Just a little cold
It’s that time of season again. The furnace ran out of oil and I’m a little cold. I’m not good at keeping track of oil. I’d prefer to have electricity to heat the home as you always pay that monthly. It doesn’t run out. The price doesn’t fluctuate daily, and you don’t have to be home when someone delivers the goods. Purchasing heating oil socks a very large bill on me instantly. Electric can be paid monthly and budgeted easier. In fact, I pay my electric bill (and most other bills) every 2 weeks on payday.
I want a heating pump. These units suck the heat out of the air outside and pump it inside your home. Even in freezing temperatures, there is still heat outside. A heat pump is just like my air conditioner, except that you can choose if you want the heat to move outside, or inside. It serves as both a heating and cooling unit for your house.
Heat pumps are very energy efficient. They have a problem though where ice collects on the coils outside. The heat pump has to heat those coils up by running as an air conditioner. You don’t need to worry about cold air being pumped in your house when it is deicing itself because it also has burners or electric strip heaters to heat the cold air coming back into your house. There are also Geothermal heat pumps. These pumps use the natural heat from the earth rather then the air.
So how much does a heat pump cost? Early estimates look like the price ranges from $1,000 to $5,000 US depending on how much heat you need. Our tax return from this year could probably pay for the most of that. I’m still researching, so this may not even be close to the actual cost. I have to determine how much area my house occupies. I think there is something here that has to do with BTU’s, but I’m not sure how to measure. After finding the price, I’ll need to look into contractors to install the thing. Maybe I’ll talk to my dad about that.
I found a Kit Builder to help me figure out what all I would need to setup everything. Now the question is how many tons do I need? It is too dark to see the model number on my air conditioner, and my air flow system says that it can handle 131,000 BTU/hour. Possible Ton values are 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, 4, and 5. These values are way below 131,000 BTU as 1 Ton is equal to 18,000 BTU and 5 Tons are equal to 60,000 BTU. Getting too many tons would setup the pump to turn on and off frequently and dehumidify the house in a bad way. Not enough tons would keep the unit running too often.
After that, I need to determine what SEER rating I prefer (10, 12, 13). Seer is pretty much how economical the unit is with energy efficiency (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio). A higher rating helps you save more during cooling. A higher SEER rating increases the initial cost of the unit, but makes up in the long run by lowering the operating cost.
It would seem that I need to first determine what I have.
January 20th, 2006 at 11:45 am
Hey Lewie,
I’m not sure where you live, but I suspect if you have an oil fired furnace you live in a cold place. From my understanding, you don’t want a heat pump for a primary heat source if the temperature stays below 32 for extended periods of time. Because a heat pump works on taking heat from the air, when it gets really cold they are not very good. Now if you live in the South ( i.e. Texas/La/Florida ) they make a lot of sense because winters are less severe.
Finally, I am writing to you today to ask you about some of your code. You see I’m a contractor working for a small company. Apparently the previous web developer used one of your file upload utilities to upload files to the website here.
About 2 weeks ago, we had a network problem. During the night when I wasn’t here, the acting manager brought in the previous web developer and they merrily updated the OS to Server 2003 / IIS 6.0. I found this out the next morning and when I asked them why they rebuilt a webserver and updated an OS at 3:00 a.m. when they were working on a network problem? (Can you tell I’m perturbed at this point.)
They claimed they found a virus. So I asked what virus? Turns out the virus in ? was the Intel Nic program…
My ? I’d like to ask you is do you recognize this code and can you tell me if you’ve tested in 2003. Or could you provide me any information about the code….
——————————————————————————
‘ Author: Lewis Moten
‘ Email: Lewis@Moten.com
‘ URL: http://www.lewismoten.com
‘ Date: March 19, 2002
‘ ——————————————————————————
‘ Field class represents interface to data passed within one field
‘
‘ Two available methods of getting a field:
‘ Set objField = objUpload.Fields(”File1″)
‘ Set objField = objUpload(”File1″)
‘
‘
‘ objField.Name
‘ Name of the field as defined on the form
‘
‘ objFiled.Filepath
‘ Path that file was sent from
‘
‘ ie: C:\Documents and Settings\lmoten\Desktop\Photo.gif
‘
‘ objField.FileDir
‘ Directory that file was sent from
‘
‘ ie: C:\Documents and Settings\lmoten\Desktop
‘
‘ objField.FileExt
‘ Uppercase Extension of the file
‘
‘ ie: GIF
‘
‘ objField.FileName
‘ Name of the file
‘
‘ use: Response.AddHeader “Content-Disposition”, “filename=”"” & objField.FileName & “”"”
‘
‘ ie: Photo.gif
‘
‘ objField.ContentType
‘ Type of binary data
‘
‘ use: Response.ContentType = objField.ContentType
‘
‘ ie: image/gif
‘
‘ objField.Value
‘ Unicode value passed from form. This value is empty if the field is binary data.
‘
‘ use: Response.Write “The value of this field is: ” & objField.Value
‘
‘ objField.BinaryData
‘ Contents of files binary data. (Integer SubType Array)
‘
‘ use: Response.BinaryWrite objField.BinaryData
‘
‘ objField.BLOB
‘ Same thing as BinaryData but with a shorter name. Added to help prevent
‘ confusion with database access.
‘
‘ use: Call lobjRs.Fields(”Image”).AppendChunk(objField.BLOB)
‘
‘ objField.Length
‘ byte size of Value or BinaryData - depending on type of field
‘
‘ use: Response.Write “The size of this file is: ” & objField.Length
‘
‘ objField.BinaryAsText()
‘ Converts binary data into unicode format. Useful when you expect the user
‘ to upload a text file and you have the need to interact with it.
‘
‘ use: Response.Write objField.BinaryAsText()
‘
‘ objField.SaveAs()
‘ Saves binary data to a specified path. This will overwrite any existing files.
‘
‘ use: objField.SaveAs(Server.MapPath(”/Uploads/”) & “\” & objField.FileName)
‘
‘ ——————————————————————————
Class clsField
Public Name ‘ Name of the field defined in form
Private mstrPath ‘ Full path to file on visitors computer
‘ C:\Documents and Settings\lmoten\Desktop\Photo.gif
Public FileDir ‘ Directory that file existed in on visitors computer
‘ C:\Documents and Settings\lmoten\Desktop
Public FileExt ‘ Extension of the file
‘ GIF
Public FileName ‘ Name of the file
‘ Photo.gif
Public ContentType ‘ Content / Mime type of file
‘ image/gif
Public Value ‘ Unicode value of field (used for normail form fields - not files)
Public BinaryData ‘ Binary data passed with field (for files)
Public Length ‘ byte size of value or binary data
Private mstrText ‘ Text buffer
‘ If text format of binary data is requested more then
‘ once, this value will be read to prevent extra processing
‘ ——————————————————————————
Public Property Get BLOB()
BLOB = BinaryData
End Property
‘ ——————————————————————————
Public Function BinaryAsText()
‘ Binary As Text returns the unicode equivilant of the binary data.
‘ this is useful if you expect a visitor to upload a text file that
‘ you will need to work with.
‘ NOTICE:
‘ NULL values will prematurely terminate your Unicode string.
‘ NULLs are usually found within binary files more often then plain-text files.
‘ a simple way around this may consist of replacing null values with another character
‘ such as a space ” ”
Dim lbinBytes
Dim lobjRs
‘ Don’t convert binary data that does not exist
If Length = 0 Then Exit Function
If LenB(BinaryData) = 0 Then Exit Function
‘ If we previously converted binary to text, return the buffered content
If Not Len(mstrText) = 0 Then
BinaryAsText = mstrText
Exit Function
End If
‘ Convert Integer Subtype Array to Byte Subtype Array
lbinBytes = ASCII2Bytes(BinaryData)
‘ Convert Byte Subtype Array to Unicode String
mstrText = Bytes2Unicode(lbinBytes)
‘ Return Unicode Text
BinaryAsText = mstrText
End Function
‘ ——————————————————————————
Public Sub SaveAs(ByRef pstrFileName)
Dim lobjStream
Dim lobjRs
Dim lbinBytes
‘ Don’t save files that do not posess binary data
If Length = 0 Then Exit Sub
If LenB(BinaryData) = 0 Then Exit Sub
‘ Create magical objects from never never land
Set lobjStream = Server.CreateObject(”ADODB.Stream”)
‘ Let stream know we are working with binary data
lobjStream.Type = adTypeBinary
‘ Open stream
Call lobjStream.Open()
‘ Convert Integer Subtype Array to Byte Subtype Array
lbinBytes = ASCII2Bytes(BinaryData)
‘ Write binary data to stream
Call lobjStream.Write(lbinBytes)
‘ Save the binary data to file system
‘ Overwrites file if previously exists!
Call lobjStream.SaveToFile(pstrFileName, adSaveCreateOverWrite)
‘ Close the stream object
Call lobjStream.Close()
‘ Release objects
Set lobjStream = Nothing
End Sub
January 21st, 2006 at 9:20 pm
As far as the heat, we have mild winters here. My parents had a heat pump in colder regions and it seemed to work just fine in the winter. There is always heat outside. The temperature would be absolute zero otherwise, and that is a rare thing to come by unless you are participating in scientific research.
I have not personally tested the upload script in Windows Server 2003. I have had many people comming to me with problems for 2003 and it turns out that microsoft locked it down pretty heavy with the default install. The main problem seems to be the amount of data you can upload at a time. I don’t know what problem you are having specifically. If you don’t have the latest version, then you may want to head on over to http://www.planet-source-code.com/ and search for upload files without com in the ASP section. You should be looking for version 3.x. People have posted comments, problems, and fixes on my code up there that could help you out as well.