free advice

I ask a lot of questions here, and people readily share their knowledge with me. I am thankful for that.I am not a scientist but I am offering my knowledge of the industry I am in, and I will provide anyone with advice on the following subjects if they need it.Plumbing
Heating (any kind)
Air conditioning
Geothermal
dock building
Boat engines (limited)
Auto (limited)
Model planes, and cars.feel free to email me, or ask me in this thread if you wish. open to all. If your having work done in your house, and your not sure about your contractor, I might be able to give you some consulting, and a free second opinion, limited to actually not being there.I can help with effeciencies, and making sure your getting the most out of your systems. I might even be able to save you money

Why is it that when I flush my toilet the water pressure in my wife's shower reduces to about half? Is that normal? If not is it serious or what can I do to fix it?By the way I can also offer my services in the realm of all things computers both hardware and software. We helped IRH awhile back with his new computer and that was fun.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

I need something to act as a radiator or heat-exchanger for a liquid-cooling system in my computer. It needs to be fairly small, like the size of a VHS tape, maybe. The radiators they sell for this specific purpose cost about 80 bucks.If I were going to scrounge something like that, where's the best place to look? Heater cores from old cars were suggested at one site but those are still too large, I think. I'm sure there's some junkyards and salvage yards in the area but I don't know what kind of junk to start looking in.Also I'm looking for little blocks of pure copper. Any idea where a good place to scrounge some of that would be? Again, looking for something cheap.(CPU watercooling - where plumbing and computers meet.)This message has been edited by crashfrog, 03-29-2006 03:54 PM

An oil cooler from an older sports car. Or contact someone at NCR. They had a line of bookshelf comutpers about a decade or two ago. They were so small that heat dissipation was a major issue. To get around it they had a conformable bag filled with some heat conducting fluid that worked just great.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

It's gotta be something I can pump water (well, either water, or alcohol, or radiator coolant from my car) through. The bag thing doesn't sound like that.I'll check out the oil cooler, though. Never heard of such a thing. Makes sense, though. Hot oil breaks down.

Good thread idea rR.Own areas of some degree of skill:mechanical engineering: electrics, pneumatics, mechanisms, control, hydraulics etcDiy of all sortsMotorcycles and things internal combustionHow to find God Jazzns, I reckon the problem is that the water feed line supplying your wifes shower is the same one which supplies the toilet. When your wifes shower is on then all the water available from that feed line goes to the shower. When you flush the toilet you empty the cistern (stored water container) for the toilet. A valve then opens automatically to refill the cistern. When it does you now have two supplies open from the one line. And so the pressure drops for as long as the cistern is refilling.Solutions:The simplest part-solution is to slow the rate at which your toilet cistern fills. There is probably a isolating valve on the cistern supply (near the cistern most likely but not necessarily) by closing this valve by an amount you'll reduce the amount the cistern robs from your wifes shower when it is filling. There will still be pressure drop but the slower you fill the cistern (the more you close the valve) the less noticeable the pressure drop will be. Of course this means the cistern takes longer to fill but unless there is a queue outside it all the time then this shouldn't be a noticable problemA full solution would be to trace where the cistern feed line connects into the line which is feeding the shower and divert it to some other feed line. If your not conversant with plumbing then you'd probably need to get a plumber in to do this for you but if the piping was accessible its not a lot of work

Hey JazznsI got a new home computer a couple of months back and was given Norton Internet Security with it and a Lexmark printer. The printer software instructions had two things to be followed:1: turn off anti-virus software temporarily (there was none installed at the time so that didn't matter)2: close all Windows (XP) Hardware Wizard first - the software would sort out installation itself. Which I didThe software installed fine. Afterwards I installed Norton and that was fine too. Hunky Dory. The printer has a scanner when choosing where to send a scan to it automatically gave the option of sending the scan to various items of software already on my computer. MS Works was the word processor option I had at the time and this was an option the printer gave. This went fine too.Then I got MS Office cheap from a Microsoft buddy and installed that and uninstalled MS Works. When I went to scan I noticed that the printer still only offered to send the scan to MS Works - not Word (MS Office). So I figured to uninstall the printer software and reinstall it reckoning that it would recognise MS Office as being in place and update that as a option to send the scan to. I noticed too that Office Word wasn't seeing the Lexmark as an installed printer anyway.That were the trouble started.I uninstalled Lexmark software using the add/remove program in XP and deleted a few Lexmark files left over and found by Windows Explorer.I powered down everything and disconnected the printer at the USB and restarted. Then I disabled Norton Internet Security and Anti-Virus as before. Then I connected the printer at the USB and clicked closed the Hardware Wizard prompts that came up - as before.Running the Lexmark installation CD went only 10 seconds through its thing just stopped mid-install and that window closed. Checking Explorer I could see it had loaded a few files but nothing like what was there before. XP gave me a pop up saying Lexmark identified as hardware then another pop up telling me that the software was installed and ready for use. But it didn't work nor could it with only a couple of files loaded (I remembered that there was much more prompting and setting up during Lexmark installation beforeBugger...Then I uninstalled the lot and tried again but the same thing.Then I went into Explorer and looked at what was on the Lexmark disc. I clicked the set up icon and got brief sliding bar showing me more files were being installed then it locked again. So I click set up again and lo and behold all the files installed. The printer is now recognised by Word and can be used from there. Similarly, the printer screen gives me a "send Scan to Word" option which works too. In other words it functions as it shouldThe problem?When I boot up I get a pop up saying "Lexmark 4300" hardware recognised. When I close that, a XP Hardware Wizard window opens telling me there is a problem with the printers software installation and that the hardware won't work properly. When I close that the "Lexmark 4300" pop up pops up again. When I close that the Harware Wizard pops up again. etc etcAny ideas what to do? At the moment I've taken the low tech option of just sliding the wizard window off screen while I use the computer!Ta

You could try the heat exchanger from a domestic combi water boiler if such things exist in the States. These units provide hot water to both central heating and hot water taps on an either one or the other basis. To heat the hot water for the faucet the gas flame first heats the water that will be circulated through the central heating but instead of that hot water being pumped around the house it is diverted by a valve to another smaller, high performance heat exchanger through which cold passes water on its way to you faucet. The faucet water is thus heated by the central heating hot waterIn my own combi unit the heat exhanger is a small item, not much larger than a video cassette. All aluminium for good heat exchanging, it would do the job nicely. Your only problem is to find an old combi heater as I imagine the new cost of this item would be more than $80

See if there are any industrial units being built in your area. Mains electricity is transmitted around the main electrical cabinets on solid copper bars (called "bus bars" here). These can be all sizes from 1/2" x 1/8th" up to (what I've seen anyway) 2" x 1/2". Electrical contractors will usually have off cuts in their vans - just find the store where they frequent at lunch time. Or just keep an eye out for "Industrial Electrical Contractor" vans

Old Computer - Windows 95 - Belongs to InLaws so not close at hand. I don't have the tower details.It won't finish booting up. Gives a HIMEM.SYS error.They had this computer pieced together by someone so there isn't a recovery disk and the bootup disk didn't boot up.Do I need to reload windows 95?
Is there a way to get it to bootup?
What do I need to look at?
Or what info do I need to get to help you help me?It will be a few weeks before I am back down there, so no rush.Thanks

Probably the plumbing was originally piped wrong.It can be fixed, but most likely you would have to open up some walls, unless you can access everything from underneith.The water mains in your house shold be at least 3/4" I.D. (inside diameter). When you feed a fixture off this main, you usually reduce to 1/2" piping. Once you reduce to 1/2" you can only split it once again, before your have to take from the 3/4 main.It's all based on volume in the pipe. When I pipe a house, I always put the toilet on its own branch so that it takes from the 3/4, not the 1/2, and possibly a shared line with the shower.You could repipe the bathroom to do this, or you could just close the valve that feeds your toilet, so that the flow into the toilet isn't so great, and it won't rob your shower of the cold water. If the valve starts to leak a little after closing it part way, take a wrench and tighten the nut behind the handle. This is called the packing nut, and keeps the rubber seal tight sround the stem leading to the handle. Do not over tighten, and make sure you hold back on the pipe as you tight, so you don't twist it off the wall. Be extra careful if your plumbing is old.Also the newer shower valves are thermatic, and wouldn't let this happen either, as they automatically adjust hot and cold flow rates to maintain the same tempurature no matter what the temp of the water, or flow of the water coming in is. If someone shut the cold off completely, the hot would stop as well.

I was going to suggest a heater core from a small car.An oil cooler will be the same size or bigger.You could make your own out of heat sinks from electric mosfets and copper tubing by drilling through the heat sinks and putting the tubing through it with dielectric grease, then put a fan to blow over it, controled by a thermostat. I might even have some here, I would give them to you.What size tubing do you have running through your cpu? 3/8"?I also build my own computers.*edit*Oh, the copper blocks, try looking in a local scrap yard, they always have strange things there, and you can get them cheap.Aluminum blocks will be easier to find.This message has been edited by riVeRraT, 03-30-2006 08:25 AM

That is a bit of a tough one. This is what I would do with my computer but keep in mind that I don't care if I screw things up because reinstalling an entire system doesn't bother me.If you have windows xp I would check your restore points and see if you have one before you installed the printer. Before you go back make sure you set a restore point to your current state. Revert back to the restore point before installing the printer and try installing it again. You should find some good resources on how to do this by googling around a bit.If that doesn't work you probably need to get a little tougher with your system. See if you can find a registry cleaner. Back in the day I think I remember one called 'regclean' but you should get plenty of hits for some. Once again before you do this set a restore point if you can. Uninstall your printer and run the registry cleaner. Try reinstalling your printer being sure not to let windows hardware do the install for you. Let the software that comes with your printer do it. To make sure windows isn't trying to do to much for you install the printer software and drivers before you reconnect your printerLet me know if any of that works.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Wow. Windows 95. My first suggestion would be to stop using windows 95 but then again that error may not be a software error.There are 2 causes of that problem. 1 is a corrupt Himem.sys file. The other is bad physical memory.To eliminate the physical memory as a problem what you need to do is see if the computer will boot off of a floppy or cdrom. You can seach around the web for a windows boot disk and specifically find a windows 95 disk if possible because it may contain an extra copy of himem.sys that you can use to replace yours if it isn't a physical memory problem.If your computer boots off the disk just fine then you can try deleting and replacing the himem.sys file. If your boot disk doesn't have one you can usually find them on the web and add it to your boot disk. If you don't know the commands it will probably be:del c:\windows\himem.sys
cp a:\himem.sys c:\windows\himem.sysAssuming that those are the locations of your old and new himem.sys files respectivly.If your computer DOES NOT boot of the disk then you need to replace the memory. Look up the type of computer it is at DRAM, Solid State Drive (SSD) & Memory Upgrades | Crucial.com and it will usually tell you what kind of ram you need. If it is that old then getting that type of ram might be hard.If your computer DOES boot off the disk but you are unable to replace the himem.sys or replacing it doesn't do anything then you need to reinstall the operating system. At that point I think you should(nt) download some filesharing software such as bearshare and you definitly should(nt) try to download a windows 98 install iso. You definitily should(nt) burn that iso and install an non-licenced copy of proprietary software on a computer because that is piracy. =){ABE} added () around the nt's if you get my drift.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

I could still have in my possession had I chosen to, but didn't, a 1930s Underwood manual typewriter that worked great. Had there never been a computer revolution I have no doubt that this massive built-like-a-tank contraption would have gone on working for at least another century. There are many of us still around whose attitudes concerning how long something should last are rooted in this bygone era.My wife's cell phone broke a couple weeks ago. The cover hinge broke and it would no longer close, the technicians said it couldn't be repaired. The phone was only a couple years old and I was already unhappy that the phone wasn't more sturdy, but then I discovered that the long-life batteries we had invested in would not fit any of the new phones. The nice twerp who helped us said that if we're gonna use cell phones then we have to expect to replace everthing every year or two. My lawyer advises me not to discuss anything that happened after that. I'm guessing that PD's inlaws aren't happy at the prospect that a computer cobbled together from parts only 10 years old might be ready for the junkyard, but while I understand how they might feel, I think they'd be much better off and suffer much less grief with a cheapie from Best Buy or even Sam's. Likely this himem.sys problem is not the last problem this ancient computer is going to suffer. Maybe PD will fix it (your advice was wonderful, by the way, I couldn't believe you were familiar with the problem, and your instructions were clear and easy to follow) and it will go on to give no one a lick of trouble - hey, miracles do happen! - but I'd bet against it.--Percy