Infrared versus regular gas grill? (and what about electric?)

by philg

We’re getting ready to run a natural gas line to where our gas grill is ($1500 is the new $700 for a half day of plumbing effort). We’ll need either to convert our basic propane grill, now 1.5 years old, or buy a fancy new grill. The space is tight and a grill wider than about 50 inches won’t look right (even the smallest grills are about this size with side shelves). We go through a propane tank every 1-2 months (using the grill every other day).

One of the divides in the consumer grill world seems to be infrared vs. conventional. The IR enthusiasts claim that they get better sear marks after a faster heating time and the reduced amount of hot air flow keeps more moisture in the food. On the other hand, some of the higher-end grills either don’t have an infrared burner or reserve the infrared burner for rotisserie, or have an infrared burner as a specialty zone with most of the grill being conventional. Here’s a grill that I overheard one rich guy recommending to another rich guy:

It has “Rotisserie system with infrared burners” but the primary burners are conventional. (Why would anyone pay $34,000 for a freestanding grill? The product lets you stick charcoal or wood in and light it with the gas. You can also do it with a $1500 Canadian grill from Napoleon and an accessory tray if a $32,000+ savings is significant to you.)

TEC sells $4,000+ infrared-only grills and claims that they’re vastly superior in every way. Certainly nobody is going to steal one because their smallest model weighs 248 lbs. on a pedestal. If TEC is so great, why don’t all of $1000 grill brands copy them? “Advantages and Disadvantages of Infrared BBQ Grills” says that infrared is unconditionally better:

Clean up is easier, too. The high temperatures practically vaporize any drippings or unwanted mess. In fact, most infrared grills are designed to use this feature by collecting the drippings in a channel. They’re then vaporized back into the food as pure flavor, eliminating the fare-ups in ordinary grills that must be conquered to avoid burning the food. These channels just wipe or clean with a regular grill brush. This is because of the high radiant heat.

Finally, food actually tastes better on an infrared grill, according to many. This is due to the high temperature and direct heating. The infrared burners are wide and cook uniformly with even heat distribution. It locks in all the seasoning and natural flavors in your food. The quickness of the neat locks in moisture, too. Meat, seafood, vegetables – everything is quickly seared and flavor-locked for the best taste.

“Infrared Grills — Advantages, Disadvantages and How They Work” says that the disadvantage is an ability to cook at low temps:

Although an infrared grill could take your steak cooking skills to another level, popular opinion is that this is about all it will do. With the crazy high temperatures it can reach, the grill can be somewhat difficult to master when it comes to the time-temperature relationship. In addition to this, it doesn’t offer the lower temperatures that a traditional gas or charcoal grill does. In contrast, other more traditional grills can offer as low as 100f at the low-end, which is great for slow cooking meats, whereas an infrared grill only goes as low as 250f.

(the TEC people claim that they can now go down to 200 degrees)

This retailer page suggests that infrared is not the complete solution.

To prepare for climate change, in which our 3-mile-inland house will soon be at the beach, it might be good to get a grill made from 316L marine grade stainless. Here’s one from Blaze into which an infrared burner can be installed to replace one of the conventional burners (about $4,000 total and we’d need to lose one side shelf to make it fit).

Readers: Have you cooked on an infrared grill? Is it suitable for nearly all grilling projects?

Crazy/heretical idea: If infrared is truly the best technology, why bother with natural gas or propane? Why not run a dedicated outlet, either 120V or 240V, and use electricity to create as much heat as desired? Char-Broil sells what they claim is “TRU-Infrared” for 320 square inches for $250. That’s actually larger than the 296-square-inch grilling surface claimed by TEC for its $4,000+ product. (Food&Wine magazine says that it doesn’t work) If you don’t need infrared, then a Ninja outdoor electric grill for $330 (you can toss in wood pellets for authentic smoked flavor), which gets 4.7 stars on Amazon. An electric grill used for slow-cooking should be vastly simpler and more reliable. Instead of adjusting the knobs and monitoring, set the desired temperature and walk away for 5 hours. Maybe gas grills are obsolete, just as gas ranges in the kitchen are obsolete, having been slain by mighty induction! (as predicted by Katherine Clerk Maxwell’s Equations) There aren’t that many full-size electric grills available right now, but we’ve been doing fine with 320 square inches of cooking surface on our existing grill.

(Existing electric grills don’t seem to make any attempt to compete with gas grills for total heat output. A medium-size standard four-burner grill puts out 48,000 BTUs, about 14,000 watts. The highest wattage electric grills that I have seen are 3,000 watts, less than a single burner on a high-end induction cooktop (3,300 to 3,700 watts is typical).)

Here’s a piece of restaurant equipment that I discovered at a friend of a friend’s house:

It seems to be called a “salamander” and the claim is that it will heat up to 1050C. It is all-infrared-all-the-time Based on a quick search, they seem to start at about $4,000 and consume 3000-4500 watts. (The house that I visited contained not a single piece of kitchen equipment that I knew how to either turn on or use.) More background on salamanders: from a retailer; from a manufacturer.

Loosely related (on the advantages of a propane-free society)… a story about Mohamad Barakat, a successful asylum-seeker from Syria:

Firefighters notified police [in Fargo, ND] after seeing guns, ammunition and propane tanks in Mohamad Barakat’s apartment, according to a report provided to The Associated Press Wednesday by the City of Fargo Fire Department.

Battalion Chief Jason Ness noted what appeared to be “a significant amount of gun ammunition,” “multiple ‘assault style’ rifles,” a 20-pound propane cylinder in a bedroom, a second smaller propane cylinder in the kitchen, and “a funnel, blender, and other items that looked to be for measuring purposes” in his report on the Sept. 6, 2022 fire.

“FPD determined everything was legal with the gun collection,” Ness wrote. “The individual admitted to owning approximately 10 guns and 6,000 rounds of ammunition. My decision to refer the issue to PD was based on the presence of the guns, several high capacity magazines, and the presence of propane tanks with no means of using the tanks for cooking or grilling.”

The migrant-turned-U.S. citizen loaded up the propane tanks a year later: AP News.

Related:

Full post, including comments

Climate resilience and Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture)

by philg

Attendance at “Oshkosh” (technically, EAA AirVenture) seemed lighter than in 2021 and 2022, possibly due to the weather being about 10 degrees F hotter and the first couple of days being marred by poor air quality courtesy of our Canadian neighbors. (EAA says that attendance was actually a record, contradicting our lived experience.) The EAA Lifetime Member “Oasis” was nothing of the sort, due to A/C that couldn’t cool the place down below 80 degrees. The typical GA plane, warbird, or vintage/antique lacks A/C and, therefore, people had trouble getting motivated to do intra-event flying.

Given that people have less tolerance for discomfort every year (central and mini-split A/C having grown in popularity) and that we’re assured by the New York Times and CNN that Planet Earth is going Full Venus, I wonder if it wouldn’t make sense to move the fly-in to early June. The public schools in Oshkosh get out on May 31, 2024, thus freeing up the no-A/C school buses that are essential to the EAA event. Why not fire up EAA AirVenture on June 10, 2024? Here are the weather averages by month:

June is 5 degrees cooler than July (though records for June 10 include some 90-degree days in various years; record temp for June 10 is 94). Given the higher heat in July, one might imagine that it is also the peak time for thunderstorms, hail, and tornadoes. Here’s a warning that we got:

OSHALERT 7/27: NWS issued Severe Thunderstorm WATCH for KOSH until 11pm. Could bring 1-2″ hail, 70mph winds, heavy rain, isolated tornado.

When basic new airplanes cost about the same as Corvettes and thousands were produced annually, perhaps a mass casualty hail event at KOSH wouldn’t have been so bad. But now that new piston four-seaters can be over $1 million and parts can take months to obtain, the risk of losing 10,000 planes has to be given more weight. From my web searches, it looks like June is actually a higher risk month for tornadoes and severe thunderstorms than July.

If the event can’t be moved, perhaps it can be made more comfortable. EAA has over $44 million/year in revenue (see Form 990; note that this was down to just $18 million in 2020, AirVenture having been canceled due to lockdowns). How about spending some of that $44 million on A/C for the four vendor hangars and also on some air-conditioned lunch venues scattered around the grounds? While EAA is at it, build some additional permanent running-water bathrooms around the show grounds and bathhouses (not Florida-style, necessarily) in campgrounds. Porta-potties and trailers don’t make for a luxurious experience. EAA is constantly harping on how they want to get more people who identify as “women” to show up. How many women want to use an outhouse for 7 days? And women with kids? Imagine the mom below trying to manage and clean up her 3 young kids in porta-potties:

Full post, including comments

Schools that are closed are “open fully” (flashback to 2020)

by philg

My favorite NYT headline of August 5, 2020 characterizes schools that are 100-percent closed as “open fully”:

Supporting those in New York, Maskachusetts, Chicago, and California who now say that lockdowns and school closures never happened, this headline cannot be found either with a Google search or a search on nytimes.com itself.

Full post, including comments

Airparks I learned about at Oshkosh

by philg

The young aviator dreams of having his/her/zir/their own plane. The old aviator dreams of living at the airport. One thing that I enjoy at Oshkosh is learning about new airparks. The one that seems to have the most promise for Florida residents is Big South Fork Airpark, which offers through-the-fence access to a public 5,500′ runway in personal-income-tax-free Tennessee just north of Knoxville. KSCX is indeed right next to some mountains, but the “numerous strip mines” note on the chart is concerning:

The sales reps said that lots are about $150,000 and their approved local builders can create a nice house for $200 per square foot ($500/ft. is more like it in South Florida!). Here’s the plan:

An instrument approach to this runway gets down to about 250′ above the runway and requires only 1 mile of visibility. When the runway needs repaving, the FAA will pay for it out of aviation fuel taxes that pilots and aircraft owners are already paying.

For pilots in the frigid Northeast, Kaynoa in the Dominican Republic might be a more attractive choice. It’s a 4,000′ runway and the homeowners will have to pay to repave it. The renderings look good! (Flying has an article with some photos of what it actually looks like.)

Speaking of Flying, their own project’s web site still says “coming in 2023”. This airpark is near Chattanooga.

(Note that Floridians enjoy much stronger protection against a state personal income tax, which is barred by the state constitution, than do Tennesseans. If a future legislature/governor pair in TN decides that more revenue is needed, nothing would stop the state from imposing an income tax.)

Full post, including comments

PetSmart ready to clothe the White House lizard

by philg

Photos from a July 19, 2023 visit to the local (Palm Beach Gardens) PetSmart. The New York Times said that the temperature outside was up around 125 degrees (see Floridians brave Extreme Danger heat levels), but, thanks to Florida Power and Light and inventor Jennifer Carrier, we were comfortable inside.

I would love to see some senior White House officials get a pet lizard in time for Pride 2024 and garb him/her/zir/them in the above outfits. Imagine the photo below with a fully dressed bearded dragon in a rainbow outfit rather than the simple trans-enhanced rainbow flag:

In case the above gets memory-holed:
Full post, including comments

A humanist looks at Sweden v. Covid

by philg

For us numbers nerds, here’s an interesting thread from Daniel Hadas, a medieval Latin professor in London who describes himself as a “Catholic humanist”… “Some remarks on Covid and Sweden.”:

… what matters is that life in Sweden during Covid continued largely as normal.

Lockdowns are deeply unnatural. They do not happen without intense social pressure, whether it be through legislation or propaganda. That pressure was absent, or at least muted, in Sweden.
At this point, it is customary to start arguing about statistics. Anti-lockdowners point to Sweden’s low excess mortality. Pro-lockdowners point to the number of Covid deaths, or to unfavourable comparisons with some of Sweden’s neighbours.
But there is no need to look at statistics to draw the essential conclusion about Sweden’s response. Any innumerate peasant can draw it, and indeed it is only those whose sense-making relies on statistics who can think some more potent conclusion lies hidden in them.
The essential conclusion is: 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘥. Sweden’s health system did not “collapse”, whatever that means. Stockholm does not look like Athens after the plague. Sweden is as Sweden was.

No numbers are needed to prove this.

In other words, numbers nerds like me are useless!

Thus Sweden, like every other jursidiction that did little in response to Covid, gives the lie to all the modellers and panic-mongers who screamed at the public that there was 𝘯𝘰 𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 to shutting down society, that every extreme measure taken was not enough.

Maybe Hadas disdains numbers because he can’t think with numbers? Actually he can!

It is ludicrous to maintain that, via statistics, certainty can be established on the causal link between a country’s anti-Covid measures, and the number of deaths in that country. The system we are trying to analyze is vastly complex: the whole of society, over several years. The potentially confounding variables are therefore countless. The effects being sought are small.

I made the following point back in 2020, but he does it more succinctly and eloquently. The majority of Americans assumed that a society with a lower Covid-tagged death rate was superior to a society with a higher Covid-tagged death rate. But that can be true only with some value judgments.

… behind the policy language of “a country’s response to Covid” lie questions for each individual: Should I lock up my children for 23 hours a day? Should I leave my parents to die alone? Should I not touch another man or woman for months on end? … The answer to these questions is not to be found in numbers.

The Swedish response to Covid was right, because, or in as much as, Swedes answered such questions in the negative. The only true disaster threatening us in the Covid years was answering them in the affirmative.

Maybe more people should study medieval Latin!

And because I’m not a humanist, but a numberist, let’s check the numbers:

and here’s the curve (of excess deaths) for Ireland (picked as a comparison country for Sweden by the NYT):

Full post, including comments

Hunting down an air handler fan that is running too slowly and growing mildew (breaker panel power monitor)

by philg

I’ve been trying to reengineer the air conditioning in our house to match the new(ish) reduced cooling load after a hurricane low-E glass window retrofit by the previous owner (see ChatGPT is almost as bad at home maintenance as I am). Before I downsized the system, however, I decided that I had better make sure that the theoretical Manual J calculations of an 8.5-ton demand were correct. The goal was to see what percentage of the time the 12-ton current system (divided into three condensers/air-handlers) was running on hot days (e.g., when the NYT says South Florida is facing EXTREME DANGER).

I decided to install an inductive current monitor in the circuit breaker panel that could watch all three air handler breakers, specifically the Emporia Vue 2. This is supposed to be easy to install oneself and I have a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering… so I decided to hire an electrician to do it properly. It took him less than one hour and he never shut off power to the panel, as the instructions suggest.

The software is reasonably good, but setup operations take longer to complete than you’d expect. Budget perhaps 30 minutes to get it all connected to WiFi and then to rename the ports. Here’s our Air Handler 3, a 3-ton system, on a day that was 125 degrees (NYT) or 91 degrees (Google/Apple). We can see that the variable-speed air handler (sadly, connected to a one-speed condenser) ramps up to about 500 watts and also that it is running most of the time (the calculated current demand for the upstairs was just 2.3 tons).

Here’s the a 5-ton air handler:

It’s drawing only 100 watts. Notice that I called it “AH2Try2” because I replaced the probe (myself!) and connected it to a different port because I assumed that the Emporia device was bad.

The installation guide for the Trane TEM6 air handler says that it should be drawing at least 500 watts:

I found that the unit was sweating on the outside and, opening it up, mildewing on the inside. The A/C contractor did the following:

  • replaced the blower (covered under warranty by Trane)
  • took the air handler apart and cleaned it
  • pumped out the refrigerant and cut the evaporator coil out and brought it down to the side yard and cleaned it thoroughly
  • cleaned out the air handler interior
  • replaced the plenum
  • replaced a failed UV sterilizer that had been in the old plenum with a REME HALO

With the new fan in place, power consumption went up to over 700 watts and the cabinet stopped sweating.

Given that air handlers are hard-wired, I don’t know of any other way to verify that they’re working properly. The regular A/C service guys don’t measure airflow carefully. And the power monitor is fun to have for investigating random appliance power consumption questions. Our 20-year-old last-legs KitchenAid refrigerator is consuming only 75 watts, for example.

What if you don’t want to spend $250-ish, including an electrician’s time? You can spend $thousands to replace your whole breaker panel and/or all of the breakers with “WiFi breakers”. Span will sell you a panel for $4,500 (plus the breakers?). Can you guess where this new company is located?

Eaton, which has been making panels for about 100 years, sells individual WiFi breakers that can report consumption and also be reset remotely. These seem to cost about $250 each, but if you already have an Eaton panel the installation could be cheap and simple.

Leviton makes a comprehensive system, but it will require replacing your panel(s). The panels themselves from Leviton seem to be cheap (less than $200). Once that’s done, an individual breaker can be as cheap as $54. Our electrician put this system in his own house and likes it.

Speaking of breakers, how long do they last in your experience? Our panels have spent 20 years in a hot/humid garage and the Cutler Hammer breakers inside don’t seem to be happy about it. Especially if a big one trips or is toggled it will tend to require replacement.

Full post, including comments

The Dutch acknowledge their wicked past, but refuse to make reparations

by philg

From a recent trip to Mauritshuis, a house-turned-museum in The Hague. The curators say that the house was built with profits from slavery in Brazil, but apparently they refuse to give the house to Brazilians who are descended from slaves and then pay rent:

A few additional photos of/in the museum:

The most famous Vermeer was pressed into service for righteous shops, reminding customers to wear a mask:

Speaking of disease, the museum has a great Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson:

The other big art experience in town is Panorama Mesdag, which convinces you that you’re standing on a dune using the best technology of 1881. The foreground is real sand:

Full post, including comments

The Dutch Pinball Museum in Rotterdam

by philg

Europeans who love Americana seem to be more passionate about their hobbies than we are. The Dutch Pinball Museum in Rotterdam confirms this general observation. I asked Gerard van de Sanden, the founder and collector, why he closed at 6 pm. “All of the American pinball collections stay open until midnight and sell as much alcohol as possible, which is how they make their money.” He replied that the late-night crowd didn’t treat the machines well and preserving the machines was more important to him than making a higher profit.

Compared to arcades in the U.S., the Dutch Pinball Museum is as quiet as a church. All of the machines have had their volume turned down low so that it isn’t deafening when the museum gets crowded. Visitors are friendly and enthusiastic. I talked to one couple where the husband has 11 machines in a backyard shed. They’d driven 3 hours from the farthest corner of the Netherlands to spend a Saturday here. The wife wasn’t an enthusiast, but joined nonetheless. On the way, they picked up friends, a couple where both husband and wife play. They have 5 machines inside their house.

For the Dutch lover of pinball, here’s the ultimate machine:

It’s made in Holland by the Dutch Pinball company. Despite the obscurity of the manufacturer, the owner says that the machine is not difficult to maintain (though metric tools are required).

Unlike the typical “play all you want” arcades that call themselves museums, this one makes an attempt to educate:

The collection includes an unusual modern game, a 40th anniversary Elvira’s House of Horrors (#31 out of just 199 made):

This is a great machine for playability, but I don’t love the theme, perhaps because I am not a horror movie fan and have never seen the Elvia TV show.

It’s Europe, so the collection must include a soccer game:

If you love space, the collection includes Black Hole and Stern’s fascinating innovative Orbitor 1:

With five technicians working in the background, the collection is quite strong on playable older machines. Example:

When you’re done, take the water taxi back to the city center.

Then hit the Markthal:

Where else can one experience great pinball in Europe? The owner suggested Krakow, Poland.

Separately, Rotterdam itself offers a mixture of Western debauchery and Islamic rectitude. A strip club is close to Halal Fried Chicken, for example:

Related:

Full post, including comments

New York Times decries heat island effect as cities sprawl, but also advocates population growth via low-skill immigration

by philg

Every day this summer, the New York Times offers a climate panic story. “Tracking Dangerous Heat in the U.S.” is updated daily and Phoenix is always a dangerous place to be (folks in Atlanta can get away with “Extreme Caution”; South Florida is literally toast):

The same newspaper previously alerted us to the connection between urban growth and oppressive heat. Example from 2018… “5 Ways to Keep Cities Cooler During Heat Waves”:

Cities can be miserable during heat waves. All that concrete and asphalt soaks up the sun’s rays, pushing temperatures up even further. Tall buildings can block cooling breezes. Exhaust from cars and air-conditioners just adds to the swelter.

This is known as the urban heat island effect: A large city’s built-up environment can make it 2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the surrounding countryside during the day and up to 22 degrees warmer at night. That extra heat is becoming a serious public health problem.

More people means bigger cities and bigger cities inevitably will be hotter cities (humans moving around on pavement will never emit less heat than grass). You might think that the natural position for a climate alarmist, therefore, would be to oppose policies that drive population growth, e.g., low-skill immigration, government handouts conditional on having kids, etc. Yet the NYT consistently promotes population growth, especially via open borders. For example, a recent piece from the paper’s in-house Nobel laureate.. “How Immigrants Are Saving the Economy” (Professor Dr. Paul Krugman, Ph.D.):

There are surely multiple reasons. But you may not have heard about one ingredient in the economy’s special sauce: a sudden, salutary rebound in net immigration, which soared in 2022 to more than a million people, its highest level since 2017. We don’t know whether this rebound will last, but it has been really helpful. It’s an exaggeration, but one with some truth, to say that immigrants are saving the U.S. economy.

I’m not sure how net immigration is measured if the undocumented walk across the border and never talk to a Census Bureau worker, but Prof. Krugman is talking about a substantial new city of humans being created every year in the U.S. (for reference, the population of Phoenix per se is 1.6 million).

What about artisanal production of population growth? A June 2023 editorial says that we should ladle out more cash to “families” (usually “single parents”) who do minimal work and choose to have multiple kids. It looks like Americans respond to financial incentives. The middle class is being bred out of existence because they can’t afford family-size housing. Those who don’t work have plenty of kids because the (too-poor-to-have-kids) taxpayers provide them with family-size housing. The rich have kids, but there aren’t enough of them to make a difference in population statistics.

Channeling the spirit of “If you don’t like seeing me naked, you should shop at a different Publix”.. “If you don’t like summer heat waves, why do you advocate for a larger U.S. population?”

I arrived in Pasadena, California last night. I disclosed my plan to walk to dinner to a gal at the front desk. She expressed surprise that anyone would be willing to walk for 10 minutes due to the heat (85 degrees and dry). Separately, after risking heat stroke and/or death, I found that the June 2023 official Pride markings on sidewalks, transformers, and stores (Rainbow-first retail) were all still up.

More photos to follow, but here’s a preview of how city property is decorated in case there is a merchant who does not do his/her/zir/their share:

(This would be illegal in at least some parts of the U.S. ummah: “‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags”)

Related:

Full post, including comments