Monday, August 01, 2011
Elegant gadget
Re-showing the animation from the Hummingbird entry:
The sprinkler that produces this fine mist is worth a positive note.
Most modern appliances are inferior in every way to pre-1980 models. Made in China, but that's not why they're bad. They're bad by design. Noisier, less effective, harder to use, impossible to repair. Presumably this is because they are designed more by lawyers than engineers. Appliances are shaped to satisfy the marauding enemy army EPA and to avoid suits from marauding trial lawyers. Usability, customer satisfaction, and maintainability are way down at the bottom of the priority list.
But there must be some categories of gadget that the marauding enemies haven't noticed yet. It's plausible to assume that lawn sprinklers are in such a safe zone.
This one is a purely elegant design, a vast improvement over my old sprinkler made about ten years ago. Both appear to be the same kind of device, and I thought I was buying the same kind of device. Not so!
The old one, identical to the picture on the left, offers a choice of several 'brute force' water distributors. The water exits the holes in raindrops, which are too heavy to be moved by air currents. Each stream goes to the same place every time, leading to puddles and dry spots.
The new one, similar to the picture on the right, offers a choice of several venturi-style nozzles that 'carburate' the water into a super-fine mist, almost vapor. Each nozzle has a different shape, producing circles or triangles or rectangles of mist. Slight air currents then swirl the mist in all directions.
You might think raindrops are best by analogy with nature; but observation shows that the fine mist does a better job of getting the water out to every part of the zone, and down into the soil. My old front lawn, which was staying yellow with the rain-sized drops, has turned green everywhere with the mist version. My newly planted clover in back, which was having trouble catching on, is now popping up everywhere. Same faucet setting as before, same length of time as before, so the overall water input is the same.
¶ 3:59 PM 
The sprinkler that produces this fine mist is worth a positive note.
Most modern appliances are inferior in every way to pre-1980 models. Made in China, but that's not why they're bad. They're bad by design. Noisier, less effective, harder to use, impossible to repair. Presumably this is because they are designed more by lawyers than engineers. Appliances are shaped to satisfy the marauding enemy army EPA and to avoid suits from marauding trial lawyers. Usability, customer satisfaction, and maintainability are way down at the bottom of the priority list.
But there must be some categories of gadget that the marauding enemies haven't noticed yet. It's plausible to assume that lawn sprinklers are in such a safe zone.
This one is a purely elegant design, a vast improvement over my old sprinkler made about ten years ago. Both appear to be the same kind of device, and I thought I was buying the same kind of device. Not so!
The old one, identical to the picture on the left, offers a choice of several 'brute force' water distributors. The water exits the holes in raindrops, which are too heavy to be moved by air currents. Each stream goes to the same place every time, leading to puddles and dry spots.
The new one, similar to the picture on the right, offers a choice of several venturi-style nozzles that 'carburate' the water into a super-fine mist, almost vapor. Each nozzle has a different shape, producing circles or triangles or rectangles of mist. Slight air currents then swirl the mist in all directions.
You might think raindrops are best by analogy with nature; but observation shows that the fine mist does a better job of getting the water out to every part of the zone, and down into the soil. My old front lawn, which was staying yellow with the rain-sized drops, has turned green everywhere with the mist version. My newly planted clover in back, which was having trouble catching on, is now popping up everywhere. Same faucet setting as before, same length of time as before, so the overall water input is the same.
¶ 3:59 PM
