Have you ever contemplated writing a bit of software that monitors a few temp sensors in a house and controls a few fans in order to maximise temp gain during spring/autumn and cool the house in summer? Its certainly needed.
Small heat gains and largish cooling can be done this way with low equipment cost and even lower energy use. Happy to give you more details if you like, though I presume you know the strategies I mean.
NT
Reducing, not eliminating.
If all the ore processing/reprocessing were done using nuclear generated electricity, then you might be said to be zero carbon..
Although SOMETHING has to oxidise..since you start with uranium oxide and end up with uranium..so you are adding a little oxygen to the air.
David Hansen typed
Given my disabilities, I don't think I can replace my hall lamp fitting for less than about £100.
How long would it take for me to recoup that expenditure? (Currently
120w, maybe 6 hours/day. New fitting maybe 20w or so) We are talking several years if it saves 10p per day, aren't we?
Now you are just being sensible. Stop it. :-)
If you are using the lights in winter, don't forget that the incandescent lamps will make a contribution to the heating, so some of the savings made by using CFLs are negated by the increased cost of additional space heating needed to make up the deficit. Unless you are heating by electricity, this should be cheaper than running the incandescent lamps, but it will reduce the cost saving.
Sid
On 6 Jul 2006 14:08:17 -0700 someone who may be snipped-for-privacy@care2.com wrote this:-
Not really. However, it may well be within the capability of various controllers at the "industrial" end of the spectrum.
On Fri, 7 Jul 2006 06:39:18 +0100 someone who may be Helen Deborah Vecht wrote this:-
Well, the difference is 100W and so in 10 hours you will save one unit, say 10p. Assuming 300 days in a year, to compensate for your 6 hours rather than 10, that is a saving of thirty pounds a year. That assumes no gear losses, something the manufacturers are somewhat quiet about. As there are gear losses and they are not (AFAIK) in the stated figures then your saving will reduce to say 20 pounds a year.
What this shows is how worthwhile compact fluorescents are compared to GLS bulbs, provided that they are a simple replacement. The extra costs of having an electrician replace a fitting are real, but no different from having someone else do all sorts of other jobs.
On Fri, 7 Jul 2006 02:03:55 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote (in article ):
So a positive outcome, then, and since there is no carbon output, no temptation to burn it.
It's a great shame that successive governments in many countries have wasted more than a generation (probably two) through not pursuing nuclear power generation and the technology behind it.
120W? I thought this fitting had 5 x 40W bulbs but I could be getting confused by a lounge somewhere that seemed to have an awful lot of bulbs in it...
I really feel this is a red herring with ordinary and "normal" sized domestic lighting. Take our lounge which did have 6 x 40W bulbs changed to 6 x 9W CFL. Difference in heat input(*1) per hour is (6 * 40) - (6 *
9) = 0.186kWhr. I bet more heat escapes when the front door is opened than that. I can't say I've noticed a 6%(*2) increase in our oil consumption since we changed over.(*1) Ignoring the bit that comes out as light, though I'll guess you'll argue that turns to heat when it is absorbed somewhere.
(*2) On the basis the room needs 3kWHr to maintain temperature. Solid stone walls and drafty windows. If your home is a modern, heavily insulated, rabbit hutch then there will be bigger effect but then you'll be using considerably less energy in the first place, 3kWHr to heat the whole house not just one room...
If nuke reduces total carbon output, then it eliminates some carbon output.
NT
On Fri, 7 Jul 2006 09:27:41 +0100, David Hansen wrote (in article ):
No it doesn't. For six months of the year, the heat contribution within the house means that the alleged saving is reduced to half.
If the appearance in the fitting and the quality of the light are unacceptable then even that "financial incentive" makes the whole exercise of using these things pointless.
The arguments are very unconvincing unless one has a greeny agenda.
ok. The main effect one takes advantage of is thermal storage in the house structure. This means the indoor temp doesnt swing up and down as much as outdoors does. Outdoor temps are higher in daytime than nighttime, and of course vary from day to day. This gives us 2 opportunities for free heating and cooling.
Compared to conventional heating and cooling this approach takes very little energy to run, saving money and energy and improving comfort, especially in summer.
Then theres the concept of stratification, the fatc that indoor air tends to separate to warmer air up and cooler air down. This can be used for another degree C of gain. For best cooling, the hottest air should be ejected. For best heating, replace the coolest air.
Theres also loft ventilation, which would be controlled separately for best cooling. One can also expand on this system with other low cost low energy heat and cool options that all add a bit more gain to the system.
NT
For me the chief reason to go CFL has been to reduce the cost of replacing bulbs. And sometimes the INCONVENIENCE.
With a supermarket bulb being something like 60p, and lasting in winter less than three months, and generally being replaced twice a year overall, thats £1.20 a year. A £5 CFL that least 5 years is worth it on that basis alone.
Essentially this is how we actually work.
That, plus opening the curtains by day except in summer maximises solar gains..I have been TRYING to indicate to SWMBO that keeping the windows SHUT in summer actually keeps the house cooler...along with the fact in winter that thermostats do not control how FAST a house heats up, juts how hot it is when it stops..and that opening windows if its too hot doesn';t make it cooler, just sends the oil bill through the roof..
Loads more that can be done as well, like heat exchanger ventilation..
You could also make something like a passive fridge, utilising heat from direct sunlight to heat a refrigerant, and then cooling it again on the north side of the house.
Blame the populations. And the media. It was simply too much of a political hot potato. Now Global warming is a bigger bogey man in the public eye than the nuclear industry, progress can be made.
Eliminate means 'entirely remove'
It's a strange tautology to entirely remove some of a quantity..
Not at all. If we are to produce an accurate and credible statement of the money saved by using CFLs, we need to take into account this, and other effects. I don't know what the variability in usages of you heating oil is, but it could well be considerably higher than the difference in consumption caused by the use of CFLs. From a scientific point of view, the temperature difference is easily demonstrable under controlled conditions with a calorimeter. It would be disingenuous to simply take the difference in electricity usage and claim that as a 'saving'. If the outside temperature around your house has been, on average, a fraction warmer while using CFLs compared to incandescents, then that could well mask the drop in heat input from the lighting.
Now, for some people, the cost of employing a handyman to replace the bulbs could well be so high that that alone justifies the use of CFLs, as the frequency at which they 'burn out' is lower (in most cases) than incandescents.
Sid
"Dave Liquorice" typed
Yeah.
Hall fitting 3 * 40w = 120w. Hall lamps lit much of dark waking time, so cfls potentially appropriate. Unfortunately, this fitting would not take cfls.
Lounge takes 5 * 40w. Lights switched frequently, room intermittently used. I would prefer to read by incandescent light. Colour rendition matters to me.
On Fri, 7 Jul 2006 09:50:14 +0100 someone who may be Andy Hall wrote this:-
On the contrary, it is a great shame that successive governments in many countries have wasted two or three generations pursuing nuclear electricity. The amount of money pissed away on nuclear could have been far better invested.
On Fri, 7 Jul 2006 10:04:55 +0100 someone who may be Andy Hall wrote this:-
I know a little about heat contributions, having been involved in a few buildings which were heated by the lighting (the heating usually only came on first thing to raise the temperature a little before occupation) [1]. I have also been involved in buildings that were not as sophisticated, but where the heat from the lights was recovered to help reduce air-conditioning costs.
What all these buildings had in common was very high lighting levels, for various reasons. Some people may like houses lit to almost bright sunlight intensity, but I have not been in any yet and don't expect to ever encounter any. The contribution of domestic lighting to winter heating is negligible. The overshoot of typical thermostats and thermostatic valves far outweighs anything from lighting.
Increase the insulation and infiltration of houses dramatically above the current standards, control the heating in individual rooms with individual optimum stop/start controllers with PID control, whether fed from a variable or constant temperature circuit is a matter for discussion and heat gains from typical lighting schemes might begin to be noticeable in an instrumented house.
[1] An example of this sort of thing is that Electricity Boards used to demonstrate confidence in their product by insisting on all electric buildings.HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.