Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2010 June 23

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June 23

Postal Jeep Wrangler?

So, I live in western North Carolina, and I have a severe hearing impairment and I'm totally deaf in my right ear. This being said, I can't hear a thing when I'm driving. I'm looking to buy a Jeep wrangler, and got the idea a Postal vehicle would be perfect for me. Would this be legal? And where would I look for these? And would I be able to find them in manual? 97.82.209.100 (talk) 02:34, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

You can buy a new one from the dealer with right hand drive. The older ones that most people associate with the post office were called DJs. (Jeeps have a two letter designation of sorts. The current models are JKs, the last Wrangler model were TJs, etc) I don't know if it matters to you but the DJs were rear wheel drive and had no 4WD capability. I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't be legal since rural postal carriers still drive right hand drive vehicles. Though you may want to check with your local DMV to see if there is a particular certification you need on your driver's license. And yes, the DJs came in manual and automatic. If you're looking for a used Jeep, there are sites like this one that specialize in right hand drive Jeeps. Dismas|^(talk) 03:13, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

If he's in North Carolina, a left-hand drive model would be more appropriate. DuncanHill (talk) 08:54, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Postal Jeeps are right hand drive. But you're right, if he can't hear out of his right ear, I don't know why you'd want that closer to traffic by being in the right hand seat. Dismas|^(talk) 08:57, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking it might be nice for him to be able to see oncoming traffic, assuming he will drive on the right like so many Americans do. DuncanHill (talk) 09:05, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Being in a r-h-d vehicle in a drive-on-the-right regime means he'll be able to get in and out on the sidewalk side of the car: for someone with a hearing impediment who can't, when stationary, easily detect traffic approaching from around a bend, for example, that might be safer. Also, it'll put him further from the traffic (I think Dismas has it wrong) but his better-functioning ear closer.

Driving in a "wrong-driving-side" car is marginally more difficult but by no means dangerously so for someone used to it. British military personnel frequently (for tax reasons) purchase new r-h-d cars when posted to d-o-t-r Germany (typically for 3 years) and experience no particular difficulties, as I know from family experience and discussion. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 15:35, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

DuncanHill, that's the whole point of his question. He wants a postal van because they're the only vehicle he thinks he might be able to get his hands on that is righthand-drive. That way his good ear would be away from the open window and he could hold conversations with passengers (Where would they sit?). APL (talk) 22:50, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Wouldnt it be safer to buy a normal car where it was convenient to slide over to the other seat for entry or exit? 92.15.3.0 (talk) 20:03, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

This isn't about me sliding out for entry and exit, or for hearing oncoming traffic. It is basically impossible for me to hear anything going on -inside- the car while its moving, and with music or a window down, completely impossible without craning my neck and therefore not looking at the road. A RHD vehicle would solve this, as my good ear would be facing the interior of the car, rather than the door. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.181.202.2 (talk) 12:36, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

RHD cars are certainly legal throughout the USA. I often drive my (British) 1963 Mini - which is RHD. However, you should be warned that driving an RHD car in the US (or an LHD car in the UK for that matter) is a serious pain...and probably dangerous too. The trouble is that you can't pull out around parked cars or overtake on a 2-lane or even 3-lane highway safely. In a normal car, you can edge out a little bit - see the oncoming traffic and then make your decision to overtake. But in an RHD car, you have to pull all the way out into the next lane (with potentially oncoming traffic) before you can see whether or not it is safe to do what you just did! Hence, I only drive my Mini to car shows and club meetings - and I tow it to car shows that are out of town so I don't have to drive it on the freeway. Otherwise, I tend to stick to roads where I don't have to overtake or pass parked cars.

Another problem you almost certainly won't have thought of is that drive-thru's at banks and fast-food places are unusable in an RHD car! (Actually, I have on more than one occasion reversed through a fast-food drive-thru...you get a lot of amusing comments and strange looks when you do that!!) I've also found that some traffic lights are set up so they aren't visible to people in the adjacent lane to the one they are controlling - sometimes those are impossible to see from the other seat of the car.

So I have to advise against doing this for a daily driver - I'm pretty sure you'll find that the inconvenience FAR outweighs the benefits. That said, if you REALLY want an RHD car, you can import them from counties that drive on the other side of the road fairly cheaply and get almost any kind of car you fancy in RHD. (I paid $600 to ship my Mini from the UK) Also, you can sometimes special-order a RHD car directly through a car dealership providing the manufacturer sells that model in RHD countries. But if you do that with a new car, it would be hard to sell it again in the future. As an alternative (and I'm also fairly deaf in my right ear) - I bought one of those really cheesy "Miracle Ear" gizmos that they advertise on TV for $19.99 (they are much cheaper than that in my local drug store) - and I stick the earbud into my good left ear and put the microphone part down on the center-console of the car and then I can hear conversation in the car just fine...but that's going to depend on how good your left-ear hearing is...it's probably not a good idea to block off whatever hearing you have left in your good ear with an ear-bud and thereby perhaps make it harder to hear horns, sirens and other audible alerts...but for about $15 you can find out - and it's a LOT cheaper/better than driving an RHD car!

SteveBaker (talk) 15:27, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't really think that the passing a parked car issue will be an issue, as in my area at least I have ample room to see on either side before I would pass a car. And as for banks and drive-thrus, I make it a point to do any business inside as a rule. And, as you said, reversing would only add to the humor of a drive-thru. As for the traffic light, as far as I can tell I have never encountered a light anywhere in my travels that was not just as clearly visible in the passenger seat of a LHD vehicle (therefore the drivers seat on a RHD vehicle), and I feel as if one or two inconveniences would be easily overcome as long as they weren't a regular occurrence. I appreciate the thoughts though, I actually hadn't thought of the drive-thru situation yet, but seeing as I try to take my business inside where ever possible, it doesn't inconvenience me. And as for the miracle ear, I doubt that would work very well for me as I have a hearing aide for my left ear, and when I do wear it, it would stop any other items from being used. Also, I'm a 19 year old college student, so I seriously doubt something sitting on the console would be safe from much, especially when considering my exceptionally rowdy passengers. And I get in and out of my car a -lot-, picking up people, dropping things off, and driving around campus, so I feel like having to put something in every time I would like to easily hear people would be a hassle.

That being said, I checked the link posted for RHD Jeeps, but they all seem to be fairly new cars. Are there not any models in the 90s that are RHD?

24.181.202.2 (talk) 13:14, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Storing Pans in the Oven

I found out my mom stores her pans in the oven. Is this "normal" (as in common to some extent)? How do most Americans store pans? ~EdGl! 04:14, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Is this in a drawer at the bottom of the oven or in the oven proper? I don't know how "normal" this is but we (my wife and I) keep our cookie sheets in the oven. Dismas|^(talk) 04:28, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I know folks who do that. Cookie sheets are especially good to stash there, as it's hard to find a more conventional place for them. Just don't turn on the oven while that stuff is in there, as it could get too hot to handle and/or it could damage the handles. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:10, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

We do that sometimes...but I always turn the oven on while they are still in there. They usually go in the drawer below the oven though. Adam Bishop (talk) 13:53, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

A lot of American kitchens (such as mine) don't have enough storage space, so bulky items like pots and pans go into the oven, which is unused 95 percent of the time. During the time it's actually heating something, the empty pots and pans are left on the countertop. Hemoroid Agastordoff (talk) 16:28, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't because of several incidents where I turned on the oven to preheat it without first looking inside to check whether there were pans in there. I opened the oven and then had the nuisance of an unwantedly-400-degree pan to deal with. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:20, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

?unwantedly, does that mean unwanted? 86.4.183.90 (talk) 18:16, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

When I typed it, I thought "unwantedly" was not really not a word in English; I was trying to be clever; but I see here that it's actually a word! If I had said "an unwanted 400-degree pan", it would have indicated that I did not want the pan; by saying "unwantedly 400 degree pan", I was trying to indicate that I just didn't want it to be at 400 degrees. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:24, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

 Done Thank you for your answers! (and yes Dismas, I meant oven proper). ~EdGl! 02:30, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Rice cookers

Are rice cookers equally effective for cooking wholegrain brown rice, rather than just the white stuff? Wholegrain rice takes about twice as long to cook as white rice. Thanks 92.15.17.9 (talk) 12:21, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, though you will need to add rather more water than for white rice, and as you say you will need to set the timer for longer. The instruction manual should have details, otherwise (unless someone else appears here with sound advice) you will just have to experiment. Or Google the problem.....--Shantavira|^{feed me} 14:09, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I use both white and brown rice. I put in the same amount of rice and water and cook for the same amount of time and I've never found the rice to be undercooked. Exploding Boy (talk) 15:47, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I generally use the standard rice cooker for white rice, and a pressure cooker for brown rice. Hemoroid Agastordoff (talk) 16:23, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Timer? You use a rice cooker with a timer? Anyway as with Exploding Boy, I have no problem with using a normal rice cooker (i.e. one without a timer) although I admit I rarely cook brown rice on its own as I greatly prefer a mixture (about 2 brown to 1 white). Depending on your preference you may want to adjust the amount of water however that will obviously vary a lot from person to person and also from the type of rice you're used to cooking (personally I've never understood the idea some people have that rice shouldn't stick together so if you are one of those I probably can't provide helpful advice). Soaking the rice first may also help. Of course I come from Malaysia so as I think with much of SEA and East Asia I use what I think is called the absorption method, if you use some other method, things may be different.

There's a Japanese study I'm lazy to dig up which found brown rice soaked for a very long time like 24 hours or more so it germinates slightly (presuming your rice hasn't been processed in such a way this can't occur I guess) has some interesting properties/advantageous, IIRC some of compounds which may be beneficial are released and it also has a lower GI. I've tried it a few times but as I tend to be lazy to remember to do so and want to cook rice when I need it and actually have been having very little rice recently I kind of stopped. I think this also lowers the amount of water needed and reduces the cooking time, and it changes the taste slightly.

Nil Einne (talk) 17:07, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Pressure cookers are usually used for making congee, so it depends on how much water you add to the rice. ~AH1^(TCU) 17:16, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Interior heat pumps as A/C

There are some A/Cs which are not connected to the exterior of the building to release hot air. What do they do with the heat? Do they release it at night or do they store it into some water reservoir which has to be emptied?--Quest09 (talk) 16:58, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Such devices are connected to the outside, but by means of a water pipe which conducts the heat away. This water pipe can be much narrower than the equivalent air duct, and so you might have mistaken it for a pipe wire conduit. See chiller#use in air conditioning. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:16, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

This diagram explains it better. The chiller is on the roof, and a skinny water pipe descends from it. At various points it runs through heat exchanger boxes, which use electric fans to draw warm internal air over a matrix of pipes carrying the chilled water, this cooling that air. The water, now warmed, runs back up to the chiller. This picture shows a temporary chiller, showing the large black water pipes running into a manifold and out to smaller yellow pipes, then back through other small pipes into an intake manifold and back to the chiller unit. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:29, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

... unless you are referring to the portable air cooler units that just use water evaporation to cool the air that is blown out. Their effectiveness is limited by the fact that they increase the humidity of the air because the heat goes into latent heat of evaporation. With ventilation to get rid of the water vapour that they produce, these can have some cooling effect, but they are not really "air conditioning". I think the so-called air conditioning in my car uses a similar method, but I must investigate it further. Dbfirs 17:43, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Which is called an evaporative cooler, although often called (by dint of their characteristic stale jockstrap smell) a swamp cooler. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:47, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. Are vehicle manufacturers being honest when they describe these systems as "air conditioning"? Dbfirs 06:58, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

I have never heard of a modern car with an evaporative cooler; every automotive AC I've seen has been a proper air conditioner with a compressor. A real AC is necessary because people use the AC to dehumidify the air inside the cabin, for the purposes of clearing the interior of the windscreen of misting, particularly on a rainy day - an evaporative cooler wouldn't do that. Swamp cooler were fitted to some old cars - see car cooler, however. Real ACs can occasionally still smell bad, but that's usually because a drainage channel is blocked. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:54, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't know where I got the idea that they use evaporative cooling. Probably from the smell, as you suggest. Dbfirs 22:09, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

In the UK the cooling effect of AC is only necessary for a couple of months (sometimes weeks!) a year. I found that when using the A/C for the first time each year it would smell stale. After my A/C lost pressure through "degraded seals" I was told that you should run the A/C for ten minutes or so a week whatever the weather. In doing this I discovered the wonderful demisting effect of A/C and heating working together that Finlay mentioned. -- Q Chris (talk) 10:32, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

This is a water-source heat pump, which employs a loop of water piping around the building that can receive heat pumped into it from a unit in cooling mode, or can have heat taken out of it by a unit in heating mode. Since there can be situations where units in a building core want cooling when the perimeter wants heat, it provides an efficient way to move heat around a building without having to make it in a boiler. The systems deal with an excess of loop cooling/heat extraction by running a boiler to heat the loop, or by rejecting excess heat to a chiller or cooling tower. If the system uses the earth as a heat sink/storage element, it's a geothermal water loop heat pump system. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia article on Water-source heat pumps redirects to Geothermal heat pump, which is only a subset of water-source/loop systems. Conventional systems (i.e., non-geothermal systems) can have surprisingly small boilers and cooling towers for the size of the building, since they have the means to efficiently redistribute heating and cooling loads around the building. Acroterion _(talk) 00:43, 24 June 2010 (UTC)