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Top-level
 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 25 comments
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  @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.  @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. 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 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  @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. @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 🦝 obviously a smart fan would need a big SPDT switch so it could be toggled back to hardwired Just A Fan mode 🐷 obviously a smart fan could have no buttons or switches and just a bunch of shitty capacitive sensors because they're so much cheaper @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 The angel on my left shoulder: 👼 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: 🦝 There are fans that run off a drill battery  @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. 👼 DC motor, 🦝, brushes also fail 🦝 Brushless DC motors are also a thing 👼 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, 🦝 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 👼 But for how long, 🦝? 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? 🐷 pardon me, gentlemen, I couldn't help but overhear...  @ifixcoinops 🧐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.   @ifixcoinops Probably 30 years ago Bill Gates’ house (on Seattle’s Lake Union, I think) was set so that each room would sense a person’s approach/presence and then turn on lights, audio etc. Your idea should be easily doable. @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! @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 @ifixcoinops (I'm on board with everything you're saying in this thread)  @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.  @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? |
Gregory's Server
@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.