Heat the person not the volume!
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Living in Texas it's not the cold that chews resources and strains the grid, it's the heat.
In the same vein, is there a way to cool the person and not the volume?
With global climate change underway I think cooling needs to be addressed with some serious urgency.
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Back when I was an Architectural student in the '70's our Environmental Studies tutor told us of a serious effort to deal with this exact issue.
Microwave the people!
The idea was for a very low energy system to be installed in ceilings that would be designed to warm up the human body just enough to make them comfortable.
I'm not sure if it was a failure to perfect the technology or simply a failure to convince people that this was a good idea that killed the idea (or perhaps that lecture was given on April 1st.)
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Pete, Mitcrorb has raised an interesting possible solution to the cooling! Perhaps you you investigate further?
@mitcorb said:
... On the matter of keeping cool. As you know, cooling is the extraction of heat. Perhaps some way to utilize phase change salt solutions circulating through garments, run with energy extracted from some source right under our noses but not yet tapped.
John, Microwave people! On the face of it, it makes sense as its only the non metallic items in a microwave oven that get cooked! I've had some bad experiences with microwaves, like the time I tried to evaporate water from a sealed plastic car tail light! The bloody plastic started to smoke. I digress
I imagine there are papers on this somewhere and probably well worth looking up.
I don't mean to sound conspiratorial but I would not be surprised if good past inventions were brought up and put to bed by the oil industry.
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Pete, further! If the Sun is causing your discomfort, it can also be the solution to the discomfort, as far as cooling volumes is concerned. http://www.solarpanelsplus.com/solar-air-conditioning/ But you probably know this already
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Check out the Bloom Energy Server. Just Google it. In fact, Google has an installation of this large scale fuel cell at one of its campuses. It was featured on the TV show "60 Minutes". However, I was thinking about tapping into some of those seemingly marginal sources such as people walking across special mats or rugs fitted with some mechanism to absorb the energy.
I think the microwave thing may have been plagued with the possibility of interfering with important peoples' Twittering, or cardiac pacemakers or hearing aids. As an aside, my cellphone when it begins to receive a call near my computer, creates an audio pulse just before it begins to "ring". -
Bloom Energy Server! Will look it up.
Yeah, microwaves make me nervous.
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I'm sitting here looking out the window. It's cold, overcast and windy as the last remnants of Irene finally make it across the Atlantic, having slingshotted of Newfoundland. I'm wearing a wonderful invention called a sweater.
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Lucky bastards, I cannot remember what cold feels like.
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I'd be tempted to offer a swap, Pete. But having tramped around Rome a couple of weeks back with temperatures around 40°C...with a heavy head cold to boot...I'm not so sure. It seems like it's relatively easy to keep the body warm with appropriate clothing, but there's not much defence against heat other than expensive HVAC or radical building design.
Well, actually there is...sitting under a palm tree, drinking ice cold beer and flopping into the pool every half hour or so. Trouble is you don't get much work done. -
40C sounds like paradise after 117F. I might even need a sweater. Here we have misters (not a male person but a gadget that creates a cooling mist) that sprays a fine mist over patrons of outdoor bars and restaurants.
And think about this. If your sweater causes you to sweat it will actually chill you even further as the sweat evaporates.
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@solo said:
Lucky bastards, I cannot remember what cold feels like.
You always welcomed to wist in Finland - it's starts to get a bit chilly here... bit by bit, four to five months later, maybe 30 degrees below zero (Celsius scale) or -22 ºF.
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Pentti, perhaps we can express boxes if the local climate back and forthe from Arizona to Finland until we are both comfortable. I think it had just dropped under 100F last night I 10 PM when I took the dog for a walk.
--Roger
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While we are swopping climates, anyone got rain?
We are burning up here in Texas, over 1000 homes burned down so far.
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Yeah, my mother lives close to you and is suffering it all as well.
Fortunately for us we caught the path of the recent tropical storm. A few days ago it was 90-100 and the past couple days have been rain and below 70. Other than the fact that my head is splitting and my sinus' are freaking out with the sudden change I am enjoying it quite a bit. "Hello pullover, I have missed you." -
It rained briefly here twice today, and half of yesterday = <17C [60F]...
That's around the seasonal average - just perhaps a tad cool/wet...
But then in the UK it's hard to separate Summer from Winter... let alone Spring and Autumn [Fall]
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@tig said:
But then in the UK it's hard to separate Summer from Winter... let alone Spring and Autumn [Fall]
Sounds familiar.
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@tig said:
It rained briefly here twice today, and half of yesterday = <17C [60F]...
That's around the seasonal average - just perhaps a tad cool/wet...
But then in the UK it's hard to separate Summer from Winter... let alone Spring and Autumn [Fall]Yeah TIG, we sent that bit of rain over to you yesterday. A bit more on the way over the next few days. I'll let you know when we will be sending a bit a sunshine
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Hi all
There is local project here that is trying to identify which is best: 'smart occupancy' or 'behaviour modification'.
'Smart Occupancy ' = the use of digital sensors to turn on and off lights, adjust thermostats and underfloor heating, open windows etc.
Behaviour modification = encouraging the user to take more responsibility to turn things off, wear a jumper, accept that PV won't make their water really hot all the time etc.
An example of the need for this is a nearby new school that achieved Breeam Excellent, it has PV, wind turbines, super insulation, passive heating and cooling and other energy saving credentials. It also has smart occupancy sensors and some of the highest energy bills of any school in the area.
This isn't because the building doesn't work, apparently it's because the users have developed the attitude that they are absolved from all responsibility; the school generates its own power and has green controls. Therefore the staff are less inclined to turn things off and more inclined to turn the thermostats up.
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I went to a military high school in Pennsylvania and we had coal fired steam radiators because the windows were single pane glass and the there was no insulation in the walls. So the furnace ran day and night. Of course the administration thought this made the rooms too stuffy and decided that the windows had to be kept open during the day. I remember standing for inspection and watching water leak out of the radiator and then freeze on the floor. It was an American school with a strong dash of British Army officers and NCOs thrown in for flavoring. Some very stiff upper lips, but they may have just frozen in that position.
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I've been to a few places in the States where the common washing line or rotary was regarded as either unsightly or maybe just plain primitive...and everything had to be tumble dried...even in perfect drying weather, which you get a lot more over over there than in the UK. Seems to me like energy conservation ought to start with the easy and obvious.
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