777 replies to this topic

[VicHockeyFan]

^ The orange paint marks walls, but you do drive the pipes over it sometimes. What does the green paint mark? ^

How thick is the styrofoam? What is the indent at the front of the house? Garage, or just a C-shaped house?

Lucky for you, I read a whole bunch last night on wikipedia.

Essentially this is the most efficient type of system, because you don't have to transfer liquids anywhere. Like on an electric air heatpump outside your house, you have to get the refrigerant, or whatever it's called, to them warm some water that you send through the pipes, so it requres a transfer and some loss.

In the wikipedia article they referred to a 10-ton sytem etc. (I'm guessing the amount of glycol in the thing). You don't seem to have an awful lot of outdoor slinky coil, compared to in the house. Is that because you only use it to heat a couple zones at a time? Or maybe you do, its just slinked up more outside and is the same length.

[VicHockeyFan]

I read this whole thing last night. Check out the 12-ton they are throwing into a pond. It's still hard for me to get my head around the fact that you can grab heat from any source that is above 0 Kelvin. Technically, you could heat your house nicely, even if it was -20C or -40C outside with a standard air-type heat pump, but the amount of electricity to keep compressing the refrigerant and recirculating it would not be worth the trouble (you'd need a hell of a compressor that would be very expensive and use more power than it would be worth to use that power for normal resistance (baseboard) heating). Of course your 10-foot deep earth stays at ? degress pretty much all year.

[Sparky]

Lucky for you, I read a whole bunch last night on wikipedia.

Essentially this is the most efficient type of system, because you don't have to transfer liquids anywhere. Like on an electric air heatpump outside your house, you have to get the refridgerant, or whatever it's called, to them warm some water that you send through the pipes, so it requres a transfer and some loss.

In the wikipedia article they referred to a 10-ton sytem etc. (I'm guessing the amount of glycol in the thing. You don't seem to have an awaful lot of outdoor slinky coil, compared to in the house. Is that because you only use it to heat a couple zones at a time? Or maybe you do, its just slinked up more.

VHF I am not sure how they calculate "ton" it might be like "watt" where it measures an output. You post an interesting question about the length of the outside coils in relation to the interior coils. I think if you measure all those circles of the slinky coils they are most likely longer. We will all get smarter as the installation proceeds. Cheers

[Sparky]

The orange paint marks walls, but you do drive the pipes over it sometimes. What does the green paint mark? ^ You are correct the walls are laid out orange, stuff like shelving and cabinets are green. You do not have to be that accurate, just close.

How thick is the styrofoam? 2 inch rigid. What is the indent at the front of the house? Garage, or just a C-shaped house? Good eye VHF this is an interior courtyard where the part closest to the house will have a glass roof so you can sit in the rain and barbeque.

[phx]

A "ton" in the heating context relates to the capacity needed to melt a ton of ice in a day.

[VicHockeyFan]

A "ton" in the heating context relates to the capacity needed to melt a ton of ice in a day.

Really. I have never heard of that. Cool.

EDIT, well, sort of cool, when you see how it was derived:

Refrigeration

The unit ton is used in refrigeration and air conditioning to measure heat absorption. Prior to the introduction of mechanical refrigeration, cooling was accomplished by delivering ice. Installing one ton of refrigeration replaced the daily delivery of one ton of ice.

* In North America, a standard ton of refrigeration is 12,000 BTU/h (3517 W). This is approximately the power required to melt one short ton (2000 lb) of ice at 0 °C (32 °F) in 24 hours, thus representing the delivery of 1 ton of ice per day.
* A less common usage is the power required to cool 1 long ton of water by 1 °F every 10 minutes = 13,440 BTU/h ≈ 3939 W.[10][11][12]

The refrigeration ton is commonly abbreviated as TR.

http://en.wikipedia....nergy_and_power

[Sparky]

Really. I have never heard of that. Cool.

Actually not cool............warm..............sorry, I just could not resist.

[LJ]

^ You don't seem to have an awful lot of outdoor slinky coil, compared to in the house. Is that because you only use it to heat a couple zones at a time? Or maybe you do, its just slinked up more outside and is the same length.

The length outside does not have to be comparable to the length inside, there just has to be enough to provide the amount of heat (tons) that the size of house demands.

The slab acts a big heat sink, which unfortunately has one drawback.

You have to find a comfortable setting and leave it at that setting. If you are too hot or cold it takes a long time to effect a change. In my application if someone is in a room and they are too hot they open a window which of course activates the thermostat to call for heat in that zone which can get kinda expensive after awhile.

With forced air systems you can have a programmable thermostat and have it cool at night with the windows open then heat up quickly in the morning when you get up. You also get the benefit of air conditioning in the summer.

We have a hybrid system with in floor heating in the basement (5 zones)and forced air (heat pump) in two zones for the main and upstairs. Works well.

[Holden West]

Seems the best household heating for some people is no heating at all. Even in the east, even in winter.

[Bernard]

Seems the best household heating for some people is no heating at all. Even in the east, even in winter.

I achieved that in my house in Lillooet for about 300 days a year, the other 65 I needed to burn some wood to heat. I burned about 3/4s of a cord a year of fir and applewood

[gumgum]

OK so this technology could be too good to be true, but I am so close to writing a cheque if only just to see if it works! Call me naive, but if this ain't BS, then we are on our way for a crazy ride for the next decade!

Why haven't we heard of this before? Well the company claims that their technology has been suppressed time and time again by big energy corps and government. With their wallets stuffed with trillions, I think these big energy corporations are capable of almost anything.

Check out their website. It's lacking in information and goes into little details of how it works. For obvious reasons, yes, but it's still frustration not knowing the basic principles other than it's got something to do with magnets and coils. But check out the first video a little bit down the page.

Here's a demonstration of it working.

I have to admit that I am forcing myself to leave my skepticism at the door with this one. But with the little research that I have done, I have yet to find one article, blog post or forum labeling this as a scam. Mind you, I have found little independent sites promoting it.

Here's a video of how this thing is supposed to work.
A bunch of magnets on a wheel.
Seems to make sense to me.
How strong does a rotating wheel need to be to produce significant energy?

Can someone with the expertise debunk this one once and for all so I can get it out of my head?

[gumgum]

I googled for a review of the material for Magnet 4 Power and I found a few - all of which appeared to be fake.

All were positive.
All of them eliminated solid information as to how it works.
All but one of the reviews were published independently on 3rd party review sites that can be published by anyone.
Most provided direct links to the website.
Most read more like a promotion, rather than a review.

One review is on a site is actually called magnet4powerscamreview.com. I thought I found my debunking information I was looking for, but that site even seems to be a bit fishy.

The strange thing is though, I couldn't find one bad review. I only spend a few minutes searching, but you would think something would have come up pretty quickly if a populous of negative feedback existed for the product.

[G-Man]

Yeah I think that is a scam. I mean the theory is similar to how a maglev works but if you tried to build something that was hooked up to a generator it would run out of steam pretty quick.

[Baro]

It's all akin to the plans a lot of us had as children to make a self-powering plane/boat/car that had a propeller on the front that generated power to turn a propeller on the back.

[VicHockeyFan]

Yes, no perpetual motion machine has ever been show to work. When you throw magnets into the mix, people somehow have this idea that there is a form of energy "built in" to the magnets, but it's not the case.



A solar radiometer is promising, but alas, it can't power much of a generator, and static photoelectric solar cells are more efficient.

I mean, this thing will keep swinging under no load, but try to get some power out of it by hooking it up to a flywheel somehow:



The float-belt idea here looks promising at first blush, I had never seen that before:

http://en.wikipedia...._motion#Gallery

[eseedhouse]

Well, either the laws of thermodynamics are wrong or this thing is a scam. I know who I am betting on.

About the only energy this thing will generate is with batteries purchased with money from the gullible they will cheat it out of.

[LJ]

Anyone see the article on 60 Minutes last night on Bloom Energy with their Bloom Box?

The guy showed a little stack of cells joined together about the size of the old floppy disks and about 8 inches high he said could power a North American household.

He then went on to show the Bloom power plants that Google, Ebay, and others are using and they are huge. According to the owners though they are saving big bucks on power costs.

[Sparky]

Thanks LJ
I missed the program (too much Olympic addiction) but there is lots on the web. I will do some reading.

[VicHockeyFan]

Anyone see the article on 60 Minutes last night on Bloom Energy with their Bloom Box?

The guy showed a little stack of cells joined together about the size of the old floppy disks and about 8 inches high he said could power a North American household.

He then went on to show the Bloom power plants that Google, Ebay, and others are using and they are huge. According to the owners though they are saving big bucks on power costs.

http://news.cnet.com...0457646-64.html

[gumgum]

Anybody hear of the BloomBox? It's worth checking out. The company, Bloom Energy, backed by some very heavy hitters, is aiming to have this appliance sized box in every home in the states in 5-10 years, making the grid redundant. Companies like Google are already using them.
Watch a 60 Minutes report here.