Telephones... then and now

[ultrarunner]

If its still working, sometimes its hard to justify getting rid of it. The power savings is significant, but will it cover the cost of a new one?

Hmmm, if only there was a calculator that could help you find out how much an old fridge is costing you in electricity, and how that extra energy production is affecting the environment....

hahahhaha
ENERGY STAR Refrigerator Calculator | ENERGY STAR

I agree that its hard to justify tossing something that is working well. But in the long run, a 50 year old fridge has cost way more in electricity than the purchase price of many new fridges.

I just ran the numbers and a little baffled...

4,320 kWh Total annual Household consumption based on 12 kWh average per day
-2,577 kWh Total annual Freezer consumption from Energy Star Calculator
-2,190 kWh Total annual Refrigerator consumption from Energy Star Calculator

Which leaves a -447 annual Negative kWh balance

So if I were to unplug both refrigerators I would use significantly less than Zero electricity for the year???

In 2400 square feet of home with electric range, oven, lights, furnace blower etc the calculations show these demands use less than nothing... and that is not counting my arc welder and mill or lathe.

My guess is a Kill a Watt meter would provide a actual vs estimated usage.

 

[ultrarunner]

I have all 1995 Nortel at the Hospital... I'm very pleased with the performance over the last 20 plus years and it is paid for...

The PBX in the closet failed once and was replaced overnight...

 

[MossRoad]

My guess is a Kill a Watt meter would provide a actual vs estimated usage.

That's the best way.

 

[newbury]

I agree that IF you have a land line (most people do not anymore) you should keep a non powered corded phone. <snip>

Which in my case ends up being useless unless I go down in the corner of my basement and power up a 12 D cell battery bank required to keep the fiber running and is only good for a day or so (takes a lot of juice to keep the fiber on).

The phone feature always seemed pretty useless to me. All it does is tell you that the phone is ringing, (they don't ring anymore because they haven't had bells for years now) and I can hear the dayum thing ring without the TV telling me so. When it does it's usually just some kinda junk call anyway. When does the do not call list ever supposed to work?

On my system the phone feature also displays the number on the TV.
And I bought a Call Blocker v202 that blocks unlisted/out of area/private numbers, and anything I add with the push of a button.
I report new numbers to the "do not call list" that I get on my cell phone almost monthly.

/edit - one of the problems we have found with blocking numbers is that some of the charities seem to be getting smarter. The same charity will dial from many different numbers. I'm tempted to leave a message on the answering machine like:

If you are a telemarketer or charity we only respond to US postal mail. Winter is coming on and we need something to burn.

 

[3930dave]

I just ran the numbers and a little baffled...

4,320 kWh Total annual Household consumption based on 12 kWh average per day
-2,577 kWh Total annual Freezer consumption from Energy Star Calculator
-2,190 kWh Total annual Refrigerator consumption from Energy Star Calculator

Which leaves a -447 annual Negative kWh balance

So if I were to unplug both refrigerators I would use significantly less than Zero electricity for the year???

In 2400 square feet of home with electric range, oven, lights, furnace blower etc the calculations show these demands use less than nothing... and that is not counting my arc welder and mill or lathe.

My guess is a Kill a Watt meter would provide a actual vs estimated usage.

At your daily kwh level, it is pretty difficult to go lower.

Just looked at my old Panasonic 27" CRT. The prominent label (I'm too old to read raised black plastic wrting on a black cabinet this morning :laughing lists Max Current at 2.0 amps. Call it 230watts, but I'm betting Kill A Watt would read less. If people watched 10" LED screens, then maybe there would be some savings.... but I bet the monster LCD units people are buying today save little or nothing compared to what I have sitting here.

Old white appliances typically had mechanical timers, and very little went wrong - decent brands typically ran multiple decades (+) with no or little maintenance. All the modern stuff has plenty of bells/whistles, but most crash and burn early - designed to make repair costs unacceptable, driving complete unit replacement.

We've all come across these problems by now - latest in the news was Samsung clothes washers. Guess they had so many EE's working on adding streaming video to this generation of appliances, they forgot to pay competent ME's to get it right. That's a great example of adding toys, at the expense of basic (in this case critical) functionality. It's bad enough to have a blinged out major appliance dead, but am I now supposed to build a scatter-blanket around my new washer ?

Rgds, D.

 

[aczlan]

Our industry (insurance) still has to abide by it. Because we identify who we are up front.

True, but there are numerous companies (ie "cardholder services") who fake the caller ID and then hang up when you ask for a company name (so as to report them for DNC violations).

Aaron Z

 

[k0ua]

True, but there are numerous companies (ie "cardholder services") who fake the caller ID and then hang up when you ask for a company name (so as to report them for DNC violations).

Aaron Z

Agreed. and spoofing caller ID is not very difficult.

 

[NoTrespassing]

When I was a kid it was long distance to call my aunt's house but it wasn't long distance for her to call our house. My mother would call her and let it ring one time and hang up. That was the code for my aunt to call my mom back for free.

We were also on a party line and the teenage girl down the road was constantly on the phone which drove my parents crazy. Sometimes my sister and I would listen in on her conversations with boys. Occasionally she'd hear us click in and tell us to get off the phone, lol.

Kevin

 

[k0ua]

When I was a kid it was long distance to call my aunt's house but it wasn't long distance for her to call our house. My mother would call her and let it ring one time and hang up. That was the code for my aunt to call my mom back for free.

We were also on a party line and the teenage girl down the road was constantly on the phone which drove my parents crazy. Sometimes my sister and I would listen in on her conversations with boys. Occasionally she'd hear us click in and tell us to get off the phone, lol.

Kevin

We had a 10 party line for a while when I was a kid. It was the next best thing to not having a telephone at all. It was darn near useless.

 

[ultrarunner]

At your daily kwh level, it is pretty difficult to go lower.

Just looked at my old Panasonic 27" CRT. The prominent label (I'm too old to read raised black plastic wrting on a black cabinet this morning :laughing lists Max Current at 2.0 amps. Call it 230watts, but I'm betting Kill A Watt would read less. If people watched 10" LED screens, then maybe there would be some savings.... but I bet the monster LCD units people are buying today save little or nothing compared to what I have sitting here.

Old white appliances typically had mechanical timers, and very little went wrong - decent brands typically ran multiple decades (+) with no or little maintenance. All the modern stuff has plenty of bells/whistles, but most crash and burn early - designed to make repair costs unacceptable, driving complete unit replacement.

We've all come across these problems by now - latest in the news was Samsung clothes washers. Guess they had so many EE's working on adding streaming video to this generation of appliances, they forgot to pay competent ME's to get it right. That's a great example of adding toys, at the expense of basic (in this case critical) functionality. It's bad enough to have a blinged out major appliance dead, but am I now supposed to build a scatter-blanket around my new washer ?

Rgds, D.

It does boggle my mind with how far things have come...

A washer with 3 cycles will just about cover everything I need...

All those 25 and 27" televisions have been replaced by at least doubling the screen size.

Did ask Mom if she wanted one of the the new TVs and the first thing she said is where would the VCR sit...

Entertainment Cabinets line the curbs on bulk pickup day for several years.

I'm not totally against new for the sake of new... hated compact fluorescents of the spiral kind... 100% love my CREE LED bulbs...

When the heat exchanger on Mom's 120,000 Btu 1957 vintage furnace cracked after 45 years I put in a new 80,000 Btu high efficiency unit and it too has worked very well... the inspector asked who installed it and I was thinking there was a problem... he just wanted to say it was one of the cleanest installs he had come across... $1200 in material including a custom plenum and new vent stack and condensate drywell...

Let's just say if we were representative of typical consumers the country would be in trouble...

Same Laundry pair since the 1960's... neighbors have gone through MANY and some real expensive ones.

Ditto for the Freezer... the 1980 Refrigerator needed a total of $45 in parts... one defrost timer and one universal condenser fan

Roof... Mom is on her second roof... neighbors on 3 with one just getting number 4... homes had shake in 1957 and it 1972 we oil the entire roof... by 1980 all the neighbors had replaced... I did Mom's in 1997.... 40 years and attribute the longevity to her oiling the singles... they were getting paper thin so it was time after 40 years.

I have one of those cassette answering machines... being able to pop out the cassette for playback at a later date or on a portable saved my bacon a few times... especially with a problem with the city building department... inspector left a message telling me it is ok to start... another inspector came out and wanted to shut down the job and the one that told me to start was on a 3 week cruise... I popped my cassette in my portable player and problem taken care of...