Slashdot Mirror
Endless Liquid Refreshment
rabtech writes "I'm very lazy. As part of that continuing effort, I've come up with a guide for installing a soda fountain in the house. I've detailed how to get the equipment, hoses, and supplies, as well as how to install and calibrate the system. Now you won't ever need to move for lack of liquid refreshment! My next project: Food Replicator."
Would be if you'd managed to rig a kegorator to dispense Guinness. If you feel like drinking a calorie-laden fizzy beverage, it might as well be one that tastes good.
Besides which, there is evidence that diet soda drinks are mildly carcinogenic and may slow down the metabolism enough to negate the fact that they are less caloric.
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
All told, I spent about:
$300 for the system
$50 for the CO2 tank deposit
$200 for various fittings and hose
Reoccurring costs that you don't recoup are:
$16 per CO2 tank fill; should last 6 months to a year
$4 per month for the tank rental (versus $125 to buy a tank)
Water (we are on city water, but it is so cheap as to be listed as "free")
Electricity (again, very little)
Reoccurring costs that you DO recoup:
$50 per 5 gallon box, $25 per 2.5 gallon box. The syrup has an expiration date, so I am trying to stick to 2.5 gallon boxes, since those get used up faster.
Since we only buy a few 99-cent bottles of soda here, this is another plaything if you got over $500 dollars burning a hole in your pocket.
An easier way is to buy soda in bulk, and keep a 2 or 3-liter bottle of soda in an ice bucket next to the couch.
Just not as much wow-factor.
The Pigloo
I had my own soda machine setup in our old house for a couple of years. While the appeal is definatly there, cost savings should not be among them. The stories you hear about "the cup costing more than the actual soda" is competely false While it is slight cheaper than purchasing 2-liters, after doing the math, it really only has a cost savings of about 20%, assuming your paying around $40 per pre-mix box, and $15 or so for the CO2. It is damn cool though, and the chicks dig it.
Wow! How to install a soda fountain! The very height of tehcnology. Something I have always wanted to do. Wait a minute.
If the guy would have installed it and controlled it with a wireless NIC and had Big Gulp cups printed with the Penguin and a caffeine molecule
Whats next in the story department?
1. Watching Paint Dry - The do's and don'ts.
2. Color Coding Recycling bins.
3. Zen and the Art of the Compost heap.
4. Tae Boe Power Knitting.
5. Sheep dipping for fun and profit.
But seriously, admittingly I sit in front of computers probably far too much, this guy has no life. Diagramming his soda dispenser installation?
Hooray that he installed then had so much time on his hands to create a web page?
Now I have seen everything.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
...or with that same $500 you could've spent $495.00 on a decent web server, and then bought a case of your favorite soda.
www.GamezCore.com For Hardcore PS2 Gamerz : By Hardcore PS2 Gamerz
an automated insulin injector, thanks to your newly-developed diabetes, too!
Yeah, right.
The whole thing is pretty absurd, hence I feel silly being serious about this...but...making it that much easier to consume soda, which is LOADED with calories(among other things- mostly from sugars), is only going to give you diabetes sooner and plump you up mighty quick. I forget exactly what economists call it, but you're more likely to spend money that's easily accessed. Ie, the bag of chips next to you is gonna get eaten faster than the one downstairs in the drawer.
Seriously, folks- get out and walk, jog, run, bike, skate/skateboard/rollerblade to the local corner store, and carry the 6-pack back. If you're lucky, it'll all balance out. you'll get your daily exercise(what is it, minimum 30 minutes raised heart rate per day?), which means you'll feel better(excercise creates endorphines), and you'll live longer, too. You'll also get to excercise the brain, and reduce eye fatigue, since you'll be moving your eyes a lot and focusing on different things.
There's also cool stuff like(gasp!) water, fruit juice, and vegetable juice. All three are much healthier for you, and(at least IMHO) taste better. I'm not saying switch off soda completely- just go for variety; it's probably the most common thing you hear from nutritionists- eat a little of everything. It's more fun/interesting, too :-)
700,000 people a year die from heart disease. "A little exercise won't kill you" is truer than you think, and eating healthy is great insurance. Ask people who just came out of having heart-bypass operations or their first heart attack, or just got diagnosed with diabetes, and ask them if they wish they had eaten better. I'd be amazed if the answer isn't 100% "Yes".
Please help metamoderate.
And if going to the bathroom becomes too inconvenient, try some of these.
Does it run Linux?
I hold a patent on sigs...
I work for one of the vendors listed on that site. We sell every part you could possibly need to do something like this, but we don't sell to home consumers or even individual restaurants. We're a sister company of the largest manufacturer of fountain soda machines in the world. So, working were I do, I've found out a fair amount about these machines. We have about 90 employees in our office and haven't installed a fountain machine because with so few employees the lines would get coated with syrup in no time. You really need a larger volume of people, or you will have to flush the lines all the time. Personally, I say just get yourself a Culligan water dispenser and save your money and teeth. If you really need soda, buy 2 liter bottles.
I was not touched there by an angel.
Can plastic survive soda corrosion?
If you build your plastic pipes out of 2-liter soda bottles, you should be ok.
Not so sure about that, but carbonation does upset the carbon-oxygen cycle of metabolism. The result is that more toxic acidic byproducts of metabolism stay in the blood.
...
Hopefully, the important lesson is this: If you're going to slashdot your server, at least have one capable of handling such an effort.
I got about half of the images broken and the other half weren't even found.
*sigh*
Anyways, for all the flame mongers out there complaining about how it's not "worth it", please. This is what hacking is about. If you sit around asking "Why? This is useless!" how do you expect to have any fun in life?
Flying cars and voice-operated light switches are pretty useless, doesn't mean I wouldn't want one.
Karma: Non-Heinous
Well, I'm too lazy to find all of that stuff and then go install it.
So, I found this instead.
It seems like it should work just as well and have only a minimally higher cost, but the up front cost is much much less (~$500 vs. ~50).
w00t for extended laziness!
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
(Not only a fitting double-meaning topic, but a nice subtle X-Men comic book reference ;D )
:p Still, the endless fountain was great while it lasted.
We had a free soda fountain when I worked at ANS - err, UUNet Ann Arbor - err, Worldcom - err, a hollow shell of a building... but I digress. After they put Mountain Dew on tap, productivity incresed... as did the waistlines of a lot of co-workers.
I finally decided one day that the weekend caffine withdrawls (since I was drinking upwards of 3 to 4 liters of Dew a day when at work) and related mood swings were causing too many problems around the house, I quit cold turkey. I lost ten pounds in the next month or so, after having cut over 1000 calories a day out of my diet. Great while it lasted... but then I replaced the raw calories with fat and sugars in the form of chocolate, and gained them all back
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Soda's alright, but I'm more of a water drinker. Do you think you could adapt this thing to dispense water on demand?
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
The carbonation in soda is pretty bad for you. It will react and strip calcium off of pretty much anything in you, teeth, bones etc, this is why sports coaches tell their players not to drink soda, it can weaken your bones. All this will also leave you with lots of Calcium-Carbonate(scale, like in hard water), this can also lead to problems. Drink a lot of soda in a short period of time, and you might notice your piss is slightly cloudy, the extreme of this happened a friend of mine, kidney stones. Ouch.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Hey now! Just because this guy built his own soda fountain, it doesn't give you the right to infer that he's a jerk!
One thing that is underrated is getting a dedicated water jug and putting it in the FRIDGE to keep it really cold. Over the last month or so I have gotten addicted to this. We have a RO Water Purification System at home (RO = reverse osmosis) because there's cauliform and iron in the well from which our home's water is drawn. (I live in a farming area, each house has its own water pump feeding it instead of a city grid.)
Really good quality, really COLD water is REALLY good. And I never guilty about pouring myself another glass. This is really worth a try!
The only downside is that you get spoiled. During weekdays, I live in Toronto at a place I am renting and the water tastes horrid to me. I have to bring bottles of it from home every week. And then there's the water in Quebec City... (shudder)
Uh, are you aware that Coca Cola is commonly shipped in *plastic* bottles? ;P
The basic machine attaches to a water line and draws 110V from a wall outlet, and that's all that you have to hook up (you can even buy an accessory water tank, eliminating the water line). Inside the machine is a little refrigerator, a small CO2 cylinder, and space for three 1-litre syrup boxes.
The thing actually mixes pretty decent soda, but apparently there were reliability and maintenance problems. In any case, the whole program flopped,and Coca-Cola no longer manufactures the Breakmate. They still make supplies, though, and you can buy a used Breakmate for $200-$300 on Ebay or through vendors like this one.
Drawbacks? Well, you're restricted to a short list of Coca-Cola beverages... Pepsi and others are out of the question. The syrup packs are relatively expensive... each pack makes about 30 glasses of soda and costs $8-$10, so you'll pay about $0.25-$0.35 per glass. More bad news: the little CO2 cylinder doesn't go very far (many Breakmates have been modified to use larger cylinders); fortunately, they're refillable, and CO2 is cheap. Despite the drawbacks it might be worthwhile; the machine does work, it's a lot cheaper and simpler to install and use, and it's sorta cool besides.
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence