Heating Help

offers

@ July 25, 2003 1:22 AM in If you like iron radiators--either old or \"new\"

I can't make an offer, but I will make a wager. The quieter side is the wiser one. Many of us have those voices of doubt and incompetence, but they never seem to show up in the eyes of the people who know us. I am sad to hear of your losses and wish for the best on any path you take. Your knowledge and concern has been a gift to me. jerry

our thoughts are with you

@ July 18, 2003 8:10 PM in In Rememberance-PGP

Paul (and others talking about their losses) I have lost both of my parents, and your loss takes me back to all that they meant to me. I have created a couple web sites for people to get grief information and if they are interested, create memorials for loved ones. If you or those around you find yourself in the grips of grief, perhaps these sites may help. http://www.griefplace.org and http://www.memoryplace.org. As others have said, the body may be gone but the spirit lives on in the people he touched. warmest thoughts, jerry

opinions on residential air handlers

@ July 7, 2003 2:18 PM in My first Rinnai yesterday.

Well, the first pass budget for our project came back and I'm thinking the retrofit of radiant for the existing part of the house may be a casualty. It has a scorched air system now, and so I am now looking at a air handler to replace it. It needs to heat about 1000sqft of the house and cool about 3000 sqft. The comressor is in place and uses R22. I can do the automatic dampers to shut the ducts when it's heating, etc. Which air handlers would be good to look at for these needs? How important is variable speed? What kind of motor horsepower is involved at this size? thanks in advance jerry

the speed of light

@ June 27, 2003 6:24 PM in Origin of the word \"street\"

"I'm travelling in a rocket at the speed of light..." BANG, you are a whole bunch of photons, probably gamma rays. A big nuclear bomb looses only a fraction of an ounce of mass, so you would really light things up. Please be on the other side of the moon when you test this. :) Seriously, it was a question very similar to this that got Einstein started on what led to relativity. for a really fun introduction to relativity, check out Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland. George Gamow was one of the great physicists of the 20th century, and he leads you through a world where the speed of light isn't too fast (people riding bicycles contract...) Now I'm just another computer person in the silicon valley. jerry

any opinions on the GFX waste water heat exchangers

@ June 25, 2003 10:41 PM in what size boiler and indirect h2o heater?

I was reading this thread and got an idea. I would think a reasonably sized tank could cover most bath tubs, so it's the shower that's the tank killer. I have not put one in, but have been looking at the gfx technologies waste water heat recovery setup. You plumb the cold water up a setup that has a copper pipe wrapped around a copper sleve that replaces a vertical segment of the waste stack. They claim over 50% of the waste water heat is captured. With a thermostatic shower control, I would think this would double the available shower time. The units run a few hundred dollars plus plumbing, which sound a bunch better than a monster water tank.Can you route either the shower cold water or the hot water heater source to run past the waste stack? Now I have no experience with it, but it makes sooo much sense I had to bring it up. jerry

another look at phase

@ June 25, 2003 8:26 PM in Basic Electricity

Pardon me, I was trained as a physicist (swatted with rolled newspaper...) and so I actually see this stuff. throw two stones in the water at the same time and each will create waves. When the waves cross each other, they seem to pass right through each other and keep on going. In some cases you have two crests come together and the wave is twice as high, sometimes two troughs come together and it's twice as low, and other times you have a crest and trough come together and there is no wave at that spot at that time. The relation of the peaks and troughs is called the phase, an it's a circular relation. You only see the up's and downs, so that's why it's a sine wave. When you generate electricity, you always start with something going in a circle (chipmunks on up.) The way you generate electricity is to move one magnet past another. If you only had one moving magnet and one fixed magnet, you can see the single circle, this is one phase. If you look at the electrons moving in the wire, they go back and forth. People figured out pretty quickly that big motors have a problem with a single phase system, there are dead spots they wont start at, and they are less efficient as well. What's the minimum number of phases without a dead spot (if you got to 4 you didn't get it.) If you forget the lectrons and see the generator, you can see how the phases work. The motor is the reverse. There are a whole bunch of details, but I hope that gives the overall flavor of what's going on. jerry

grounding the secondary

@ June 23, 2003 6:33 PM in Basic Electricity

Alan, It's a coin toss whether the transformer you have already has an internal ground. Since they tell you to do it, that may pitch it toward not. Two ways to test. If the system is not electrified, you can do a resistance test from each lead to the transformer chassis (and make sure you scratch through any insulation coating.) One will be a short if it's grounded. If the transformer is hot, then you can use AC volt test to see whether either leg shows 0 voltage relative to system ground. If it does, then it's grounded. If they aren't, you'll probably see the meter give a strange reading that has nothing to do with 0 or 24-28V. If you are sure that the secondary is not grounded, then you pick the one to ground. AC is wonderful that way, as long as you're consistent it works. If you cross them, then you get to find out what is going to do an impression of a cheap lightbulb. I'm local if you want to give me a call or drop a line. jerry

why clouds are up there

@ June 23, 2003 1:21 PM in NATE

Yes, water vapor (H20,molecular weight 18) weighs less that air (N2 molecular weight 28, O2 molecular weight 32...). This has little to do with why clouds form. I think I can still spell adiabatic cooling. :)

Analog controls aren't so bad

@ June 16, 2003 1:23 PM in thinking of building my own electronic controls for radiant

Those TCV on constant circulation systems are actually quite good at keeping temps stable if they are well located. It's actually quite a bit of work with control systems to reach this level. Their downfall is with things like low water temps, automatic setbacks and other things like that. One big part of my goal is to both run the energy efficiency very high and also quantify the energy in use. This leads me to things like low water temperatures which make all sorts of things harder (that 20 degree drop is a bigger deal when it's from ambient +30 to ambient +10 rather than ambient +100 to ambient +80.) It's like new car engines, which get amazing power and efficiency, but with more computers and hoses than I can deal with. I'm actually leaning away from a PID solution, I think there are going to be any number of things that make that approach more difficult that a digital solution. Also, I'm a digital kind of guy, Analog in, analog out, bits in the middle. I took an analog computing class (they still offered it when I went to college) and learned how hard it was to build stable circuits. just my $.02

better have lots of ventilation

@ June 16, 2003 11:16 AM in Paint removal

That's alot of CO2 to dump into an area. Human breathing is driven by CO2, and too much in the air makes you stop. It's also a good bit heavier that air, so when you pass out you end up in a higher CO2 area. If someone were to do a bunch of this in a smaller room with insufficient ventilation, it could be really bad. This was a major problem with CO2 fire supression systems to the point where they have been banned in computer rooms. Can you tell I'm a geek and a scuba diver? jerry

using the wall well

@ June 13, 2003 8:34 PM in thinking of building my own electronic controls for radiant

I don't want to clutter this with things that aren't appropriate to the wall, so let me know when the thread should move of this forum. thanks again, jerry

a tech guy thinking about rolling his own controls

@ June 13, 2003 8:32 PM in thinking of building my own electronic controls for radiant

I am a tech guy who is not quite knowlwdgeable enough to be considered dangerous yet. I have read a bunch of stuff on this wall and the other parts of the web site. This is great stuff and you are certainly wise and fun people to listen to. I have some background in controls (systems, aircraft) and like tech projects. I am going to remodel my house, and for a bunch of reasons want to use radiant (something about using forced air to heat a 19' area just seems dumb.) It bothers me that the average japanese rice cooker has a good deal more smarts than the average house temperature control system. If they built an aircraft control system with the oscillations of even the fancy thermostats, you'd have quite a number or people using those air sickness bags. Sooo, I am thinking I would like to take a stab at building designing my own software to control the heat and cooling of the house. I'm not too worried about the cooling side. I have a compressor in now and I understand how to move damper solenoids and how to detect/avoid icing. It's the heating side that seems like it's a bit trickier. The basic system design is zone per room/area with a total of ~2250sqft of radiant floor surface. First, if you assume the time is free since it's a project for me, is this a sane thing to try to do? Clearly no one else will ever be able to deal with this, so I'll need to have wiring in place to allow simple set point thermostats to be used instead. The thermostats will be direct read thermisters (maxim/dallas semi one wire, $3 each) and possibly a cheap radiant heat sensor with A/D, along with a few buttons and a display. I might even try to work in a microphone that would allow you to push a talk button and say "warmer" or "I'm cold". (That's all the other members of the house really want to do.) If this is bordering on sane, would any of the wet and wise people here like to contribute their wisdom and wishes for an ideal heater control system? I'm game to see what I can cook up and happy to share my ideas and results. While I'm bothering you folks, the warmboard product has caught my eye. It's very expensive subfloor but they claim is makes for super system efficiency and lower total install costs. The efficiency stuff matters to me for environmental reasons, but the numbers have to make sense as well. Have any of you folks done much with warmboard for floor radiant and what have been your cost and customer satisfaction results? thanks so much, jerry PS. I can safely state that the desire to oversize boilers isn't limited to heating professionals. When I did the rough heal calcs for the remodeled house, the numbers came out to under half of what I hadexpeced and a third of what I would have guessed for the size of the heater.