10 Rules of Winter Driving

By Jeff Ivany on December 9, 2009

Wonderful Winter Driving

Wonderful Winter Driving

There are 10 rules of winter driving.  Don’t get intimidated, they are really easy to understand and remember.  I’ll even help by providing a reason why each of the ten rules should be followed.

  1. Follow at a safe distance
  2. Follow at a safe distance
  3. Follow at a safe distance
  4. Follow at a safe distance
  5. Follow at a safe distance
  6. Follow at a safe distance
  7. Follow at a safe distance
  8. Follow at a safe distance
  9. Follow at a safe distance
  10. Turn your lights on (specifically your tail lights)

See, I told you that it would be easy to remember the 10 rules. ;)

So why do I think these are the 10 rules of winter driving?

Well, in my observations, most of the time people end up in a ditch or in an “accident” because they had to do some panic braking because they were following too close to the car in front of them.  A couple days ago I observed as groups of cars would drive down the highway, only a few feet from each other.  As one driver touched his brakes, the trailing vehicles would all slam their brakes on harder because they suddenly realized it was slippery conditions.  Eventually, one of the trailing vehicles spins out and ends up in the ditch because they have discovered one of the laws of physics really does apply to them.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a “conservative” driver.  I’m probably the guy passing you in the left lane on a snowy day, even without snow tires!  **gasp** What I won’t be doing is following too closely to the car in front of me.

Which brings us to rule number 10.  Turn your lights on so that your tail lights are also on.  I could care less about the front end of your car when we’re driving in the snow.  I’m more interested in the front end of my car.  When you turn your tail lights on, it provides trailing drivers a visual cue as to where you are.  They can see you through the snow before they will be able to see your vehicle.  In a sudden white out condition, this can make a huge difference.  I can judge my following distance based on your tail lights so I’m not suddenly on top of you as you slam your brakes on due to the white out.

Image credit – hint of plum

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Forever on Street View

By Jeff Ivany on December 3, 2009

The Winnipeg Free Press has an article on a group of co-workers who managed to get themselves captured by Google Street View in front of their office. Apparently one of the other employees was on his way to work when he saw the standard grey Google Street View car and he called ahead to the office to get the gang all out in the street to ham it up for the camera.

Co-workers from ManLab in Winnipeg, MB ham it up for the Google Street View car.

Co-workers from ManLab in Winnipeg, MB ham it up for the Google Street View car.

Fantastic!

Image Credit – Winnipeg Free Press

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Noma “Super Bright” LED Christmas Lights

By Jeff Ivany on December 1, 2009

This season, Noma has introduced a new line of “Super Bright” LED Christmas lights.  I picked up a string of 70 “Super Bright”  multi-coloured LED Christmas lights last night from Canadian Tire and they really are much brighter than the older style Noma LED Christmas lights.

Noma Super Bright LED Christmas light box

Noma Super Bright LED Christmas light box

The two immediate advantages to the Noma “Super Bright” LED Christmas lights are the ability to change the lights and the fact the string is fused!  Included in the box were two additional fuses and two replacement LED “bulbs”. Yippee, we potentially can now have no more burned out LED lights!

Fuses and extra LED bulbs included

Fuses and extra LED bulbs included

Oh, and by “changing the lights”, I mean you can change the order in which the lights are on the string.  You just pull off the coloured plastic strawberry shaped light and swap it with any of the other lights on the string.  Super!

Unfortunately the Noma “Super Bright” LED Christmas lights are not perfect.  They are supposed to have yellow and orange lights but there is very little difference between the two colours.  It’s sort of like bright yellow and not so bright yellow. If you notice in the (crappy) picture below, the “Super Bright” LED lights around the front window are brighter and more yellow than the others.

This is unfortunate as the biggest complaint about the older LED lights was that the blue and green were overpowering.  Now you just get a whole lot of yellow.

Noma LED lights outside - Super Bright are around front window

Noma LED lights outside - Super Bright are around front window

Also, be careful with the length of this string of lights.  The set of 70 is supposed to be 23′ long but that doesn’t seem to be the case.  One review on the Canadian Tire page linked above says their set was only 17′ long.  I didn’t measure mine before installing but the string of lights is definitely not 23′ long.  Maybe if you put the thing on a rack and stretch it out completely straight it might be close.

Finally, make sure you keep your receipt!  The box indicates a 5 year warranty (as does the instruction sheet inside) but it explicitly states you must have proof of purchase.  Go and put that receipt in a safe spot now.

5 year warranty on the box and in the box

5 year warranty on the box and in the box

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Constance Bay Red Light District?

By Jeff Ivany on July 10, 2009

Constance Bay's New Attractions Sign Constance Bay recently had a new attractions sign installed by the City of Ottawa to indicate what services were available in the downtown area. Apparently one square on the sign was left blank and someone added their own “attraction”.

Source – Ottawa Citizen – Saucy illicit sign points to Constance Bay’s ‘charms’

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Solar Hot Water vs Natural Gas Hot Water

By Jeff Ivany on May 31, 2009

Natural Gas FlameToday we will do a cost comparison of solar hot water and natural gas hot water. This is the third part of the Should I Install Solar Hot Water? series. Yesterday we looked at Solar Hot Water vs Electric Hot Water.

Background

Currently in eastern Ontario, you can have a solar hot water system installed for about $4000-$4500 after all of the rebates and incentives. While this is a huge discount from the roughly $9000 regular cost, does a solar hot water system actually make sense financially?

The Numbers

The typical solar hot water system (EnerWorks 2 panel system) we have been using in this series can produce about 2800 kWh/year of hot water here in eastern Ontario. This of course is when it’s installed in an ideal location/orientation.

According to the ACEEE, a high efficiency natural gas water tank is 65% efficient at converting natural gas into heat.

The current combined price of natural gas in Ontario is approximately $0.3022/m3. That’s $0.2354/m3 for the gas with a price adjustment of -$0.0616/m3 plus delivery of $0.1285/m3.

Now, price per cubic meter is fine and dandy but we need to convert to kWh to make this easier. A quick Google search tells me that 1 m3 of natural gas is roughly equivalent 10.5 kWh (it varies but we need a number to work with).

This is a little more difficult than the electric hot water example so I’ll show the steps so I don’t screw anything up and so you can check my math. :)

Our example 65% efficient natural gas hot water heater needs to consume 4300 kWh to produce the equivalent 2800 kWh/year that the solar hot water system can produce.

2800 kWh / 0.65 = 4300 kWh

4300 kWh is approximately 410m3

4300 kWh / 10.5 kWh per m3  = 410m3

And 410 m3 costs about $124 at current market prices in eastern Ontario.

410 m3 * $0.3022/m3 = $124

Therefore, if you are reducing your natural gas bill by $124/year, it will take you between 32.24 to 36.29 years to recover the costs ($4000 – $4500) of the solar hot water system and start saving real money.

Over 30 years to recover the initial investment? The lifespan of a solar hot water system is only “over 20 years” which means you could easily still be paying for the thing after it’s been replaced.

Of course, that is using current natural gas pricing which is extremely low. It dropped more than $0.10/m3 as of April 1, 2009 and the summer prices are usually much lower.

When would it make sense to install solar hot water with a natural gas system?

Using the examples above, the combined natural gas price would have to reach almost $1.00/m3 before a solar hot water system could pay for itself in 9 years. $0.50/m3 is definitely a possibility in the near future (if I remember correctly, last winter was just shy of $0.40/m3) so the payback period starts to get closer to what it currently is with electric hot water heating.

Now, for my particular house, I’ll don’t think I’ll ever install a solar hot water system for domestic hot water. We have a Polaris high efficiency gas hot water tank that we use for both our domestic hot water and for heating the house. That puppy is 95% efficient. At today’s natural gas prices, it would take about 50 years to recover the initial investment in a solar hot water system.

In a future post, I’ll explore the difficulty of designing a solar hot water system to augment a combined natural gas heating system like we have.

Image Credit- ARRG.ch

This post is part of the Should I Install Solar Hot Water? series.

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