The Grange - Come for the beer stay for the food!

Recently I visited The Grange Public House in downtown Decatur, GA. The Grange is a modern Irish Pub, complete with real Irish people. The location used to be Angel's, part of the Atlanta chain that included Hand in Hand, Price of Wales, Rose and Crown and Fox and Hound. If you've visited any of these dreary establishments, you'll be pleased to know The Grange is new and improved.

Fortunately they brightened up the atmosphere of the Pub from the former and removed the old carpet (What idiot puts carpet in a pub?). The place is light, open and has a great vibe. In addition the food I've had so far is great. I definitely recommend the meat pie and the fries are fresh cut and cooked in pure canola oil. Most restaurants in Atlanta still use hydrogenated oil because it costs less and last longer. Knowing they use healthy oil, make me want to order and second order of fries!

The beer isn't bad either, Darren Comer the proprietor insists on pouring the Guiness with the traditional double pour and they pride themselves with clean lines and taps wth great selection of tasting beer (17 taps, plus bottles). Right now The Grange is open evenings, but they plan to open for lunch soon.

Bosch Aquastar 250SX - SUX!!!

I've had the Bosch Aquastar 250SX tankless water heater for a little over 4 years now. And I have to say it's been nothing but a pain in the ass.

We built this house in 04 and our goal was to build a very green energy efficient house. Tankless hot water does make sense and when its working, it works well; producing endless 122 degree hot water.

The initial problems I had were a loud groaning when the 250SX fired up, intermittent cold water surges, random errors that shut the unit down.

There are several factors that might explain the miriad of problems I encountered.

• New Model - When I purchased the 250SX, it was a very new model, and it is obvious that Bosch was still in the process of working out the bugs. At one point they sent a revised controller that was supposed to work better and later they sent an attenuator that would solve the loud groaning sound it made when it started. In the end they ended up sending me an entire new unit.
• Self Install - Based on a friend that installed his Aquastar himself, I decided I'd save the money and do it myself - big mistake. The actual installation wasn't that hard, but as it turns out there are internal adjustments that in theory don't have to be made, but in my case were essential to get the unit operational. The adjustments required a manometer to monitor the incoming pressure and a CO2 analyzer to monitor exhaust.
• Liquid Propane - I'm using LP instead of natural gas - LP doesn't burn as hot. Again without the tools, there's no way to accurately adjust the incoming LP pressure.
• Well water, not city water - I'm also on a well system, so my pressure ranges from 40 - 60 psi. In addition, when my well pump would kick in, a slight lull in the pressure caused the 250SX to shut down. So imagine you are in the shower, the pressure in the tank hits 40, the pump kicks in, Bosch shuts down, it then takes another 30 seconds for the Bosch to produce hot water. Meanwhile you are receiving cold water in the shower - not fun. This was eventually fixed when after two plumbers could not properly adjust the pressure tank, I called the drillers that drilled my well. For $100 they were able to adjust the tank in about a minute.

It took over a year to get the unit working trouble free and by that time I'd spent another $600 in technician and plumber charges. Bosch did reimburse me for $300 or so. Once I was up and running the unit has worked fine. That said there are a few things to remember when you use a tankless hot water heater.

1. From the time you turn the hot water on, it will take the Bosch at least 30-40 seconds to actually produce hot water. Add to that the time it takes for the hot water to travel through your pipes to the tap. And if you shut the water off for just a second and turn it back on, it's got to go through the entire startup cycle again, meaning another 30 seconds of cold water out the hot water tap. So you can't wash the dishes and turn the hot water on and off and expect to have constant hot water. This is more annoying than you might think. The end result is you do waste quite a bit of water, so if you live in a dry place and water is not plentiful, a tankless water heater might not be for you.
2. Minimum water flow - if you turn a tap on but just want a small amount of hot water, it may not be enough flow to fire up the 250SX and you'll just get cold water.
3. A tankless hot water heater is more complex than a standard hot water heater. Just the other day I got an EA error. I called Bosch and after 20 minutes of waiting for tech support, they had me disassemble the unit and clean the ignition contacts with steel wool. If this was my wife, that would have been another service call. For me it was a couple more hours of lost work. Most traditional tanks, you just ignore until 10 years later when they fail then you replace them.
4. The 250 SX is limited to 6.35 gallons per minute with a 45 degree rise. In other words 2 major appliances can run at one time, max. And if your incoming water is really cold, this can be optimistic.

Bosch technical support has been good (once I get them on the phone), but I'm not impressed with the overall operation and design of this unit. I'd consider Rinnai, they seem to have a better reputation.

Bottom line, tankless is cool, it takes up less space and uses less energy and you never run out of hot water, but you will use more water and they are more complex than a traditional hot water heater. My recommendation is if you buy one, make sure you buy it from someone local that will install it and be there to fix any problems that might arise.

Georgian Terrace - Definitely not 3.5 Stars

The Georgian Terrace - 2 Stars, not 3.5 Stars...
I travel to Atlanta ever other week for a couple of days at a time. I'm usually by myself and travel as inexpensive as possible. Still I'm able to get some good deals through hotwire (www.hotwire.com).

Last week, my wife decided to join me so I decided to splurge and get a 3.5 star hotel, normally I book the 3 star Hyatt Place in Buckhead for $54 per night plus tax (through hotwire). Hyatt Place is fantastic, 42" plasma TV, granite, newly renovated, free parking, free continental breakfast.

So I splurged for a 3.5 star and got the Georgian Terrace in Midtown, from the website it's a great place and it's in walking distance to Piedmont Park and tons of good restaurants. The GT ended up being $89 per night, plus tax. But what they don't mention is that parking is an extra $25 for valet service, and that doesn't include tips.

We checked into our room and man it was tiny and featured a full sized bed (Hyatt Place included a King!). I didn't even know they still made these things. In addtion to my wife, I had my 3 month old son, Max, with us and opted not to haul the crib along, figuring we would either get a King or two Queens. Obviously if I left things as they were, I'd be spending the night on the floor.

I called the front desk and told them of our dilemma. No problem, the guy at the front desk said he'd hook me up as long as I "took care of him". There goes another Andrew Jackson!

So we get the new room with a King and a Kitchen. The bed was nice, but otherwise the place was small and depressing. Here's the bitch list:

1. Bathroom tub badly in need of caulk.
   


2. Bathroom sink had cigarette burns around the edges of the sink.



3. Old and damaged wall paper in kitchen. Notice the two tone paint around the light fixture.



4. Frayed carpet at transitions, stained carpet.
   
5. Here's my favorite, on the entrance door, they have that piece of hardware that replaced the old chain. Obviously someone had tried to force their way in with the bar in place. The result was the hardware was just hanging on and the door trim badly damaged.



6. Stippled ceiling - nice 70's touch


7. Old and deformed metal shades, that worked but that someone had removed the catch so that they had to remain down. Also notice the condition of the window ceil.
   

That said, there were some positives. The swimming pool on the roof was treated with saline chlorination from http://www.chlorking.com/. It was awesome, when you got out of the pool you didn't stink of chlorine and when you opened your eyes underwater, your eyes didn't sting. The pool appeared to be a 25 meter lap pool. Why don't they treat all pools this way?


What else? the elevators were fast and the employees very courteous.

The bottom line is this hotel while old, beautiful, elegant and geographically desireable is not maintained to 3.5 star standards. I'm glad I didn't pay full rate, and I doubt I'll be back.

Mac Slowdown - Cocktail to the rescue

I've had my Mac Mini for three years now. And during that time it got slower and slower. It got to the point where every time I clicked on Safari or itunes, I could grab a cup of coffee before the program loaded. I was considering upgrading to a newer Intel based Mac it was running so slow. We mainly use the Mac as a surfing box in the kitchen. We also use it as our main iTunes database and serve music to the house from it using a Apple Airport extreme.

I've been a PC guy for years and know about deleting the caches and defraging to keep a computer running cleanly. There on tons of utilities for the PC to keep it running clean. For the PC i like CCleaner (www.ccleaner.com). Theres are not as many choices for the Mac.

First of all on a Mac there is no reason to defrag the hard drive. From what I read it has to do with the way the OS handles files.

As for speeding up my slow Mac, I found a great utility called Cocktail. It's about $15 and worth every penny. Cocktail clear out a whole slew of caches (system caches, component caches, kernel caches, user caches, ColorSync caches, Dock caches, Java caches, QuickTime caches and font caches) that I never knew my Mac had.

Using a feature in Cocktail called Pilot, I scheduled Cocktail to clear all my caches and restart my PC every Tuesday morning at 6:00am. I also had to go into my system preferences and make sure to wake my computer prior to 6:00am so that the scheduler could run. I've found doing this keeps it clean and running fast all of the time. So it looks like i can put off my mac upgrade for a little while.

Google Organic Listings loaded with Spam...

When you're looking for products on google, you end up searching through ton's of garbage sites known as scraper sites that waste your time. These scraper sites typically are loaded with google adwords advertisements. Why google allows these site to move to the top of the list is beyond me. Maybe they enjoy the revenue created when you click one of the adwords links. But in the end, google is a directory of directories.

It drives me crazy, I search for something, click on a site and it's another list of sites - all fluff, no content. Froogle now called Google Product Search does work pretty well when you are searching for a particular product. But the regular listings aren't doing it for me anymore.

Adwords Rock... Actually I get better results with the google adwords advertisements than I do with the organic listings. You have to figure people paying for adwords don't want clicks that don't convert into sales, so they make sure to list words that are relevant.

Humidity Blues...no mo!

My POS Sears dehumidifier bit the dust a few weeks ago in my basement. I pretty much ignored it and went on with my life. After some time I noticed my floor was bowing upward. This is not good... Took the dehumidifier back to Sears for repair. Two weeks later, I got it back and it still didn't work. First of all, I don't know what they pay at Sears, but it's not enough. The people there were clueless. I think I could write a blog on the ineptuted of Sears employees, but I'll save that for another day.

This all got me thinking, I need a real dehumidifier, so I called a local HVAC company Air Craftsman for a quote. They quoted $2,500 for a real whole house unit. But after getting the quote I figured I could do it myself for less.

So I bought an Aprilaire 1700 from Westside Wholesale in Cali for $1,049 plus shipping. They had the best price out there and they shipped it the same day I ordered it. I give WestSide an A+ for fast service.

Aprilaire 1700 Review

The unit weighs about 100 lbs and is incredibly well built. I went to Home Depot for ductwork, and found they didn't have what I needed, but Lowes did. So I spent another $100 for ductwork and pvc pipe for drainage. Installation took about 4 hours. That included cutting two holes in the drywall and framing them out to install the vents. I stashed the dehumidifier under the steps in the basement and have two intake vents and one exhaust vent back into the main part of the basement.

I fired it up 2 days ago and my humidity has dropped from 71% to 43% and my floor is almost perfect. The bowing in the floor has relaxed and I'm a happy camper.

Noise level is low, but you can definitely hear the the movement of air, but it's slight and it's way quieter than my old Kenmore portable unit.

The cool thing about this unit is it has a dehumidistat built in and all you have to do is set it and forget it. I also bought a Aprilaire model 90 remote dehumidistat for it. I've yet to install it, but it will allow me to set the humidity level as well as power on/off without crawling into the crawl space.

I had my buddy Dennis (an electrician) come over and install a dedidicated 15A circuit for the unit.

Bottom line I saved $1,000 easy by doing it myself. The Aprilaire 1700 unit seems well built and functions as I would hope for it to.