Costco blog/discussion forum

It's hard to describe this Powerstation PS5000M (Costco item #179852, priced at $79.99 in July 2008), which is available at Costco warehouses. It is an air compressor, a portable power source, a worklight, and a car battery all rolled into one. I've owned this for about a year, and have used it only a few times but it was worth the $80 each time I used it.

First let me describe what you get: the Powerstation PS5000M contains an 18 amp-hour battery, two 46 inch 6 gauge cables that have heavy duty 400 amp clamps, a 400 Watt inverter, a 140 PSI compressor, and a bright LED worklight.

Now let me describe how you use it. When you buy this, unpack it and plug it into the wall somewhere out of the way. I have it in the garage.

• One day you go to your car and it won't start, the battery has died. Just get the Powerstation PS5000 out from the garage, open your hood, connect it to the battery, and a ground. Start the car. You just saved yourself a call for a tow truck.
• You notice your tires are low on air. Go get the Powerstation PS5000M, unplug it from the wall, bring it out to your car and inflate the tires. It's that simple. You can also use it to inflate basketballs, volleyballs, etc.
  

The Little Giant Model 17 Type 1a Aluminum Ladder is being sold at both Costco warehouses and Costco.com (Costco item number 269470, priced at $199.99 in June 2008 at both my local warehouse and at Costco.com (shipping and handling is included!).

This ladder is made of aerospace grade aluminum. Its rated load is 300 pounds, but it can probably handle twice that without a problem. The ladder weighs 31 pounds, and folds up for easy storage.

If you order this Model 17 from the Little Giant website, it will cost you $359.80, which includes shipping and handling. That's 80% more than it costs from Costco.com!! Amazon.com has similar prices, about $350.

Although many people first heard of Little Giant Ladders from their series of infomercials starting in about 2004, the company is much older. It was started in the 1980's, but sold mostly to industrial and government clients. They were known for quality ladders for some 20 years before they started selling direct to consumers.

I missed all the infomercials, but first discovered Little Giant Ladders at a Costco Special Event a few months ago. The Little Giant Ladders special event has many other ladders displayed and for sale. I had my eye on the four step Little Giant Safety Step Stepladder pictured to the left, but I didn't buy it that day. I'm still regretting it. If anyone sees this at an upcoming roadshow, please post the price.

Most people don't even know what a power inverter is, but once they find out they understand how useful it could be. Costco.com offers several:

• Vector 400 Watt Inverter (Costco Item # 226396), $34.99 (Pictured)
• Vector 100 Watt Slim Inverter (Costco Item # 992828), $29.99

Why do you need an inverter? A converter plugs into the cigarette lighter of a car and provides a household-like 120 V AC outlet. So, it allows you to plug in your laptop, cell phone charger, digital camera battery recharger, electric shaver, portable DVD player, or whatever into your car.

The 400 W model also allows you to draw directly from the car's battery, with a cable similar to what you use for jump starting a car. If you need more than 200 Watts, you'll need to connect directly to the battery. The wiring to the cigarette lighter in the car cannot handle that much current.

The Vector 100 Watt inverter is more mobile. In fact, it can be used on many airplanes to plug into the plane's electrical system. See The Seat Guru for information on which seat to pick.

The prices that Costco.com offers on these inverters are competitive, but not a great deal. You can find the 100 W inverter on Amazon for about $23, once you include shipping. The 400 Watt model goes for about $45, once you include shipping. I would buy from costco.com, in case you need to return it.

Costco.com has appears to have a great deal on the Onan Homesite 2400 generator (Costco Item #200085). During June 2008, they will sell this for $349.99.

This portable gasoline powered generator provides up to 2200 Watts of power. It weighs just under 100 pounds and provides two 120 V AC outlets.

For comparison, costco.com sold this same generator for $399.99 in June 2007 and that was advertised as a $150 off coupon, implying the regular price was $550. Indeed, if you look around online you find these generators selling for $500-$550. So it's a great deal right? No.

While this may be the best deal you can get on an Onan Homesite 2400 model generator, you should probably consider an alternative.

In 2005 inexpensive 3000 watt generators began appearing in auto parts stores across the country. The engines in these generators were being manufactured by Jiung Manufacturing in China. They had licensed the design of a popular Honda engine and were producing it for far less money than Honda had charged. These engines led to cheaper generators, scooters, and go carts. In the US, the brand to look for is Champion, although other brands exist. The whole story of this innovation in portable power generators is laid out in this long thread at rv.net.

At most warehouses, Costco is currently featuring a portable air conditioning unit, the Sharp 10,000 BTU Portable Air Conditioner AC CVP10NC (Costco item number 263786). This was listed at my local warehouse for $499.99 before a $20 manufacturer's mail in rebate.

If you've never owned a portable air conditioner, you need to know a few things so that you aren't disappointed.

• It requires a window. You hook an air duct hose, like the one that vents a dryer, from the unit to the window. This unit comes with a window attachment kit that works with most common types of windows.
• It collects water as it cools. How much water depends on the humidity. If you live in the South, it's going to be a lot more than if you live in the Arizona desert. The unit holds about 4 pints of water, that's half a gallon. You have to hook up a hose and drain it once the reservoir is full.
• It's not that portable. If you have visions of moving this "portable AC unit" several times a day, you will be disappointed. The window attachment kit needs to be installed, it requires that you screw into your window sill. I would describe it as not permanent, rather than portable.

If none of that worries you, this unit has some great features. It's quiet. Sharp lists it as 38 db of noise. According to my charts, that means you could have sixteeen of these units in the room and together it might sound as loud as a loud dishwasher.

The price I observed, $499, seems good but not great. Although I can't find this particular model online, the CVP10MC is sold online for about the same price. The CVP10MC looks to be a discontinued model, so perhaps the CVP10NC is just rebranded for Costco and represents Sharps leftovers.

This outdoor fluorescent floodflight (Costco item 464411), manufactured by Lights of America consumes only 65 Watts of power, but is as bright as a 500 Watt incandescent bulb. Even better, it only costs $8.49 at my local Costco warehouse.

This is not just a bulb, but it includes the housing. You need to wire it up to your house's electrical system. It's much easier than that sounds, if you just replace another external fixture.

I installed this in under an hour. First turn off the power to the current fixture, at the breaker box. Unscrew the current fixture from the wall, and pull out the power wires from the box. Disconnect the power wires from the current fixture, and use the screw caps to connect the power wires to the new fixture. Screw the new fixture onto the wall, and turn the power back on.

If your new fixture doesn't light up right away, don't panic. This Lights of America fluorescent floodlight has a built in light sensor that shuts off the power to the floodlight during daylight hours! You can use this as a security light that will automatically stay lit all night, and shut off in the morning. (You can still test the light, by covering the sensor with a piece of black electrical tape.)

The bulb is rated at 10,000 hours. If you leave the lamp on all night, you'll average 12 hours of use per day throughout the year and the bulb should last you about 2 and a half years.

You can find the Wilmar Performance Tool Stubby Set (Costco item number 213484) in the auto/tool section of your warehouse.

The set includes 1/4" and 3/8" drive ratchets, a stubby precision adjustable wrench, a high torque screwdriver with slotted, phillips, hex, and star bits. It also has SAE and Metric sockets from 5/32" to 3/4" and 4-17mm.

This sells for $9.97 at my local warehouse. For comparison, vendors on Amazon are selling it for $17 to $25, and you will have to add about $8 for shipping.

This makes a great Father's day gift. You can keep one in your car, or at your office. If you have a someone going away to college, give them one. It's a quality little tool set for whenever you need to fix a small job.

Recently our toilet became clogged with a foreign object, a pine cone, due to a three year old boy, who will remain nameless. When flushed, this pine cone happened to be just the right size to make it partially through the toilet. It was no longer visible, but still encased within the porcelain.

I tried a toilet auger , but that wouldn't work. I pulled the toilet up from the floor and tried to work at it from the other end, but no luck that way either. I was left with two options, call in a professional or replace the toilet. The toilet was old, so I went with replacing it.

Our local Costco Warehouse stocked the WaterRidge one piece dual flush toilet-in-a-box. (Costco Item 368062) These toilets were selling for $199 with a $20 instant manufacturer's rebate, total $179.99. It took about one hour to unpack this toilet and install it. The job is very easy and a number of web sites detail how to do it. The hardest part is lifting the 70 pound toilet and placing it directly over the drain.

The toilet-in-a-box comes with everything you need to install it, including a wax ring, floor bolts, a braided supply hose and even an angle supply valve. You need to supply common tools, an adjustable wrench, and a screw driver.

The toilet is a high efficiency model. It saves water. It does this by offering you two options for flushing, a full 1.6 gallons flush or a reduced 1.2 gallon flush. The flush control is on top of the tank, it is two semicircular buttons that you push to activate.

These blue shop towels, officially called Scott Shop Towels on a Roll (Costco Item #872063) are a must have for your workshop or garage. They come in a 10 pack, with 55 towels per roll.

They have very little lint and work well for cleaning windows. You can use one of these blue paper towels to clean multiple windows, while if you use normal kitchen paper towels you will end up using a half dozen towels per window.

When you are finished with the job, just dispose of these in the trash. (For safety reasons, if you absorb flammable solvents with these paper towels, you should let them dry out (outside) before disposing of them. Otherwise, you can get spontaneous combustion, where heat is released as the solvent oxidizes and the heat can start the rags on fire.)

These paper towels are such an improvement over the standard kitchen paper towels that I have often suspected a conspiracy of sorts is keeping this technology out of the kitchen. These only seem to be sold in an industrial blue color that most people would not want to display in their kitchen.

This is how Kimberly Clark, the head of the conspiracy, describes the towel's potential kitchen uses:

While our products are not toxic and excellent at cleaning up spills and messes, they are not intended for use with food, and have not been tested for direct contact with food products. We do not recommend use in that way.

What they are trying to say is that this product is intended to compete with workshop rags, not their own Scott brand paper towels.