OMG! My dream heating system!
Apr. 30th, 2007 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zdashamberSo, we've all got a dream mansion/secret underground lair of evil/treehouse in our heads to consider while insomniac or otherwise unoccupied. In mine, I live lightly on the grid because I've had a hole drilled a few thousand feet down where the earth is hot, and hot air rises to turn a turbine and then go on to heat the house. How delighted I was this evening to find that someone else has already considered the energy stored in the earth and worked out a much better way to draw on it to heat (and cool!) a house!
Check out this Chronicle article about ground-source heat pumps. Basically, drill down 2-300 feet to where the temperature is always 60F, run down a loop of pipe full of liquid, circulate the liquid with a pump, use the 60F liquid to heat another pipe of low-boiling-point liquid to vaporize it, use a compressor to condense that, voila heat by the bushel. "Every kilowatt of electricity used in the process generates more than three units more of heat than a conventional system." (A couple of satellite Chronicle articles here and here.)
And! Both houses profiled have radiant floor heating systems! Heaven!
Also, ya gotta support an article that devotes one picture to a thermostat. Nothing else, just the thermostat, like you'd get off the shelf at Home Depot... :)
Anyway, this is awesome. Much cheaper drilling costs, and of course now that I think about it it's far smarter to pump water through rather than let air percolate up and down. Now, if only there were commercial engineering solutions to remote computer-shifted labyrinths. ::sidelong look at internet::
Oh! And the picture of Healdburg guy's heat exchanger room: looks like a good place to put a pipe organ. I mean, pipes. Everywhere. Or, you could hire some artists to do it up like the McMenamin's Edgefield... Or I like the simple community-college chic thing of painting all the pipes different solid colors delineating what's within them... Or you could include a bunch of false pipes disguising the door to a secret room...
Oh, and an update on the hole in the infrastructure Dear Martha: apparently it's international news, as determined by my sister in London who called up just to laugh at me yesterday after seeing "Northern California Bridge Blows Up" on Yahoo. What, London gets the earthquakes and we get the insane traffic? Dogs and cats! Living together!
Today wasn't bad, though my path on the 580-80 ramp was slow with people taking in the best view of the fascinating destruction. (Usually: slow just because.)
Check out this Chronicle article about ground-source heat pumps. Basically, drill down 2-300 feet to where the temperature is always 60F, run down a loop of pipe full of liquid, circulate the liquid with a pump, use the 60F liquid to heat another pipe of low-boiling-point liquid to vaporize it, use a compressor to condense that, voila heat by the bushel. "Every kilowatt of electricity used in the process generates more than three units more of heat than a conventional system." (A couple of satellite Chronicle articles here and here.)
And! Both houses profiled have radiant floor heating systems! Heaven!
Also, ya gotta support an article that devotes one picture to a thermostat. Nothing else, just the thermostat, like you'd get off the shelf at Home Depot... :)
Anyway, this is awesome. Much cheaper drilling costs, and of course now that I think about it it's far smarter to pump water through rather than let air percolate up and down. Now, if only there were commercial engineering solutions to remote computer-shifted labyrinths. ::sidelong look at internet::
Oh! And the picture of Healdburg guy's heat exchanger room: looks like a good place to put a pipe organ. I mean, pipes. Everywhere. Or, you could hire some artists to do it up like the McMenamin's Edgefield... Or I like the simple community-college chic thing of painting all the pipes different solid colors delineating what's within them... Or you could include a bunch of false pipes disguising the door to a secret room...
Oh, and an update on the hole in the infrastructure Dear Martha: apparently it's international news, as determined by my sister in London who called up just to laugh at me yesterday after seeing "Northern California Bridge Blows Up" on Yahoo. What, London gets the earthquakes and we get the insane traffic? Dogs and cats! Living together!
Today wasn't bad, though my path on the 580-80 ramp was slow with people taking in the best view of the fascinating destruction. (Usually: slow just because.)
no subject
Date: 2007-05-05 02:08 pm (UTC)