I'm trying to make a cheap manual service thermostat that I can wire inline on a thermostat cable (right inside a rooftop air handler for example) for servicing and testing HVAC equipment. Essentially it's just going to be a big dip switch where toggling one of the switches closes a circuit between the thermostat R wire and one of the other thermostat outputs (G, W1, Y1, etc.) That part is simple though. The part I'm struggling with is that I also want a switch that can disconnect the actual remote thermostat outputs while I'm using this manual service thermostat. I could just use another large dip switch and manually toggle off all of the outputs one at a time but it would be nice to instead have a single switch that toggles them all off at once. The problem is if I only use a single switch then that means I need to open 3-9 different circuits (G, Y1-Y4, W1-W4) with one switch. I haven't seen any 9P1T switches available anywhere. I know there's all sorts of things I could do fancier circuitry to achieve this but I want this to be as simple, cheap, and robust of a device as possible.

Is there a simple and ideally entirely mechanical way to open several low power circuits with a single switch or am I just stuck using multiple switches?

Edit: Thank you for all the advice but I have since realized that I was being dumb. I don't need a switch. I can just plug the remote thermostat in through a terminal block plug and unplug it when I want to use the service thermostat. So I'll just use one of these.

So now I guess I'm getting paid to sit in bumfuck nowhere and wait for a tow truck. And of course, like a movie detective, it died one day before retirement. I was swapping into a new van tomorrow and this one was getting traded in. I'll miss the old barge though. It had been owned and modified by several different contractor outfits at various points in it's life so it definitely had character.

So to preface, I only really use doordash when I'm sick and I want to get food without spreading whatever I have. So I don't open the app much. I just noticed that dominos is on the doordash app in my area. Why in the world would anyone ever doordash a dominos pizza when they already do delivery anyways? That just seems like a great way to burn a bunch of extra money for a worse service.

Seriously no wonder people abuse this stuff. I have gotten so much absolutely back breaking work done today and I'm not even slightly tired. I cleared the rest of the BS blizzard snow from the rest of my driveway (had only shoveled the sidewalk before), plus the curb all the way to the nearest storm drain. I rearanged my living room, reorganized my whole service van, I finally swapped in that new clothes dryer that has been sitting in the garage for a month, and all that is after a full day of physical work. I would have normally been tired 3 times over by now. I'm am resting right now not because I feel like I need to but because I don't want to accidentally actually cripple myself by acting like I'm superman. If only this stuff didn't completely destroy your body in the long term.

So weird situation. I'm a contractor that does work at a lot of commercial kitchens. A few days ago I was repairing a piece of equipment at a local resturant where I work fairly often and one of the new employees there called me out by name and said she recognized me from somewhere but couldn't remember where. I didn't recognize her at all. We chatted for a bit while I was working and neither one of us could figure out how she recognized me. I was back a day later to replace a part on something and she said she still couldn't figure it out and of course I still had no clue.

Well, earlier today it suddenly dawned on me. We matched on tinder like 5 years ago. Back then we chatted for a couple weeks but it never really went anywhere beyond casual chatting. I kind of get the feeling that neither of us was in a great head space at the time so things just dropped off.

Well, I'm going back there on Tuesday to finish up the repair. Should I tell her why she recognizes me or would that be inapropriate considering we are both working? The last thing I want is to make someone feel uncomfortable and trapped.

TLDR - I got my hands on a cold oxygen plasma generator for preventing biofilm in ice machines; could it help food last longer in my fridge or will it mess up my food?

I'm a refrigeration mechanic and recently while decommisioning some old ice machines I found one with a functional Luminice II module in it which I snagged. Generally nobody in my area orders icemachines with this optional module. With our water quality limescale becomes an issue and necessitates cleaning far far more quickly than biofilm so they generally aren't worthwhile here. So I have no experience with these modules.

From what I understand they use a UVC bulb to generate cold oxygen plasma which is then pumped through the ice machine to kill bacteria. At least from what I've heard they work really well. I've been trying to think of places I could use it and it occured to me that I could pump cold oxygen plasma through my fridge to kill any microbes in there and therefore potentially make my food last longer in there. At the same time though, food is also often made of cells so I'm not sure what effect cold oxygen plasma would have on my food long term. Maybe I would just be turning my fridge into an instant produce spoiling machine.

This isn't really an issue that needs to be solved but I like tinkering and it would be cool to have a self sanitizing fridge. Is this a bad idea?

Fridgie here. Just got some manufacturer training on some equipment that uses R-290 (propane) as the refrigerant and one of the interesting things in that training is that this manufacturer requires the use of wago lever connectors for any repairs on that equipment. They specifically tell you not to use any wire nuts or crimp connectors.

Why would they specifically require wagos? As far as I was aware the main benefit of them was ease of use and that doesn't seem like it would make any difference as far as the manufacturer is concerned. I especially fail to see how they could be more safe and robust than crimp connections. Is there something I'm missing here?

So I'm not sure what the right community for this is but I'm hoping yall can help. I'm a refrigeration service tech and recently I was tasked with replacing a sensor in a room used to store ethanol drums. Due to the nature of the room every device in it had to be rated explosion proof and I couldn't use any tools that could pose any risk of ignition (no heat gun, basically nothing with an electric motor, and definitely no open flames) while working in there. Normally when I splice wires I use heatshrink to cover the splice simply because it looks far more professional than electrical tape and it holds up better over time. However in this case I could not figure out any way of shrinking said heatshrink without posing a potential ignition hazard so I was stuck just wrapping the splice in tape. We do a lot of work for this company so I'm hoping to find a better solution for the next time I am in a similar situation.

So do any of you know any way to shrink heatshrink without posing an ignition hazard or am I stuck just using tape in those situations?

Location: USA

My last job was barely paying me enough to get by and when I had a health issue last year I fell several months behind on my mortgage and other bills. That medical issue has since been resolved so I am no longer falling further behind but I am also not catching up.

Things are starting to look better though because I have recently gotten a new job which should pay slightly more (starting hourly rate is barely higher but overtime is more likely) and it should vastly reduce my expenses (cheaper and better insurance along with a company provided vehicle and gas). In addition it is going to be a far more secure job in the comming economic crisis. Honestly, it's also looking like my dream job. However this new job requires me to purchase many of my own tools. There is a tool stipend but it accumulates hourly and only pays out quarterly so I will need to front my own tool costs to start with. The problem here is that even the cheap tools are going to cost me about $1000 and if I want a set of tools just good enough that they aren't an active hinderance I'm looking at closer to $2000. I currently have no money which isn't allocated to bills that I am already behind on.

It seems like a simple solution would be to take out a loan from my 401k. Right now I could take out a maximum loan of a bit over $6,000. $5,000 would be just about the perfect amount to catch up on all of my bills and buy the tools needed to do my new job. If I set it at a 5 year repayment term then the monthly repayment is under $100 which I should definitely be able to afford with my new job. I could go with a shorter repayment plan but my thinking is that without knowing exactly what my finances are going look like, I want to have the smallest required payments and just plan to pay it off early if my finances are where I expect they will be even if that means I pay a bit more in interest.

At the same time I don't like the idea of taking out a loan to pay off debts that aren't charging me any interest. My bank isn't forclosing on me yet and, considering I am still paying them every month, I doubt that they will. My medical bills may go to collections if I let them sit much longer but there aren't any late fees and I can always pay off the collections company as I get money. Just looking at the money it almost seems like the more financially sound long term plan would just be to choose to fall a bit farther behind on my bills now to buy my tools and then catch up on those bills later. My credit is already trash and will be for a while. But I also already own my home, have no plans of moving, and tend to buy dirt cheap used vehicles with cash, so I don't really need a good credit score right now or anytime soon. So my late bills really aren't doing anything but causing me stress right now. Does it really make financial sense to start paying interest on a loan just to get rid of that stress?

At this point I am heavily leaning towards taking out the loan. But I can't help but feel that I'm going to be paying a whole bunch of money in interest just to feel more secure. I've also never taken out a 401k loan before. So should I take out the 401k loan or just temporarily fall even more behind on my bills? Also if I should take out the loan is there anything I need to know about 401k loans or any pitfalls to watch out for?