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brandhout's comments

brandhout | 2 months ago | on: The biggest heat pumps

A misunderstanding. A lot of people (at least here in the Netherlands) believe that heat-pumps just actively refuse to heat a home when it's not up to spec, isolation wise. That of course isn't true, you'll just need a bigger heatpump.

brandhout | 2 months ago | on: The biggest heat pumps

You can switch to a heatpump before insulating your house; you just need a bigger one. Which isn't really great thanks to our struggeling energy grid but its still cheaper than a gas heater.

brandhout | 2 months ago | on: The biggest heat pumps

It isn't more interesting with solar panels because they won't generate nearly enough electricity in the winter. You should see both as entirely separate energy saving investments, not dependent on one another. (I'm however very happy with "free" cooling in summer)

You might need other radiators if your current radiators are very small. But you also might not in a recent house, or in a recently renovated house (e.g. the radiator are still sized on single-glazing-glass when having double glazing installed).

You can also choose in-foor heating with the next renovation, a lot of homes already have in-floor heating and it's very comfortable. You can probably also boost existing radiators with small fans on the bottom or choose an electronic back-up module which boost the temperature a bit on the coldest days.

Tldr: it really isn't that hard. The focus on hybrid systems in NL is purely thanks to a lobby from gas-boiler installers and manufacturers. Air/water heatpumps are a drop-in replacement in a lot of cases.

brandhout | 7 months ago | on: Netherlands rations electricity to ease power grid stresses

Rationing is a bit of a exaggeration. Flexible contracts are becoming more common, but that's part of a longer trend, and there's a national campaign that "asks consumers to charge bikes and cars outside of the 4pm-to-9pm peak".

This is very sensible. You can't build a grid that supports a large part of the country coming home at 5pm: start the oven (and/or induction cooking), heatpump, laundry, connect the electric car all at the same time.

There are probably some cases when people have to charge a car at 5pm, but it's madness that everyone will start doing this just because that's the time they get home.

Keep in mind; 11kW charging at home is not uncommon at the Netherlands, as many homes are equipped with 400V 3 phase power.

brandhout | 1 year ago | on: I Like NetBSD, or Why Portability Matters

I love that NetBSD is still going strong, I like the system but it does not really have a professional use case anymore. Not that it matters but it would be great to run NetBSD on a server or desktop and have the performance and driver support not be completely nonexistent.

The portability aspect is cool but Linux runs on more platforms nowadays

brandhout | 3 years ago | on: ADHD traits more reliably predict mental health issues than autistic traits

I think mild ASD, at least for me, can be just as bad. It depends on person to person; Its a spectrum for a reason.

No one in my childhood and teenage years had the idea that I was 'different'. However, I was constantly gaslighted that I was, for example, too rude to look people straight in the eye, shake hands, kiss all people on a family birthday (yuck) or that I was lazy because I really needed an hour of rest after school or work instead of doing household chores immediately.

I never fully met all the social norms, my siblings did, and was therefore a bit of the black sheep in the family. According to my (loving) parents everything was my own choice, and of course in a sense it is, so in the end I fully believed that too. It took some time to rebuild my self-image.

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