EPA declares greenhouse gases a health threat.

This one will get the elephants in the room moving.

Lew

On Apr 17, 10:30*pm, "Lew Hodgett" wrote:
EPA declares greenhouse gases a health threat.

This one will get the elephants in the room moving.

Lew

How many cubic feet of greenhouse gas in an elephant's fart?

"Lew Hodgett" wrote:

EPA declares greenhouse gases a health threat.

This one will get the elephants in the room moving.

Lew

The ONLY thing this will accomplish, is to raise your energy prices
through the roof, further sabatoging an already shakey economy. It
will have NO other effect. No, wait - it will have one other effect -
it will increase Al Gore's income.

-Kevin in Indy
To reply, remove (+spamproof+) from address........

On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:38:22 -0700, Robatoy wrote:

On Apr 17, 10:30Â*pm, "Lew Hodgett" wrote:
EPA declares greenhouse gases a health threat.

This one will get the elephants in the room moving.

Lew

How many cubic feet of greenhouse gas in an elephant's fart?

Someone once said that the romance of the North went away fast when you
were behind a dozen sled dogs that had eaten old frozen fish for
lunch :-).

--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw

Not the big ones - it is termites. They out produce all sources
other than volcanoes.

Now think of the rotting wood in Brazil ? ......

Martin

Robatoy wrote:
On Apr 17, 10:30 pm, "Lew Hodgett" wrote:
EPA declares greenhouse gases a health threat.

This one will get the elephants in the room moving.

Lew

How many cubic feet of greenhouse gas in an elephant's fart?

"Robatoy" wrote:

How many cubic feet of greenhouse gas in an elephant's fart?

Good question.

Here in California, a major dairy state, cows are a major source of
animal farts, but don't think elephants have yet been monitored.

Lew

On Apr 17, 11:08*pm, Kevin M. Vernon
wrote:
"Lew Hodgett" wrote:
EPA declares greenhouse gases a health threat.

This one will get the elephants in the room moving.

Lew

The ONLY thing this will accomplish, is to raise your energy prices
through the roof, further sabatoging an already shakey economy. *It
will have NO other effect. *No, wait - it will have one other effect -
it will increase Al Gore's income.

-Kevin in Indy
To reply, remove (+spamproof+) from address........

Gore is a fraud.

Robatoy wrote:
On Apr 17, 11:08 pm, Kevin M. Vernon
wrote:
"Lew Hodgett" wrote:
EPA declares greenhouse gases a health threat.
This one will get the elephants in the room moving.
Lew
The ONLY thing this will accomplish, is to raise your energy prices
through the roof, further sabatoging an already shakey economy. It
will have NO other effect. No, wait - it will have one other effect -
it will increase Al Gore's income.

-Kevin in Indy
To reply, remove (+spamproof+) from address........

Gore is a fraud.

Careful, now. If you talk like that he'll ban you from the Internet.
He invented it, after all, so he must have controlling rights.

;-)
Glen

"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
...
EPA declares greenhouse gases a health threat.

This one will get the elephants in the room moving.

Lew



Quick kill all plant life as plant life emits gas found in green house.

"Robatoy" wrote in message
...
On Apr 17, 11:08 pm, Kevin M. Vernon
wrote:
"Lew Hodgett" wrote:
EPA declares greenhouse gases a health threat.

This one will get the elephants in the room moving.

Lew

The ONLY thing this will accomplish, is to raise your energy prices
through the roof, further sabatoging an already shakey economy. It
will have NO other effect. No, wait - it will have one other effect -
it will increase Al Gore's income.

-Kevin in Indy
To reply, remove (+spamproof+) from address........

Gore is a fraud.

Yeah, he's a fraudy cat.

Lew Hodgett wrote:
EPA declares greenhouse gases a health threat.

This one will get the elephants in the room moving.


Their goal is to remove all Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Fortunately,
the amount of CO2 in the air is a negligibly small percentage...

Kevin M. Vernon wrote:

The ONLY thing this will accomplish, is to raise your energy prices
through the roof, further sabatoging an already shakey economy. It
will have NO other effect. No, wait - it will have one other effect -
it will increase Al Gore's income.

Well, it might increase /my/ income, too.

FWIW, the customer whose shop is featured at

http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html

passed the payback point this spring - and can look forward to *free*
heat and a year-round warm shop for the next 25 or 30 years...

[ Still trying to encourage woodworkers to build their own, but not
seeing many who're willing to help themselves - and I'm having a
difficult time pinning that on Al Gore. ]

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

HeyBub wrote:
Lew Hodgett wrote:
EPA declares greenhouse gases a health threat.

This one will get the elephants in the room moving.


Their goal is to remove all Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Fortunately, the amount of CO2 in the air is a negligibly small
percentage...

And by the time they're done we'll all be starving. Plants need CO2.

On Sat, 18 Apr 2009 03:30:43 +0100, Lew Hodgett wrote
(in article ):

EPA declares greenhouse gases a health threat.


I don't even own a greenhouse. It's not my problem

- - George W. Shrub

On Sat, 18 Apr 2009 14:04:53 +0100, J. Clarke wrote
(in article ):

HeyBub wrote:
Lew Hodgett wrote:
EPA declares greenhouse gases a health threat.

This one will get the elephants in the room moving.


Their goal is to remove all Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Fortunately, the amount of CO2 in the air is a negligibly small
percentage...

And by the time they're done we'll all be starving. Plants need CO2.

So does the thing in my basement....

Morris Dovey wrote:
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html

passed the payback point this spring - and can look forward to *free*
heat and a year-round warm shop for the next 25 or 30 years...

[ Still trying to encourage woodworkers to build their own, but not
seeing many who're willing to help themselves - and I'm having a
difficult time pinning that on Al Gore. ]


Next time I build, I will be contacting you for prices or plans, one or
the other.

BTW, in reference to this...
"The construction crew expressed amazement at the temperature and force
of the panel airflow - they were surprised that the air could be moved
so rapidly without blowers."

Does the size and/or shape on the cold air intake vents have anything to
do with this?
Or is it just a case of being big enough?


--

-MIKE-

"Playing is not something I do at night, it's my function in life"
--Elvin Jones (1927-2004)
--
http://mikedrums.com

---remove "DOT" ^^^^ to reply

"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
...
EPA declares greenhouse gases a health threat.

This one will get the elephants in the room moving.

Lew



This will finish off most of what is left of the US industrial
complex.
Hello third world US.

basilisk

-MIKE- wrote:
Morris Dovey wrote:
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html

passed the payback point this spring - and can look forward to *free*
heat and a year-round warm shop for the next 25 or 30 years...

[ Still trying to encourage woodworkers to build their own, but not
seeing many who're willing to help themselves - and I'm having a
difficult time pinning that on Al Gore. ]


Next time I build, I will be contacting you for prices or plans, one or
the other.

I can help with the first, but for the second you can consult

www.builditsolar.com

BTW, in reference to this...
"The construction crew expressed amazement at the temperature and force
of the panel airflow - they were surprised that the air could be moved
so rapidly without blowers."

Does the size and/or shape on the cold air intake vents have anything to
do with this?

Yes - but also the sizes and shapes of the plenums and discharge vents.

Or is it just a case of being big enough?

This too, but height and depth are far more important than width for
airflow.


--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

Morris Dovey wrote:

Kevin M. Vernon wrote:

The ONLY thing this will accomplish, is to raise your energy prices
through the roof, further sabatoging an already shakey economy. It
will have NO other effect. No, wait - it will have one other effect -
it will increase Al Gore's income.

Well, it might increase /my/ income, too.

FWIW, the customer whose shop is featured at

http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html

passed the payback point this spring - and can look forward to *free*
heat and a year-round warm shop for the next 25 or 30 years...

[ Still trying to encourage woodworkers to build their own, but not
seeing many who're willing to help themselves - and I'm having a
difficult time pinning that on Al Gore. ]


Morris, I'd take you up on that, but payback here in AZ would be measured
in decades (I buy about $40 worth of kerosene per year to heat my shop).

Get back to me when you get that stirling cycle air conditioner into a
commercially viable format, then we'll have something to talk about. ;-)


--
If you're going to be dumb, you better be tough

"Mark & Juanita" wrote in message
m...

Morris, I'd take you up on that, but payback here in AZ would be measured
in decades (I buy about $40 worth of kerosene per year to heat my shop).

Get back to me when you get that stirling cycle air conditioner into a
commercially viable format, then we'll have something to talk about. ;-)

Would you settle for a solar powered swamp cooler?

Dave in Houston

Mark & Juanita wrote:
Morris Dovey wrote:

FWIW, the customer whose shop is featured at

http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html

passed the payback point this spring - and can look forward to *free*
heat and a year-round warm shop for the next 25 or 30 years...

[ Still trying to encourage woodworkers to build their own, but not
seeing many who're willing to help themselves - and I'm having a
difficult time pinning that on Al Gore. ]


Morris, I'd take you up on that, but payback here in AZ would be measured
in decades (I buy about $40 worth of kerosene per year to heat my shop).

Lucky you! At one point I needed to heat my shop to get an order out and
burned more than $40 worth of LPG in a single /day/.

Get back to me when you get that stirling cycle air conditioner into a
commercially viable format, then we'll have something to talk about. ;-)

I'll invite you to be really specific about what you mean by
"commercially viable format".

The air conditioner is a two-part - or, depending on your definition of
"commercially viable format", three-part problem.

Part one is to produce a Stirling cycle engine suitable for use with
solar heat. We know (sorta) how to build different flavors of Stirling
engines, but there's a lot of R&D needed. IMO, there's a serious lack of
R and even less D - and there are significant political disincentives
for correction of that problem.

My progress has been limited by the fact that I'm only able to spend
about $50/month on the project. I just bought a torch, regulators,
hoses, etc to that I could braze prototypes - and that outlay
represented more than three months of saved-up R&D budget. Oxygen and
acetylene may be do-able next month, we'll see.

My first priority isn't air-conditioning - it's a solar powered pump
suitable for irrigation and village water supplies, and if you have an
interest in how things are going, there's a menu of web pages at

http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Projects/Stirling/

to help keep you up to date. The last link in that menu is to a page
showing progress made by some really brainy young folks who're trying to
help and who don't mind getting their hands dirty to get the job done.
More hands /is/ making lighter work (but their development budgets
aren't any better than mine, and they also have other claims on their
time and energy).

The engines that you see there are the probable forerunners of the
engines that will be the core part of that air-conditioner.

It's looking more and more likely that it won't be me who gets back to
you on the solar Stirling air-conditioning unit, and it may be to your
kids rather than yourself, but it will happen.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

On 2009-04-19, Morris Dovey wrote:

It's looking more and more likely that it won't be me who gets back to
you on the solar Stirling air-conditioning unit, and it may be to your
kids rather than yourself, but it will happen.

It occurs to me that a MAJOR part of the success of any green heating option
(and this one looks good) is INSULATION! I note a glaring lack of details
on this major factor.

nb

notbob wrote:

It occurs to me that a MAJOR part of the success of any green heating option
(and this one looks good) is INSULATION! I note a glaring lack of details
on this major factor.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the issue of insulation is not tied
to any particular type of heating system - green or otherwise.

If you were asking for details on the building pictured (probably not,
or you'd have used a '?') I can say that I saw 6" of fiberglass in the
walls, assume at least 6" of fiberglass on the ceiling, and think
there's some insulation under the slab. The 10'x10' overhead door seals
well all the way around but I don't know if it's insulated. I also don't
know about the entry door, and I think the sliding windows are
single-glazed (but I'm not sure, perhaps you can tell from the photo).
If you're really interested, I have permission to provide the owners
contact info, but I won't put it here.

You probably won't find many insulation details on web pages for
traditional/conventional heating systems either.

[ A Google web search on "fiberglass insulation" produced 293,000 hits
with the quotes, and 508,000 without. ]

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

On Apr 19, 1:42*pm, Morris Dovey wrote:
notbob wrote:
It occurs to me that a MAJOR part of the success of any green heating option
(and this one looks good) is INSULATION! *I note a glaring lack of details
on this major factor.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the issue of insulation is not tied
to any particular type of heating system - green or otherwise.

If you were asking for details on the building pictured (probably not,
or you'd have used a '?') I can say that I saw 6" of fiberglass in the
walls, assume at least 6" of fiberglass on the ceiling, and think
there's some insulation under the slab. The 10'x10' overhead door seals
well all the way around but I don't know if it's insulated. I also don't
know about the entry door, and I think the sliding windows are
single-glazed (but I'm not sure, perhaps you can tell from the photo).
If you're really interested, I have permission to provide the owners
contact info, but I won't put it here.

You probably won't find many insulation details on web pages for
traditional/conventional heating systems either.

[ A Google web search on "fiberglass insulation" produced 293,000 hits
with the quotes, and 508,000 without. ]

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USAhttp://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

I had a professional do an energy assessment on my house. The
governments in charge felt it was a clever way to induce some spending
and offering incentives to those who want to make their homes and
businesses more efficient. That includes furnaces and AC units,
windows, siding, roofs etc.
They widened the scope of tax incentives even to basic remodeling such
as kitchens and bathrooms. (Yay for Rob)

They put a huge blower in my front door and rigged up some manometers
and a computer. Lots of insulation all over the place in all the right
spots.... but also all kinds of air leakage in spots I would have
never guessed, and I have been around buildings a long time in many
stages of con- and deconstruction.
A cube of poly-urethane foam took care of most of that.
IOW, you can insulate your building to the n-th degree, but if your
energy bleeds to the outside, 12 FEET of insulation won't help you
much.
22 electrical outlets on outside walls added up to a 6" hole by this
tech's estimation. His smoke wand showed how just how much air that
actually pulled. Mind you, he had a huge sucker creating a strong
vacuum in my house, so 'real world' was amplified by quite a bit.
Still, you see this little foam pads for electrical outlets, and I
always thought they were a bit over the top, but I stand corrected.
So, if you create any kind of suction, say by launching SketchUp, make
sure you check for air-leaks.

r

Dave in Houston wrote:
"Mark & Juanita" wrote in message
m...

Morris, I'd take you up on that, but payback here in AZ would be
measured in decades (I buy about $40 worth of kerosene per year to
heat my shop). Get back to me when you get that stirling cycle air
conditioner
into a commercially viable format, then we'll have something to talk
about. ;-)

Would you settle for a solar powered swamp cooler?

Dave in Houston

You found out swamp coolers don't work in Houston, eh?

Maybe you could sell it to someone in New Orleans?

On 2009-04-19, HeyBub wrote:

You found out swamp coolers don't work in Houston, eh?

Maybe you could sell it to someone in New Orleans?

Oooh! ...harsh. :|

nb

Dave in Houston wrote:


"Mark & Juanita" wrote in message
m...

Morris, I'd take you up on that, but payback here in AZ would be
measured
in decades (I buy about $40 worth of kerosene per year to heat my shop).

Get back to me when you get that stirling cycle air conditioner into a
commercially viable format, then we'll have something to talk about. ;-)

Would you settle for a solar powered swamp cooler?

Dave in Houston

Around my cast iron tools? No way.


--
If you're going to be dumb, you better be tough

Morris Dovey wrote:

Mark & Juanita wrote:
Morris Dovey wrote:

FWIW, the customer whose shop is featured at

http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html

passed the payback point this spring - and can look forward to *free*
heat and a year-round warm shop for the next 25 or 30 years...

[ Still trying to encourage woodworkers to build their own, but not
seeing many who're willing to help themselves - and I'm having a
difficult time pinning that on Al Gore. ]


Morris, I'd take you up on that, but payback here in AZ would be
measured
in decades (I buy about $40 worth of kerosene per year to heat my shop).

Lucky you! At one point I needed to heat my shop to get an order out and
burned more than $40 worth of LPG in a single /day/.

Get back to me when you get that stirling cycle air conditioner into a
commercially viable format, then we'll have something to talk about. ;-)

I'll invite you to be really specific about what you mean by
"commercially viable format".


Morris, if it can get to the same level of install-ability as your heating
systems, I'd consider that "commercially viable". I'd even take a lower
level of maturity if it provided the cooling capability with the use of
solar energy.

The air conditioner is a two-part - or, depending on your definition of
"commercially viable format", three-part problem.

Part one is to produce a Stirling cycle engine suitable for use with
solar heat. We know (sorta) how to build different flavors of Stirling
engines, but there's a lot of R&D needed. IMO, there's a serious lack of
R and even less D -

Not having done the research, has anybody done a study on the number of
square feet of collection space required (at expected insolation levels) as
a function of expected vs. required stirling efficiency?

and there are significant political disincentives
for correction of that problem.


What political disencentives exist?

My progress has been limited by the fact that I'm only able to spend
about $50/month on the project. I just bought a torch, regulators,
hoses, etc to that I could braze prototypes - and that outlay
represented more than three months of saved-up R&D budget. Oxygen and
acetylene may be do-able next month, we'll see.


Sounds like R&D outlays where I work. ;-)

My first priority isn't air-conditioning - it's a solar powered pump
suitable for irrigation and village water supplies, and if you have an
interest in how things are going, there's a menu of web pages at

http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Projects/Stirling/


Best of luck in developing the pump concept -- your heart is certainly in
the right place. Slightly off topic, did you ever have any nibbles in
trying to get your heating systems to Ukraine (or was it Belarus)?

Been following that web site. Looks like some reasonable
proof-of-principle development has been going on, but more work to the
proof-of-concept, real design is going to be a while in coming.

to help keep you up to date. The last link in that menu is to a page
showing progress made by some really brainy young folks who're trying to
help and who don't mind getting their hands dirty to get the job done.
More hands /is/ making lighter work (but their development budgets
aren't any better than mine, and they also have other claims on their
time and energy).

The engines that you see there are the probable forerunners of the
engines that will be the core part of that air-conditioner.

It's looking more and more likely that it won't be me who gets back to
you on the solar Stirling air-conditioning unit, and it may be to your
kids rather than yourself, but it will happen.


If it becomes profitable to do so, then development will speed up. The
nice thing about the prototypes you've shown so far is that they use
reasonably-priced materials. If that can carry forward, the economic
viability is more likely.


--
If you're going to be dumb, you better be tough

notbob wrote:
On 2009-04-19, HeyBub wrote:

You found out swamp coolers don't work in Houston, eh?

Maybe you could sell it to someone in New Orleans?

Oooh! ...harsh. :|


For many years folks from Houston visited New Orleans where we were met with
gracious and exuberant hospitality. I could tell you stories...

So, when Katrina came along, we were more than eager to repay the many
instances of hospitality. We opened the Astrodome and accepted 75,000
evacuees. We tried hard to integrate them into our society.

It didn't work.

I've had more than one Houston Police officer tell me a common refrain is:
"Watch you mean I can't be moseyin' in my 'hood with a malt and a toke?"
Fortunately, the undesirable elements are killing each other off with great
regularity and the remainder experience "Texas Justice."

We don't lack of prison space like California. During the bountiful years we
built prisons as far as the eye could see. Our prison system grows virtually
all its own food - except for a few things like coffee and pepper. The
system has cotton fields, textile mills, and the women's unit takes the
cloth and makes uniforms, bedding, and sundry items.

You might want to browse through the other stuff the Texas Department of
Corrections makes. It's an interesting study.

Texas Correctional Industries
http://www.tci.tdcj.state.tx.us/

Anyway, when Hurricane Yikes! came along, and more evacuations from New
Orleans seemed imminent, the Ad Hoc Vigilance Committee for New Orleans
Evacuees was hastily assembled. Members jobs were to stand on the side of
Interstate 10 holding signs that said "This Way to San Antonio."

"Mark & Juanita" wrote in message
m...
Dave in Houston wrote:


"Mark & Juanita" wrote in message
m...

Morris, I'd take you up on that, but payback here in AZ would be
measured
in decades (I buy about $40 worth of kerosene per year to heat my shop).

Get back to me when you get that stirling cycle air conditioner into a
commercially viable format, then we'll have something to talk about.
;-)

Would you settle for a solar powered swamp cooler?

Dave in Houston

Around my cast iron tools? No way.

The first (machine) shop that I worked in was an old aircraft hanger
complete with swamp coolers. Rust was not nearly the problem I thought it
would be.

Mark & Juanita wrote:
Morris Dovey wrote:

Morris, if it can get to the same level of install-ability as your heating
systems, I'd consider that "commercially viable". I'd even take a lower
level of maturity if it provided the cooling capability with the use of
solar energy.

Ok - that's good information that I can use.

Not having done the research, has anybody done a study on the number of
square feet of collection space required (at expected insolation levels) as
a function of expected vs. required stirling efficiency?

The efficiency /limit/ for a Stirling cycle engine is strictly dependent
on temperatures and is given by the formula

E = 1 - (Tc / Th)

where Tc is the cold head temperature in Kelvins and
Th is the hot head temperature in Kelvins

Remember that temperature is NOT energy - it's the energy /density/ of
some quantity of mass.

As with the solar heating panel, the trick is to nudge the design as
close to that limit without pushing cost through the roof. Also like the
solar heating panel, it's a matter of identifying /all/ the variables
and (re)learning enough of the physics involved to make the best
possible trade-off decisions. Time, heat transfer, and flow rates are
important considerations in the engine and I'm pretty sure that I don't
know all I need to (yet).

Under ideal conditions, the rough rule of thumb is to figure that the
sun delivers roughly 1 kW of power per m^2. The amount of power (and so
the area of collector) is dependent on the amount of heat to be moved.

If the collector is a passive flat panel, the temperature will be
dependent on the height of the panel - and if the collector is a
parabolic trough, the temperature will be dependent on the width of the
trough and the width of the "bright line" to which the radiation is
focused. The temperature is significant because it defines the upper
limit on how efficiently the power will be converted.

and there are significant political disincentives
for correction of that problem.

What political disencentives exist?

Put on your favorite congress-critter's hat and consider:

Both my existing solar heating panels and the not-yet existing AC
represent one-time expenditures. Once installed, there will be no fuel
or electricity costs and no maintenance costs.

There will be a significant reduction in fuel and electricity revenue
for those who've (probably) been among your largest campaign
contributors. Ask yourself how this is likely to affect your campaign
funding and your chances in the next election - will your situation be
improved or worsened?

With out a need for maintenance, many jobs for those who earn a living
doing annual furnace tuneups, checking and recharging AC units, and
repairing breakdowns will be largely eliminated. How is this going to
affect voting in the next election? Is this likely to improve or worsen
the support of the trade unions who represent obsoleted workers?

And finally, answer the question of whether you want most to be
re-elected or whether you care more about what your constituents pay for
heating and air conditioning.

Best of luck in developing the pump concept -- your heart is certainly in
the right place. Slightly off topic, did you ever have any nibbles in
trying to get your heating systems to Ukraine (or was it Belarus)?

A considerable amount of web site activity - but only one nibble.

This last week, I received a video from the group in Pakistan showing
their pump working. It wasn't working very well - I think because of a
much too strong spring in the check valves they used - but it /is/
pumping water. I've been trying to track down some valves with weaker
springs, but am having the usual difficulty with getting a US producer
to even talk to me. I'm beginning to think I could make my own
flapper-type check valves faster and cheaper than I could buy 'em. sigh

Been following that web site. Looks like some reasonable
proof-of-principle development has been going on, but more work to the
proof-of-concept, real design is going to be a while in coming.

Design is considerably ahead of build. The necessary rule is that only
one new thing at a time can be changed, else it becomes all too easy to
misinterpret test results. With the pump, the changes are still large
enough to require a complete (or nearly complete) rebuild, which slows
things down a lot.

I'm really looking forward to the "fine tuning" stage.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/