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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

5 comments
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.

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.

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.

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

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