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Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I go into my kitchen and I look at my fridge, whose job is to move heat outside of itself into the room. Centimetres to the right of it is the oven, whose job is to make heat, and we don't like using it in the summer because its whole thing is making heat. Further right is the AC vent, which is connected to a furnace downstairs, which is connected to a big fan outside which blows my heat into the neighbourhood for a few minutes each morning to dry out the air and make it tolerable with a fan. Right next to the furnace, within a metre of it, is the hot water tank, which is another inside-out fridge that takes heat from the basement and puts it into my shower water.

None of these machines are connected together in any way at all

Like, what are we doing here. What are we doing as a species.

10 July at 14:29 | Open on retro.social
44 comments
phi1997
MycotropicForHarris

@ifixcoinops

Well they are connected, they just use the entire sink of the atmosphere as a reservoir for heat right? It's an excellent approach which began when humans moved into towns I'd guess and decided to poop into the nearest flowing water because "the ocean is big" right?
I get your point completely.

10 July at 14:32 | Open on beige.party
Michael Kohne

@ifixcoinops Not having everything in your house be one big appliance, so that when things fail, you don't lose everything all at once. There's a lot of redundancy in that setup, but remember, if you remove redundancy, you increase the consequences of failure.

10 July at 14:37 | Open on mastodon.social
Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

@mhkohne nah, if the fridge's heat quits going into my oven then it'll just take as long to prewarm as it already does.

Machines can be made so that if one part stops working, it puts a note in the log and carries on going but a bit shittier. Most machines IRL work like that, except for the crap ones of course

10 July at 14:43 | Open on retro.social
Michael Kohne

@ifixcoinops Ahh, but then you've further increased the complexity, leading to greater likelyhood of failure.

What we actually need is a fairly simple way to store and release heat the way we do with batteries for electric. Then you can just equip any heat-wasting devices with an output to the 'heatsink' and any heat-using devices to take heat FROM the heat-sink, with everything capable of also operating without a house-wide heat sink.

10 July at 14:46 | Open on mastodon.social
Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

@mhkohne how the hell would that work

10 July at 15:12 | Open on retro.social
Michael Kohne

@ifixcoinops Hell if I know. The only way I can imagine is a well insulated cistern in the basement and a stupid amount of plumbing, which would make the exercise more stupid than almost any other way to do the job.

10 July at 15:15 | Open on mastodon.social
Jon Spring

@ifixcoinops @mhkohne water has a pretty high specific heat. I wonder if having two water tanks, one for hot water and a larger one for cold water (since lower temp difference between room temp and freezing) would ever make sense for the home heating/cooling and refrigeration parts, where we just want to move heat around, with the tanks managing the daily cycle part.

10 July at 15:23 | Open on data-folks.masto.host
OddOpinions5

@ifixcoinops @mhkohne

hard to say what the right thing is here

but one obvious low hanging fruit is to continue to push on improving energy efficiency

oddly, I couldn't find recent data but this makes the point:

appliance-standards.org/blog/h

10 July at 14:47 | Open on mas.to
Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Like, come on, we're clever, we can figure this out.

Running pipes and hoses all through our walls to each appliance so it can send its waste heat back to the water tank? Sounds like a PITA but what with the new plumbing ways, home-run pex and all, no 90-degree joints to fail, it's more do-able now than before.

What about those fridge coils next to the oven? They're probably the easiest, they're right there

10 July at 14:39 | Open on retro.social
rockmaster mike

@ifixcoinops buildings used to just have a boiler to handle combined heat/hotwater. Some buildings have a central chiller to handle multiple HVAC units. Water/steam pipes everywhere. So yeah it can be done. There are some downsides.

people figured out piping all that hot water and steam around was a bit of a hazard and leaks are a big problem. I can't even count how many times my building has had chiller line leaks that wrecked the ceiling tiles and carpet.

10 July at 14:44 | Open on mastodon.social
Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

The water heater and the AC being divorced from each other is some heckin nonsense tho

My furnace fan only turns one way. The system can't flip flaps by itself. It doesn't have any way to hear if the water heater ask for some of the heat elsewhere in the house. My basement is SO CHILLY and my attic is SO HOT

10 July at 14:48 | Open on retro.social
Alexis

@ifixcoinops Solar photovoltaic panels work better when cooled.

Solar thermal collection tech could be adapted into water cooling for solar PV, using a household hot water tank as a heat accumulator.

But nobody's doing it because "it's expensive."

Meanwhile I'm over here like, y'know what's more expensive? Species-wide migration to another planet because we choked this one on the farts of industry.

10 July at 14:55 | Open on plush.city
Pete Keen

@ifixcoinops we have a ground source heat pump for HVAC and it's hooked into our water heater. Waste heat is used to preheat the water that the hot water heater draws from.

It's useful and efficient but on all but the hottest days we're still running the hot water heater an awful lot.

10 July at 14:59 | Open on hachyderm.io
Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

My ceiling fan is cooling me down and making it absolutely fine for me to be at 28 degrees, but it's doing that by dumping 40 watts of heat into the room, and can my ceiling fan tell when I'm nearby? Can it bollocks, if I leave the room then it keeps exhausting 40w for blowing onto dead surfaces that can't sweat

10 July at 15:16 | Open on retro.social
Charles U. Farley

@ifixcoinops There are variable refrigerant flow systems that can do something like this, almost certainly including water heating, but I suspect finding people capable of installing them is extremely difficult in the US. The installer will almost certainly need to travel to you. I suspect most such systems also involve geothermal.

With geothermal it might make sense to connect the refrigerator, since the water will likely be below the ambient temperature. But refrigerators tend to be optimized for room temperature anyway, so I think it would only be a tiny difference from dealing with the air conditioned room temperature.

I close the basement central air vents in the summer to keep the water heater from overcooling the space. I'll open them enough in winter to keep the space warm enough to prevent the resistance coil from operating, but no more.

The water heater seems sufficient to keep the basement dehumidified as well, which is nice. The dehumidifier barely ever kicks on.

@ifixcoinops There are variable refrigerant flow systems that can do something like this, almost certainly including water heating, but I suspect finding people capable of installing them is extremely difficult in the US. The installer will almost certainly need to travel to you. I suspect most such systems also involve geothermal.

10 July at 15:35 | Open on retro.social
Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Moving the heat through fluid would be better than moving it through the air, but we're not even trying to move it through the air, what the heck

10 July at 16:12 | Open on retro.social
Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I had some ideas and I looked on amazon to see if my idea could already be purchased and apparently my idea of a smart fan is very different from capital's idea of a smart fan

Me: šŸ¦ a smart fan is one that turns itself off when it's not pointed at a person

šŸ¦ also it'd be neat if all the various fans around my house could coordinate with each other to move hot air to where it's either useful or not actively harmful

Capital: šŸ· a smart fan is one where you say "Hey Alexa, turn on this fan" rather than pressing the button

I had some ideas and I looked on amazon to see if my idea could already be purchased and apparently my idea of a smart fan is very different from capital's idea of a smart fan

Me: šŸ¦ a smart fan is one that turns itself off when it's not pointed at a person

šŸ¦ also it'd be neat if all the various fans around my house could coordinate with each other to move hot air to where it's either useful or not actively harmful

10 July at 16:17 | Open on retro.social
Stu

@ifixcoinops I recall Gates mentioned wearing a pin that allowed the new house he was building (late 90s?) to turn lights on and off based on his presence. I don't think we need that but we could totally do something with motion sensors, etc. But there's no subscription upsell for that so no chance these days. Turning houses into thin clients.

10 July at 16:22 | Open on hachyderm.io
Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

@tehstu the annoying thing is that it's so trivially easy to make a life form detector that everyone who gets a hobby microcontroller does it accidentally before they find out about pullups

10 July at 16:24 | Open on retro.social
Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

šŸ¦ obviously a smart fan would need a big SPDT switch so it could be toggled back to hardwired Just A Fan mode

šŸ· obviously a smart fan could have no buttons or switches and just a bunch of shitty capacitive sensors because they're so much cheaper

10 July at 16:23 | Open on retro.social
āœØphredšŸ§™šŸ¼ā€ā™‚ļø

@ifixcoinops omg I have a vornado and it has no buttons, just capacitive plates. Turns on at full blast every time, just outstanding design here

10 July at 16:27 | Open on weirder.earth
Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

The angel on my left shoulder: šŸ‘¼ If we put electronics in a fan then that means a power supply, and capacitors fail

The trash-fingered raccoon technician on my right shoulder: šŸ¦ There are fans that run off a drill battery

10 July at 16:29 | Open on retro.social
Charles U. Farley

@ifixcoinops Mitsubishi ductless mini-split heat pumps have models with motion sensors.

Could just use a zwave or ZigBee plug or even X-10 with a motion senor. There are probably also plugs with motion sensors built in.

10 July at 16:31 | Open on retro.social
Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

šŸ‘¼ DC motor, šŸ¦, brushes also fail

šŸ¦ Brushless DC motors are also a thing

šŸ‘¼ Ah yes, reinventing the AC induction motor, rock-solid reliable basic tech for over a century, by involving a, what was it, a COMPUTER, yes,

10 July at 16:34 | Open on retro.social
Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

šŸ¦ Alright there are some things to think about, but the answers could save people a lot of money, not to mention the emissions versus air conditioning

šŸ‘¼ But for how long, šŸ¦? A basic fan will last as long as its owner, how long will your brushless DC computer fan keep going? Will it fail just outside of the warranty?

šŸ· pardon me, gentlemen, I couldn't help but overhear...

10 July at 16:39 | Open on retro.social
Steven Hoefer

@ifixcoinops šŸ§Smart fan is consuming some power at all times so it can respond to voice commands, and if you do something like wire it to a timer or motion sensor it won't work because it boots up in "spying but not blowing" mode.

10 July at 16:29 | Open on wandering.shop
Michael Kohne
Doug Baker

@ifixcoinops Probably 30 years ago Bill Gatesā€™ house (on Seattleā€™s Lake Union, I think) was set so that each room would sense a personā€™s approach/presence and then turn on lights, audio etc. Your idea should be easily doable.

10 July at 16:24 | Open on mstdn.ca
Joe Glombek

@ifixcoinops I reckon you might be able to do something with #Dyson fans (or any with temperature sensors and an HA integration) and some complicated #HomeAssistant routines!

10 July at 16:28 | Open on umbracocommunity.social
misery :gay_as_hell:

@ifixcoinops I mean ZigBee enabled fans and presence sensors can be hacked together to turn off when no one's around. Yes, it adds complexity, but could still improve power and heat efficiency

10 July at 16:38 | Open on tech.lgbt
Cordelya

@ifixcoinops
Two days ago I set the thermostat to run the fan continuously even when the system isn't actively cooling the air and that made things much more bearable. I have my thermostat set for 83-ish during the day when it's just me at home because I can tolerate it. Just taking the warm air from upstairs and throwing it into the basement was very effective.

(I'm on board with everything you're saying in this thread)

10 July at 15:50 | Open on toots.cordelya.net
Don Whiteside

@ifixcoinops I'm not sure the water heater has enough thermal mass to make a difference. Thirty-plus years ago my father replaced the AC in his South Florida home with one that had an energy saving feature: it could leverage the pool water to dump heat. It would circulate the water out of the pool then back in, warmer.

This is not a lap pool but not small either.

He ended up having to create a bypass for it because the pool started to exceed 100F. And that's thousands of gallons, not tens.

10 July at 15:52 | Open on mastodon.coffee
ffffennek

@ifixcoinops we are just smart enough to be dangerous. sorry.

10 July at 16:14 | Open on cyberplace.social
Roc

@ifixcoinops I've been thinking this for months, almost every time I take a shower. Sure, the oven with a heat pump wouldn't get over something like 50 or 60C maybe, but that would be a good start! If I want to take a shower, why not use the heat that the fridge produces to heat the water too?

10 July at 16:17 | Open on mastorol.es
ianto

@ifixcoinops on a much smaller scale, i think about the waste heat in the water when i shower. that must be useful for something.

10 July at 14:50 | Open on toot.wales
Alex H :firefox: VA7OMM CN89

@bocs @ifixcoinops energy.gov/energysaver/drain-w

There are drain water heat exchangers available. But your money's better spent on insulation and heat pumps in most North American houses.

10 July at 15:58 | Open on indieweb.social
ysbreker
Acin on .art

@bocs removing wrinkles in hung fabrics.

@ifixcoinops

10 July at 16:16 | Open on mastodon.art
Acin on .art

@bocs @ifixcoinops on the bigger issue: the scarcity of gray water systems makes me cry inside. Why are we using our water only once?

(Subnote: "It's unsafe" is a weak answer. I live where the tap water has high amounts of other people's body-affecting medications plus a constant supply of harmful microorganisms that aren't filtered out by the water provider. Consumers are already expected to take additional safety measures for using community resources. Water wells and barrels exist, too.)

10 July at 16:17 | Open on mastodon.art
šŸš²

@ifixcoinops @cinebox I recently listened to a podcast about a new company called Harvest. Their jam is that they use an air source compressor (outside) to heat a hot water tank higher than normal and use that overhead for home heating. Itā€™s a small part of the web youā€™re describing, but itā€™s something.

10 July at 14:51 | Open on social.ridetrans.it
Syphilia Morgenstierne

@ifixcoinops What we are doing is obediently buying what is offered us from corporations that have no idea beyond making money here and now. Depressing.

10 July at 15:00 | Open on kafeneio.social
Ding Dang Trevor Flowers

@ifixcoinops It seems like one big heat pump and some smart pipes could get it done.

10 July at 15:24 | Open on machines.social
Pamela :yell:

@ifixcoinops
The hotter it gets, the more we need the A/C. The more we use the A/C, the more greenhouse gasses we contribute to the atmosphere. The more greenhouse gasses we contribute, the hotter it gets . . .

It seems to me rather more like an addiction than a plank in a political platform.

10 July at 16:38 | Open on mastodon.social
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