functioning battery to work at all. Happily, new batteries are inexpensive, readily available, and easy to install. Obtaining a replacement battery for the TX15 The original battery was a 4+ pound, sealed lead battery. Any replacement battery should closely follow the specs of the original. I bought this MightyMax Battery on Amazon , which is a perfect replacement. There are many batteries that conform to the needs of the TX15, and they can be found at local hardware stores as they are commonly used in lots of equipment. It pays to look locally if you need something faster than Amazon.  The battery specs are as follows: 12 Volt, 7.2 Ah lead battery (mine was marked 1272). Length: 5.94" (151 mm)  Width: 2.56" (65 mm) Height: 3.94" (100...

I've decided to try to measure my household waste. All my trash ends up in a specific trash bin before I throw it out, and all my compost ends up in a specific compost bin. I take out the trash as infrequently as possible: it only happens when they're full or when they stink. So why not measure it while I'm at it? Using the magic of my postal scale and/or my luggage scale, I measure each bin before it goes into my trash barrels. Right now I am only measuring compost and trash, because I find that easiest. The Net Weight of my Waste Without further delay, here is my Waste Weight log. I use grams because metric is easier in terms of the math. Just remember that 1000 grams is roughly 2.2 pounds. Net Weight 2022-06-18: Compost.. 1594 grams 2022-06-18 : Trash....  990 grams 2022-06-27: Compost.. 2712 grams 2022-06-27: Trash. ...  904 grams 2022-07-02: Compost.. 1288 grams 2022-07-02: Trash. ... 1688 grams 2022-07-06: Compost.. 1144 grams  2022-07-16: Compost.. 1194 grams 202...

You might have read that you can make your own foaming soap from regular liquid hand soap. You just add water to liquid hand soap, let it settle, and then those foaming dispensers can pump it exactly like the stuff you buy from the store. But what are the economics of it? That's what this posting is all about. Liquid Soap with my "custom mix" bottle To make foaming soap, I mix 32 ounces of water with 8 ounces of liquid soap, resulting in 40 ounces of foaming soap. That means each unit of liquid soap turns into 5 units of foaming soap. Therefore, my 56 ounce bottle of liquid soap becomes 280 ounces of foaming soap. What is the cost? Here you are: Store foaming handsoap..: 19.60¢ per fluid ounce Store liquid handsoap...:  7.66¢ per fluid ounce My home foaming handsoap:  1.53¢ per fluid ounce The Economic Conclusion All this means that my $4.29 jug of liquid soap can be turned into $54.90 worth of foaming soap. Yes, the store bought foaming soap is 13 times as expensive as m...

The apartment building we own has "common" lighting in the hallways and stairwells. Lighting accounts for our largest share of electricity. I've worked over the years to reduce the lighting costs. Here is how I reduced our lighting expenses by a whopping 90%. Pursuit 1: 70% savings by moving from CFLs to LEDs and reducing bulb count My first pursuit was to simply transition from CFL lightbulbs to LEDs. LEDs are generally lower wattage than CFLs, and given the extraordinary reliability of quality LEDs, I no longer needed in-fixture bulb redundancy. I happened to come across a set of Energy Star certified Cree LED bulbs and used them to replace all of the old CFLs.† This reduced the building's lighting expense by about 70%. This change also greatly reduced my labor costs, because the CREE LEDs have been 100% reliable for the past 6 years, unlike the old bulbs which needed to replaced every year or so. The reliability of the CREE LEDs have been so high that over the pa...

A few months back my dishwasher started to get noisy.  The wash cycle was taking a very long time, and  the dishes were coming out dirty. This turned out to be a water fill problem due to debris in my home's hot water pipes. In the end I solved my dishwasher's problem by flushing my home's hot water pipes.  Here is how I solved this problem. Dishwasher Problem Diagnosis After a few weeks of awful dishwasher behavior, I ended up opening its door in the middle of a cycle to see what was going on. It sure did look and sound like it was trying to pump water around, but it was clear that the spray was minimal. At first I imagined the problem was due to a clogged dishwasher filter or bad pump, but after disassembling all those things it was clear they were not the problem. Then I started to suspect that the dishwasher simply wasn't filling up with enough water. There was an easy way to test it: just add water. So at the start of a cycle I'd add about a liter of water and ...

I have a love/hate relationship with the TP-Link DECO X20 . I have a few of these set up in other peoples' homes. There are the things that I love about the X20, but they have serious limitations that I strongly dislike. I would recommend them to some people, but I would never buy one for my own home. Here are the details why. Overview The Deco X20 is a cute-looking WiFi6 (802.11ax) mesh router system. You can buy them in one , two , or three node packs. You can add more nodes later if you wish. One of my setups is a three node system, and one is a two node system.  It might be wisest to buy the three pack and sell off any nodes you don't need. Each node is a dual radio device, with optional Ethernet back-haul. Each node has two Ethernet ports that can be used for wan uplink, lan, or client device They look like pretty little cylinders with an external power brick. The Good These are stupidly easy to set up. There is very little configuration that needs to happen. They are pre...