Heat wave warning: Dangerously hot temperatures coming to B.C. this weekend

[blkgsr]

Originally Posted by BlackV62K2

At least 3 people in line returning their AC at Costco today when I was there. Guess those machines all have "issues" in mid September lol

costco is so stupid for allowing this to happen along with the rest of the random shit people use then take back


costso should have a reduce price "used" section, what else are they doing with the mounds of open product people take back?

[Hondaracer]

As far as I know, it’s the manufacturer that will eat the cost, not Costco.

Although they will be the ones who are ultimately responsible for the waste created

[320icar]

There are a few ways to deal with product, and every company is different.

Lots of items are destroy for credit, which is exactly what it sounds like. Many are RTV or return to vendor. We usually get a high% back on those. There are salvage, which are usually sold to stores like sams club? Or if you remember XS Cargo. Then you have companies like Lego that give you nothing.

So all those people who speculatively buy 10 of the $500 Lamborghini lego sets hoping to make money, but don’t, so they return 8 of them? Yepp we eat that $4000

The percentage of people who abuse the return policy is small. And like hondaracer said. There’s also the companies that will eat the entire cost, because that 0.001% of members who return stuff is a drop in the bucket versus getting your products sold in costco

Edit: and don’t forget, we keep records of *everything* and can (and have) cancel your membership at any time for abusing it. You return 3 MacBooks, a gopro, a kayak, a tent, a tv after football season, we can refuse it and tell you to get stuffed.

[StylinRed]

Originally Posted by blkgsr

costso should have a reduce price "used" section, what else are they doing with the mounds of open product people take back?

If they're like Amazon, they probably auction some of it off by the pallet, and or destroy it

[Mikoyan]

Sam's Surplus in Burnaby ends up with a fair chunk of Costco returns.

[westopher]

Originally Posted by StylinRed

If they're like Amazon, they probably auction some of it off by the pallet, and or destroy it

"do whatever the fuck you want with it, just make sure no one poor gets anything" - Jeff Bezos

[acrophobia]

Our Big Box Outlet is always full of Costco returned items...clothing, electronics, appliances, etc.

[EvoFire]

Where are these places where you can get costco returns? And are they cheaper than what you can get at Costco?

[inv4zn]

Originally Posted by EvoFire

Where are these places where you can get costco returns? And are they cheaper than what you can get at Costco?

Surplus Sam's is one, south Burnaby (about 5 minutes towards the river from Market Crossing).

I went a few times for shits and giggles, they range from 20 to 50% off retail, some items are even unopened.

It's cool to go check out because they do have a lot of stuff, but you have to dig around, the selection changes weekly, and it's a case of buyer beware because I'm fairly certain everything is final sale.

[AzNightmare]

I remember watching this documentary about Amazon destroying all their returned items. A lot of stuff was just returned because the buyer decided to change their mind. Pretty much brand new still.

[donk.]

Outlet stores are a great way to waste money
Its the same as signing up for coupon sites

You just end up buying garbage that you dont need

[GIZZ]

Originally Posted by EvoFire

Where are these places where you can get costco returns? And are they cheaper than what you can get at Costco?

I went to Sams in Burnaby a month ago. Not worth checking out. They had at least 2 dozen dewalt fans on sale for more than they were selling for at costco. They also broke up the 3 can pack of Gumout brake parts cleaner and were selling the induvidual cans for $9 each I think, crazy. The prices for everything on the ground level were out to lunch, some clothing upstairs was correctly surplus priced.

Not really worth the visit, until they realize they have a bunch of junk and price it accordingly.

[6793026]

Originally Posted by AzNightmare

I remember watching this documentary about Amazon destroying all their returned items. A lot of stuff was just returned because the buyer decided to change their mind. Pretty much brand new still.

no diff than costco; they don't give an F on what you do ... cause the vendor takes the hit.

[320icar]

Originally Posted by 6793026

no diff than costco; they don't give an F on what you do ... cause the vendor takes the hit.

This is not true. Our d&d (damage and destroy) which includes returns and general raw loss, would yah know the GVA has some of the highest in North America ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[SkunkWorks]

Originally Posted by 320icar

This is not true. Our d&d (damage and destroy) which includes returns and general raw loss, would yah know the GVA has some of the highest in North America ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Personal experience from when I was out east, the only folks I knew that openly returned used stuff back to Costco were all from BC.

Must be the water.

[Presto]

Necro bump for a related article:
https://www.castanet.net/news/BC/361...ulate-to-death

TLDR: The heat was so intense that drone bees' sex organs exploded from their bodies.

Bees can’t sweat. So when a record-breaking heat wave hit in late June 2021, drones fled their colonies in search of water — some descending on the burlap sack-covered kiddie pools dotting Emily Huxter’s Armstrong, B.C., farm.

At over 200 beats per second, the bees’ wings would have helped cool their tiny bodies as they desperately lugged water back to their colonies. Somewhere along the way, an untold number didn’t make it.

That morning, Huxter went out into her yard to check on her petite livestock. Dead drones everywhere, she remembers. In the grips of heat stress, their sex organs had exploded out of their bodies. The bees had ejaculated to death.

“It was unbelievable,” said Huxter, recounting the scene. “They have got all of their man parts out.”

Huxter called two beekeeping family members, who confirmed they were finding the same dead drones in awkward death poses.

Then she checked on roughly 300 starter hives where she rears queens, each worth hundreds of dollars. About 70 per cent were dead or missing.

“We had incredible losses. It was really scary,” she said. “Then we were like, ‘Oh my gosh, what's happening?’”

Huxter called up University of British Columbia researcher Alison McAfee, who as a post-doctoral student at the BeeHIVE Research Centre, had run experiments on how bees respond to heat. At 40 degrees Celsius, McAfee explained, heat stress affects a bee's ability to mate; by 42 C, at least half of drones have been found to spontaneously ejaculate and die for some reason experts haven’t figured out.

Within weeks, climate scientists found the heat wave that scorched B.C. and the U.S. Pacific Northwest was made 150 times more likely due to climate change; by the 2040s, its record temperatures could return every five to 10 years.

Such extreme heat threatens more than bees or the honey they produce. The Armstrong bee farm is part of a network of beekeepers that provide pollination services for crops worth an estimated $5 billion a year in Canada.

Every year, Huxter drives her colonies across the Okanagan Valley, helping to pollinate cherry, apple and plum trees from near the U.S. border in Osoyoos up to Vernon.

A second-generation beekeeper, Huxter’s farm also rears queens for other beekeepers across Canada, helping to backfill the winter losses colonies experience every year in the Prairies or Ontario.

It’s all part of a push to make the industry more self-sufficient and wean Canadian beekeepers off queens imported from places like Australia or the United States.

Rising temperatures, said Huxter, is threatening that vision. So after the June losses, the beekeeper thought to herself, “How can we do things better?”

During the heat wave, desperation had driven Huxter to layer polystyrene (brand name Styrofoam) on top of the hive boxes. Other beekeepers she knew had tried adding sugar syrup to the hives, which would ostensibly evaporate and cool the colony.

“I thought, ‘Hmm, I wonder if that's a good idea or not?” Huxter told Glacier Media.

A month later, in the lead up to another heat wave, Huxter decided it was time to figure out what was the best way to protect her buzzing livestock. She reached out to McAfee to help design an experiment.

McAfee suggested running six starter hives with two-inch-thick pieces of polystyrene insulation on top to protect them from the sun. Huxter suggested giving another six hives a steady drip of sugar syrup. A third group got nothing.

Next, Huxter installed temperature loggers McAfee had sent her in each of the hives as well as one on a nearby solar panel to record ambient air temperature.

From July 28 to Aug. 9, they recorded temperatures in the hives every 10 minutes.

Over that 12-day period, the outside ambient temperatures climbed to 35.5 C. But inside the hives, internal temperatures ranged from 14.5 C to 41.5 C, with the highest temperatures found in the untreated hives.

When she went to analyze the data, McAfee found the syrup-fed hives reduced average daily high temperatures by 1.1 C, a difference she described as “not significant” in the beekeeper industry newsletter “Hivelights.”

The polystyrene cover, on the other hand, dropped average daily highs by 3.8 C, a “significant reduction.”

“It actually made the difference of having dangerous temperatures inside the hive to bringing it down below that threshold,” McAfee told Glacier Media.

Since then, Huxter has redesigned all of her hives with two-inch polystyrene lids, a cheap and simple solution that helps the bees get through the winter too.

Both McAfee and Huxter doubt the insulation will be enough to protect bee colonies from the kind of extreme heat wave seen at the end of June.

“It’s one step towards getting better at managing the colonies under these extreme conditions that we should really only expect to increase in the future,” said McAfee.

Both women agree they need to keep experimenting, not least of all with alternative insulation materials that are more environmentally friendly.

“Maybe it's doing that trapped air, you know, like a wood-air-wood sandwich-type idea,” speculated Huxter, who is also looking to reach out to Australian beekeepers to understand how they adapt their colonies to extreme temperatures.

And while the sugar syrup didn’t show a large effect on the mini hives, it might still help the more mature colonies.

In some ways, water is going to matter more as temperatures climb: find the right distance to a lake or pond and bees can reach its waters to stay cool in the summer and get just enough of its cooling effect in the spring.

For now, Huxter is hoping Styrofoam and her network of kiddie pools will protect her young queens and drones across her farm’s 30 colony sites.

Over the last several decades, beekeeping has faced a number of challenges, from the arrival of pathogens and pests into Canadian colonies to poor nutrition.

“They have all these other problems. And climate change hasn't really been considered to be a major challenge for them in the past,” said McAfee.

That's because bees are good at staying warm. On Huxter’s farm, the colonies regularly raise internal hive temperatures from -20 C to 18 C to survive Armstrong’s frigid winters. But as increasingly hot and dry summers take hold, cooling down a colony is more difficult.

“They're not designed to do that as well,” said Huxter.

As a warming planet threatens food systems across the world, beekeepers like Huxter are looking to fight back with their own adaptations. Their success will be a crucial factor determining how much fresh food British Columbians see on their grocery store shelves.

“We're trying to transition in B.C. to being a self-sustaining industry,” she said. “And that's going to be really difficult as temperatures rise.”

[SkinnyPupp]

Drones are all females.. Male bees stay in the hive and once in a while, one of them gets to fuck once and then die.

[BIC_BAWS]

Talk about going out with a bang

[Traum]

Necro bump bcos I want to stay ahead of the game:

I am buying a portable AC unit this year after getting roasted by last year's heat dome. Portable bcos I want to be able to roll it around the house during different times of the day.

Looking at specs now, and the big question for me is -- how loud (ie. in dB rating) is loud? I only know 78 dB is whisper quiet for a car exhaust, but I can't imagine it being the same when it is an AC unit humming 5' away from me.

[RiceIntegraRS]

i have 2 AC machines, my window AC is rated at 56db on highest but i find that loud and im used to sleeping with sound machines on cause of my kids. my portable ac is super loud to the point where i pre chill my room 1-2hrs in advance then turn it off or else i dont think id be able to sleep properly with it on. IMO i dont think u will be rolling ur portable AC around because getting the window setup and sealed properly for the AC hose to attach to it takes time. I only moved my AC once from my bedroom to the living because i had people over and i didnt want them to die from the heat.

[blkgsr]

what are the go to machines for this year?

house (not apartment) sized.....

[EvoFire]

Just waiting for Costco to bring back their dual hose machines so I can get one for my office just in case.

[sonick]

Originally Posted by Traum

Necro bump bcos I want to stay ahead of the game:

I am buying a portable AC unit this year after getting roasted by last year's heat dome. Portable bcos I want to be able to roll it around the house during different times of the day.

Looking at specs now, and the big question for me is -- how loud (ie. in dB rating) is loud? I only know 78 dB is whisper quiet for a car exhaust, but I can't imagine it being the same when it is an AC unit humming 5' away from me.

I would lower your expectations on how portable these are. In my experience it would be a huge pain in the ass to be frequently moving it from one room to another, given its weight as well as the need to setup the exhaust hose every time.

[BlackV62K2]

Originally Posted by sonick

I would lower your expectations on how portable these are. In my experience it would be a huge pain in the ass to be frequently moving it from one room to another, given its weight as well as the need to setup the exhaust hose every time.

I would agree with this. My portable AC barely even kept my apartment cool during the heat done. If you have the option, I would look into a mini-split/heat pump.

[donk.]

Buy a window unit if you can. Cheaper, more efficient, quieter. (Those of you in stratas, check your bylaws, alot of them do not allow window units, they are a hazard since they are never installed properly)

In regards to noise, if I'm not mistaken, every 10db higher the rating is, the noise doubles.

50dba = noise
60dba = 2xnoise of 50dba
70dba = 4xnoise of 50dba

AC units need to be sized properly. You cant just buy a unit and expect it's going to cool.
What does this mean? Go on Google, and research BTU of cooling required, to get yourself a rough idea

Ex. 6 people in 900sqft condo, plus kitchen, plus 4 computers operating, huge south facing windows (30,000btu required)
Vs
2 people in 400sqft condo, plus kitchen, one laptop, small north facing windows. (10,000btu required)

Spoiler!

^ as an example, since everyone on here takes comments like facts

Ps, those of you looking at dual vs single hose portables, dual hose units are far superior to single hose units.

Mini split units are the highest end option, far more expensive, but a no brainer if budget and bylaws allow them