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DIY HVAC
Posted by
michael
on Sun Feb 29, 2004 06:08 PM
from the PDQ dept.
from the PDQ dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I found this very interesting project called DIY Zoning. It allows one to add air flow balancing, temperature control, zoning, home automation, and more to an existing or new HVAC system. After getting a $200 electric bill, this sounds like a good solution for those who are getting screwed with outrageously high electric bills due to their HVAC unit especially since organizations like TVA have raised the electric rates."
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(Godfather Voice) Don't forget about the family! (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget about Haywire [sourceforge.net], Jukebox [sourceforge.net], and ServoMaster [sourceforge.net], all of which are hosted at SourceForge and directly tie-in to the temperature zoning system featured in this Slashdot posting.
[Oh, and FWIW, Professor Tkachenko's son is a cutie (an old college friend of mine knew him)!]
Re:(Godfather Voice) Don't forget about the family (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.shokk.com/blog/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 02 2003, @10:39PM)
Gray-Water Toilets! (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.glowingplate.com/)
directly tie-in to the temperature zoning system featured in this Slashdot posting.
The temperature controller is an *excellent* idea, I think I'll take a look at incorporating it into my house.
Here's my little (non-computerized) ecological project: a gray water toilet [glowingplate.com] which recycles water from my washing machine.
What about water conservation?? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What about water conservation?? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.pixelmovement.com/)
Re:What about water conservation?? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday March 10 2004, @11:39PM)
I saw a program on PBS or The Discovery Channel or HGTV or God knows what channel...
about a hotel in Arizona or Malaysia or Australia or god knows which country
which has a water recycling system installed. They have low flow toilets, and a filtration system, and the water is in a clear acryllic case. All the water for the all the systems is mostly recycled.
Re:What about water conservation?? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://users.pandora.be/redx | Last Journal: Sunday March 19 2006, @01:26PM)
It's even mandatory these days to install a rain water reservoir for new houses (here at least).
Check out this week's "This Old House" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What about water conservation?? (Score:5, Informative)
- Install stormwater tanks. Hook them up to your roof's stormwater system, with the excess (that the tanks can't store) going into the stormwater drains, as the whole lot used to do. Use this water to flush toilets, water gardens, and possibly wash clothes and shower in (depending on the quality of the rainwater you get).
- Redirect water from your shower to gardens, toilets, etc. You may need to treat it to get rid of soap, shampoo, etc. residues.
- Fix those leaking taps.
- Take shorter showers.
- Install a water-saving shower head.
- Stop hosing down the damn concrete driveway. Use a broom, or a blower if you're that damn lazy.
Here in Australia, stormwater tanks used to be illegal! That's changed, though, as the Powers That Be came to the realisation that our water resources are limited, they won't be expanding, and yet they have to support a growing population. The scary thing is, since my father installed stormwater tanks for our showers, toilets, and laundry, our water bills dropped by a third (or more).As an aside, there's one place in Melbourne (Aus) that has no water bill. None. Zero. Zip. They were actually investigated pretty thoroughly when this happened, because authorities assumed they were stealing water from their neighbours. Not so, though; they were just very efficient with their water use and recycling, and were able to fill their needs from stormwater.
Re:What about water conservation?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Would you buy bottled water to pour into your toilet? Probably not, and yet that is essentially what you're doing right now.
I like to use a good, old fashioned cistern, a big bucket to collect rain water, for many uses that don't involve ingestion. Why buy "bottled water" to spray across your lawn/plants? Hell, your plants even like it if it's a bit, ummmm, shitty.
You can learn a lot about water managment by reading books on sailing. When blue water cruising, management of drinking water while still getting other things done requiring the use of water can mean the difference between life and death, not merely a larger water bill. Salt, rain, grey and fresh drinking water all have their various ideal uses.
KFG
Gray Water Toilet - pictures and info! (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.glowingplate.com/)
Would there be anything wrong with using your shower water as toilet water? I honestly can't see anything wrong with that and it'd certainly cut down on somebody's water bill from month to month.
I meant to reply here rather than my post in the previous parent, I clicked on the link and brainfarted about the subject.
My toilet costs me about $200/year to flush (based on number of flushes per day counted for a typical week, and the size of the toilet's tank). So I built a system to refill it using water from my washing machine [glowingplate.com].
I did also consider using the water from the shower, but in practice, the water from the washing machine provides enough water to keep the storage barrel full.
Whether you have one or several toilets, the number of flushes per day is probably proportional to the number of people in the house. Since the laundry usage is also proportional to the number of people in the house, the water barrel is likely to remain full, but I'm sure there'd be no harm in dropping a pipe off the clean-out port at the bottom of the bathtub/shower U-trap, putting in another U-trap to serve as a vapor barrier, and draining that into the barrel. A couple of barrels should probably also be paralleled for a high-volume multiple toilet installation, but if you store too much water, it will start to grow (stinky) algae.
I tried paralleling barrels, but in practice, I didn't need to - just two people in my house. It'd be very easy to do, just a hose connecting fittings near the bottoms of each barrel, and they'll reach an equilibrium even if it's several minutes after the washing machine has finished a drain cycle.
As for what's wrong with gray water toilets, I don't know. I know it's against building codes here, but I don't know why. My system, not being a permanent installation or requiring any modification to the existing plumbing, skirts the rules about building codes.
I have yet to find a single disadvantage to my gray water system.
HVAC Heating, Ventilation, & Air Conditioning (Score:5, Informative)
Re:HVAC Heating, Ventilation, & Air Conditioni (Score:5, Funny)
And for the rest of us, it stands for High Voltage AC. Though that's usually fairly darwinistic as a DIY-project.
That project doesn't conform to the industry specs (Score:4, Informative)
(http://goat.cx/ | Last Journal: Wednesday August 18 2004, @02:34PM)
Easier way to lower the electricity bill (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.realistic-dragon.co.uk/)
Putting a circuit in to turn off the AC when someone opens a window helps too.
Re:Easier way to lower the electricity bill (Score:4, Interesting)
A better idea: talk with the husband/wife and determine what you can afford to set the thermostat to. Make it clear to the kids that it is not their place to adjust the thermostat.
Seems easier than coming up with an elaborate decoy system.
Re:Easier way to lower the electricity bill (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday November 08 2004, @10:00AM)
Even cheaper, don't get married and don't get kids.
Re:Easier way to lower the electricity bill (Score:4, Funny)
(http://s87365085.onlinehome.us/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 28 2003, @04:22PM)
Re:Easier way to lower the electricity bill (Score:5, Informative)
(http://beamon.ca/ | Last Journal: Wednesday December 15 2004, @09:55AM)
You will pay more for parts than for the electricity [energy.gov] ($1.25 for the entire lifetime of the device, or, about 30 cents yearly).
Re:Easier way to lower the electricity bill (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.pathname.com/~quinlan/)
Yeah, because divorce is always cheaper than paying higher electrical bills, right?
Re:Easier way to lower the electricity bill (Score:5, Funny)
(http://kentbrewster.com/ | Last Journal: Monday July 19 2004, @05:47PM)
We found some very nice dummies that lit up, clicked, and hummed convincingly. Problem solved
This king of thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't get why this kind of project is really worthy of doing anyways. May save some money, but most people's houses dont use more than 1500 kWa of electricity a month... ~140$ of electricty around here (considering we pay the "Berea College Utilities" tax). Now a worthy project would be covering your house with solar panels and breaking even on your utility bills
Buy a new fridge, and other suggestions. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the single most worthy project would be simply buying a new refrigerator. They are the #1 electricity consumers in almost every household, because they run 24x7x365, and are never thrown out until they completely fail(after years of working below the already mediocre factory performance). Newer refrigerators are MUCH more efficient than those made 5, 10 years ago. There are even models that are so efficient, they can be run entirely off solar power.
Wanna reduce your electric bill, but can't replace your fridge? Leave enough space behind it for airflow, and vacuum/dust the coils, especially those under the unit. Oh, and properly set the controls; buy a thermometer and adjust until both compartments are cold -enough-. The freezer control, by the way, doesn't control the freezer compartment temperature- it controls the RATIO of cooling between refrigerator and freezer compartments.
All in all, even if you buy a new fridge, it could end up paying for itself in a year or two in saved electric costs. Oh, and slowly switch your lights over to fluorescent bulbs, wrap hot water pipes in foam insulation, put sealing inserts behind outlet plates+switchplates, etc. In the winter, cover windows in rooms you don't use with the window insulation you can buy at the hardware store. Find out the R-rating on the insulation in your walls, attic, etc; old insulation can be horrible compared to the latest new stuff(which can often be "blown" into place, install is a cinch). Got an old furnace? Get a new one; they're also a thousand times better these days. My folk's new gas furnace is so efficient, its exhaust is a 2" PVC pipe that is barely warm to the touch when it's going full blast...
Last but not least, turn off the damn computer when you're not using it, get an ISP account with webspace instead of running your own webserver, etc. I worked it out once...100-200W over 24x7x365 equals a LOT of money per year!
Re:Buy a new fridge, and other suggestions. (Score:5, Informative)
"I worked it out once...100-200W over 24x7x365 equals a LOT of money per year!"
First - that math is for 7 years, it should be 24 x 7 x 52.179 or 24 x 365.25
200W x 24hrs/day x 365.25days/year = 1753.2kW-hours / year.
At a rate of $0.08/kW-hour = $140.
Now - that is assuming that it is using the full 200W all the time. A 200W or 300W power supply is needed because there is a lot more power used when the disks are spinning up or that CD/DVD is spinning and writing. Even a more busy CPU and graphics card will draw significantly more power. So that box is probably drawing only a fraction of that power on average which means that it isn't really close to that much.
Now if I could just find my clamp-on amp-meter to give some real power numbers on my own boxen.........
Bills? (Score:5, Funny)
Ack, gotta go, a cloud's coming!
Do it yourself (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't complain about TVA (Score:5, Informative)
Read this:
http://www.nemw.org/tvareport.htm
wow that freaked me out for a second (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://flickr.com/photos/re_verse/ | Last Journal: Tuesday April 13 2004, @04:41PM)
What a weird yet fitting title to see on
Zoning rocks (Score:5, Informative)
Take this house for example, 2000 sq ft 2 story farmhouse, 1950's anderson windows, still nice but not real tight, no in wall insulation, attic is aesbestos (but now sealed)
The house is set up into 3 zones, on an old , circa 1950 American Standard electro-mechanical zone system, it is hot water heat, about half baseboard, the other half cast radiators, the heat throught the hose is awesome, never too cold anywhere. Now, the fun part, we dont have gas, and electric was way too ineffecient to heat this house soooo, my grandfather a pipefitter as well installed the system back in the 50's
The wind up of all this , my heating bill for the entire year ? Under $600 Thats 350 gallons of oil, I only took 310 or so after 13 months last time I topped off. And I live near Cleveland Ohio (Akron), not exactly warm winters here ya know
Here's some solutions to help lower the bill: (Score:5, Insightful)
Learn to do without.
I know it sounds contrite, but hear me out.
Do you really need both of those monitors? If not, chuck one, or turn it off. Monitors draw quite a bit of power. Also, make sure you turn off your monitors when you're not using them, or make sure their power saving modes are on. Alternatively, you could go LCD to help reduce the costs, but I've always looked at that with some suspicion in that the prohibitive costs related to 19" and higher LCD's offset the potential savings.
How many computers are you running? If the answer is more than one, ask yourself if you really *need* to be running the others. Sure it's nice that you've gotten that old P233 up and running as your firewall, but frankly, a Linksys dedicated router/firewall is going to draw much less power, with fewer moving parts.
Air Conditioning: Learn to live a bit warmer. Learn to open windows instead of reaching for the thermostat. You'll find that your body can and will adjust to warmer temperatures if you let it. I live in the South with oppressive humidity and heat during the summer and my dad tells me stories of him growing up when they didn't have A/C. It can be done. And, if you follow the first 2 items above, you'll find your house isn't as hot. Computers + Monitors == lots of heat. Now, in my apartment, I don't have central A/C, only a couple window units, unfortunately. A trick I've learned is to shut the door to my bedroom, which happens to be decently sized, and only run the A/C in that room. It gets downright cold pretty fast. Now, it does make me somewhat of a prisoner in that room, only venturing out to use the can or to cook something in the kitchen, but I've learned to cope. Besides, I can grab my laptop and browse the web wirelessly from anywhere in my house. Also, at least here, the hottest part of the summers is only one or 2 months that you have to "suffer" through. Actually, if you work a lot, here's an excuse to work some OT.
My bill dropped from $150/month to less than $50/month once I adopted these measures.
If you're married with kids, feel free to ignore because I'm assuming most of the
Re:Here's some solutions to help lower the bill: (Score:5, Funny)
(http://dattaway.us/)
My monitors *are* my zoned heating system. A small quartz heater take up what else the distributed computing doesn't make. I can keep my living area around 80 degrees (I like it hot) with a total monthly utility bill less than $100.
The hotter months, I move my hobbies down to the basement in the furnished bomb shelter. Underground, its much cooler. My LCD displays with the backlight on soft only consumes a few watts, so they are good. Summer utility bills are less than $60 and I get to leave florescent lights on.
Re:Here's some solutions to help lower the bill: (Score:4, Interesting)
But a good HVAC system will save you electricity AND fuel, being better able to meet the heating/cooling demands better. That translates to lower costs all around - AND more comfort!
A good HVAC system doesn't even need to be all that complicated, either. Chances are it's already possible to have your home re-evaluated and do a minor tweak to save a few bucks.
If you've got baseboard heat (hot water), and ever had or will soon have your boiler replaced, it's worth doing a detailed heat load calculation. Chances are the guy installing the new boiler will probably size it up to handle what the radiation is designed to put out - and typically it's quite a bit more than you actually need to keep the house comfy warm!
This results in the boiler cranking out more hot water than is actually required, and with a single-zone system you'll end up with some rooms too hot and others too cool. The boiler will also short-cycle more often, resulting in poor efficiency.
There's several solutions you could use. Putting the right sized boiler is obviously the best way to go if you don't want to redo the whole house, but if you've got plenty of radiation (and a newer, non-cast-iron boiler!), why not run your system at a lower water temperature? The boiler won't have to work as hard to get up to temperature, and it'll stay off longer (feeding off the latent heat to keep the water warm). A simple tweak of the boiler's temperature shutoff and a 3-way mixing valve is usually all it takes.
While you're at it, clean that fintube. Maybe throw some insulation on those pipes in the basement. Little things like that are easy to do and certaintly can't hurt.
=Smidge=
Looking in all the wrong places (Score:5, Informative)
The author obviously didn't look in the right places. Here are a few links to get started:
SmartHome [smarthome.com]
HomeTech Solutions [hometech.com]
Bass Burglar Alarms [bassburglaralarms.com]
I've done business with all three, and have retrofitted my home with a two-zone system powered by an RCS zone controller and electronic dampers. All three have been extremely helpful in providing technical advice.
One thing to remember: The HVAC business (as well as the burglar alarm business) are very protective of their turf. You stand little chance of finding an HVAC contractor willing to work with you on designing a custom HVAC system.
Programmable Thermostat? (Score:2, Insightful)
Open sourcing everything (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://mrspeaker.webeisteddfod.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday February 06 2005, @10:56PM)
Doesn't seem that hot - fun reading I'd say! The idea is great though (not new, but great) - As open source branches in to more and more area, the people involved with open source software are more likely to adapt OSS principles to non-software aspects of their work.
"An open-source future is one in which we realize that reality itself is open source [fusionanomaly.net]" to quote an unknown guy on the internet. Hope it happens this year!
Open Source Energy Initiatives (Score:3, Insightful)
Its time to do something about it.
Re:Open Source Energy Initiatives (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.catering-connection.com/)
Re:Open Source Energy Initiatives (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Tuesday August 19 2003, @03:49PM)
Depends very much on where you live. Here, in one of the Denver suburbs, semi-arid climate, the following rules come into play:
-
No new cesspools or septic fields allowed.
Inside the city limits, developers are required to connect to city services.
If you have an existing septic field, and want to subdivide a portion of your property, you won't be given permission until you shut down the field and connect to city services.
-
No new wells allowed.
If you decide the septic field is not worth the trouble and want to connect to city sewage, you'll have to shut down an existing well and connect to city water also.
Outside the city, wells have a different set of problems.
Shallow wells are not reliable.
Deep wells into some aquifers are regulated by the state now.
Up in the foothills, it is not unusual to have to drill 10K feet in order to establish a reliable well.
Pumping water that far is expensive.
-
Collecting rainfall and storing it is, in general, illegal.
Senior water rights to runoff from your property are held by someone downstream.
Trust me on this one, buying water from the city is cheaper than trying to find all of the people that might have rights to your runoff.
Since some of those rights will be held by the local municipal government, who will not be shy about taking you to court when you try to install a cistern of any size.
Water law in the western US is bizarre, to say the least.Use less power? Nah, use more... (Score:3, Interesting)
Throw that snow shovel away!
Here are some more ideas (with graphs) (Score:5, Informative)
I found the site while searching for information on heat pump water heaters. One example graph they give shows the heat pump water heater using less than half the energy as resistive heating.
If installed properly, a heat pump water heater will also help air-condition your house. A good place to put ducts is in the kitchen, where the waste heat from cooking can be removed and used to heat water. Ideally, the returned cooled air can be directed at your refrigerator's condenser coils for increased efficiency.
It's not the heat, it is the humidity (honest) (Score:5, Interesting)
The sensible heat load is the outside temperature seeping through the walls, but it is also the sum beating down on the roof and walls and pouring through windows. The latent heat load is largely the result of air infiltration with some contribution from showers and cooking: running a dryer contributes to latent heat because it pulls 150 CFM of inside air through the dryer vent that gets made up by air seeping in.
One of the points made was that in fall in Florida, the air conditioner runs less so the indoor humidity climbs to the sticky range. They are recommending a variable speed air handler so that a low flow setting, the air gets chilled more so more of the AC goes into humidity removal. Heat pipes have been recommended as well -- to pre-chill the air handler input and pre-warm the output to trade less cooling for more condensing.
Other approaches include not running your fan in continuous mode because that just evaporates the moisture film on the coils every time the AC cycles off to better draining cooling coil pans.
But a fundamental problem is that the latent heat load is pretty much constant across the day while the sensible load varies with the sun and contributes to the big electrical peak. One idea is to paint the roof with titanium white to cut down on the sensible heat load.
The idea I have is to try to smooth out the electrical peak load by letting the AC run more at night and run a little less during the day, and to let the sensible-heat temperature cycle up and down during the day, but to have some combined measure of heat and humidity remain constant. Instead of maintaining a constant temperature to try to maintain a constant indoor dewpoint.
This system would 1) have it cooler at night to make sleeping easier -- I can stand it warmer during the day, 2) smooth out electrical peak demand, 3) more efficiently remove humidity averaged on a 24 hour basis because humidity removal efficiency goes down if the AC duty cycle goes up during the day and you are pulling the indoor humidity below 50 percent.
Carrier makes a rather expensive ($200 plus) Humidistat product that controls the AC to both temperature and humidity targets. A cheaper solution for me is to use a setback thermometer which lets the temps go down at night and go up during the day, and to only start lowering temps at sleep time. A typical setback unit has night, wake, day, and return times -- I may go for 75 night, 74 wake, 77 day, and 78 return (the thermal pulse from the sun shining all day makes it through the house by evening, and at 78 the AC will be cycling to lower the humidity anyway). I also use an electronic humidity gauge and dial all those temps up or down a degree or two to get about 50 percent RH).
Two concerns: Resale and housing code (Score:5, Insightful)
It would royally suck to need something inspected later on, such as when selling a house, only to be told it wasn't code and had to come out or be expensively upgraded to meet code. I've done a ton of electrical work (some in conjunction with remodeling which was heavily inspected) and nobody said boo, but it was all code-compliant.
And speaking of resale, even though a zoned hvac system would be nice, one that's more complicated than your grandma can operate will actually lower your resale value to most people since it will be seen as a maintenance liability. I put in a Honeywell 7 day programmable thermostat and my wife hated me for a couple of months until she figured out how to work it. I can only imagine what she would do with something that made one room cold and another warm without being totally obvious (like a 15" LCD touch screen with a floor plan of the house and car-type heat controls).
Re:Two concerns: Resale and housing code (Score:4, Interesting)
But I am glad I don't have to answer the radio shout for help from the poor on-call technician who gets a look at this equipment for the first time at 0200 on a Sunday morning. If something breaks on a system like this, and the geek that built it is gone, then things will likely progress as you describe: The hardware changes will be undone in a few hours, returning the system to a state understood by the servicer, even if the problem is as simple as a mechanically broken servo link. Many of the HVAC techs working have trouble using their VOMs efficiently on the high voltage sections of the system. For these guys, controls are mysterious scary voodoo magic. For such a cool system to survive its inventor it'll need killer documentation, easy to find and comprehend, and hard to lose.
The article mentions the Trane XV1500. We had a bunch under our care; they were wicked good air conditioners. They stopped making them because the average service tech was helpless to make them go when they broke, so they tore them apart and tried to make them work in a more simple way...which was not possible with those systems, as the compressor was a frequency-controlled DC motor. Much unhappiness for tech, for homeowner, for service company, for Trane. So now they make a condensing unit with two old fashioned compressors, and stage those. They still get butchered, but at least coldness can happen on an emergency call on the 4th of July weekend.
History lesson (Score:1, Funny)
The air conditioner was actually invented by three Jewish gentlemen. Just look at the front of any air conditioner and read their names: Norm, Hi, and Max.
No HVAC here, sorry. (Score:4, Interesting)
Evaporative coolers use electricity only to spin the fan vs. compressing freon or whatnot, which takes a lot more energy.
$30 solution (Score:3, Redundant)
(http://www.squeezer.net/)
Before you do *any* of this stuff. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Before you do *any* of this stuff. (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Sunday January 19 2003, @04:11PM)
Now, if you are me, you live in a apartment located partway underground and you love mother earth. Thanks to being mostly underground my heating/cooling bills are 1/3 of my upstairs friends. Viva La Basments!
No dampers here (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.certsoft.com/)
Not as good as using dampers, but much simpler. I put a copy of the webpage for this system on my website:
System_Hvac [certsoft.com]
My fundamental problem with HVAC... (Score:1)
RHVAC (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.dailywheel.com/thegame/ | Last Journal: Monday January 15 2007, @12:34PM)
yeah, but a kernel panic would be a bitch.... (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://hnsg.net/)
heating and cooling costs? (Score:4, Funny)
Works for bears, works for me.
Only 200? (Score:3, Interesting)
My home electric bill is roughly $200 (The water is also about $200). And that's LA DWP, which was a damn sight better than the poor fools who got 10x rate increases during the crunch.
Dupe... (Score:1)
Out of date (Score:1)
(http://www.aviflax.com/)
This site mentions that some parts may be introduced in May 2003. There are also some 404 links.
Why is this considered news?
Also, for someone new to the site, the organization is lacking. I found myself frustrated and unable to find what I wanted.
A nerdy approach that certainly outweighs mine (Score:5, Interesting)
Started with the electric bill, did the obvious things, knocked the thermostat in a direction that'd keep the costs down. Replaced all the bulbs in the house with florecents. Switched to more energy effecient devices and appliances. It helped, but didn't make a real dent. My problem was heating and cooling. I live in a location with all the seasons. Very hot, very cold.
Then a co-worker inspired an idea. He faught in Viet Nam, told me bout how the guys rotated back to the world and stopped in Hawaii for refueling. All the guys in combat were so used to the hot humid jungle that the 88F weather of Hawaii was just too cold for them, they all had on leather jackets trying to beat the chill.
It was then I realized, that to a degree, my battles with TVA were more easily won by conditioning. All these years I had been spoiled by AC and electric heat. So I did a little experiment this Winter.
I vowed never to turn on the heat unless there was a chance that the pipes might freeze. Went and bought a coleman sleeping bag and a bunkbed at a thriftstore, kept myself closer to the cieling and snuggly in my sleeping bag. Kept very warm at night, during the day I'd burn a few candles just to take the chill out of the room, wore long sleaves.
My electric bill went from 270$ a month to around 30$.
Success through suffering. But the experiment worked, now I can run around in shorts when it's 38F out and it's not big deal to me.
How will I fair during the Summer tho? Many people die in the South from heat stroke, so I'm a little concerned about that. I really don't wanna die or get sick to save a dollar. So I think I'm going to do some zone cooling, reasonable AC set on 80 and lots of fans.
The methods illustrated in the story would have been tempting, but I'm a renter. Not a whole like I can apply to the living structure without violating my lease and being homeless where it's gonna be really cold out.
-1, Troll (Score:3, Insightful)
How does this stuff make the front page, is the editorial staff of Slashdot the Socialist Worker's Party or something?
Finally! (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.shadyproject.net/)
ah, technology.
HVAC? No, In Floor Heat! (Score:5, Interesting)
The heat for the infloor system is from standard water heaters. Since the water heaters are downstairs, I don't need to turn on the thermostats for pump control - simple thermosiphon will cause the hot water to flow thru the system in the upper two stories.
The system is simple and convenient. If power goes out I still have heat from thermosiphoning.
It is possible top retrofit homes with this system, either with baseboard radiators or running the tubing between the joists (plus some drilling to get to each joist bay) as long as the crawl space is available.
There are other companies besides Wirsbo that produce this type of heating system/product.
When you are ready to build/buy your own house I recommend comparing HVAC and infloor heating. Look at "Fine Homebuilding" magazine for ads and articles, they are at the obvious web site.
To make my heating system more viable I used foam insulation for R-50 in the walls and R-60 in the roof. Double paned windows and a 5 foot overhang to reduce summer heat gain (my outside walls are 11 feet high). If the are more than 8 people in the house at a time I need to turn all the heating off, as the heat thrown off by the bodies raises the inside temp.
All in all a rather pleasant solution to the heating/cooling system.
Since I live on the northern California coast I don't need cooling. Average year round temp is 55 degrees F.
If you need cooling the system could be adapted for that. To cool the house you only need to cool the circulating water, a heat pump would the best solution.
HVAC is too expensive! So we went for swampies. (Score:4, Informative)
(http://zardoz.hotblack.net/)
Originally, we investigated the possibility of going for an HVAC reverse-cycle capable system but the running costs, along with the prohibitive installation costs were from Mars, or something. They wanted "only" AU$3000 for install of the three phase, plus it was about ten grand for the system and installation.
Installing split-system wall units was also an idea, however, cold air doesn't easily move throughout the house due to airflow being restricted so you'd realistically want units in every room. All of a sudden, Carrier's centrally airconditioned system doesn't look too bad.
In the end, we went with two evaporative coolers from a company called Brivis [brivis.com.au] (Australian). These units are self-cleaning and self-maintained, too, so we don't have to dash up on the roof every six months. Our heating system is also from the same company and was the most efficient on the market when we had it installed.
Now, the nifty thing is that our wall controllers have backlight LCD displays and use RS232 (or 422 - I can't remember but I know that it was standard) for communication, so it should be easy to, say, hook one up to a PC if I really wanted to, although these AU$200 wall controllers have been installed in factory environments with 12 coolers in them. On one controller.
And because the installers of the cooling were slack (we should be able to have both coolers AND the heater on the ONE controller) and didn't want to run cables under the house, they installed seperate controllers for each cooler. So I've got one to play with if I felt like running some cables.
So how is it? Cheap to run, but be warned that evaporative coolers are better when you start them in the morning before it gets hot - the ideas is to cool the air by moving a lot of it. Windows need to be kept open to allow the airflow to occur or else things get very humid. And on a reasonable day, I've had the coolers bring the temperature from 38C down to a comfortable 21C.
But as other people have observed, these coolers become ineffective on humid days - we had a day with 80% relative humidity where the temp came down from 40C to about 32C - still a change, but it was still hellishly humid inside.
I'd love real HVAC cooling. It's dry, quiet and I can keep all the doors and windows closed, however it costs a fortune to install and a fortune to run.
Also, most HVAC systems had zoning as a feature. Heck, my heating has zoning built-in. I don't see what all the fuss is about.
plumbing (Score:1)
(http://intertrusion.com/)
I would encourage everyone to do their own home-repairs, but that's just me.
-C
Oh my God, that's cheap power (Score:2, Informative)
(http://www.petergottlieb.com/)
Energy efficiency is very important here and would have a great payback period, except that unless you do it entirely yourself the contractors will make you pay through the nose. The state makes various "barriers to entry" such as several layers of licensing so tradespeople's hourly rates for jobs of that kind of size are comparable to lawyers and doctors (I am not kidding).
When it gets hot here it is frequently very humid and this takes even more energy to cool. My worst computer failure was one summer when I was out, the air conditioner tripped off, and the room where I had my system got to 130 degrees. The complete failure and subsequent head crash of the disk was made serious by the failure of the backup system to make usable tapes for the past month.
I do this for a living.... (Score:3, Informative)
IOW, be careful. I sell my expertise. If someone wants to design a system, then they are welcome to, but I'm not interested in getting involved. This isn't unscrupulous. Guess who you'll call if it doesn't work? Or something burns out? And my time is expensive. I could fiddle with something for days, but will I be payed for it?
Another issue is the high efficiency cooling equipment, or heat pumps. In humid areas, if you install as per manufacturer's specs for the most efficient, the unit will not dry the air out, and can contribute to mould and high humidity issues. So you may save a couple hundred over a year, then need to spend multiple thousands replacing windows, saturated insulation, etc. Again be careful.
Swamp coolers work well in very dry areas. In moderate to humid areas, don't even think of them. They will rot your house, and possibly make you sick.
The best way to save on cooling costs are to shut it off. To save on heating costs, have the house cooler and even cold at night.
Derek
This is a microcontroller application (Score:2)
(http://www.animats.com)
The next logical step is to put in some passive motion detectors, so that when nobody is home, the HVAC system knows it.
$200, that's cheap ! (Score:1, Interesting)
(http://www.bavoderidder.com/)
Two days ago I paid my bill, 250 EUR. Given that I live alone, with almost no electrical devices turned on, that is even considered a low bill here in Belgium.
Average families with two children can expect 300 EUR to 500 EUR bill each year.
It's more about COMFORT than economy (Score:2)
No. Basic zone control via air flow control is mostly about comfort and preventing hot and cold spots. It does save a bit of money, but mostly because you don't have to overcool one area to make another cool enough to tolerate.
If you get into advanced control, with schedules for individual zones, temperature diferentials between zones, and all the things this project seems to make possible, you could save more money.
However, the most important part of an energy-saving system is the hand that controls the thermostat. I remember some TV coverage at the height of the California electricity crunch ... a woman complaining about her huge electricity bill, while her two kids played on the carpet behind her in t-shirts and shorts. If she had turned the t-stat down 10-15 degrees and put the kids in warmer clothes she would have saved a bundle.
All the basic moneysavers apply: sun screens for windows in hot climates (worth a fast 20 drop in indoor temperature), insulation in the attic, weatherstripping and caulking, storm or dual pane windows ... whatever gets you the fastest return on investment.
Re:HVAC? (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/~T-Kir)
Ummmm, Hoover VAcuum Cleaner! Yes, that's it! Not that I'm advertising them or anything (although I use Dyson myself).
;-)
Re:Throw that shit away. (Score:1)
Re:HVAC? (Score:1)
Re:Throw that shit away. (Score:2)
(http://trypticon.org/)
Re:DIY Waste of Money (Score:1)
(http://buttersideup.com/)
BTW, I'm in the process of installing this system, and it looks good so far (only one zone on at the moment tho').
Re:Sustainable lifestyles... (Score:1)
Re:DIY Waste of Money (Score:1)
I'm too lazy to ponder about that. I'll let the computer figure it out.
Horizontal zoning does indeed work, but if you want to shuffle the registers yourself all day long. As it says in the FAQ, the temperature balance in the house changes every second, depending on season, weather, wind, time of day, phase of moon and Philip Morris stock price.
Re:Sustainable lifestyles... (Score:2)
(http://integramod.tripod.com/)
Last time I checked, late-model Volkswagens seem use more fuel for a given engine size than similar vehicles made in Japan. BMWs and Mercedes aren't economical at all.
Forget European cars; buy Japanese.
As for the Iraq war question, ask Tony Blair. He's European, in case you didn't know.