[Strawbale] Free energy

[Speireag Alden]

On 2007, Nov 28, at 23:16, Derek Roff wrote:

> 2) There's nothing like organic, home-grown tomatoes.  All my friends
> love them.  But if I have a dozen, the next dozen isn't so useful.
> Having a couple of hundred becomes a liability.  There are a few
> weeks every summer, when I can't give away beautiful tomatoes, and
> many rot.
>
> Solar energy has something in common with the tomatoes.  We have most
> of it, when we need it least, and it doesn't store well.  Solar
> gizmos have something in common with the guy offering free money on
> the street.  There is usually a hidden cost, and often you will get
> nothing back on your investment.

     *laughing*  This is a really good analogy!  I'm going to use it.

> I await the results of Joshua's experiments with seasonal heat
> storage.  I have faith in his careful approach.

     Aw... I'm touched!

> Without some
> temperature and heat flow data and/or theory, which is not available
> on the sites of most seasonal storage advocates, I lack information
> to make an informed judgment.  I am playing the odds, which seem to
> me to run this way:  Seasonal heat storage in earth won't work.

     It will be fun to see, anyway.  It certainly isn't turning out  
to be cost-effective in my case, but that wasn't the main reason I  
wanted to do it.

> It isn't needed in most cases.

     Hm... what's "need"?  If you mean that you don't need it in  
order to heat a house cheaply, that's probably true.  But if your  
objective is to be able to pretty much ignore heating or cooling the  
house in a wide variety of climates, then it might turn out to be the  
only essentially solid-state solution.

> The initial costs could be better spent
> (would give more bang for the buck) if spent on other enhancements to
> the house.

     I think this is likely to be true in the majority of cases.  In  
my own case, the expense and trouble of digging in rocky ground has  
made this option unexpectedly expensive.

     On the other hand, if I had done it at the outset, as part of  
the original design, then it might have added much less to the  
overall costs.

-Speireag.