I’m curious, what’s an item, tool, or purchase you own that you feel has completely justified its cost over time? Could be anything from a gadget to a piece of furniture or even software. What made it worth it for you?
House insulation.
I live in Australia where the minimum insulation required by law is a long way below inadequate, and many cheap contractors go below the minimum because it’s so hard to prosecute them.
I already had solar and a house battery, so the next obvious step was replacing the insulation. With my already very low electricity bills I cant say that it literally paid for itself (although it would have without the solar and battery), but it has made the house so much more comfortable. On some summer days, the AC would be using 7kW and barely keeping the inside temperature down to 30°C/85°F. Now it uses 3-5kW and the whole house stays comfortable.
Also, finding and patching the massive gaps from the previous “landlord special” house extension made a huge difference to the temperature of that room, and explained how lizards had managed to get inside.
- Epson Ecotank Printer
Has ink tanks so money isn’t wasted on cartridges and the printer is actually initially expensive unlike those printers that make money back on ink catriges
- Hammer Drill with the proper bits
Makes it easier to mount shit to bricks, goes in brick like butter if you’re using the right drill and bits
I recomend Ryobi Hammer Drill & Bits
- Air Fryer
I’ve stopped using my oven and only use it rarely for things that I don’t want blown apart thst I can weigh down with a fork or spoon like Pizza for example
- Refillable Japanese brand pens and mechanical pencil
I recently got these to aid in Japanese study and refillable pens are more economical in the long run
And Japanese brands go hard on the quality of stationary and I got introduced into the cult of stationary obsession with this
I’ll edit my comment if I can think of anything else
Make sure you use that printer once a month. I let mine sit and the ink dried on its nozzels or somewhere and now it won’t work. I’ve attempted to fix it with no luck. Was a great printer until that happened.
A bicycle. No gas to pay, no parking fees, no insurance, and I can do most of the maintenance.
Camping hammock, it’s what I sleep in most nights. My body complains when I have to use a mattress
I’m going to say my $50 charcoal grill. I’ve had more propane grills fail on me in 5 years, and charcoal grill keeps going. I know its terrible for the environment.
A private jet is way worse for the environment. I think you’re okay.
Your little grill is hardly terrible for the environment. Maybe for your lungs, but that’s why you don’t inhale the charcoal.
My Casio A 168 - I like watches and typically I would opt for more expensive ones but I still marvel at the amount of watch you get for this kind of money. The design is great, very comfortable to wear, very precise and has a very good battery lifetime and background light.
Someone else already mentioned a safety Razor.
My iron pan - much healthier, more ecological and will last longer than I will ever live.
Obviously my bike. Saved so much money on it. Although I still need to figure out what I should do with my very rusty chain. Should I replace it?
Yes replace it! It feels good to help your bike after all you’ve been through. Spent more than my bike is worth on repairs lol
50ft electric plumbing snake. Cost $60 and saved me $200+ bill first time I used it. I’ve used it for friends and family as well, making its value well over 10x in savings, not just my own.
Put 11.6 KW of solar on the roof. I’ll hit break even next year. Should have 15-20 years left of use.
I bought a big pack of eneloop rechargeable batteries a decade ago and they are just within the last year or so starting to fail.
I guess my bike? Have saved loads of money on bus tickets and it’s much more reliable too.
Sewing machine pays for itself quite quickly as paying a tailor to repair your clothes is like 1/3 the cost of a brand new sewing machine, so just repair like 3 items of clothing to get your money back.
I got a hot air rework station with a soldering iron many years ago.
The things I’ve repaired with it are so numerous, I cannot even recount them all, but here are a few:
- an assortment of gaming controllers
- a ghetto blaster from the 1970’s
- a few gaming consoles (Xbox 360, PS3 “Fat Lady”)
- retro technology (at least two 3Dfx Voodoo’s and a rare Abit motherboard)
- a full-metal eBook Reader (Sony PRS-505) that will probably survive an atomic fallout
- a Panasonic broadcasting camera from the 1990’s (because it looked cool and I wanted it to work)
- a few LCD monitors
Even though some of that work was just replacing old capacitors, I have saved so much money by buying “broken” stuff and fixing it up. No regrets. Over the years, I paired the station with a hotplate and a solder sucker and now I could probably open up an electronics repair shop. But I mostly do these repairs for fun. Fixing things calms my mind and soothes my soul.
Can you post a gear list? I got an iron a while ago and some crappy Amazon sucker tubes but I really think I’m missing some stuff because I’m either missing stuff or using crappy solder. I like to try and just take components off boards for practice but even that is a huge struggle. I’ve fixed a couple things but it’s rough work for sure.
I know it’s probably a skill issue, but I think some other tools might make certain things a bit easier as well, but without someone I know to ask questions I don’t want to just buy some random stuff.
Heat the metal, heat the PCB a little bit, then solder. I’m terrible at soldering and my friend just taught me that trick.
Can you post a gear list?
- Hotair / Soldering station: Aoyue Int 986A
- Solder Sucker: Aoyue Int474A++
- Preheater: Aoyue Int853A Pro
- Solder: Sn62Pb36Ag2 (lowest melting point, hard to get because of regulations, but available on the Praud store from Poland for example)
- Flux: Kingbo RMA-218 (available on Aliexpress, the variant in syringes is very easy to apply)
- Convenience:
- a brass wool sponge for removing the solder from the tip
- a very long and thin drill bit if too much solder ever gets stuck inside the solder sucker (cleaning one of those out is a bitch)
- tweezers
Have a lot of fun! Soldering get’s really easy if you have the right gear. Swapping out the crappy amazon solder with the good stuff from Praud made the biggest difference, imho. You can already solder a lot of stuff with a 30W soldering iron from the hobby store, but flux and solder are what’s really important.
There’s a lot of really cheap solder on amazon with way too high melting points. Sometimes the sellers just lie on their datasheet, I once fell for CFH fake solder which barely melted, even when I had my iron on overdrive. It wasn’t me, it was the crappy and fake product!
Thank you so much!
I have a Weller WLC 40w, I did a good bit of reading before I bought it but I might have missed the mark. I got a brass sponge that I stuck in an old metal canister, and some of those crappy plastic unpowered vacuum suckers off Amazon.
I did buy my solder on Amazon, I wonder if that’s been an issue. It’s this: Kester 24-6337-0010 44 Rosin Core Solder 63/37, and I don’t use flux with it.
The solder you have, is it regulated because of lead content? I can go buy a hunk of pure lead without question so it’s weird to me if that’s the case.
You need to get in touch with your local Repair Café! It’s sounds like you would make a perfect addition. :)
I love both my eBook reader (that 505 won’t die) and my PS3 (which could really use a reflow).
How difficult would you say reflowing one of the OG 60GB models is?
How difficult would you say reflowing one of the OG 60GB models is?
If you need to swap the RSX out, you’ll have no chance with a hot air station. You will need an infrared rework station. Reflowing the RSX is only a short-term solution, because the underfill of the chip itself has a defect. All 90nm RSX chips are bad.
There are people putting a 65nm (or 40nm) chip from the later models into the FAT PS3’s. This is called the “Frankenstein mod” and some repair shops in the US are providing that service. If you want to have a FAT lady that will last forever, I’d say this is the best solution.
I was really lucky, because I got my model going by swapping out the Tokin capacitors (but I’m aware this probably won’t last when the RSX finally gives up). The FAT PS3 board is very thick and sucks away a lot of the heat. I needed to put the board on the preheater and then used hotair combined with that to remove the caps.
Eventually I’ll get around to fixing it, right now it will power up find and then will cut out after a few minutes… Or at least that’s what it was doing last time I messed with it so it’s just been unplugged and back in the box for nearly a decade now.
Thanks for all the info, definitely let’s me know not to just toss it in an oven (that was the original plan, then I shelved it).
My motorcycle has paid for itself many times over in terms of the enjoyment I get out of riding it. It’s something I can recommend to anyone, and lets you see the world in a way most people never will.
I did a refresher course two months ago, but I haven’t gotten around to buy a motorcycle yet. But everything is there, I just need the bike. Really looking forward to it. Stay safe!
If you’re willing to wait, you can probably get a good bike used in the spring. Otherwise, head to Craigslist or FBM to find a used bike. Cheaper and already broken in.
What are your monthly costs? Does seem fun
Something like 1500/yr for insurance, probably 30/month for gas, assuming I don’t take a long trip.
I have two 10,000 liter water tanks in my basement that I use to harvest rainwater, and another 2,000 liter tank on my roof. From October to around May I close the city water and use only rainwater. I’ve been doing that for a bit more than 10 years now, and it paid for the installation cost in about 4 or 5 years. I also have solar water heaters, but it’s hard to tell how long they took to pay for themselves because I also have on-grid photovoltaic panels for energy generation. My energy bill is about 1/6 of my neighbors’, and the photovoltaic panels paid for themselves in about 5 years as well.
How did you get the tanks in your basement?
sloped lot. I put them there before the walls.
Wow. Thats very cool. I’m planning on getting a solar system installed this winter too (costs less in the winter). Here power supply is not reliable but solar is fairly cheap thanks to China. Infact I’m pretty sure we have a very impressive solar system for a country of our status. (Pakistan)
It’s been more than a decade since I installed mine, so there are probably more options today, but when I did, you were either on-grid or off-grid. On-grid means you “sell” your energy production to the energy company, but if the city power goes out, so does yours. Off-grid means you don’t use city energy at all, but it was much more expensive because it required batteries for storing energy… however, I remember recently reading about people using their electric car batteries to power their houses when the electricity was out, and I’m sure batteries are much more affordable nowadays because of how much electric car technology has developed.
I’ve got a 5kw battery/solar system for my little off the grid trailer home. Batteries were at $1000 a piece, at 2.5 kw a piece, last year. They are currently $800 each so prices are dropping year over year
Bit different here. You can be on grid or off grid too. But the government has limits. They don’t want to buy all the power lol. Despite the fact that they don’t produce enough themselves.
You are put on a waitlist first. Now we do have one side of the house under solar already for a year. But thats my uncles side, and they are on grid by now plus have have batteries. And yep batteries are the expensive part here too. But you can manage a combination too.
Batteries are quite expensive. Lead-acid batteries are readily available, but don’t really work well for powering a house on a regular basis, because they don’t have a very long life cycle. LiON batteries work very well, but they’re fire hazards. Even worse, if you live in an area where you get freezing temperatures, they must be kept inside, because they can’t be allowed to freeze if you’re cycling them. LiFePO4 is the current best option. If you don’t charge them above 80, 85%, and never discharge below 20%, you should have a nearly infinite lifespan. But that means that for every 30kWh of power you use, you want 50kWh of battery. And currently LiFePO4 battery banks run approx. $1000/kWh (+/- depending on band). If you heat your home with electricity, and you live in e.g. North Dakota, you’re going to want more like 200kWh of batteries, because even high efficiency heat pumps can suck a lot of power when it’s -20F.
I’m currently working on getting a 17.7kW system approved by the local utility. It looks like I’ll need to step down what I’m feeding into the grid, because the line capacity out where I live is only 10kW, and they will only approve 75% of the line capacity for grid-tied systems.
When you say "I close city water’, sounds like you are also drinking that water? Sounds like a cool idea that I too have been thinking about. That water needs disinfection though
I’m not a native speaker. I just mean I use the city water supply when it’s not raining season, and when it starts raining (about half of the year here) I stop using (and paying for) it and use only rainwater. As I wrote in another comment here, my city has a lot of natural springs and I get water for drinking there.
You drink the rainwater?
Not directly, but I probably could. I have nets in my gutters so insects and leaves don’t fall on it and I have another filter before the tanks in my basement. I regularly do tests to check levels of pH, chlorine and other stuff. The chlorine tablets I use says it’s used to make water drinkable, and I use the rainwater to cook and make coffee (so I only consume rainwater that was treated and boiled).
My city is in the middle of mountains and it rains a lot and it also has tons of public water fountains, so every weekend I just go to a natural water spring at the bottom of a mountain and fill some bottles to drink through the week - the city’s water company do weekly tests on the fountains and every fountain has a QR code for you to check that fountain status.I think that’s a cool option for preparedness, but seems like a bit of a hassle compared to just using municipal water. But I’m guessing the municipal water is also fairly expensive where you live
There were a couple of years with extended drought season and the city’s water reserves got dangerously low and there was rationing. Since then, I got another five 260L barrels and tons of 5L bottles filled with rainwater under my stairs just for use on my lawn, garden, and houseplants. I don’t believe the climate is going to get any better in the future, nor that the population will get smaller or industry will use less water. Every year is hotter than the previous one. What I expect are longer and longer drought seasons, and I don’t think I’m prepared enough :P
Im my experience, the expensive park of the water bill is actually the sewer expenses. Are you on septic or do you use municipal sewer? Do you have a water/sewer bill at all in the months youre not using their water?
Here the sewer is 80% (so for every $10 you consume of water they charge another $8 for sewer). In those months I don’t use their water I still pay for the sewer minimal fee (up to 10m³ water consumption, my average in the months I use their water is 18m³)
Filters, hommie.
I mean, I know, but wouldn’t those also increase the cost?
I pay $200 a month for water in the seattle suburbs, plus $180 for city drainage, and a one time $25k fee for hook up to the water system. So yeah filters might be a cost.
Two pairs of black Carhartt cotton duck overalls I bought in 2010 and 2011. One knee is blown out but they are the softest most comfortable clothes I own. I still wear them once or twice a week, wash on hot, dry on hot. These, a Dickies pocket T shirt, and 15 year old 14 eye steel toe Docs are the ‘uniform of the day’. Other than a few nice suits and some shorts, I’m pretty much not interested in clothing. The suits were bought for corporate recognition and I work from home otherwise.
Setting up a fully automated system to download, track and organise … eh … Linux distributions …onto a NAS under the stairs. I used to subscribe to a bunch of services that would … eh … provide access to all sorts of … eh … Linux distributions … for a flat monthly fee, but I realised that I often was only really interested in one or two specific Linux distribution so I really didn’t need to pay for these services.
Now I just download the … eh … Linux distributions that I actually want to install. It also prevents my kids from … eh … endlessly installing different Linux distributions. Not really a productive use of time.
Nice set up! You could easily use it to pirate and watch movies too.
I don’t know why, but that joke just never gets old. I always chuckle about it. Just the other day, there was a thread where somebody wrote about “Seasons of Linux isos”. Idk, just gets me. Thank you 😅
