response 51 of 103:

Apr 9 03:24 UTC 2002

Re #47:  Most A/C systems (with the obvious exception of the ones
which use fan coils/antifreeze loops for heat transfer) have fresh-air 
makeup ducts as an integral part.  The obvious trick is to allow the
blend doors to be set to "full fresh" mode and run the fan as required
to hold temperature.  When you consider that this would be more frugal
than recirculating whenever the outside temperature was much cooler
than the machine room, you get an idea of how much it could save.

Last December, I watched the cooling towers on top of a skyscraper
cycle on and off when the outside temperature was something like 15
Fahrenheit; that same heat could have been moved by just dumping air
outside and bringing in fresh, or without a fan at all using something
like a heat pipe.  All I could think was, "What a waste."

Re #48:  Have you tried one of the dimmable fluorescents?  There is a
Lights of America 3-way circlite which uses between 13 and 34 watts,
and I don't notice any flicker effects from it.  The ballast is a
little circuit board packed with electronics.  If you haven't seen
how one of these works with your eyes, you may have a very pleasant
(not to mention cost- and pollution-saving) surprise coming.

response 53 of 103:

Apr 9 16:16 UTC 2002

Re #51: The A/C unit cooling the server room has no fresh air intake, 
it can only recirculate.  It's a cheap wall unit installed when the 
building's central A/C turned out to be both inadequate and unreliable.

Re #52: There's a story that when Cray moved out of their old 
headquarters building, it was discovered it had no heating system.  
They'd been using waste heat from their computer systems to heat the 
entire building.

response 55 of 103:

Apr 9 19:48 UTC 2002

A window air conditioner has the hot coils outside the window and rejects the
heat to outside air.  Does it 'pull in' outside air?  You are supposed to put
it in a shady spot so it will not gain heat from the sun.

response 57 of 103:

Apr 9 20:31 UTC 2002

That is possible, although a fan still usually blows air over the
condenser coils. Do they have two fans? Come to think of it, the units I
have seen have a lever for choosing recirculation vs exhaust. I guess I
better look at room air conditioners more closely. The one at
http://www.howstuffworks.com/ac2.htm has two fans and does not include air
exchange to the outside (it recirculates on the evaporator side only). 

response 59 of 103:

Apr 10 05:05 UTC 2002

At work here we have a small machine room with A/C that consists of
condenser coils mounted outdoors with a large circular fan, and in the
machine room it has evaporator coils inside what look for all the world
like baseboard heating units, except they're mounted about 4 feet off
the floor.  They've definitely got some sort of fan in them, but I've no
idea what.  There is definitely no connection between the evaporator
coils and the outdoors except for plumbing - and the machine room
they're cooling isn't even adjacent to an outdoor wall.

There are several sorts of cooling towers.  The larger sorts rely mainly
on the "chimney" effect (hot air rises) to move air, and only a
relatively modest amount of energy is needed to pump water.

response 61 of 103:

Apr 10 14:27 UTC 2002

Refrigrators cool the air inside them without taking in outside air.

response 63 of 103:

Apr 11 19:30 UTC 2002

I expect my heating bills to be zero this summer.  I don't quite follow 62,
did you maybe mean 'next winter'?

response 65 of 103:

Apr 11 20:11 UTC 2002

Yeah, it does both. I gotta tell you, if I had a lot of bucks, I would 
get such a system in my house. 

response 67 of 103:

Apr 12 22:12 UTC 2002

Re #66:  Saving winter snow/ice for cooling purposes would reduce your
summer bill to what's needed to run the air handler and a water pump
(a few tens of watts).  No heat pump can be as economical as just
letting heat fall downhill.

response 69 of 103:

Apr 13 04:10 UTC 2002

Re #68:  Apparently you don't understand thermodynamics.  Heat flows
from hotter (higher temperature) objects to colder (lower temperature)
objects:  downhill.  Moving heat "uphill" requires techniques like
transferring the heat to a vapor, then increasing the temperature of
the vapor via compression so that it can then release the heat at a
higher temperature.  That's how most refrigerators etc. operate.

Compressing vapor requires the input of work.  Just letting heat transfer
from room air to icewater requires none, and if you can get the icewater
for little or nothing in terms of energy you are home (almost) free.  I
don't think that being ecologically sensitive requires sacrificing comfort.

response 71 of 103:

Apr 13 22:29 UTC 2002

What might all the gadgets cost even without the electricity for moving the
heat around?  We get our fans free.  If you cook outside when it is hot out
the house does not get very hot.  Jim keeps his kitchen door shut and the
windows open.  Only problem is that the neighbor's loud air conditioner goes
on around 6 pm when it starts to get cool out, and the noise comes in his
kitchen.  We figure the neighbor is cooking with the window shut while it is
60 out.  It also helps to take showers while the windows are still open.

response 73 of 103:

Apr 15 01:56 UTC 2002

But you have to use energy to dig that pit in the ground and make materials
to cover it and move the cold around.  What is the status of solar air
conditioners, which don't require having large amounts of storage space and
work only when needed most?