Dan Fixes Coin-OpsJul 10, 2024

I go into my kitchen and I look at my fridge, whose job is to move heat outside of itself into the room. Centimetres to the right of it is the oven, whose job is to make heat, and we don't like using it in the summer because its whole thing is making heat. Further right is the AC vent, which is connected to a furnace downstairs, which is connected to a big fan outside which blows my heat into the neighbourhood for a few minutes each morning to dry out the air and make it tolerable with a fan. Right next to the furnace, within a metre of it, is the hot water tank, which is another inside-out fridge that takes heat from the basement and puts it into my shower water.

None of these machines are connected together in any way at all

Like, what are we doing here. What are we doing as a species.

Show threadMichael KohneJul 10, 2024
@ifixcoinops Not having everything in your house be one big appliance, so that when things fail, you don't lose everything all at once. There's a lot of redundancy in that setup, but remember, if you remove redundancy, you increase the consequences of failure.
Show threadDan Fixes Coin-OpsJul 10, 2024

@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

Show threadMichael KohneJul 10, 2024

@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.

Show threadDan Fixes Coin-OpsJul 10, 2024
@mhkohne how the hell would that work
Show threadJon 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.
Jul 10, 2024 at 3:23pmWeb
Show threadPeter KrausJul 11, 2024
@Spring @ifixcoinops @mhkohne the reason why we don't use water as a working fluid in our fridges is that it freezes at 0°C. Also, the heat of vaporisation is the more important quantity, as heat pumps usually exploit the state change of the working fluid at different pressures.
Show threadJon SpringJul 11, 2024
@pkraus @ifixcoinops @mhkohne I didn’t mean as working fluid, I meant as an alternative to air source / ground source, since the original comment was inquiring about the potential synergies between e.g. air cooling and a water heater. I presume there are good reasons that’s not common, but I’m curious to understand better what might be.