If I had all radiant heat I'd still set the thermostat as far back as I could during the night. I would just program it to start heating up earlier so it was warm once I got up. I still recommend setting it back as far as possible/comfortable.

Actually, we keep the heat at 60F from when we go to sleep until we get home from work. Its a bit cold in the morning, but you jump in the shower then get dressed and its not bad.

Some performance info. At about 6 PM on Saturday we lost power. It came back on last night. When the power came back on the thermostat said 54°. By that time it was clearly warmer in the basement. Maybe as much as 10° warmer. I've got to insulate the top side of the house now.

On another note, almost none of the leaves have fallen off my trees. The result is that the 6" of wet snow we got was suspended in the branches. Maple trees aren't built for that kind of thing. I'm going to have plenty of fires in the yard this winter.

Just joined this site yesterday and have read through this entire thread. S-F I am humbled by your forward thinking and tenacity. I can only imagine how rewarding this is for you.

Thanks for the inspiration,
Tony

I wasn't going to post about my latest renovation because it isn't strictly an eco project but then I realized that there is a very important element to it which should be shared.

http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x...124_110635.jpg


This is the wall which separates the basement stairs from the kitchen and hall. I sawed it in half to open everything up.


http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x...124_110708.jpg

See that? This is sticking my head in that hole I made and looking up at the "ceiling". That black stuff is balsam wool bags. It's about R 2.2 / inch. It's left over from the original construction of the house. Maybe 3" in the attic covering everything. As you can see there was a slanted ceiling in the stairway. Basically it was an open vent for my heat to go up and out the ridge vent. When I air seal an attic I usually cover these things up with foil bubble wrap, staples and one part foam. It's a cheap fix but it works. Auditors won't pay for a real fix, like tearing a stairway ceiling apart to properly put up drywall. The thermal envelope of my house is at the sheathing everywhere accept the ceiling which uses the airtight drywall approach.


http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x...209_180912.jpg

Here it is after I hung the sheet rock. I didn't get a good picture of the ceiling, sorry, but I'm sure your imagination can tell you what a ceiling looks like.

Things turning out as you had hoped?
 

S-F,

In one of the earlier posts to your basement insulation thread, you had some high hopes as to the heat-retention qualities of the project that you were beginning.

How would you say that things have turned out so far, comparing your expected results with what you are experiencing at this stage of the project?

As for myself, I am struggling with a kitchen insulation project and it is coming along rather slowly, but still coming along...

I found myself thinking that I was expecting much higher performance by now, but then I realize that there are some key components to the project that remain undone. For instance the floor is still uninsulated and over an unheated crawlspace. I think that the general rule of thumb is that a floor constitutes about 30% of the heat loss of a house. Now, with the walls and ceiling much upgraded, the % loss of the floor is higher by comparison, although the absolute heat loss of the floor remains the same.

Same for the windows, I haven't tackled those yet, but the heat loss remains the same.

And I have at least two air leak disasters that need fixing.

But, little by little, things are improving as I continue.

The same for you?

-AC_Hacker

I'm glad you bring this up. Basement retrofits aren't something people usually think of.

I can say that the basement is performing as expected in the winter. Now we did have a fairly warm winter but it was never cold down there. I also kept the house much warmer than the previous owners and paid less than 1/3 to heat the place. The heat load was supposed to be "about 4 x 75 watt light bulbs at -5". We didn't have too many -5 days but when we did my daughter who sleeps down there was fine at night with a single sheet and a light comforter. I was colder down there during the times when the heat was on (I have a setback to 55 in the day and at night; although it never got down to 60 once). Early in the morning it was a bit warmer down there. When we lost power, and thus heat, for several days and the house got to 56 the basement was certainly warmer. Now, I wasn't running the lights down there all the time. Once I install a HRV the temperatures between the two floors will equalize a bit more with the circulating air. Even if the air being pumped in down there is 80% the temp of that upstairs it will still make a difference. I am honestly amazed. This winter my house has been warmer and more comfortable than ever before... ever. I also have some more work to do down there. I'm going to put fiberglass in the ceiling to keep noise the floor where it's created. Then I'll put up a drop ceiling. This will obviously detract from 1st floor warmth conditioning the basement. Also the window in the mechanical room is still the original garbage. I left it there because I wasn't ready to drop the $ on a dedicated vent for my boiler an I don't want my children to suffer from CO poisoning. If next winter with a HRV and insulation in the ceiling sees the basement cooler I will install a single baseboard radiator down there. I thought about that this winter too because I was spoiled by how warm it was upstairs. Boo hoo! It's 70 upstairs but only 66 down stairs! Last winter I was paying $120 a month to keep my apartment at 64 when I was home and 55 at night.

There is one caveat. I am going to have to install some kind of AC. There is just no way to get that place cool. Not enough windows. It got up to 96 when I did the spray foam and it didn't cool down for weeks. It sucked down there. And then I had to run the dehumidifier all the time, which cost a lot and also produced heat. A lot of heat. Really it's hard to cool my house in general. The windows are all really small. There is only one that is large enough to accommodate a box fan.

My basement isn't insulated at all, is the reason I ask.

But I do have a small shop down there and I thought that running a 220v heater would beat some kind of mini split. I was floored when I looked at my power bill. then I did the number comparing a really cheap mini-split (Chinese, no inverter) and the break even was about two or three years! Of course, my winter temps are not a cold as yours, but you might want to pencil it out. You'd get a pretty good AC as well.


I can't remember if you have gone after the upstairs of your house or not, but do you have trees that could provide shade? Maybe grapes planted along the sunny side of the house. Sure helps me a lot.

Another angle is that about 35 years ago, there were a heap of solar collectors going up on roofs. Well, the roofs are wearing out now and most of the solar collectors are not being used because not everybody is so handy at keeping things working.

Solar collectors not only provide heat, they also provide shade!

If you look in Craigs List for your local area for SOLAR PANEL you might be mighty surprised!

Try searching for "panel", "panels", "collector", "collectors", even try just "solar".

-AC_Hacker

The cost of installing a baseboard wold be pretty small. Maybe a couple hundred. I'd just plumb it in with the rest of my radiant system. As for AC, I think I'm going to go with a conventional ducted split system. Not as efficient but I can run it through the HRV ductwork and have even cooling in each room. The basement needs more due to the humidity I'm assuming. So I imagine the cost of 2 minisplits would dwarf a conventional 16 SEER system. It makes no financial sense to scrap my current boiler.

I'm not done here but I've got to go out and there is now way to save this as a draft so it will have to stand as is for a time.

To Be Continued

As part of my work on the house I'm getting mini splits installed in the next week or so. Part of the process involved a Manual J. Even though my house has, basically no insulation in the attic and walls the heat load was around 18,000 BTU and the gain is around 1 ton. In the article about Robert Riversong the house being discussed is also 2,200 Sq. Ft. and the heat load is 1,700 BTU. So I'm not doing too bad. Once I'm done I'll heat the place with light bulbs, cooking and the energy generated by my children.


http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x...ildingGain.jpg


My windows are all pretty small. So small that I can't mount any casement shaker on the market in them. I do have two 4' 6" picture windows which are crappy single pane jobs facing South and East. It's amazing how much of the gain is from the glazing.

Here's the loss chart:


http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x...ildingLoss.jpg


The portion marked as "floor" basically is my entire basement. Here the poorly insulated walls dominate the chart. I'll shrink that down to a tiny nub by wrapping the house in foam (sucks but I'm not in the mood, cash or time for a proper gut renovation with cellulose) and then the chart will basically be all window.

The next order of business after the new HVAC system is to air seal the attic and fill it up with 20' or so of cellulose.

I think it's really a great idea that you did a Manual-J before your eco-onslaught. Gives you a much better idea of what you need to do, and to some extent, how to go about it.

Doing the results of a Manual-J as a pie-chart should be mandatory for all eco-renovators. One glance tells the story. Maybe you might also want to do a before-&-after bar chart too, to visualize the improvements.

BTW, I've been pretty amazed, from looking at various heat loss charts, just how effective plain old storm windows are in terms of reducing heat loss... I know how you like those interior storms.

Xringer's experience with agricultural shade cloth on the outside of a sun-struck window was pretty significant. If you got the shade cloth from a feed & seed store, it should be very attractively priced, should you give that idea a go.

Best of luck on the project!

-AC

Update:

It's 97° outside and 72° in the basement. It's always cool down there. The temperature fluctuation between summer and winter seems to be about 10°.

I'm glad to hear all the hard work is paying off!

Update:

http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x...709_160923.jpg

http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x...709_160912.jpg

http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x...709_161036.jpg

This next one is taking up the space my Dali Last Supper previously occupied, and I'm not entirely happy about that.


http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x...709_161012.jpg


EDIT: Oh, BTW, Mitsubishi Mr. Slim units with the Hyper Heat™. These things are supposed to operate at full capacity down to 0° F. I have it from reliable sources that they do indeed put out over 105° F below 0°. They are each 3/4 ton units. It's more than enough for cooling and it's just under what I "should" need for heating. Anyone want to buy an 80,000 BTU Buderus boiler For short money? It would really be a shame to have to scrap the thing as it works very well and most likely will never fail. I just don't need 80,000 BTU to heat a hot water tank.

EDIT Part 2:

I didn't install these. I work about a million hours a week and didn't have the spare cycles to make it happen. I did take the day off from work to hang out with the techs who did do the install and supervise them while drinking adult beverages. The install is really stupid easy. They basically had them both put together by lunch time. And they arrived at about 9:00. Really most of the work was hanging the inside unit. The rest was just plugging things together. For the record they didn't ream the flares (they shortened the line sets) or anything like that. They had a super slick flare tool that has the point off center which slowly rounds out the flare. No de-burring necessary. Although they did inspect the flares to make sure. The flare tools were also ratcheting and they cut out at the proper torque. No way to screw it up. It's all full of 400 PSI of Nitrogen for the night. In the morning, after inspection for pressure loss, they get sucked out and then the charge gets let loose. Simple.

While I don't like spending money on anything, and especially on labor for something so simple, I had a great time sitting in a lawn chair, on my first day off in God knows how long, shooting the breeze with the techs on all this kind of thing and soaking up their straight forward attitude to the work.

Looks nice. If you don't mind, what did the two units plus install set you back?

About $6,400. I made the pads and did the wiring. Not sure what that cut off the cost but the materials alone for that stuff was close to $300. Also, I ran 14/3 (yes the units each need only 15 amps) when I only needed 14/2 (which I'm sitting on close to 1,000' of). I thought these things needed a neutral thinking the indoor unit had some 110v demand.

Congrats on the install... it's really not so tough, is it? Sounds like you got a lesson, just watching.

Nice pix, although the blog robot 'resizes' anything bigger than 640x480 pixels. Sometimes the faster loading 640x480 (& smaller) just don't show critical detail, and you really need to go with the bigger view...

Best,

-AC

Yes, I learned a lot. I had some concerns about the installation which are now ALL gone. From reading Xringer's log of his install I was thinking that it was a much larger procedure than it really is. You basically install the indoor unit, which is the hard part, connect the wires and line set, pressurize it, wait, pump down and open it up. That's it. These guys took their time and basically had it done in three hours. Two mini splits with two guys. They didn't use goop on the flare fittings, although they said that it's fine to do that if you want and they showed me the grease that they would use. No torque wrenches. Just tighten it enough but not too much, like the valve cover on an engine. If you make the flare too thin just cut it off and do it over. No big deal. For the folks out there, don't have any fear of the process. Honestly, even now, knowing what I know I would still have paid for the labor. They had complete confidence about things like the charge. There was a while in the Xringer/Sanyo thread where there was speculation about the charge being wrong. And at the same time I saw how it should be done by people who do it all the time. And BTW, the line set tubing is very flexible. I screwed around with some of the scraps and they, in particular the smaller one, can be bent into circles and all kinds of strange shapes without folding.


Oh, one more thing. I was ready to pour a concrete pad, per the Xringer/Sanyo thread but was instructed not to. I was told that with a heat pump you want it elevated and placed on a porous material so that in the winter the run off from the defrost cycle can escape. The pads are a PT 2x6 frame with landscaping fabric on the bottom and filled with gravel, per the instructions of the guru.

Cool !!
 

Congrads on the systems! Nice machines. I know you're going to love them!
The price is surprisingly low. Was the dealer/installer related to you? :D
At $3,200 each, you really made out well.
How much do you think you saved by doing the pad & electrical prep work?


When I did my second install, I wasn't so worked up about the pad.
And, experience helped a lot. #2 went much faster.
I've looked at a dozen+ local mini-split installs during the last few years,
and I don't think any of them had a fancy pad like mine (#1). :o
A lot of them are just sitting on bricks or patio pavers.
I did angle that pad so the water would run off away from the house.

It was real humid last night when I went to bed, so I left the Sanyos in dehumidify mode.
My wife was so cold this morning, she shut them off before sunup.
At least the air was dry. :)

XRinger, Honestly I feel like I got bent over on the cost of the labor. I'm happily paying it, but it still sucks. I think the cost of materials for them was close to $2,000 less than what I give them. That's 2 grand for these guys to do very little. They earned it though because now I'm a full fledged mini split installer.

I've heard of many people getting discouraged from buying a mini-split
because of installed cost was about 2.5 to 3 times the price for the unit (seen on the web).
So, it seems to me like you got the labor for $1,000 each unit.
Yeah, it seems high to me too, but not to a lot of installers.

With your prep work, and what looks like plain vanilla installs, they didn't have
to do a ton of work for their money. But, you got a good deal compared to what many folks pay.

Nice that it's warm weather. They don't have to spend a lot of time on the vacuuming.

The next time we have a heat wave, you're going to forget all about labor cost.. :D

Maybe the reason none of them had a fancy pad like yours was that they are not needed? I was discouraged from pouring one as it would just become a carrier for a sheet of ice.

That's the spirit... only maybe 3/4 fledged, so far.

I'd still recommend any newbee to use a torque wrench. If you're doing installs every day it would be unnecessary, but for the inexperienced installer, the wrench isn't expensive, and the torque specs are in the installation manual. Then you know for sure.

Way cheaper than a service call.

-AC

I have a buddy looking to add a central furnace to replace his electric baseboards. The aren't overly fond of the look of minisplit head units and on the quotes the cost to install 2 of them was more then to install a central gas furnace and have ducting added. If I remember correctly the prices came back at 8k for gas, 10k for 2 minisplits and 14k for a central heatpump

A concrete pad or solid concrete blocks is per the Sanyo install manual.

I've seen dozens of outdoor AC units mounted on concrete pads, and liked
the idea of a large solid mounting surface that wouldn't sink into the mud,
and allow the Sanyo to start tilting over.

Check out this Jumbo Sanyo.. (Behind me).
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...ger/rich-1.jpg

It's not the only one that I've seen that looks like it's going to fall over someday.
Patio bricks aren't the best mount, if the soil gets muddy..

I've seen a little ice on my pad, but it never lasted long enough to get more than 1/8" thick..
No really dangerous, since the pad is so small, there's no room for walking on it..

What I wanted to avoid is deep snow building up around my system.
And rain water running down the wall, and splashing into coil.
So far, my anti-snow & rain measures have worked out okay..

It seems that most installers want a lot of money to install mini splits.
And a lot of folks don't like the idea of paying 5 or 6 grand to have
a $2,000 unit installed, by one guy, in one day.?.

No one like the idea of paying that much per hour, for a job that
looks pretty basic when you watch it done on Youtube.
Plus, many people feel they can't afford it.

Looks:
My wife didn't like the look of the indoor unit at all..
But after 'feeling' the benefits of inverter technology, she is fully sold! She loves our Sanyos.

LG had 'Cool Art' indoor units when I checked last summer (work related).
http://www.gelidus.com/images/artcool_gallery_m.jpg

Oh, of course I would use a torque wrench and grease the flares. I was making light of how much tension I have witnessed surround the installation of these units and how effortless it seemed for me to watch. I even use a torque wrench for putting on a valve cover.... ever since I snapped off one of the bolts in the nut. That sucked. The stud was one of the bolts which held the rocker assembly down. I snapped that one off twice. Must be a ham fisted moron.

Some post heat pump observations:

I have 2 x 9,000 BTU units. In the evening when I come home I turn them both on. If it's really rough outside I keep one unit on dehumidify at night and turn it off when I leave in the morning. I have the temp set to 72° on both units. It has been burning hot this week. Close to 100°. I haven't come home to a house showing a temperature over 73°. Mind all of my windows have curtains pulled over them during the day. My new gadgets are cool but spending $ to run AC always pains me. Even when they are 26 SEER AC units. I've just gotta prioritize and build that swimming pond in the back yard to cool off.

72 degrees is a bit cooler than we keep our house, and we have been through scorching weather too. We keep the temperature set at 75 degrees all summer when the AC is on {most of the summer} and at 71 or 72 during the heating season.

That said, 9k BTU twice is what, equivalent to a 1.5 ton central unit? I had an oversized unit installed at my home when we built it 10 years ago, because I didn't know better back then. We have 3.5 tons where the installer suggested a 2.5 ton unit. That will be corrected next year. You must either have a smaller home than I thought, or it must be considerably more efficient than mine.

Yeah, 18,000 BTU is 1.5 ton. It's probably a combination of both smaller and more efficient. My basement doesn't really need conditioning and the rest of the house is pretty straight forward. It's a ranch. Of all the different types of houses out there I consistently see ranches being tighter than any other. It's just such a simple design. There is little room for the common air sealing debacles to take place.

Simple Winter Notes on The Heat Pumps:


So I have been using these things for heat since it started to get cold here in MA. My general usage is to turn them on in the morning for 1.5 hours and for about 2.5 hours in the evening. The rest of the time they are off and the house is unheated. In order to bring the house up to temp they run full tilt. When they run I have them set to 70°. Early this morning I saw the lowest temperature all winter with a record low of 61° upstairs. The basement is always cooler by a few degrees as it's unheated. On one occasion I accidentally left one on all night in 0° conditions and in the morning (very early AM before the Sun made its appearance) the gadget was still putting out great heat and the whole house was warm. The thermostat in the hall in the middle of my upstairs read 71° which is one degree higher than the heat pump is set for. I have been paying attention to when the defrost cycles happen, because you can tell by the noises the units make, and I always quickly look out the window at the outdoor unit. I have yet to see any ice or water or anything like that. The coils do get frosty and then defrost. There has never been any ice or anything like that. I haven't bothered to remove snow from the top of the units because the defrost cycles don't do it on their own. I haven't kept track of last year's heating costs with Line Gas but I can say that the average addition to my electric bill for the last two months has been about $50. Less in December. Maybe more next month. It's hard to say as other electric loads fluctuate.
Right now it’s about 30° outside and the heat pumps have been running all evening so the mass in the house has had time to come up to temp. They are barely moving air at all now compared to how I push them usually.
Also, and this is very important, I had these units installed in the middle of the summer when it was brutal hot here. I spent the majority of the summer working 10-14 hour/day commercial jobs in attics which would reach 120° by 11 AM. No one looked at the thermometer after that. I would come home, take a straight up cold shower and sit in 70° AC. Such aggressive cooling, more aggressive then my heating because I can now put more clothes on to keep warm, resulted in an average increase of $40/month in 7/12-8/12. It got to the point where I was sleeping in a 70° room.
The moral of the story is that heat pumps are winners. At least the right ones for the right climate.

Tomorrow: air sealing an attic…….

"Tomorrow: air sealing an attic……."

Are there any special tricks or products that you use when the surface temperatures that you are air sealing are below freezing? I noticed that the specs for spray foams and caulking usually have a lower limit of 40 degrees or warmer. Sure you can warm spray foam up to 90 or 100 degrees for application but as soon as it touches the cold surface, would that cause a problem?

I'm not sure. I just keep foam, guns and caulk inside when not in use. I hope the top side of my sheet rock is above freezing :/. Usually the problem is that things are too warm up there. That's why air sealing is needed. I just saw a house with no insulation in the attic at all see a blower door reduction of 4,600 CFM 50 to 1,100 CFM 50 with common air sealing techniques. I have seen large expanses of two part foam fail. That is corrected by spraying water on the surface first.

http://www.tiptemp.com/assets/17/tipWD-35639-30.jpg

When I was adding layers of insulation to my attic, I used one of those cheap IR heat scanners.
It enabled me to detect areas with heat leaks and take corrective action. Very inexpensive and effective tool.
It allows you to remotely view areas that aren't easy to reach. Or areas that are unsafe to walk on.

When it's real cold in the attic, and the house heat is turned up to 70F, leaks are easy to find, even 15-20 feet away.
But when you get closer (5 to 10 ft), you greatly narrow down the location of the leak.
Here's an example of the range resolution of one model.
http://www.fluke.com/NR/rdonlyres/3C...atio_250px.jpg
At 1" spread per foot, at 20 feet, the detect zone would be 20"?
This one doesn't look that great, but by sweeping slowly across the area,
while watching the peak, you can really focus in on the leak.

Yeah, once you get all of the obvious targets (chases, top plates, chimneys, lights, etc) I usually take a peak around with the IR camera.

Latest Installment:

Air Sealing The Attic


http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps88a2bceb.jpg



http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps4422e750.jpg

I'm about 1/2 of the way through the attic. The difficult half. I've been working for about 6 hours so far and gone through as many cans of foam. I probably have 5 left of just air sealing. I'm also removing the balsam wool bags as I go. Then I'm going to make a 2' dam out of plywood around the hatch. I'm not air sealing the top plates at the perimeter. It's just too much of a PITA so I'm going to get the 2 part spray foam guys where I work to squirt those tricky spots.

It really is a shame I didn't take blower door measurements before I started all of this work. I still haven't run a blower door here. Maybe I'll look into getting one here this weekend to aid me in my attic air sealing.

EDIT:

Oh yeah. The heat pumps failed in January. Not in a mechanical sense. In a financial sense. $380 electric bill. I have never seen anything like that. Those damn things are off until it gets hot out. I guess they don't like the way I ask them to bring the house up to temp twice a day.

Thanks for these pictures. Never really were sure what people were talking about when they discussed foaming the top plates to air seal. I never ran into the 2x4s between the drywall sheets when I was in the attic before looking for stuff to foam. It's probably because there is about a 13 foot span without a wall going down the middle in the section I was looking. Good to know.

"Oh yeah. The heat pumps failed in January. Not in a mechanical sense. In a financial sense. $380 electric bill. I have never seen anything like that. Those damn things are off until it gets hot out. I guess they don't like the way I ask them to bring the house up to temp twice a day." Are your thermostat(s) seeing more than a degree or two of temperature differential and triggering resistance heat? $380 sounds like it.

ASHPs can't do everything. The irony is that when it gets colder out and you need more heat, they become less able to deliver the heat you need. But up to that point, they're amazingly cost effective.

If you understand the ASHP weakness, and prepare for the times when the temperature really drops, you'll do OK.

I'm still using ASHP for my heating until I get my project done. When the winter temp takes a nose dive, I 'circle the wagons'. I reduce the area of the house that needs to be heated by the heat pump. I also fill in with some gas heat from the kitchen stove for now... but I recently bought a small direct vent NG gas heater for that purpose. Now that my kitchen is much tighter, heating even a little bit with the gas stove is not a good choice.

I found that out with my CO2 monitoring project.

BTW, you really into video editing?

Best,

-AC

"I'm still using ASHP for my heating until I get my project done. When the winter temp takes a nose dive, I 'circle the wagons'. I reduce the area of the house that needs to be heated by the heat pump. I also fill in with some gas heat from the kitchen stove for now... but I recently bought a small direct vent NG gas heater for that purpose. Now that my kitchen is much tighter, heating even a little bit with the gas stove is not a good choice.

I found that out with my CO2 monitoring project."

Be sure you are also monitoring CO as well as that will be more important than CO2 monitoring.

The top plate sealing is really pretty important when looking at he big picture. The drywall is sealed to the adjoining piece but not to the structure of the wall so air is free to move up and down between the structure of the wall and the drywall. As you can see in my first pictures, I have sealed the rock to the plates and then along the strapping over the plates extending beyond a few inches because you can't get the seam under the strapping. In the second picture I'm sealing the top plate of the load bearing wall through the middle of my house. There is strapping right up next to it on either side acting as a nailer for the rock so I sealed the plate to the strapping and then the strapping to the sheetrock. Then the joists lap there so I sealed the seam between them in a continuous fashion with the rest of the foam.

I don't have electric heat so that isn't it. The original heat is a line gas fired Buderus boiler. I think the heat pumps just don't like raising the temperature so so drastically. So I'll continue to use the gas. At least until I have this place properly buttoned up. We'll see what happens next winter.

@AC Hacker,

I have a hobby of video encoding, as in format changing movies to make them smaller to take up less space on my file server, but I don't know much about video editing per se. Why do you ask?

Oh, I thought I remembered seeing a post from you in which I thought you mentioned that video editing was your hobby. I've been editing on a PC for about 17 years now, so it was of interest to me.

BTW, if encoding is your thing, I recently discovered the joys of using a very high-performance video card's GPU to do rendering. I was formerly dumping rendering jobs onto my quad core. The acceleration due to the GPU is simply amazing.

Best,

-AC