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Radio emissions altering your biology is even more out there than anti-vax.
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Oct 2, 2017 18:07
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Frown Town posted:But whatever, it's probably fine, right? If you had watched Better Call Saul you'd know that the guy with EMF "sensitivity" is pants-on-head literally tin-foil crazy and his EMF is 100% a psychological problem and not a physical one.
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Oct 2, 2017 18:10
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QuarkJets posted:IIRC there is scientific evidence that sleeping with your phone nearby (say on a night stand next to your head) makes your sleep worse I would be super interested in pointers to those studies, if you have them.
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Oct 2, 2017 18:10
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Frown Town posted:Wanted to ask the question because I know it's pretty Either I'm going crazy or this is the like the 2nd or 3rd thread you've posted about this in? Are you trying to make this a thing? It's not a thing
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Oct 2, 2017 18:15
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I would be far more inclined to believe psychological/behavioral causes as affecting your sleep, rather than physiological ones caused by radiation. As Leperflesh said, you're being bombarded by radiation all the time; the comparatively puny amounts put out by household electronics aren't going to make anything more than the most trivial of impacts. Think instead about things like sources of stress, if you've been depressed lately, whether you've been getting enough exercise, if you're consuming caffeine too late in the day (IIRC as much as 8 hours before bed can still impact your sleep?), if you're going to bed and getting up at consistent times, if your bedroom is dark and cool, if your mattress needs to be replaced...all things that have well-documented impacts on the quality and quantity of sleep you get. Don't go chasing red herrings.
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Oct 2, 2017 18:18
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Frown Town posted:Wanted to ask the question because I know it's pretty This is a great question and I for one and glad that you as a homeowner are taking the health of you and your family seriously. In general I think people are right that the signal strength of the smart meters themselves are going to be dwarfed by background transmissions -- cell, radio, wifi, emf producing electrical devices, and even induced RF signals from the wiring that's running through all your walls. Furthermore, even if you negate all the signals within your own home, it's quite probable that the aggregate emissions from surrounding homes will still be substantial. In general, you need to remember the Inverse-Square Law: the power of an EM signal is uniform across the surface of a sphere at a given distance from the emitter; however, as the radius of that sphere (i.e. the distance from the emitter) increases, that energy is divided over a proportionally wider surface area, meaning that the actual energy density decreases. This is why irradiance is measured in "Watts-per-Meter-Squared". Barring some extremely powerful emitters, you're most likely better off worrying about nearby sources (even if weak) rather than those even one or two rooms away. But like I said before, the aggregate background radiation from sources that are outside your control are going to account for a big part of your EMF exposure. Given that, I think the best way to protect yourself is going to be by engineering your protection into the house itself (just like you rely on your house to protect you from the rain and cold). You should look into constructing what's known as a "Faraday Cage". Since RF signals are really just electrons (acting as both wave and particle) moving through space, you can actually intercept them by placing a grounded conductive surface that will absorb the electron and then diffuse its energy instead of re-emitting it in between you and the source. Of course since wave-particle duality is a thing you can't just build a wall/roof to block it -- the signal will kind of wrap itself around the edge (if you've ever seen pictures of how waves diffract around an island or jetty in the water you will have an idea of how the analog would look for EMF). If you enclose a volume on all sides with this conductive "wall", however, suddenly there's no way for the signal to diffract in without being grounded out, giving you complete protection. Furthermore, this conductor doesn't even need to be a solid sheet of metal -- since RF signals are "fat" (with amplitudes perpendicular to the direction of travel) you can get effective protection by simply using a screen/mesh of wire with holes that are smaller than the finest wavelength you are concerned with. Thus the term "Faraday Cage". If you are serious about this, I'd strongly recommend looking into this documentary from Geovital about EMF-screening that they retrofitted into an existing house using a combination of metal screening under the roof and conductive paint (bonded to the ground using straps): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOJKcvFzJU8 However, blocking all the EMF is still going to be impractical since you've got electrical devices INSIDE your home, not to mention the induced EMF from the wiring powering them. So I'd also consider something like a bed-frame cage for SECONDARY protection, like that described here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4UdozjyLlA This doesn't have to be fancy! The important thing is that it's grounded and enclosed on all sides with a conductive mesh. If you've got small children, something like this should be a totally reasonable implementation:  (make sure you secure all those staples well, though -- you don't want the kids hurting themselves!). In both cases, it's important that *all* the faces are electrically bonded to one another. Since you're building it out of multiple pieces so you can get in and out it's important to have a way to maintain the conductive connection between them after you get in. For the cage material itself, you will ideally want something highly conductive. Copper sheeting would be ideal:  But this may be tricky to hide under walls (unless you really enjoy the admittedly awesome copper-orange aesthetics!). Copper mesh, however, is also available and should be usable at fairly coarse levels:  You could even go so far as to use (metallic!) window screen material or chicken wire/"hardware cloth" from the garden section of your hardware store (although in that case you might have to offset/double-up the layers to get a tight enough conductor spacing). The important thing in all cases is to make certain it is grounded. Constructing an entire frame around your bed might be more work than you're willing to put in to start with. In that case you might be able to go with even more 'personal' measures. Special bed clothing made out of conductive fiber should accomplish the same goal, provided you still have it connected via a (flexible!) lead to the ground for the diffusion of induced current:  Suits of varying construction are available depending on how much you're looking to spend and what your threshold for "comfort" and "peace of mind" are:  e: as far as daily concerns (you mentioned worrying about devices at work) you should check out this video from David 'Avocado' Wolf about staying grounded during the day to minimize the impacts of EMF (and other 'negative' energy!) by using the ground wiring already available through whatever electrical system is nearby powering the radiation sources. You're essentially using the Earth (via the 'ground' wire, which is a direct electrical connection to the Earth's electrical aura) to naturally disperse and heal any damage being done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E46Fm0dtE2c ee: THIS video shows a different implementation of a similar idea -- a grounded, conductive bed sheet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wPqh4DNfwg In this case you're giving up the total protection of a Faraday cage for convenience, but probably still seeing some substantial reduction in EMF exposure. Obviously you'd be better off if you put the screen material under your mattress pad as well as on top of the bed sheet, but every little bit helps! Hubis fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Oct 2, 2017 |
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Oct 2, 2017 19:41
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Beautiful.
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Oct 2, 2017 20:02
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Bravo. This is well worth my 
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Oct 2, 2017 20:03
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Frown Town posted:I've recently gotten a bit more aware of EMFs from cell phones, wi-fi, and other things in our lives. I've started cleaning up my bedroom of electronics and stuff and that's really helped my sleep, but I found out my energy company wants to eventually upgrade people to Smart Meters.. which send usage info about electricity continuously, generate EMFs, mess with sensitive peoples' sleep.. If it's any consolation, I work for a cellphone recycling company, so the running joke around here is that we're all going to die of some horrible unknown cancer in fifty years similar to asbestos and mesothelioma. On the topic of electricity and sleep though, there are some interesting studies from circadian neuroscience researchers at Oxford about the effects of artificial light on first and second sleep cycles. Like, the whole way we sleep is completely different in the twentieth century than it was even in the 19th: http://slumberwise.com/science/your-ancestors-didnt-sleep-like-you/ http://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/14/s...&pagewanted=all Basically without exposure to artificial light, people tend to return back to sleeping for about twelve hours, interrupted by a period of moderate wakefulness for several hours sometime in the night. Potentially something to consider for getting better rest, though I can't imagine a way to practically implement no artificial light in the digital age.
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Oct 2, 2017 20:19
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OSU_Matthew posted:If it's any consolation, I work for a cellphone recycling company, so the running joke around here is that we're all going to die of some horrible unknown cancer in fifty years similar to asbestos and mesothelioma. ... This, however, is 100% a thing -- especially when it comes to "blue" end spectrum exposure.
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Oct 2, 2017 20:23
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 OSU_Matthew posted:If it's any consolation, I work for a cellphone recycling company, so the running joke around here is that we're all going to die of some horrible unknown cancer in fifty years similar to asbestos and mesothelioma. Thanks for the reads! I work in mobile games and am probably at risk for some weird disease I don't know about yet. I wear some blue spectrum blocking glasses at night, at least! mattfl posted:Either I'm going crazy or this is the like the 2nd or 3rd thread you've posted about this in? Maybe I have? I felt this thread was most relevant to my immediate concern regarding smart meters. If you feel so inclined to go through my post history though, you may find it's just in my poorly maintained TFLC log that I complain about sleep issues and maybe a recent shoutout on EMFs and my dive into true tinfoil hat territory... EMFs became a thing I was aware of because I met someone who was legitimately sensitive and had problems with her hormones/weight/sleep/anxiety because of it. I mean. Maybe it was in her head, but those headaches sounded rather real to me. Frown Town fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Oct 2, 2017 |
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Oct 2, 2017 20:37
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Frown Town posted:I work in mobile games and am probably at risk for some weird disease I don't know about yet. I wear some blue spectrum blocking glasses at night, at least! You should look into f.lux, which automatically adjusts your computer's display to remove blue light when it's getting close to bedtime. I'm sure similar programs exist for phones. quote:EMFs became a thing I was aware of because I met someone who was legitimately sensitive and had problems with her hormones/weight/sleep/anxiety because of it. I mean. Maybe it was in her head, but those headaches sounded rather real to me. Never underestimate the amount of actually physiologically significant symptoms that can be produced by the placebo effect. The presence of headaches or other pain can easily be explained by someone believing that they're being hurt/attacked by EMF, without the EMF actually having any direct physiological effect. Similarly, those dumb copper/magnetic bracelets can actually legitimately make people feel better even though they have no medical value outside of the placebo effect.
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Oct 2, 2017 20:50
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Frown Town posted:Maybe I have? I felt this thread was most relevant to my immediate concern regarding smart meters. Serious question, why do you think a smart meter would be special compared to any of the other 500 billion radio, wifi and cellular signals bouncing around you all time? Even if electromagnetic fields can cause some kind of physical disruption to a human, it's really weird that you singled out a smart meter as problematic.
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Oct 2, 2017 20:52
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A very common misunderstanding of the placebo effect is that if something is "all in your head," the symptoms "aren't real." That is completely wrong. The placebo effect instead reveals that to some degree, belief - which you can deconstruct into things like anxiety, peace of mind, anticipation, etc. - has real physiological effects. Not just headaches, either: stress actually shortens people's lives, and stress is clearly highly related to state of mind. The other thing you (e: Frown Town) and/or your friend are doing is mistaking correlation for causation. It is especially wrong to identify a symptom, and then lock on to the first cause that occurs to you and if it appears to be correlated, eliminate all other possible causes without investigating them. If someone is experiencing real health problems, deciding that EMF can't be causing them is not the same thing as denying the health problems exist. e: and yeah, like I said earlier, you're probably getting way way more EMF from a dozen other sources than you would from a smart meter mounted on the side of your house.
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Oct 2, 2017 20:53
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Droo posted:Serious question, why do you think a smart meter would be special compared to any of the other 500 billion radio, wifi and cellular signals bouncing around you all time? I'm concerned about all of it. But I thought a smart meter was the most relevant topic of discussion for a home ownership thread. And the meter the electric company sticks on your house may not really be your choice in the first place (or not presented as a choice, at least); I think the topic of consent is what I'm worried about here. I mean, this isn't stopping me from buying an Ecobee and putting more wifi in my house. I've just been trying to do some due diligence and research about what I'm getting myself into by upgrading the house's tech. If wifi, for instance, DOES mess with my sleep patterns on some level, maybe I can find a setting to not have it transmit at certain times.. just a thought. And I appreciate the genuine thought and discussion.. I know it seems crazy, but, it IS something that worries me on some level. I just don't know how concerned I really need to be, you know? We're effectively a bunch of human guinea pigs because smart phones and the magnitude of wifi/rfs/etc have been increasing since the 90s and it's probably still too early to see the data surrounding increased tumors, disease, etc, but some of the animal studies at least make me think I should continue paying attention to the research. (interestingly one of the studies found an increase in tumors AND lifespan in male rats exposed to high emfs; female ones weren't affected the same way.. other studies point to increased glial/brain tumors.. a really small study found a specific type of breast tumor in women carrying their cell in their bra) E: And whether placebo or not, adopting some habits like not looking at the phone at night has been helpful for fixing my sleeps.. emfs or blue light or whatever. I also don't do stuff like carry a cell phone in my bra. Just taking some of the tiniest precautions to not expose myself to things I feel may be a little questionable. But to each their own! I personally am going to err on the side of caution. Frown Town fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Oct 2, 2017 |
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Oct 2, 2017 21:03
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Frown Town posted:And I appreciate the genuine thought and discussion.. I know it seems crazy, but, it IS something that worries me on some level. I just don't know how concerned I really need to be, you know? If you want to prioritize your attention on the things that have the greatest impact on your health, you'll get better results from paying attention as you walk across the street than you will from trying to avoid the EMF from a smart meter.
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Oct 2, 2017 21:08
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:If you want to prioritize your attention on the things that have the greatest impact on your health, you'll get better results from paying attention as you walk across the street than you will from trying to avoid the EMF from a smart meter. Oh man, I'm going to take and redeploy this line moving forward.
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Oct 2, 2017 22:07
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My smart meter is behind my breaker panel, which acts a shield to keep out the harmful radiation! More seriously, my smart meter combined with a $20 SDR stick lets me monitor my power usage in real time. I actually called and requested a meter swap to get this functionality (and the utility did it for free!)
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Oct 3, 2017 02:17
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Subjunctive posted:I would be super interested in pointers to those studies, if you have them. Erwin posted:Care to back this one up? "IIRC there is scientific evidence that X" is a horrendously problematic sentence and the fact that we're okay uttering a sentence like that is why there's so much misinformation in the world. A quick search only reveals studies around people sleeping worse because they're checking their phone constantly and screwing with their circadian rhythm. That's okay, for fun I like to argue against people who post psuedoscience bullshit from naturalnews and motherjones so I can understand your concern with that kind of statement (I was on my phone at the time). Perusing pubmed you can find many studies examining sleep quality as a function of exposure to high-frequency radio waves, with special emphasis on the frequency bands used by cell phones and at reasonable power levels (aka they assume a phone on a night stand, not strapped to your head). Here are a few: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25685954?dopt=Abstract https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8821374?dopt=Abstract https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23482083?dopt=Abstract tl;dr there is some evidence suggesting that even the small amount of power emitted by a cell phone is enough to cause measurable circadian issues when the phone is close to its owner (within an arm's length away). Like so many things, it's still an active area of research and needs further study
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Oct 3, 2017 03:12
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Thanks! My pubmed skills are rusty, I appreciate it.
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Oct 3, 2017 03:13
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Charles Mansion posted:Can a radiant barrier in an attic make a significant difference in cooling costs if the HVAC ducting runs through a crawlspace below the house? Short answer: yes, but I'd still recommend something else instead. Radiant barriers do make a difference, and can even be significant in cases where most of your incoming heat comes from radiation, but in every study I've seen you're better off investing the same amount of dollars in traditional insulation. If space and weight is really at a premium, though, and you hate money, you can go with aerogels...
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Oct 3, 2017 04:55
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TheManWithNoName posted:I have a Little Giant (Costco has the best deal) and a reel mower (Scotts 20"). But I also have a smaller house and yard so. From last page, but Costco has the 17ft Little Giant ladder for $119 until late October. https://www.costco.com/Little-Giant-MegaMax-17-Ladder-wAir-Deck--.product.100111832.html
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Oct 4, 2017 20:59
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Tricky Ed posted:Short answer: yes, but I'd still recommend something else instead. Thanks for the reply. That seems to be the consensus from anyone who doesn't have an interest in selling radiant barrier products and the cost seems to be higher than I initially thought it would be, so scratch that idea.
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Oct 4, 2017 21:12
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Can anyone help me out with my dryer? It's a Frigidaire Gleq2152Ee0. It's had a long history of popping E68 (stuck button) error codes, but it's generally been usable. Recently though it's been bad enough that I can't run a load without it stopping and popping the code. Everything I've seen that if it's not a stuck button, replace the control board. I just did that, but apparently no one ever mentioned that the dial needs to be in the right spot, otherwise the positions the dial says won't match up to what the dryer thinks you're doing. I've done a little Googling and can't find how to correct the position of the dial (hopefully without taking it apart again). Any help? Thanks!
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Oct 5, 2017 23:04
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BeastOfExmoor posted:From last page, but Costco has the 17ft Little Giant ladder for $119 until late October. https://www.costco.com/Little-Giant-MegaMax-17-Ladder-wAir-Deck--.product.100111832.html these ladders rule, i found one on craigslist for $60
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Oct 8, 2017 19:24
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Paid full (Costco) retail for that ladder, still feel like it was worth it.
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Oct 9, 2017 15:59
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The drywall in my garage is a disaster. The tape lines are bubbling and peeling in spots, and overall it just seems sloppily done. My overall goal is to get drywall up on the entire garage, and get it looking nice enough so that I can paint. How difficult would it be to repair this tape job and get the drywall to a point that it can be finished effectively with paint?  
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Oct 9, 2017 22:25
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Man, I'm super bad and impatient when it comes to floating drywall and I'm pretty sure even I would have done a better job than that
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Oct 10, 2017 04:50
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Do wasps eventually abandoned their nests if they can't access it? I think I have a nest in my crawl space as I noticed a ton of wasps coming in and out of the hole. I have since then blocked it with a piece of cardboard but they're still trying to access it. It's been about a week and winter is coming so I imagine they'll be gone come spring?
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Oct 10, 2017 06:15
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I have a big field ant mound in my backyard, and nothing I do seems to get rid of it. They laughed at the ant spikes I placed around it. The mound is too deep for the expanding foam insecticides to reach the queen. Bombing it with Borax just killed the grass. Do I call an exterminator, or are there some DIY solutions?
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Oct 10, 2017 06:38
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What state/country are you in? If you're in California, just LOL forget it, the entire state is one continuous ant colony.
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Oct 10, 2017 07:13
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Leperflesh posted:What state/country are you in? If you're in California, just LOL forget it, the entire state is one continuous ant colony. I'm from Toronto. The nest has lasted at least 1 winter as well. On the plus side, it's pretty much as far away from my house as it can get on my property but still, it makes it harder to mow the lawn.
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Oct 10, 2017 11:06
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Gonna have to dig the queen out and show those ants who is boss. I suggest a backhoe.
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Oct 10, 2017 14:51
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Sunshine89 posted:I have a big field ant mound in my backyard, and nothing I do seems to get rid of it. They laughed at the ant spikes I placed around it. The mound is too deep for the expanding foam insecticides to reach the queen. Bombing it with Borax just killed the grass. Fill it with molten aluminum, put video on YouTube, sell resulting art on eBay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGJ2jMZ-gaI
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Oct 10, 2017 15:50
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Maybe diatomaceous earth would work? If you surrounded the hill and covered it with it I'd imagine they'd track it in and out and eventually it would kill the ants faster than they can be replaced and kill the colony.
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Oct 10, 2017 16:13
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couldcareless posted:Man, I'm super bad and impatient when it comes to floating drywall and I'm pretty sure even I would have done a better job than that I'm really not sure if they DIY'ed it or the builder just threw it up as quickly as possible when they built the house. It really is tempting to just re-do the entire ceiling, but if I can get away with not doing that it would be preferable.
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Oct 10, 2017 16:16
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Kinfolk Jones posted:The drywall in my garage is a disaster. The tape lines are bubbling and peeling in spots, and overall it just seems sloppily done. My overall goal is to get drywall up on the entire garage, and get it looking nice enough so that I can paint. How difficult would it be to repair this tape job and get the drywall to a point that it can be finished effectively with paint? Whoa, that's really bad. Were the seams not laid up on the joists properly?
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Oct 10, 2017 16:27
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lol internet. posted:I think I have a nest in my crawl space as I noticed a ton of wasps coming in and out of the hole. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdkz7tZ5lr0
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Oct 10, 2017 16:40
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Sock The Great posted:Whoa, that's really bad. Were the seams not laid up on the joists properly? I have no idea how it was installed. Was like this when we bought the place. At least all the walls inside look fine haha. So should I consider tearing it all out and starting over or is it salvageable?
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Oct 10, 2017 17:10
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It is not uncommon for the drywall to be hung by the builder and not finished in the garage since the finish is not required by code. Some DIY jocky spent a lot of time making a lot of work for you. Have you gotten some quotes to have a drywaller do the work? They are faster and better then you will be.
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Oct 10, 2017 19:58
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