Divemedic

Complaint

I recently had a complaint made against me at work, which is a rare occurrence. This was a 50 year old woman with a history of diabetes who came in because she had an open wound on her ass. We were admitting her because it was a diabetic sore. When you admit a patient, it takes a couple of hours to secure them a bed and send them upstairs.

She had an A1C of 12.6, meaning that her AVERAGE blood sugar level is 315. At that level, your blood gets thicker, meaning that it can’t perfuse as well, and as a result she had already had one leg amputated. She just isn’t managing her diabetes.

After six hours in the ED, we managed to get her blood sugar down to “only” 177, and had been refusing to feed her because her sugar when she came in was over 400. When I told her she couldn’t eat, she said she would fix that, and took some of her insulin when I wasn’t looking, which caused her blood sugar to drop into the 40’s. Then we had to give her an ampule of dextrose, and it really complicated her care.

She was upset with me that we were sending her upstairs without “fixing the problem” that she came in for. I told her that her problem was caused by her not managing her diabetes, and that continuing to eat sugary foods and not taking her medication would mean losing other body parts, and would eventually kill her. This wound was not something we could “fix” in the ED, and would require a stay in the hospital with specialized wound care nurses working on the wound, and with her constantly trying to eat sweets, it likely would never completely heal.

So she complained about me for being rude. My boss agreed with me, and told me that sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth that they need to hear.

By Divemedic, ago

Builders

We called the builder to complain that the sink in the upstairs bathroom had no hot water, only cold. The bathtub that is right next to the sink has hot water, though. So after a couple of weeks, a plumber shows up. He runs the water in the sink for a couple of minutes, then declares that the sink is piped incorrectly. He says that he will have to cut into the drywall to get at the pipes and will need the boss’ permission to do it. He says he will be back.

An hour later, he returned with a second plumber. They said that they would be cutting into the drywall to repipe the sink. I have a complete set of photos of what the house looks like without drywall in place. I show them where the pipes are, and they cut a 2′ square hole in the kitchen ceiling. In the wrong spot. They are mystified when they wind up under the upstairs air conditioning plenum.

I again point out to them that they are in the wrong spot. This time, they cut where I tell them the pipes are. There is the hot water pipe, and they tell me that the pipe was mislabeled during construction. They then cut a third hole so they can tap off of the bathtub’s hot water.

The sink upstairs still doesn’t have hot water at that point. They keep trying to figure it out. At this point, they have been at it for over 4 hours. There are three giant holes in my kitchen ceiling. There is insulation raining down all over the kitchen. My house is in a shambles. We can’t use the kitchen.

I asked them if they checked to see if the faucet is bad. They looked at me like I was a moron, so I continued: “What if there was some construction debris in the pipe, and it made its way to the faucet’s hot water valve, clogging the valve.” They asked how I would figure that out. I replied: turn off the cold water valve under the sink. If the faucet still works, it’s piped wrong. If the sink doesn’t work, it’s the faucet.

It was the faucet.

They plumbers apologized profusely and said that their boss would call me to figure out how to repair my ceiling. This is what it looks like.

I understand that mistakes happen, so I call the builder. He tells me that it’s a warranty issue, says he will put in a work order, and according to the warranty documents that I agreed to at closing, they have up to 15 business days to repair it. They will, he tells me, get to it “when they get to it.”

I tell him that he needs to do a better job of reading the warranty. A warranty item is described as a “defect in materials or workmanship that occurred during construction of the home.” This didn’t happen during construction. It happened because his subcontractors were incompetent morons. This means that it is a claim for their insurance, and they have exactly one week to get it fixed. If it isn’t, I am going to hire someone to fix it myself, then I will sue them to collect my costs.

I can’t use my kitchen. There is drywall dust everywhere. We are finding blown in insulation all over the house, because when the plumbers tried to clean the insulation that had fallen from the ceiling, the shop vac they used just blew it everywhere. That cardboard patch that is duct taped to the ceiling in the picture below? It fell off 15 minutes after they left.

Now every time we open a door or the air conditioner comes on, insulation falls from the holes. Bugs crawl in at night. So I got some pieces of cardboard and attached them to the ceiling using staples from my nail gun. These are essentially holes that open my house to the outside.

I am more than a bit pissed off about this. If it isn’t fixed by Monday, I will start calling my own drywall guys and an attorney. This is complete and utter bullshit. I’m not nearly as mad about the plumbers fucking up as I am about the attitude of the warranty supervisor. You handle things like this by saying “I am so sorry this happened. Let me tell you what we are going to do to fix this. It will be a priority item for us, and I will see how quickly I can get someone out to help you. In the meantime, one of us will be over right away to secure your home from the elements.”

What you don’t say is “I don’t control the drywall company’s schedule. I will put in a work order and they will get to it when they get to it.”

In the meantime, posting may or may not be sporadic as I deal with this and still have to go to work to pay the mortgage on my now trashed house.

By Divemedic, ago

Earthquake in NJ, just outside of NYC

An earthquake of magnitude 4.7 just hit New Jersey at about 10:30 this morning. The center is in Readington Township, about 30 miles west of New York City. My brother in law, who lives about 80 miles north of the epicenter, said that it was enough to feel the walls shake in his apartment. He lives in a two story building and said the walls were shaking.

A friend of ours who is a banking executive in NYC said he thought that the furnace in the house had exploded.

By Divemedic, ago

Everyone Gets Paid for Everything, or Nothing

People have lost their minds and think that they should get money because they want it. Now some stupid whore has decided that, because she got cream pied by some random dude at a college frat party kegger, that businesses or someone should pay her because she is having to care for her crotch fruit.

“I think that at the very least, stay-at-home parents should earn the equivalent of working full-time on minimum wage,” she tells Yahoo Life about what inspired her to make the video. “In Michigan, this would be about $1,600 a month. However, I think to really make this work you should offer all parents either a monthly [stay-at-home parent] stipend or a voucher for free daycare. This would allow parents to have more freedom to make the decision that will work best for their family without sacrificing their career, if they would like to continue working.”

Say what? Then she doubles down:

Whether working outside the home or inside the home, we are all raising our children. However, only the parents working outside of the home are being compensated for the time spent working.

I just can’t fight the stupidity any longer.

By Divemedic, ago

Hazards of Batteries

There have been people who are saying that solar is unsafe because the batteries present a safety hazard. I was trying to keep the discussion here a simple one and not get bogged down in minutiae, but there are always people who want to make a simplified discussion more involved and complicated than it needed to be. Remember when I said that there was a lot of misinformation and outright bullshit out there?

If you don’t want to read this long post, you can refer to the CPSC page on solar system fires. Or you can read my lengthy research on the subject:

A little bit on my background. First, I was a Navy Electrician’s mate. I spent six years being professionally trained on high voltage electrical systems. I didn’t work with batteries, but I did work with a lot of electricl stuff. No, I am not an engineer, but I still have the basics.

Second, I spent decades as a firefighter. I have Bachelor’s degrees in Fire Science, in Public Safety Administration, (even though it doesn’t apply here, Nursing), and am a couple of classes shy of a degree in Chemistry. I am also certified in HAZMAT to the operations level as a result of my time as a firefighter. Yeah, I was trying to become a Battalion Chief, and I was actively working towards that, so I took a lot of college.

Let’s take a look at fire incidents involving batteries. Fire departments in the United States track fires throughout the US using the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS). Every time a fire department responds to any incident, they file a report that sends data to this system. Every kind of fire is tracked, including those by batteries. This has created a huge database. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) is the industry group that publishes fire protection information. The NFPA sets the standards that battery manufacturers in the US must follow, and that standard is NFPA 855.

Lithium battery fires are caused by a phenomenon called thermal runaway. In these situations, the increased temperature in the battery triggers it to raise temperatures even higher. As a result, the battery may become too hot to touch, smoke, catch fire, eject gas, or explode. As with any battery, a solar battery could potentially cause a fire if it overheats. But the top brands have strict quality control and are very quick to do a recall if something is found to go wrong, which is incredibly rare.

The type of lithium-ion battery can make a difference, too. There are different chemistries that are used in lithium-ion batteries, for example lithium cobalt oxide or lithium iron phosphate, and some are better than others when it comes to the risk of overheating. The safest in this regard and least likely to experience thermal runaway, is lithium iron phosphate. LiFePO4 batteries are also the most durable.

The other key to ensuring safety is to make sure everything is installed correctly and that the various components of your solar system are compatible. In particular, the charge controller that manages the power flowing from your solar panels into the battery: an incorrectly sized charge controller won’t protect your battery from overcharging properly and could potentially lead to problems.

To ensure the safety of your solar power system and property you should only invest in dependable and tested solar lithium-ion batteries from a reputable company that are properly installed by an experienced installer in accordance with the manufacturer’s recommendations. Always research battery brands before purchasing, including their product reliability, testing processes, and reviews.

That is one of the reasons why I decided to go with Tesla Powerwalls and why I won’t install it myself. I don’t have the experience with battery systems to the point where I trust myself to avoid a redneck engineering situation where I put together a system that works, but creates a fire hazard.

The Risk

What are the odds of an installed lithium battery catching fire? While the NFIRS system doesn’t track fires in lithium batteries versus other kinds of batteries, it does have pretty good statistics involving battery fires in general. Nearly every fire that I could find involving a lithium battery was in a cell phone, e-bike, or e-cigarette. These sorts of small batteries present fire hazards because they are small batteries where space is at a premium, and they are not properly vented due to those size constraints. Different type of issue than the larger batteries seen in EVs and large scale storage batteries.

Factors in battery fires are easy to track. Overcharging these smaller lithium batteries is the cause of these fires. According to the CPSC, approximately 54% of residential fires involving batteries resulted from overcharging or charging with incompatible chargers. In other words, people charging their e-cigarette, e-scooter, or e-bike with a cheap Chinese charger that they bought at Dollar General.

The CPSC reported that 18% of battery-related residential fires were caused by physical damage to the device. Not going to be an issue with a battery that is in a sturdy enclosure that is bolted to the wall. The NFPA states that approximately 20% of battery-related home fires resulted from improper storage conditions.

That’s 92 percent of all battery related fires being caused by improper charging, improper handling, or improper storage. This simply isn’t going to be an issue with a professionally installed home battery system.

Outside of that there are a few EV fires, and one other incident in a town called Surprise, Arizona. I searched every database that I could, and found a very few fires involving large storage batteries.

So avoiding all of the media hype, just what are the statistics involving batteries and fires?

  • Each year, there are about 9,300 fires that occur in the United States.
  • Tesla alone sells about a million EVs each year. There were 44 electric vehicle fires in 2023.
  • In total, there were 390 fires, explosions, overheating, or incidents of venting involving batteries of all kinds in the US in 2023, but once you remove the smaller batteries as discussed above, that drops to less than 100.
  • Worldwide, Underwriter’s Laboratories reports that there have been 51 injuries and 4 fatalities from large storage batteries since they began tracking them in 1995.
  • Considering that there are about 2 million homes in the US with solar storage batteries in them, seeing 100 fires per year means that the risk is extremely low: about 1 in 20,000.
  • The batteries in energy storage systems (ESSs) predominantly use safer lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry, compared with the nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) technology found in EVs.
  • The failure rate of lithium batteries is about 1 in 40 million.
  • LFP cell failure results in less energy release and a lower probability of fire. A LFP battery that fails is more likely to smoke than it is to catch fire.

So yes, about 1 in 100 fires in the US involves a large battery of some kind, with the majority of those being EV battery fires, and one known case of a home storage battery causing a fire in the past 5 years. The risk of a solar battery fire is exceedingly low, but it is possible.

What if A Battery Does Catch Fire?

The National Fire Sprinkler Association is an industry trade group that is responsible for tracking how fire sprinklers put out fires. This is a great resource for fires involving lithium batteries. While it is true that there have been several high profile incidents involving lithium batteries, the incidence of them is rare, as discussed above. That brings us to our next point:

A second statement was that Lithium fires are impossible to put out, so fire departments don’t even waste their time with them. That’s a surprise to me, after spending more than 30 years as a firefighter. The metal fires that gave me fits were magnesium fires. There are certain brands of cars that use magnesium in their transmissions that are hard to put out, and I hated car fires involving them.

One of the problems that I saw with vehicle fires in general is that many firefighters have trouble putting them out. The fire is usually in an area protected from water, and lobbing water on the roof or hood of a car from 30 feet away isn’t effective at putting out a fire in the engine or transmission. You need to get to the source of the fire for any sort of firefighting to be effective.

Still, let’s look at the available information. The National Fire Protection Association is the fire industry’s main source of research and information on fires and fire prevention. Here is what they have to say on the matter:

Water works just fine as a fire extinguishing medium since the lithium inside of these batteries are a lithium salt electrolyte and not pure lithium metal. Confusion on this topic stems from the fact that pure lithium (like what you see in the table of elements) is highly reactive with water, while lithium salts are non-reactive with water.

However, this is only true of small and EV batteries. I would not recommend fighting a home solar battery fire with water, because a home battery storage system will be energized with some relatively high voltages. Although there are some companies out there that are trying to sell specialized equipment for these fires, most of it looks like hogwash that is designed to steal your money. My bet will be on using dry chem and calling 911.

Conclusion

The risk of fire from solar batteries is rare, and I worry more about an ordinary electrical fire caused by the wiring in the wall or from a stove than I do from the solar or its associated battery system. The battery in my laptop is more likely to cause a fire than a solar battery.

I am not going to worry about it.

By Divemedic, ago

Dyke Cop is an Asshole

Last May, this dyke cop pulls a gun on a man who called 911 after he had another man threaten him with a gun. Here is a short summary of the story.

If you want to know why the cops there are such assholes, simply advance to the 5:20 mark of the video and listen to how the Police Chief addresses the man who was there to file a complaint, then threatens him with yet another arrest.

Finally, after the above video was released, the cops released investigation materials and announced that the cop had been fired. I’m guessing that was because the cops knew at this point that they were in deep shit, so they needed a sacrificial lamb.

Watch the video of her internal affairs interview that includes her body cam footage and hear the following exchange:

LesboCop: “I’m detaining you.”

Guy: “For what crime?”

LesboCop: “Because you don’t want to listen.”

Guy: “That’s not a crime. You’re fucked. Are your bodycams on?”

Guy: “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

LeboCop: “Yes I do.”

and therein lies the problem. Cops think that because they have a badge and a gun, that they are our masters whose commands must be obeyed. Before you get into the whole “resisting an officer” thing, you should note that a person can’t resist an officer in the LAWFUL performance of their duties. If what the officer is doing is unlawful, there can be no crime for resisting them. We know that what she did was unlawful, because the cops admitted to that when they fired her for her unlawful actions.

She yells for him to drop the phone, then draws a gun on him when he refuses. There is nothing here that would indicate that drawing a firearm on him was appropriate. Watch her body cam video. He obeyed every one of her commands. Her problem was that he wasn’t showing the proper amount of deference and boot licking.

As soon as they display that they are treating you as a suspect, you should immediately say, “I am not answering any questions without a lawyer present.” Then shut the fuck up. There is no reason to EVER talk to a cop. The risks are too high.

She claims that she acted this way because someone on scene may have had a gun, and she wasn’t sure who had it. Her excuse?

“It’s never easy when you know there is a gun out there.”

Note that she never searched the guy who she was so concerned was armed that she drew down on him and placed him in cuffs, yet once they got to the guy who DID have a gun and matched the description of the guy with the gun, they didn’t draw on him. This wasn’t about a gun- this was about demanding that people kiss their ass because they are so brave. Now that we have permitless carry in Florida, expect unhinged cops like this to get worse.

This slot licking dyke then makes fun of the man’s nail polish and later tells her sergeant on camera: “Fuck that guy.” Totally unprofessional and unhinged. She is then asked by the sergeant: “Did anyone go talk to the other party?” (you know, the guy who actually DID have the gun that she was claiming as the cause of her unhinged behavior?) and she replied that no one had yet done so.

Then the guy who had brandished the gun had his gun taken and was allowed to leave the scene without charges. You know why? Because the cops don’t care if you commit a crime, as long as you lick the boots.

Why do I keep mentioning that the cop is a dyke? Because she was fired as a result of her unhinged handling of this incident, and is now claiming that she was fired because she is a lesbian. By the end of the interview, she began crying and blamed her behavior on stress and adrenaline, proving that she doesn’t have the temperament to be a cop.

To the supervisor’s credit, he drove the victim to Red Lobster, bought him lunch, then took him home. Why? Because they knew that they had fucked up.

Every other cop that was there is a bad cop. The department found that this cop violated the law and department procedure to the point that she was fired. Every other cop who was there should have received discipline for seeing her behavior and not only standing there, but actively assisting her in depriving this man of his rights- they left him in handcuffs for over four hours, despite them knowing that he hadn’t violated the law. Not only that, the dyke falsified his arrest report. There should be criminal charges here.

This was a bad cop, and everyone knew it. She used her police database access to stalk her lesbian lover’s ex, she left her department issued AR-15 in her patrol car, which was burglarized and the rifle stolen, and she had a previous incident exactly like the one that is the subject of this post. Despite all of this, she was allowed to keep her job earning over $100K per year.

When they finally did talk to the guy with the gun, the guy was allowed to sit in a chair and calmly answer questions. Security video showed that the guy with the gun was the aggressor. The dyke was calm and bordering on kind to the guy with the gun.

She then turned off her body camera. I maintain that any cop who turns off the body camera during an investigation, that investigation should by law be considered in automatically result in the cops entire testimony be disregarded.

This guy’s mistake was in calling the cops. At this point, they are to be considered to be unpredictable loose cannons who are just as likely to make a situation worse as they are to solve the problem. I can’t imagine a reason for calling the cops at this point.

He has filed a Federal lawsuit against the officer and the Palm Beach Gardens police department. He filed a lawsuit after moving to Chicago, where he claims that it is safer.

On a side note that speaks to tactics- These cops were so focused on the guy who was arguing with them, that they ignored the reported gun that was on scene, even though they had been called about an armed individual. An ambusher could have wiped out all three of these idiots. That detail may be important someday.

By Divemedic, ago

Hey You, Get Out of the Gene Pool

A man shot is roommate on accident when he thought that they were doing a “vigilance drill” to test each other’s reactions.

The roommates confirmed that they often conduct “drills” to stay vigilant in their surroundings by trying to get the jump on each other. Usually, the guns are not loaded, or they use nonfunctioning rounds, officials said.

This is one of those times when I think that we should just let this sort of stupidity play itself out, if for no other reason than to clean up the gene pool. Since when do you surprise each other with stupid assed stunts like this while using live, loaded weapons?

By Divemedic, ago

Basic Electricity & Solar

In order to have a discussion about electricity in general and solar in particular, we need to define a few terms. (You engineer types, this is simplified. I am trying to keep things easy to understand, so spare me the discussion about how holes move. I am also excluding things like power factor, vectors, and other things that needlessly complicate the discussion.) There is a glossary at the bottom of this article.

The Basics

Your house gets power from the grid as alternating current, delivered at 60 hertz. There are two current carrying lines and a “return” line that enter your home from the grid. They are referred to as 2 “hot” lines and a neutral. The voltage as measured between either hot and the neutral is about 117 volts. If measured between the 2 hot lines, it’s about 235 volts. In this way, we can power smaller loads like light fixtures or televisions with a hot and a neutral. We power larger loads like water heaters, stoves, clothes dryers, and the like with 2 hot wires.

Your typical house circuit has a breaker that is either 15 or 20 amps. Any more than that, and the breaker will trip to prevent fires. (They can trip for other reasons, too, but that is beyond the scope of this article) Large 235 volt circuits may deliver up to 50 amps before tripping. If your home is new and like most homes, the total of all of the circuits in your house will be 200 amps. That works out to a maximum power of about 47 kilowatts. For short periods of time, like when your air conditioning compressor first starts, some circuits can use even more power than that.

So now that we know our house can use a maximum sustained amount of power that is equal to about 47 kilowatts, we can plan for our backup power needs. Now we need to know how much power we use each day. My utility has supplied my house with a “smart” electric meter. On average, my house is using about 25 kilowatt hours per day. During the summer, when the air conditioner is running, I am guessing we will double that. Maybe more. We will wait until July comes around before we make any decision, so we have a better idea of what our cooling will cost us.

How Solar Works

How solar works is that photovoltaic (PV) panels convert the light striking them into electric current. Nowadays, each panel puts out about 400 watts when new. (Panels lose about 0.25% of their power output each year as they age. After the 25 year warranty period, they should still be producing more than 93% of their rated power.) The power produced by those cells is direct current at about 40 volts. It needs to be changed to alternating current that matches the incoming grid power, and this is accomplished by an inverter.

Your solar system can produce more power than your home is using, and that excess power can run your electric meter backwards, effectively selling that power to the utility. At night, or when it is cloudy, your solar system doesn’t produce as much, and you buy power from the grid. If you size your system correctly, you will produce at least as much as you consume, thereby making your bill as close to nothing as possible. (Sadly, the local utility won’t let you run a negative bill. In fact, the least that your bill can be is $30 per month.)

So let’s proceed with the assumption that we consume 50 KWh per day in the summer, and about 25 KWh in the winter. With Florida being as sunny as it is, we can count on 4 hours per day on average of sun year round, and 6 hours per day in the summer. (This accounts for nighttime, cloudy days, etc. Days in the winter are both shorter and cloudier.) I got the figure of average hours per day of sun from the solar companies. That’s the numbers that they use.

If we want to produce 55 KWh per day during the 6 hours of summer daylight, we need to have a system that produces around 9 KW. That means we need about 23 PV panels in our system, making it a 9KW system. That will give us the 50 KWh that we consume, plus 5KWh additional in case we need it. As you can imagine, some days will be extra sunny and we will have lots of power, and other days, not so much. More on how we deal with that later.

What about grid failures? When the grid goes down, the National Electric Code says that our solar system must disconnect from the line so as not to endanger linemen who may be working on the system. That’s where batteries come in. If your system has solar panels and a battery for storing power, you can get a relay installed that will disconnect your system from the grid, thereby allowing your system to act as its own backup power source. This sort of solar system is known as a hybrid system.

With the system disconnected from the grid, instead of running the meter backwards, it sends 100% of its excess to the batteries. Then at night, our house uses that stored power to keep the lights on. As you can imagine, the battery that does that is large and somewhat expensive. In fact, a battery is half or more of the cost of installing a solar system. Still, the system can’t be used as a whole house backup without a battery.

So our battery should be capable of doing two things: storing 11 or more KWh per day of energy, and delivering large amounts of current for short periods as our air conditioners and the like start up and use more than the PVs can deliver.

One note about battery systems: the battery is the weak spot of the system, and a major part of the expense. Batteries are only warrantied for ten years, and will need to be replaced more often than the rest of the system.

During the day when the grid is still running, your system’s inverter does something smart. It powers your house from the PV cells, then sends some energy to charge your batteries, and the rest gets sent to the grid to run the meter backwards. When the power goes out, the batteries either get charged or supply power to your house, depending on the needs of the moment.

Load Shedding

Wouldn’t it be a good idea to shut off non-essential power drains when the gird is down, so as to conserve battery power? You can do that by turning off circuit breakers to nonessential loads, or you can use a smart breaker box to do it for you. That’s where the SPAN panel comes in. This panel allows you to designate loads as being essential, nice to have, or nonessential. When the grid goes down and your PVs aren’t making enough power to supply everything, the SPAN panel will disconnect the nonessential loads from the system, sacrificing their operation to save battery power. When your batteries have less than half of their charge remaining, the SPAN panel then shuts off the “nice to have” circuits to preserve the remaining battery for things that need it, like refrigerators.

So I think that is enough to get the basics down. Ask questions in the comments.

Glossary

  • Alternating current: The electricity reverses course in a cyclic fashion. The number of cycles per second is measured in Hertz. The electricity delivered by the grid is 60 hertz alternating current.
  • Current is the number of electrons moving past a fixed point. It’s measured in Amps or Amperes.
  • Direct current: All of the electrons move in a fixed direction. DC is the current supplied by batteries.
  • Electricity is simply a measurement of the movement of electrical charges, mostly as carried by electrons.
  • Kilowatts: 1 kilowatt is equal to 1000 watts
  • Kilowatt hour: A measure of how much power is being used over a period of time. 1000 watts for one hour.
  • Voltage (or what is called potential) is the equivalent to water pressure. The higher the voltage, the more “pressure” there is pushing the electrons through.
  • Watts: A measure of power. It is calculated by Volts times Amps= Watts.
By Divemedic, ago