The Official Pleasing Purchase Thread

[gremlin]

Weight rack (or squat rack, half rack, half cage...call it what you will)

Been looking for a while and during lockdown prices went bloody silly as the gyms closed. Found a fella who makes gym equipment, emailed him and he came back with some CAD designs, we had a bit of tweaking on dimensions and stuff, but really good quality. Not silly expensive either.

rack.jpg (72.54 KiB) Viewed 1018 times

More photos on his FB page a little way down. Highly recommended and I've asked him to design a punchbag mount as the one I have is crap.
https://www.facebook.com/TRaxgymequipment/

[ZRX61]

Well poop. The touch screen on my Akaso had shit the bed when I went to put it on the bike this morning. It's previously had a very short test ride on the bike & 2 days of use in the Camaro without issue. The only thing visibly working today was the blue power light on the lower left rear of the case.

As the default setting of the camera is video I decided to see if it was actually working even though there's no way to tell. except the blue power light flashes when it's recording, so off I went & hoped for the best.
It recorded perfect video's* except the sound really fucking sucks inside the plastic case, (which admittedly is for diving) its just loud buzzing instead of melodious Muzzy Megaphone bellowing.

Luckily it has a 1 year warranty, already emailed them, they're actually pretty easy to deal with.

*it automatically cut's off & starts a new video after a certain amount of memory on the card has been used, so far it looks like about 30minute segments.

Saw some guy by a HD laying in the middle of the Westbound 101 freeway on the way home as I was headed East. Bike was upright, people were standing by the guy. I guess that explains the CHP Ford Exploder that I had just lane split past as he crawled along in traffic headed that direction

[Mr. Dazzle]

How much do you get through? I suppose you can't tell yet

Dude reckons about 25kg a quarter for a family of three. The softener he's proposing is online and tells you how much water you've got through and how much salt it's used. He showed me averaged data for people in our area to support that 25kg claim.

We used 25kg in the first week.....although after testing the incoming water, the plumber had set the softener way harder than it needed to be. People will say they use 25kg a month, roughly, my sister gets through a bag a week in a very similar hardness area.

So... i guess somewhere between 1 bag a week and 1 bag a month... lol

Had our softener in exactly a week now

Our water is 310ppm, for reference anything over 150ppm is classed as 'very hard'. I was a little surprised to learn there is not a legal maximum in the UK.

A week in and it hasnt actually used any salt! We get 1800 litres of water before the resin bed has to 'regen' and use some salt up. Currently we're averaging 240 litres a day, so we've not got through the 1800. The app currently predicts 142 days before more salt is needed.

We're still not reaping the full benefit, we've got the older style cold water tank in the loft to feed the hot water system. That tank is still a mixture of hard and soft water, I tested the hot water today and its still 90ppm which would considered hard.

[Wreckless Rat]

How much do you get through? I suppose you can't tell yet

Dude reckons about 25kg a quarter for a family of three. The softener he's proposing is online and tells you how much water you've got through and how much salt it's used. He showed me averaged data for people in our area to support that 25kg claim.

We used 25kg in the first week.....although after testing the incoming water, the plumber had set the softener way harder than it needed to be. People will say they use 25kg a month, roughly, my sister gets through a bag a week in a very similar hardness area.

So... i guess somewhere between 1 bag a week and 1 bag a month... lol

Had our softener in exactly a week now

Our water is 310ppm, for reference anything over 150ppm is classed as 'very hard'. I was a little surprised to learn there is not a legal maximum in the UK.

A week in and it hasnt actually used any salt! We get 1800 litres of water before the resin bed has to 'regen' and use some salt up. Currently we're averaging 240 litres a day, so we've not got through the 1800. The app currently predicts 142 days before more salt is needed.

We're still not reaping the full benefit, we've got the older style cold water tank in the loft to feed the hot water system. That tank is still a mixture of hard and soft water, I tested the hot water today and its still 90ppm which would considered hard.

Intrigued to which softener you have?

Water here is rock 'ard.

To help set your domestic appliances, the water hardness in different units is:
488 mg/l (or parts per million) :Calcium Carbonate
195.2 mg/l (or parts per million) :Calcium
33.965 °C :Degrees Clark
48.8 °F :Degrees French
27.718 °dH :Degrees German
4.88 mmol/l :Millimoles

[Mr. Dazzle]

Its an Ecowater something or other....second from bottom on there domestic range.

TBH we bought it based on the dealer rather than the unit. He gets 9.9/10 on Checkatrade with a few hundred reviews, which is why we contacted him initially.

He turned up on time, no hard sell. Price he quoted for the unit itself was £200 less than you can buy them for for DIY fitment. He is a one man business clearly just keeping going until he can retire in a few years time. Fitted a new stop cock (previous one had seized solid) and also changed the cold water tank valve FOC then rearranged the under sink plumbing to fix the previous owners DIY bodging FOC too.

There are deffo cheaper units out there but he doesn't fit them because "I can't be bothered with coming back in a few years".

Besides....if I'm buying a 10 quid bag of salt once a quarter rather than once a week it'll pay the difference in no time

[Wreckless Rat]

I suspect there is fuck all difference in the salt usage between all metered units with same hardness water and same useage.

Your water at 310ppm is soft as fuck compared to mine

From the research I done - the two main points are metered rather than timed, and modern resin beads, which are all the same - unless they are of an old design.

Will be interesting how much you use, although if you’ve had it a week and your water is still hard, I’d be wondering if it’s turned up enough.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Only the hot is still hard, but its coming down. The cold water tank in the loft started out full of hard water, the 'new' water thats added to it is soft so it will taper down....the tank is about 800 litres I think (dunno why they make 'em so big?) and we probably only only use 50-100 litres of hot water a day. Currently its about 90ppm, down from 300.

Cold is fully soft, at least to the limits the little liquids coloured test kit can tell.

I was curious to see if there's a formula or anything which estimates salt usage...doesn't seem to be. I dunno if its like a squared law or what. The unit has been told the ppm, so it seems to work it out for itself. There's no "more salt/less salt" option.

[Wreckless Rat]

Tbh - I don’t care that much. If it’s a bag a month, which is about what most people say they use, it’s worth every penny for soft water.

So far we use a bag every 3-4weeks, and my missus washes every fucking bit of clothing, bed sheets, towels etc like we are all carrying the plague, I’m sure she is OCD, but it keeps her happy

[ZRX61]

New Akaso camera showed up & fucked one shipped back, plus this spiffy set of handy things showed up... It will go in the drawer with my ovary snatcher & things of that ilk.


The extendable bendable light doohicky is well spiffy

[ZRX61]

New battery charger (car/bike), decided to see if it could revive my car battery & after a moment of diagnostics it basically said "it's buggered".. which I already knew owing to the 4.2v it showed on my AVO.
So Thursday's pleasing purchase will be a new battery.

Something odd about the way batteries behave in this car. They're just fine for ages & then will totally shit the bed. The current one did it over night, the previous one did it while I was gassing up at Costco in the space of maybe 3 minutes (on October 11th 2017 apparently)

[weeksy]

3 years isn't very long for a battery

[lostboy]

A Waterman Expert fountain pen. Not the flashiest or expensive but just so smooth to write with.

[ZRX61]

3 years isn't very long for a battery

Bosch brand, bloody krauts...

[Mr. Dazzle]

3 years isn't very long for a battery

Bosch brand, bloody krauts...

Clearly got an 'I'm not fitted to a German car' premature failure generator included. The Bosch battery in my Beemer is the OE one which is 9 years old.

[ZRX61]

Used the replacement Akaso camera today, screen crapped out before I got to the end of my street. Camera got REALLY hot. Akaso got a fairly pointed email & a shredding on Amazon. No longer officially pleased.

[formula400]

These Oakley’s. Seriously great in today’s sun

[slowsider]

These Oakley’s. Seriously great in today’s sun

Not seeing any patisserie there

[formula400]

These Oakley’s. Seriously great in today’s sun

Not seeing any patisserie there

posted before but here you go

Amedei Chocolate mousse, almond praline by lewis wilson, on Flickr

[ZRX61]

Still waiting on the 2nd replacement camera which was supposed to show up yesterday. This is what tracking shows.. apparently it repeated yesterdays journey from Chino to Lancaster again today...

TRACKING HISTORY

Sunday, January 24th

6:14 AM

Out for delivery

Lancaster, CA

6:03 AM

Parcel arrived at a carrier facility

Lancaster, CA, US

3:41 AM

Tendered to local postal carrier for final delivery

Lancaster, CA, US

1:20 AM

Package departed an Amazon facility

Chino, California, US

Saturday, January 23rd

3:42 AM

Parcel arrived at a carrier facility

Lancaster, CA, US

3:41 AM

Tendered to local postal carrier for final delivery

Lancaster, CA, US

1:42 AM

Parcel left the carrier facility

Chino, CA, US

1:26 AM

Package departed an Amazon facility

Chino, California, US

Friday, January 22nd

11:05 PM

Package arrived at an Amazon facility

Chino, California, US

7:13 PM

Shipment has left seller facility and is in transit to carrier

[slowsider]

Does your occupation have any bearing on your choice of location?