u/lilbawds

Looking for someone local who doesn’t charge an arm and a leg or try to upsell unnecessary repairs. Anyone have good experiences with a business in or around Montpelier?

Weird question, but can I set up a Senville heat pump (connect lineset, vacuum test, open valves) and leave it like that for weeks before the unit is hooked up to electrical/commissioned? Waiting for electrician to run electrical, but I want to get started on the project ahead of time.

I'm sure many of you have seen the EnergyHandyman Mold Chart and RIT's Dew Point Calculator. They provide a "days to mold growth" estimate based on temperature and relative humidity (68RH at 70F=340 days to mold growth, etc.)

Can someone explain how mold growth on construction material (drywall, wood framing) works over time? For example, if you have one humid week (68% RH at 70F) and then a dry week afterward (50% RH at 70), does the "days to mold growth" countdown start over? Or like, in climates with cold dry winters, does 6 months of very dry RH stop the mold risk that exists during spring and summer?

I don't have ductwork in my house, but need a dehumidifier on my first floor. Our portable one is just too noisy to have on all the time, so I want to install a Santa Fe or April Aire in the basement and run a flex duct up through the first floor with a single register. Does it matter if it just pulls supply air from the basement rather than also adding a duct to the supply side? On the plus side, I imagine the dehumidified air won't be as hot coming from the basement.

I have loud dehumidifiers running in the basement. If I hang acoustic blankets across the basement ceiling above the dehumidifier, will that do anything to deaden the sound on the first floor? Is there a deadening material that will work better in this scenario where I can't fully enclose the unit?

There are now three models on the market. One from Santa Fe, Broan, and Innovative Dehumidifiers. They all look pretty much identical from the spec sheet. Any intel on any of them? I'm drawn to the low volume (46-48 db) and flush install. I don't have ductwork.

Probably out of the ordinary for this sub, but are there any filtration experts that can answer this question?

A few backpacking filtration brands have started putting "activated carbon" pellets into their hollow fiber squeeze filters. Katadyn BeFree AC for example. It claims to remove "chemicals and microplastics" from water sources. The carbon pellet is literally the size of a mini marshmallow. Can it actually effectively filter chemicals from, let's say, a stream near a factory somewhere on the edge of a city? Isn't there some minimum surface area for it to be effective?

I'm trying to fill a large cut in my veg tan leather project, roughly 3-4mm thick. It's too thick for something like Angelus Leather Filler to work well. I've heard some folks use leather dust mixed with glue to fill bigger gaps. Does anyone know what type of glue works best and at what ratio? Ideally, the glue will be able to take dye too.

I am buying a remote controller/humidistat for a dehumidifier. It connects via a 25-foot Cat 5 cable. I need to get a longer cable. Do I need a special kind for this application or will any Cat 5 do? Basically, I'm not sure if the communication that happens between a remote and appliance requires a different cable than say, a Cat 5 meant for ethernet.