Fluke 87V - any reason not to buy?

How do you recognize an Arizonan? When he says "But it's a dry heat ..."

In an hour I am starting my 2nd attempt to whack the ice cover on the steep driveway because I need to get to a client tomorrow, after being more or less stuck here in the house since Sunday. Wish me luck. This morning I heard a neighbor somewhere trying the same, then started up the car, put in gear, release brake ... ka-crunchah ... ka-chrunch ... phsssseeeee ... *CRUNCH* ... sounded like it's sitting in a frozen snow bank now.

Saves us from feeling terrible in the heat, but makes cold _really_ cold :-(

I ought to add a humidifier to this house, but they're a pain to maintain.

You don't have any ice salt? ...Jim Thompson

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Yeah, I don't like to do it because it's bad for the environment but I just pelted the driveway with salt. Hopefully does the trick and gives us a window. That window closes in minutes when the sun goes past that driveway and the melting runoff re-freezes to black ice in minutes. Happened yesterday. I was nearly at the bottom and wanted to go back up for a break, and almost couldn't.

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I see that you understood me well. 58F is too crispy for me to get up without an emergency. I suggest at least two more cords. And more pellets. ISTR your place was decently insulated, but the cold snap has just been extreme.

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This may sound weird but try taking a leaf blower to it.

None that I know of.

I've had one for two years, in daily use. Even when I've got fancy HP bench meters within reach, I tend to pick it up in preference.

I'm thinking about getting a second one.

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To a 2" ice cover? Well, I got it to go away, mostly, by whacking it with a shovel, shoveling the ice sheets aside and dumping salt onto the surface. The ice shattered with a noise like glass.

The home is well insulated but the windows aren't. Single pane, albeit thick glass. However, yesterday at the client I found that one of the engineers had just replaced it on his whole house with dual-pane. $30k! Our house has a lot more windows and sliders :-(

IOW, there ain't no chance at all to recoup that sort of investment.

Ouch. We had a similar job done a few years ago - one-story ranch-style, two big patio glass double-doors, big dual-pane sliding windows in three bedrooms and the kitchen, plus a couple of bathroom windows. We had low-emission double-pane glass installed, with extra-thick used in the master bedroom and attached bath. The total came to just a bit over $5k.

As far as comfort goes, though, it's a real win. The house feels a lot snugger in winter, and significantly cooler during the hot days of summer (it was well-insulated in other respects when we bought it).

I think it's the best investment we've made in the place.

Shop around... you may find that you can get good-quality double-pane windows installed for rather less than what your cow-orker paid.

Do you remember which brand and who the installer company was (if nationwide)? I am in Northen California. Which sometimes feels like Siberia lately ...

Ok, will do. I've heard that the Pella brand is good but I can't ask the friend who had those installed over here because he passed away :-(

Both Pella and Andersen were top rated when I looked into it, many moons ago - 1979. AFAIK they still are. In the meantime, have you ever thought of using that plastic heat shrink sheeting that you install on the inside? When we bought the house, the windows leaked like a sieve, and there was no money to replace. So we used that stuff for several winters until we saved enough for new windows. The stuff worked great! MUCH more comfortable. The stuff comes with plastic tracks with self-stick tape on them. Peel the tape, install the tracks. Put the sheet up and press it into the groove in the tracks with a T shaped piece of plastic trim that goes into the groove. Then heat and you get a nice tight wrinkle free transparent look. You can't open the windows, so if warm days come and you want air, you have to use the doors. Other than that, there's no downside to using it, at least none that I encountered.

Ed

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Oops. I was thinking small fractional inch.

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I would not make that decision quite so quickly, dual pane low-E can=20 make a big difference in HVAC costs. Ask a "Pro" and reduce the=20 promised savings 50%. Also insist on documentation on the nature =20 and issues of any proposed savings of "rebates".

That's a problem out here. If mounted on the outside the fierce winds we have will tear it away. Insides there's the paws of three dogs, two of them a tad on the wild side at times. We have to clean the slider glass almost weekly, paw prints inside and out.

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Oh yeah, we will be very careful. It seems there are quite some "inconsistencies" and wild swings in this business when it comes to pricing. As for HVAC, we don't use AC much in the summer. It's the wood stove that has to crank so darn hard in winter because it seems to get colder every winter.

On several of our big windows we have "roll-a-shields", somewhat like I've seen in Europe to close off store fronts at night.

Ours, of course, are electric-powered, but you might prefer hand-cranked ;-)

We close ours when the sun is on the north side of the house (15' x

Quite effective... the slats are composite layers of aluminum-foam-aluminum. ...Jim Thompson

We had that in Germany, real heavy duty stuff. However, even people in town can't believe the winds we get up here on this knoll until they've experienced them. Heavy chairs becoming airborne and so on. Would tear this stuff right out of its tracks and then on into the road.

Now how does the sun get to the _north_ of your house? Did they move Arizona south of the equator? Habla Espanol por ahora?

The recent microburst that sent the patio furniture careening didn't do anything to the roll-a-shield... I know it was a microburst... it completely flipped over a garbage container _within_ our walled-off garbage container area :-(

You don't understand summer/winter tilt ?:-)

It doesn't get north by much... just enough. ...Jim Thompson

Umm, Phoenix is 33N. The highest latitude where the sun would be overhead (Winter solstice) is 23.5N.

If by not much you mean -10degrees. ;-)

OTOH, at higher latitudes the summer sun rises/sets quite far to the north of due east/west.