I am making up excuses lately instead of dealing with the brutal truth. Also it seems my wife and I are not communicating too well about food issues. I bought a new refrigerator and had it delivered and set up at my house while I was out of town visiting a geothermal heat pump factory to make sure they were doing everything right. That was a month ago. The refrigerator looks very nice and has some great features. It makes ice cubes and dispenses water too. I enjoy pure ice water. It is my favorite refreshing drink. I put the cubes in first and then the filtered water. When I just took water from the dispenser, I noticed that it didn’t seem very cold. My excuse was that probably the fridge doesn’t store water inside to cool it, and it is just passing through, & I am just drinking tap water at the same temperature as the kitchen faucet. Hey I am a refrigeration guy who has repaired 100’s of residential and commercial freezers, refrigerators and walk in coolers, so I should know better. I would take leftover food out to have a snack and my wife would smell it and throw it out before I could eat it. I can’t smell very well anymore. Maybe because I repaired too many ammonia refrigeration systems in 90 year old hockey rinks and dairy factories? Yes, they are still out there. Probably ammonia is better for the ozone than freon, but it is brutal on the nose when they leak. That was the second clue that I missed thinking maybe my wife nose was too sensitive and the food might have a few more days. I don’t drink milk much so I also didn’t know my wife was throwing the milk out after only a few days. She was thinking that my daughter might be leaving it out too long. Finally after being asked to buy milk too many times I saw the light & looked at the thermostat and saw the refrigerator was set close to 50 Fahrenheit. That is a tropical 10 Celsius for my friends outside of the USA. I adjusted it lower and now we enjoy 37F food and drink just like regular people. Reminds me of all the swimming pool and spa heat pump, geothermal, aquaponic, hydroponic and aquaculture service calls that I took where the only problem was the thermostat was set wrong or the heat pump was turned off. I hated telling people that news as then they feel stupid and that isn’t a good feeling as you write a bill for your labor. Now I know firsthand what that feeling is. Then I thought maybe I am slipping a bit in my middle kinda young old age? No that couldn’t be possible. I just installed a really quiet inverter variable btu condenser on my 18 year old Rheem Ruud heatpump split system. I squeezed into a nook in the crawl space next to where the air handler and a-coil was jammed with no room for my 182 pounds and changed the expansion valve and metering piston on the indoor coil so I could use 410A freon and stop using 2005’s Freon 22. That worked out pretty well so I must still have some diagnostic skills. My electric bill dropped too so I am happy.
Keep an eye on symptoms. They are your friend. 🙂
Best,
Marcus Miller Cell 360 348 7574
I don’t need your &$@?!%* resume. That is what a potential customer wrote to me this week while I was trying to help him. He had written to me asking for a delivered price of some swimming pool heat pump equipment listed on my website. To get him the most competitive shipping quote, I wrote back asking if he needed a commercial or residential delivery with a liftgate truck and another question to make sure this would be suitable for his application. I always do that because if someone gets something that isn’t proper for their project, then nobody is going to be happy. I then said that I once worked in his area so that I was familiar with his conditions and weather. Soon I received an e-mail back from him with a one line response saying that he only wanted a price and not my resume. So because he said that I didn’t give him either and now unfortunately everyone loses. Funny in way too as his LinkedIn profile was attached to the e-mail with all his business information. It was actually someone that would have been a good business contact for me as I need his type of services. Needless to say he is now the last person I would reach out to if I needed that type of service. I don’t know if something negative is in the air this week more than normal, but I then I followed up with someone who had asked for my free advice to help them plan their large geothermal heat pump project. I innocently sent them a text asking how the project was going? I was doing my job following up and caring about people who have reached out to me for advice. Then, I got back a text saying, “Stop texting me.” Now I have a pretty thick skin and have seen much worse in my time on the web, but this week’s hostility surprised me a bit. Half of my business is educating people for free about swimming pool, aquaculture and geothermal heat pumps. Most people disappear because they never do the project, it is not in the budget, their circumstances change or they pay much more and buy locally. That is fine with me. Tom Hopkins taught me years ago that if you make one sale in ten calls, then each phone call was one step closer to the ten. Hey, it can’t hurt to be polite though. I buy lots of stuff too. If you seem nice, have a good reputation and are knowledgeable about your product then I am an easy sale. Especially If you have your profile on LinkedIn, then it is in your best interest to be nice. If you engage me and I am trying to help you then maybe just say thanks for the information and then disappear. We are all in this together and at the end of the day experiencing a little courtesy makes it all worthwhile.
Best,
Marcus Cell 360 348 7574
This is a photo that one of my aquaculture buddies took of his Koi pond at a high elevation in Northern California. He is using one of my cold weather heat pumps to keep the fish warm all year so that they keep active, eating and healthy. He doesn’t want the little guys to just drop to the deepest point in the pond with their fins shivering waiting for spring for the water to warm up. Potential customers in California love to ask me for references in the Golden State of happy customers who are using my aquaculture and swimming pool heat pumps. I sometimes give the phone number of a few home owners with pool heaters and even my Koi buddy with an Agricultural heat pump to show an extreme example of a heat pump working in cold weather. It hasn’t seemed to impress potential buyers much though. They want someone in their neighborhood most of the time. I then show the math comparing the cost of propane, natural gas, oil to electricity to document the cost saving of using a heat pump; plus the added bonus that a heat pump can also cool the water too. Sometimes that helps. Home owners with photo voltaic (PV) panels who generate their own free electricity make it a no brainer to use an Aquaculture or swimming pool heat pump. Twenty plus California communities have banned new gas installations, so the state is slowly moving in the direction of heat pumps both Geothermal and air to water. I have never had anyone from California disappointed that they received a swimming pool heat pump from me. I want people to have comfortable water maintained at the lowest cost with the most reliable efficient equipment with the longest warranty. My friends with ponds of pet fish find caring for and watching them relaxing. If the fish hide because they are cold then that doesn’t benefit anyone. My pool heater customers relax by swimming or soaking in warm water. If it costs too much to heat or cool the water then they don’t use it enough. If I can help the country de-stress a bit then I have done my job.
Keep warm or cool out there. Whatever makes you happy.
Best,
Marcus
I hope that all my aquaculture & aquaponic friends are doing well this season. Even though most consider this industry a science, the results are not always scientific. You can see the photo of my rotten jack-o-lantern that appeared without any help from me. I had it all arranged for someone to water my giant pumpkins in August while I was away from the patch. August is the most critical time in their growth cycle where I live. My watering friend showed up one day and saw that someone else had used the hose near the pumpkin patch for washing something and figured that I didn’t need them to take care of the giants and then they never came back. So all the plants were damaged, and I didn’t get a very impressive crop this year. My failure didn’t affect my ability to earn a living, it just made me upset. That is nothing like my buddies who depend on successful productions for their agroecology, mariculture, fish farming, integrated multi-trophic aquaculture, algaculture, and aquiculture operations to pay the bills. They have to consider heat and cold, bacteria, UV, humidity, and probably 100 other things. When they use my reliable agricultural heat pumps to heat and cool air in greenhouses, heat and cool water for plants and fish, then that will be one less thing they have to worry about. Please keep your fish and plants happy by keeping the air and water surrounding them at just the right temperature with heatpumps to make them grow fast and live a healthy life.
My garden work is winding down this month. The giant pumpkins are gaining the last pounds of the season. Kind of a lame size this year. Not going to hit 1500 pounds. Maybe not even 250 pounds. Ugh! I think that they experienced too much water stress when I was unable to care for them for a few weeks this August. I wish that I have some of my hydroponic, aquaponic and aquaculture buddies near my house so I could share some of my plants with them. I harvested a squash last September in 2018 and kept it on the kitchen counter until about a week or two ago. I didn’t even keep it cool in a root cellar or basement. It never rotted so I wanted to see if the seeds were still good. I cut the gourd in half and buried it in my garden and then forgot about it. Today I noticed about a 100 baby seedlings breaking through the ground. Kind of sad that they won’t grow big because winter is coming. I still have one more 2018 squash left so I will save those seeds for next year. If any of you want some seeds please send me a self-addressed stamped envelope and I will send you some. I would really like to see how some of you make out over the winter growing them in a controlled environment. I have a lot of heat pumps out there in grow houses keeping water warm so that the plants are growing in the best conditions. I am still cooling water and greenhouses in some of the hot states and hot countries too in the northern hemisphere. I wish you the best growing season ever. As always if you can grow a bigger gourd than me with my seeds, then I will send you something cool as a reward.
Best,
Marcus
In May I saw a squash plant growing out of some decorative stones in front of my house. It was growing from a hostile environment of only sand and stones and nothing really to support a big gourd. I didn’t plant it so it a small animal or bird must have dragged it there from the garden last fall. I don’t like to kill plants that appear in impossible situations so I am letting it grow. I overwatered it and over-fertilized it to pretend that I had a mini Aquaponic farm with one plant. The sand is always dripping wet and the plant is thriving with many small zucchinis growing from the many flowers that keep blooming. I would love to send some seeds to all me Aquaponic and Aquaculture friends and see who can grow the largest gourds. Just send me a self-addressed stamped envelope and I will get them in the mail right away. If you can grow bigger ones than me I will figure out something cool to send you. Maybe giant potential 2000 pound pumpkin seeds or giant sunflowers? Also, I will take $100.00 off an aquaculture heat pump to keep your fish and plants comfortable and healthy growing like crazy. My heat pumps also cool the water for the critters that need to chill to be happy.
I hope to send out lots of seeds this year to see what my greenhouse, Agroecology, Algaculture, and Mariculture, buddies can create.
We are on your side. Have a great growing season.
Best,
Marcus
You have a perfectly created environment for your fish and plants that depend on electricity and mechanical equipment to maintain them. Mechanical equipment and or electricity will fail at times. That is why it is always good to have a plan B.
Make sure you had a licenced electrician check to see that all is up to code and you are not overloading the electrical system in the facility. Have back up heaters and chillers in case one of yours fails. Then you have a window to repair the equipment before the temperature is critical in your tanks. Have a generator on the property with a few days fuel to bridge the gap while power is restored. If you are worried about the water getting too hot and have no back up kill the lights for as long as you can. Usually, the benefit of the lights is not as important as the water getting too warm for some species. You know your situation better than me here. Maybe consider a solar or battery powered fountain to help evaporate the water to cool the tank or pond. Maybe a battery powered air pump to get some oxygen in the water too? You don’t want to have set up a bicycle connected to a coconut pump like Gilligan from Gilligan’s Island might do. 🙂 Maybe oversize your filters to give a little extra time when the system goes down? Put battery-powered monitors to alert you if there are any issues. The faster you know about a problem the faster you can work to resolve it.
I am on your side. I want happy healthy fish and little creatures out there.
My Northern California Koi breeder buddy that lives in the foothills, is keeping his fish warm all winter with one of my cold temperature breeder heater aquaculture / aquaponic heat pumps. The Koi are healthy and eating like crazy. No dormant sad, bottom dwelling fish here. Even though there is snow on the ground, the heat pump is keeping his pond warm. It will keep heating down into the high 30’s Fahrenheit or about 2 to 4 Celsius outside temperature. He is spending about 1/6th of what he would pay for a electric element or propane (LP) heater to operate and his fish don’t go dormant in the winter and not grow. Also in the summer it will chill the water so that the fish won’t get stressed by water that is too warm. So come on all you hydroponic / aquaponic type people out there. Make this a year of happy fish and plants. I know that if they could talk, that they would thank you. If you get a aquaculture heat pump, It would make the little creatures and me happy too, and I will thank you. 🙂
Best,
Marcus
Stay warm and safe out there.
Here at Green Planet Supply we pride ourselves at well….being green. Our heat pumps heat and chill Aquaponic and Hydroponic farms using much less energy than almost any other method. We also love to save hotels, motels, campgrounds and resorts money heating their swimming pools and spas with heat pumps. I was being happy with my family at Disney World, (the happiest place on earth) when I saw some of their guests trying to be green by hanging out their laundry on their hotel room porch. For some reason that didn’t make me happy. I know Disney generates lots of their electricity from solar panels to help their high air conditioning load, and they are doing what they can to be green. If you ever get a chance to take their private tour backstage at their aquaculture, hydroponic and aquaponic showcase please do it. They have done amazing things there raising huge healthy produce and fish using heat pumps to keep the water at just the right temperature. If you have solar panels and heat pump like they do then you have the best of both worlds. They can cool the water with the sunshine. Amazing. They say that their aquaculture area is has no negative environmental impact, and that they recycle 100% of their waste. I know that they made me recycle my wood toothpick. I wonder where that one will wind up? I hope not for someone else to spear their cucumber slice with? I am off topic though. Please dry your clothes in your room where I can’t see it, not outside at 90% + RH in Orlando, FL in the summer. That is the green thing to do in this case. It works better too. My room dried bathing suite proves that. Martha Stewart approved. For all my agricultural type people out there, I will send free Giant sunflower seeds to anyone in the USA who will send me a photo of your giant gourd in October. The photos is of big healthy coffee plants. I will try to grow then as soon as my Aquaculture system is set up in the barn.
Have a great summer
Best,
Marcus Miller Cell 360 348 7574
President Green Planet Supply
Hydroroyal Agricultural heat pumps.