EcoRenovator  

Go Back   EcoRenovator > Improvements > Geothermal & Heat Pumps
Advanced Search
 


Blog 60+ Home Energy Saving Tips Recent Posts Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read


Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 04-26-13, 07:41 AM   #21
ELGo
Helper EcoRenovator
 
Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: Albuquerque
Posts: 66
Thanks: 4
Thanked 3 Times in 3 Posts
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by scottorious View Post
Explain what is optimistic about my 80,000 BTU estimation. if 8 pounds raises 10 degrees in 3 hours why would 1000 pounds of water in 8 pound containers not raise 10 degrees?
The btu arithmetic is correct, that is not the problem.

Answer this: would the idea of night time cooling work absent the water ? If no, why not ?

ELGo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-26-13, 08:29 AM   #22
scottorious
Helper EcoRenovator
 
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: bloomington IL
Posts: 45
Thanks: 0
Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
Default

I think pre-cooling my house could work to an extent. I guess I would say it seems like it might work as well as putting a 12 pack of cold coke into a cooler with no ice and expecting it to stay cold all day. I know that jugs of water are not ice but I'm only looking to cool my house 20ish degrees cooler than outside, not trying to achieve a frosty 35 degree soda. I'm in the beginning stages of planning a large scale experiment in one of my rooms to attempt to verify how well this might work.
scottorious is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-26-13, 09:36 AM   #23
ELGo
Helper EcoRenovator
 
Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: Albuquerque
Posts: 66
Thanks: 4
Thanked 3 Times in 3 Posts
Default

That is not a helpful analogy.

We all know that e.g. in the winter, turning down the thermostat during the night saves energy, even though we use energy to heat the house right back up in the AM. Why ?
ELGo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-26-13, 09:50 AM   #24
AC_Hacker
Supreme EcoRenovator
 
AC_Hacker's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Portland, OR
Posts: 4,004
Thanks: 303
Thanked 723 Times in 534 Posts
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by scottorious View Post
Explain what is optimistic about my 80,000 BTU estimation. if 8 pounds raises 10 degrees in 3 hours why would 1000 pounds of water in 8 pound containers not raise 10 degrees?
scottorious,

You're not sounding very caveman anymore.

However, you might not be able to 'pull the coolness' from the milk bottles filled with water as rapidly as you would like to. Experiments like this that were performed earlier used plastic soda pop bottles, which would give larger area per gallon.

If you did some experiments with an array of milk bottles, arranged as you expect to use them, and measured the rate of temperature decline... maybe plotting the temperatures against time, you'd begin to know if you could get the effect you expect.

If you actually did this, you would learn a lot... and if you shared your results in this forum, we'd all learn a lot.

If it didn't release coolness as fast as you wish, some smaller containers might be called for, like maybe a bunch of soda bottles. Or, going the other way, some plastic 50 gallon barrels (three would give you 1,252 pounds of water) with some pumps and fans and heat exchangers with larger areas than you could get with milk bottles.

BTW, have you searched through some of the alternative energy books that were written during the 1970's? There was a lot of work being done then, some very good, some not so much.

I went to our local really big used book store, and they have a very big section on alternative energy books, that are concerned with citizens taking energy issues into their own hands, similar to what you seem to be talking about doing.

One day, I actually went through all of the books, noting the number of alternative energy books that were published in each year. It was interesting to see that these kinds of books were remarkably absent before the 1973 oil embargo, and then a building tidal wave of books appeared and continued to grow until 1981, the year Ronald Reagan was elected, and then they rapidly declined to insignificance afterwards. But then again, beginning about 12 to 15 years ago, books on these topics began to reappear in numbers that approaching those from the 70's.

You might find some very interesting material there...

-AC
__________________
I'm not an HVAC technician. In fact, I'm barely even a hacker...
AC_Hacker is offline   Reply With Quote
The Following User Says Thank You to AC_Hacker For This Useful Post:
Mobile Master Tech (06-07-13)
Old 04-26-13, 10:15 AM   #25
ELGo
Helper EcoRenovator
 
Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: Albuquerque
Posts: 66
Thanks: 4
Thanked 3 Times in 3 Posts
Default

Here is my last attempt to explain why I think you will waste energy and money:

1. Cheap energy to cool the water -- good
2. (Albeit Cheap) energy to cool the *entire* thermal mass of the house to temperatures below what you would otherwise would, causing an increased gain of heat until the house equilibrates with the outside ambient -- not good.

Your approach requires (2.) to achieve (1.)

This will make more sense if you are familiar with Newton's law of heat transfer.

Last edited by ELGo; 04-26-13 at 10:22 AM..
ELGo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-26-13, 10:32 AM   #26
AC_Hacker
Supreme EcoRenovator
 
AC_Hacker's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Portland, OR
Posts: 4,004
Thanks: 303
Thanked 723 Times in 534 Posts
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by ELGo View Post
This will make more sense if you are familiar with Newton's law of heat transfer.
And they are....?

-AC
__________________
I'm not an HVAC technician. In fact, I'm barely even a hacker...
AC_Hacker is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-26-13, 11:17 AM   #27
scottorious
Helper EcoRenovator
 
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: bloomington IL
Posts: 45
Thanks: 0
Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
Default

I understand what you are saying about cooling the mass past the point that I would normally cool my house. However My intention was to not cool the house to a point cooler than I would normally cool my house. I'll give my entire strategy in detail with hopes to clarify what I want to do or for someone to better explain where my plan is failing. I may be so far off on this but nobody has provided clear reasoning other than just saying it won't work.

for this example lets say I use 100 KWH a day to run the A/C and its spread out throughout the day. Its an effective plan however when the A/C wants to run the most will be when the power cost the most.

In my plan lets say I still use 100 KWH of energy in a 24 hour time frame. However instead of spreading that out all day I use most or all of it during the hours when electricity is the cheapest. Maybe my house will see larger swings in temperature but as I insulate more and more I hope to lessen that swing. and I can deal with the temp not being a constant 70. I also would have to make a great effort at reducing heat gain from cooking/showering.

In my head(and Ive been known to be way off before) whether I run the A/C all day or once a day it is still removing the same amount of heat, or no?

Another question, would running the A/C in the cooler temps of the night be more efficient for it? Last question, would running the A/C once for an hour be more efficient than running it for 3 20 minute periods over 2 hours. Basically is start up power enough that running the A/C fewer cycles but longer periods would amount to anything?
scottorious is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-26-13, 11:23 AM   #28
scottorious
Helper EcoRenovator
 
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: bloomington IL
Posts: 45
Thanks: 0
Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
Default

http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/dept...%20cooling.pdf
scottorious is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-26-13, 12:20 PM   #29
AC_Hacker
Supreme EcoRenovator
 
AC_Hacker's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Portland, OR
Posts: 4,004
Thanks: 303
Thanked 723 Times in 534 Posts
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by scottorious View Post
I understand what you are saying...
scottorious,

I'm wondering what other projects have you completed, and do you have any photographs of your work that you would like to share with the rest of us?

-AC
__________________
I'm not an HVAC technician. In fact, I'm barely even a hacker...
AC_Hacker is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-26-13, 12:58 PM   #30
scottorious
Helper EcoRenovator
 
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: bloomington IL
Posts: 45
Thanks: 0
Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
Default

I have only owned my house for a year now so I have not had much time to ecomod it yet. I'm currently remodeling the entire second floor which is getting a lot of insulation, Wiring to accomodate DC lighting and an DC brushless motor driven fan in the bathroom for settings such as when you just want enough airflow to remove unwanted smells or when you need to quickly remove excess heat and humidity. I have only installed an on demand water heater. I have experimented with solar ovens quite a bit in the past and aeromodded a 99 saturn sc2 to get 52 mpg highway. Pictures for the saturn can be found on facebook(it has its own facebook page) the project was called ecorod. Currently I am working to improve the already fantastic fuel mileage of my 1986 honda elite 150. I built a picaxe controlled Power Meter that would give an update on power used every 15 seconds however since they changed out my meter for the new power smart pricing meter I have to recalibrate it and may not worry about it because my power bill will include a 24 hour breakdown. My house is on septic and used to have all the gray water flow into a cistern, past homeowners changed that and had some gray water flowing into the septic so I rerouted all gray water to use the cistern(I haven't devised any pump to use this water but I will). To lessen the load on the septic I built a nice little composting toilet(it stays outside and is only used when its warm enough to have your pants down outside). I guess I can't forget the bubble wrap on the windows this last winter. So I guess I'm not a supreme ecorenovator yet but as time and money allow I will certainly be working on projects.

scottorious is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 08:35 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.
Ad Management by RedTyger
Inactive Reminders By Icora Web Design