My head cold is holding on. A neti blaster keeps the front sinuses clear, but chest congestion remains. I’ve been considering innovative treatments to tip the balance of power.
I have a nebulizer, and thought that might be useful. A nebulizer is an aquarium pump that blows air through a small chamber holding medication. The medication evaporates and is inhaled as vapor.
The air isn’t heated, so water doesn’t evaporate. I tried vodka. The alcohol would evaporate, and hopefully make life less comfortable for the virus.
There was only about a quarter-ounce of alcohol in the chamber, so I wasn’t too concerned about intoxication. It worked, but did little to alleviate symptoms.
My new thought is to use heat to make life unpleasant for the virus. A mild fever helps fight viruses. I’ve known a few people who, when getting a cold, swear by putting on a nylon sweat suit and doing hard cardio. Many people hit the sauna. I want to put the heat where I need it.
I’ve considered many ways to generate warm, moist air with the resources available, but nothing sounds any better than putting my head under a towel over a pot of boiling water. That sounds too much like my mother’s advice. Also, I have a gas stove, so wouldn’t want to catch the towel on fire or inhale combustion fumes.
I should be able to improve on the old ways.
When I renovated my kitchen in 2010, I got new pots and pans. The Circulon Infinite Hard Anodized Nonstick Cookware was supposed to be good stuff. The pots and pans could go through the dishwasher. It was a few hundred bucks. During the Covid year, the handle popped off of one of the pot lids.
The company was no help. The school building had just been renovated, but the metal shop wasn’t operational yet. At the end of that school year, retiring was a really good idea, so I did that.
Surprisingly, I found the lid and enough copper fittings to jig up a steam port.
No idea why I have that brass nut or bushing or whatever it is. It is the same size as that copper fitting, but drilling a 1 inch hole in stainless steel isn’t for the timid. Most hole saws are for wood or soft aluminum.
The biggest metal cutting drill bit I have is a half-inch. I have a series of forstner bits up to 1 1/4 inches, but those are for wood. My expedient approach was to use the half-inch bit and move the drill around at an angle to hog out a 5/8″ hole. Then use the forstner bit to hog out to 3/4″, and so on. Since drill bit flutes were doing the cutting, instead of the cutting tip, it didn’t seem like the bits would be ruined.
With the lid hole, the next step was to fabricate the vent.
With the copper all prepped, soldering isn’t hard if the joints don’t have to be water-tight.
I was wrenching on that brass nut pretty hard. It’s possible to shear the fitting off, so it was getting scary. The copper fitting isn’t threaded uniformly, like a bolt. It gets tighter, as the brass nut goes on farther. That’s what makes a tight seal. I didn’t want to force the nut on any farther than this.
I need to come up with a spacer to take up that gap. I could go to the hardware store at the end of the street, but Uncle Junk is not made of money. I do have a piece of HDPE that used to be a cutting board, and two hole saws.
And, it came out okay.
Altogether, it looks like this.
I wish the hole wasn’t in the center of the lid. It would work better if the horizontal pipe was tilted a bit to drain condensate back into the pan. The steam and the pipe are hot enough that I will need to be cautious using it.
So, I invented a kettle, but it didn’t cost me anything. Amazon has stainless steel kettles for $9. Maybe I’ll buy one of those.
Why do I have a $300 Corning Hot Plate? An Art teacher had borrowed the hot plate for melting wax for a project. Being a conscientious fellow, he didn’t want me to leave for retirement before getting the hot plate back. I was at NoRo for 17 years, and never had this type hot plate. He borrowed it when we both taught at Normandy. Whatever, I’m keeping it.