Uggggh, Oil is up again!

[djm]

Everything I have read about geothermal says it is very expensive to install, and that operation and maintenance costs can be prohibitive. Another great but impractical idea. :roll:

djm

[Daniel_Bingamon]

When I was a child, they used to talk about the idea of airbags for cars. But airbags where considered too expensive and impractical.

[spittin_in_the_wind]

Well, I am seriously looking into installing a solar space heater before this winter, if I can get someone qualified to do the work.

I'm not sure where you're located, but usually solar is better for summer use, when daylight hours are longer, and the wind dies down. Wind turbines are better in winter when there are fewer daylight hours and the winds are more prevalent.

djm

I looked at that but the wind turbines are far more expensive and I would have to put it up on a really tall tower for it to work in my area, if that were even legal here. The solar space heater just warms air in the mechanism and then blows it back into the house during times when the sun is out. The unit I've been looking at is described here:
http://shop.altenergystore.com/Itemdesc ... q~~Tp~.htm

Robin

[Caj]

The last North American Nuclear Disaster was Three Mile Island in 1979. Since then, two have taken place, both in Japan.

What about the big one, at Chernobyl?

Caj

[Flyingcursor]

Hey Tyler - I get 55mpg out of my vehicle too, and (apparently) somewhere around 170mph. Not at the same time though, obviously.

Hey Oscar - I don't know about the UK, but in the States, we call those "crotch rockets".
My son is the proud (?) owner of a 1977 Suzuki 275, 2 cycle that we affectionately (?) call the "wing-dingy-dingy", cuz that's what it sounds like.

I hope you make that lad wear a helmet. Everytime I see someone riding w/o a helmet I think of eggs breaking for some reason.

[missy]

not to worry Fly (although, after Sunday a motorcycle will be the least of his worries! ) - Nate has never ridden a bicycle without a helmet - there's no way he'd ride a motorcycle without one. This thing is so small, even though he now has his license, he still won't take it on the highway.




Oh - and David - on the geothermal.......
You may want to contact the Nelson County KY school district about using geothermal. They installed this system at all of their schools about 2 years ago, and they can't get it under "control" at all. I don't know if it's the system, who installed it, who's trying to run it, or what, but ALL of the teachers say it's absolutely horrible as far as climate control.

[Flyingcursor]

not to worry Fly (although, after Sunday a motorcycle will be the least of his worries! ) - Nate has never ridden a bicycle without a helmet - there's no way he'd ride a motorcycle without one. This thing is so small, even though he now has his license, he still won't take it on the highway.

Yeah. I knew that already. Just wanted to use the opportunity to make the "eggshell" metaphor.

[spittin_in_the_wind]

Oh - and David - on the geothermal.......
You may want to contact the Nelson County KY school district about using geothermal. They installed this system at all of their schools about 2 years ago, and they can't get it under "control" at all. I don't know if it's the system, who installed it, who's trying to run it, or what, but ALL of the teachers say it's absolutely horrible as far as climate control.

Ah, the beauty of the low bid.... :roll:
Actually, I've heard geothermal heat pumps are pretty good. I don't know if they work well in all climates, though.

Robin

[The Weekenders]

This one lady who has a studio near my shop and is always commenting on the environment, she always arrives in a van and then complains about others misusing things. hmm.

I've heard good things about geothermal heat pumps, but if everyone had one, it might raise the temperature of underground water and affect something.

Or how about those complaining about CO2 emissions, if they would stop complaining - that alone would reduce a lot of emissions.

WHO TO TRUST?

Then there are the ones who compain about our local energy company Cinergy. Cinergy burns coal, catches the flyash and converts it to gypsum for making drywall. They make electricity for about $19 per megawatt, whereas the rest of the world is over $40.
Environmentalists keep screaming that burning coal is evil , but the major alternative to coal is oil. It seems to me that the evironmentalist are helping the oil companies.
This is a bit weird and I've seen it happen before. A few years ago, DOW chemicals patent on Freon was running out. Suddenly evironmentalists everywhere were calling freon evil, it kills the ozone layer. DOW shows up with PURON to save the day -- supposedly Puron is more harmful to living things but at least it supposedly won't hurt the ozone. It sounds fishy and it sounds like someone was paid off.

I think that lot of these folks running around screaming about these issues at the Washington level are paid off by one industry to hurt another industry. :roll: It reminds me of our chickens, one chicken starts cackling and all the other chime in totally clueless on the facts. When it comes to evironmental issues, I don't believe you can trust anyone from Washington (on either side) or any of theses Self Proclaimed Experts that the media digs up.

If you don't believe above, Google Sierra Club and ethanol. They pushed hard for MTBE to be added to our gasoline in Calif. because of their aversion to the agribusiness producers of ethanol, which would have been the mandated alternative. The result was contaminated ground water, lakes and streams. And it was evil conservatives who were against MTBE from the start, even organizing an unpublicised rally in Sacramento (our state capitol) against it. It took over seven or eight years of activism and damage, but its finally being phased out.

And what really pissed me off was the nerve of the Sierra Club to use the opportunity of the MTBE pollution (which was partly their doing) to then push for bans of small watercraft in lakes because of the MTBE. (Its funny how the Sierra Club has connections with the oil industry http://www.fpcn-global.org/index.php?na ... opic&p=167, like Chevron, yet periodically sues them.) I know many of you prefer the silence of rowing craft, and frankly, so do I, but the elitism of suddenly making many John Q Publics two-stroke boats worthless reinforced the image of how self-centered many well-heeled environmentalists can be.
This was around the same time that Yosemite closed many tent-cabins and campsites but upgraded the Ahwanee Hotel ($300 per night) so I am a bit irritated on this paradigm...

Geothermal is okay but it takes a lot of development and can eventually drain the water table dry in its locality. We used to run cattle amidst the steam field area called the Geysers in No. California so I am pretty familiar with the issue. Despite what seemed like endless groundwater at one time, they drained it so dry with their wells that taxpayers ended up footing the bill for about $50 million to build a pipeline that sends treated sewage water on a 40 mile journey from the Santa Rosa area, back into the mountains where its injected underground so that there will be steam to run all the plants that they built.

I guess heat pumps might be a different way of utilizing the steam, not sure.

[Daniel_Bingamon]

(Its funny how the Sierra Club has connections with the oil industry http://www.fpcn-global.org/index.php?na ... opic&p=167, like Chevron, yet periodically sues them.)

They probably use the lawsuits to get their payoffs and make it look like they're not connected.

[djm]

Geothermal is okay but it takes a lot of development and can eventually drain the water table dry in its locality.

I'm not sure we're talking the same geothermal. The type I'm referring to is a closed-circuit system that pumps the same water round and round again through a circular series of buried pipes and back into the home. In winter the ground below the frost line heats the water up to 55F, and a conventional heat source brings it the rest of the way up to room temperature, saving energy costs to heat. In summer, the same circulation uses the ground's temp to cool the water down to 55F. There's no reason it would affect wells or groundwater, since it is a closed system.

djm

[The Weekenders]

Geothermal is okay but it takes a lot of development and can eventually drain the water table dry in its locality.

I'm not sure we're talking the same geothermal. The type I'm referring to is a closed-circuit system that pumps the same water round and round again through a circular series of buried pipes and back into the home. In winter the ground below the frost line heats the water up to 55F, and a conventional heat source brings it the rest of the way up to room temperature, saving energy costs to heat. In summer, the same circulation uses the ground's temp to cool the water down to 55F. There's no reason it would affect wells or groundwater, since it is a closed system.

djm

Yeah, very different. I'm talking about harnessing escaping steam out of the ground where it makes contact with the hot lava because the earth's crust is thin. They do it here in NorCal, in Iceland and a few other places.
Yours sounds a lot more groovy.

[s1m0n]

In winter the ground below the frost line heats the water up to 55F, and a conventional heat source brings it the rest of the way up to room temperature, saving energy costs to heat.

As I understand it, this kind of system can use heat pumps or heat exchanges (I don't know the difference) to get all the way to room temperature without a secondary heat source.

[oscartherabbit]

This thing is so small, even though he now has his license, he still won't take it on the highway.

Yeah but it's a 275 stroker. It ought to be able to blow anything into the weeds in the twisty bits.

[djm]

As I understand it, this kind of system can use heat pumps or heat exchanges (I don't know the difference) to get all the way to room temperature without a secondary heat source.

They would use heat exchangers in the systems I refer to. This is where air or water from one isolated system flows through a system of many small channels that run right next to many small channels of a second isolated system. Heat is exchanged as the flows from each system move past each other in the small channels.

For example, a buried water system in the ground picks up or loses heat because ground temp below the frost line is normally 55F. This is pumped in a circular flow. In the home, it runs through a heat exchanger and picks up or gives off heat to a second system, such as a radiant floor heating system.

A heat pump is basically an air system that sets up one part of the home, say a sunroom, as a heat source, pumps the air into a heat reservoir, such as a buried water tank or gravel bed, and then when the house cools off, pumps the warm air from the heat storage back into the house. There are many, many different designs. This is just one example.

djm