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I bought this: Watts OneFlow, no where near that big.

I bought this one: Watts OneFlow. The height is deceptive because you don't drop the bottom out like you do with a whole house filter. You simply unscrew the top and remove the filters. I had more than enough height to install mine in the basement.

For the past several years we've had a 10,000 grain Watts water softener that we've used to deal with hard TX water at our winter location (and elsewhere). However, with the use of a washing machine a softener of that size requires fairly frequent recharging. I know I could have purchased a larger softener but I wanted to share an alternative that we've now installed.For years there have been a variety of devices that have claimed to combat hard water though the use of electricity and magnetism but I've not been convinced that these had any scientific evidence of actually working. But while investigating these, I did come across what's called Template Assisted Crystallization (TAC) which is sort of a catalytic process in which a "filter" material is used to cause dissolved calcium and magnesium ions to form "soft" crystals which don't cause scale. The minerals are still present in the water but they don't result in the formation of scale. In fact, they are "active" enough to actually remove some of the scale that's previously been formed. In addition TAC eliminates the need to get rid of brine every time you recharge the softener system and reduces the Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) in the wastewater.If you're interested here's a presentation by scientists at Arizona State University which compares the efficacy of TAC compared to several "electromagnetic" anti-scale systems. The TAC comes out far superior: http://www.714water.com/docs/Peter-F...p-TurboTAC.pdfI'll be honest and admit that TAC isn't a miracle solution. It has pluses and minuses. Since it doesn't remove the dissolved minerals the actual hardness of the water doesn't change so that you don't get to use less soap. OTOH there are medical studies which show the benefits of drinking water with minerals as opposed to water that has been softened and largely had its minerals removed. Lastly, TAC systems contain a fairly expensive "filter" which has to be replaced every couple of years but over that interval you won't have to have purchased salt and you'll avoid the time spent in periodic recharging.It appears that the research on TAC was mostly done ~10 years ago and several companies now have marketed systems based on the concept. One of those is sold by Watts, a well-respected name in the water treatment business and that's the one I have now purchased and installed. The tank is slightly shorter than the one for my 10,000 grain softener and I don't have to provide for getting rid of the brine during recharging. I only need to be able to access the filter every 2-3 years (according to the manufacturer). The directions say to make it the last water treatment element in your system so ahead of it I have plumbed my existing whole house filter in which I use 1 micron filter material.So now I wait to see if I can detect any differences. The instructions say that for the first 30-90 days there may actually be an increase in the quantity of scale buildup in faucet aerators, etc., because the treated water will break down some of the already existing scale that has accumulated in the plumbing. Beyond that I'll have to see if there seems to be less scale in the plumbing, but exactly how I will measure that I don't know. It's difficult to measure the efficacy of a system whose efficacy you have no direct way of measuring! My intent in posting this is to acquaint people with the concept of TAC so that they can evaluate if it might appeal to them. I have no business interest in Watts or any other water treatment company.

That describes us. Our 2000 Beaver Patriot Thunder was 11 years old when we titled it. It had 55,000 miles then; we now have >125,000 miles. With the exception of this past COVID year we have put anywhere from 5-10k miles per year. We've had a couple of incidents which caused a bit of "stress" but we, also, have each time been able to get repaired and on the road again in a day or two.

Well said! I've never contended that EVs wouldn't play a major role in personal transportation simply that they won't be the entirety of the vehicle fleet. Millions of city dwellers will do fine with EVs, but even in that environment there will be lots of infrastructure issues to overcome. For example, for those who live in urban high rises and park their vehicles in multistory garages who is going to cover the cost of wiring those parking structures with chargers? Even for those who live in suburban garden apartments who is going to cover the investment of providing chargers in the parking lots? Will there be enough that everyone can charge his vehicle every day? One commonly overlooked aspect of technology development is the consideration of how that technology enters society in general. If you put aside "early adopters" who buy the first new "somethings" just because they are new, how a technology integrates itself into the larger population is not always so easy to predict. Some new technologies take much longer than others to garner large market share. Products , such as smartphones, are disruptive in nature because they create an entirely new market segment, but EVs aren't really disruptive because they displace existing technology. Historically, it's been much harder to predict the how such technologies will fare in the marketplace. For example, how many of you still have analog TVs in your RVs because you've never gotten around to replacing them because you didn't see all that much of an advantage? All I'm saying is that the "devil is in the details" of exactly how EVs will penetrate the vehicle market in the US and worldwide.

I'm glad to hear someone else say this other than me. The problem as I see it is that the EV cheering section is so strident that if you speak up against them it's as if you are opposing motherhood and families. There are a whole group of questions which you simply aren't supposed to ask. For example, as the article states that "Half an hour is an unacceptably long time to spend at an electron pump." I totally agree and have made this point repeatedly. I understand that, on a daily basis, many people will charge their vehicles at home overnight but what about people who live in apartments? What about those who are traveling and find a half an hour to be a ridiculously long fuel stop? I'm tired of hearing advocates say "oh, you'll just recharge when you stop for lunch" when that isn't at all how we travel when we don't have the MH. Oh, and you're never supposed to mention that most electricity in the US is generated from fossil fuels, so using it in an EV doesn't produce nearly as dramatic reduction in CO2 and other pollutants as one might think. I'm a great fan of nuclear power, but I wouldn't bet on a new nuclear plant being commissioned in the US in my lifetime, maybe not even in my children's lifetime. The stains of 3-Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukishima may have made it virtually impossible to ever build another nuclear plant, at least in the US. There's no question but that EV's will play a large role in meeting future transportation needs, but I think it is premature to insist that it is a given that they will be the principal individual transportation system in use 30-50 years from now.

Totally agree. I'm going to go through the MH and replace the remaining "original" GFCI's.

It now costs ~$25 to buy a Leviton other name brand 20A, WR-rated GFCI. Not "cheap" by any measure.

I had a strange occurrence with a GFCI a month ago. One morning we started hearing a "clatter" in the bathroom; I went in and it was pretty easy to localize the sound to a GFCI mounted in a sink vanity outlet. All of a sudden there was a "pop" and smoke came out of the GFCI. Needless to say I flipped the breaker off pretty quickly. I replaced the GFCI with a WR-rated one I had in reserve; I figured that being near a sink might have exposed it to some occasional wetness but I have no idea what happened. Does anyone have any thoughts? It's worth noting that this was a 20-year old GFCI in our MH of the same age.

If you download the Starlink app, you can use it to determine how much open sky a Starlink dish needs. It wasn't as large a clear window as I was afraid it might need.

Roxanne at Miller is super. She knows all the in's and out's of Progressive's policies.

Is there something wrong with reading national news sources rather than local ones? Here's the lead paragraph from that article: Hours into widespread blackouts in Texas last week, the state’s power regulator took an unusual step: It stopped relying on the deregulated market to set electricity prices and did so itself. The Texas Public Utility Commission said it raised prices to a market cap of $9,000 per megawatt hour during a six-minute emergency meeting Feb. 15, up from recent prices as low as $1,200 a megawatt hour, because the computer that was supposed to help match supply and demand on the power grid wasn’t working properly, and it needed to intervene to relieve a growing crisis. The utility regulating agency Ercot raised the wholesale price rather than relying on market forces to set it. This resulted in a huge increase in the wholesale "spot" price which is the reason some customers are seeing huge spikes in their electric billa.

Read this: https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-power-regulators-decision-to-raise-prices-in-freeze-generates-criticism-11614268158

What I've read is that during the worst of the "crisis" the governing agency, ERCOT, pegged the wholesale rate at an exceedingly high level to entice power producers to put power onto the grid. That very high price is what is being passed along to some individuals. The problem as I see it is that this rate wasn't market-driven, it was totally arbitrary.

It's quite possible that the Nighthawk isn't approved on the T-Mobile network, at least for this particular plan. Are you aware that T-Mobile is discounting the 5G M2000 hotspot so that its monthly price is ~$7 when you sign up for the 100GB plan? The M2000 covers all the T-Mobile bands which the Nighthawk definitely won't and it provides 5G service (when available).

I had absolutely no difficulty setting up my online account using only the phone number assigned to my SIM and M2000 hotspot. That account now covers both of my two 100GB accounts. I did the whole thing online without the help of Customer Service.

That's my understanding, also. The one caveat is that any obstructions of its field of view can result in loss of your connection (for a period of time). The system has no way, for instance, of knowing that there's an obstacle that obscures even a small portion of the sky. So if the satellite you're supposed to be connected to is behind that object, you're out of luck

So it would work for RVers if they want to take very short trips! 😂 I've already signed up to get my Starlink system and it should arrive late this year for use in TX. Even if it sits unused for the months we are traveling it will make a world of difference when we are at our home location. I can easily absorb the $99/mo by discontinuing one or two of my existing cellular connections none of which provide the speeds that Starlink seems capable of.

The TX coast around Corpus Christi will see its coldest temperatures in >30 years Sunday through Tuesday. We even have a "winter storm watch" in effect. The lows on Tuesday morning are expected to be ~18-20F. Most, if not all, of our plants will die; we'll take a few potted ones inside.

FWIW as of yesterday Starlink is allowing people from all over the US to sign up for accounts, with delivery dates of your hardware depending on where you live. Friends of mine in ID report they can take delivery immediately whereas my coastal TX address has been promised delivery in mid-late 2021. There's no indication that Starlink has removed the "geo fence" requirement so it may still not be of interest to RVers in general, but if you spend your winters in a particular location it may be of interest to you. That's why I signed up for it. The cost to sign up is $99.

T-Mobile is offering 100GB/mo for $50 which is an excellent deal, especially now that the T-M network has improved a lot since the Sprint merger and its increased low band 5G. They are offering the plan with the new 5G Inseego (formerly Novatel) M2000 hotspot with a Cat22 modem.

I hope you understand how large a battery bank you would need in order to be able to do what you suggest. An A/C drawing ~15A will use ~14 kWh of electricity over 8 hours. Lets assume that it only runs half the time so that's ~7 kWh of energy. A GC2 golf cart battery stores ~200A-hr of energy at 6 volts which is the same as 1.2 kWh of energy. You wouldn't want to deplete your batteries on a regular basis so you should assume that one golf cart battery has ~0.6 kWh of usable energy. So to run a single A/C for eight hours overnight would require a battery bank with ~11 fully charged golf cart batteries. This very simplified calculation doesn't include losses in the inverter or any other electrical loads that might also be consuming energy.

Having a property in TX and a legal address in SD seems to be working fine for us. As a result we now have credit cards and credit profiles in both locations. This occasionally causes some confusion with automated credit approval systems, but nothing that wasn't easy to resolve.

With all due respect, I think you don't fully understand how domicile "rules" work. Our cars are registered in South Dakota and we have SD drivers licenses. I don't need to "validate" anything to a police officer in any other State. I need to "validate" to the authorities in SD that I meet the requirements for residency, but once I've done that no one can question my right to claim SD domicile. No one in CA or any other State is going to bother you if you take your vehicles into CA as visitors and don't make an effort to maintain residency. They would be just as legal in CA if they were registered in SD or TX or anywhere else. However, if you maintain some kind of residence in CA and have your vehicles in the State for an extended period of time you may run afoul of CA laws regardless of what State they are registered in.

We had our second shots this past Friday. My wife had some generalized tiredness; I had no side effects at all. My wife took a couple of ibuprofens; I didn't need them. It was no worse than a flu shot.