[Strawbale] Free energy

[Ilan Ungar]

The case of the tomato is a good analogy.

But I would answer to it that when left uneaten, joyfully return them to the
soil they came from, as I am sure you do at your compost pile.
It is exactly what I propose to do with the unused heat when opening a crack
in the window: return it to where it would have ended up, had it landed a
few feet away from my solar collectors.

Ilan.


On Nov 29, 2007 1:12 PM, Speireag Alden <speireag at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> 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.
>
>
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-- 
Ilan Ungar, Architect.
Lehavot Habashan 12125
Israel
972 4 6953429
972 52 2431398