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DIY HVAC
An anonymous reader writes "I found this very interesting project called DIY Zoning. It allows one to add air flow balancing, temperature control, zoning, home automation, and more to an existing or new HVAC system. After getting a $200 electric bill, this sounds like a good solution for those who are getting screwed with outrageously high electric bills due to their HVAC unit especially since organizations like TVA have raised the electric rates."
DIY Zoning is just one in a family of projects.
Don't forget about Haywire, Jukebox, and ServoMaster, all of which are hosted at SourceForge and directly tie-in to the temperature zoning system featured in this Slashdot posting.
[Oh, and FWIW, Professor Tkachenko's son is a cutie (an old college friend of mine knew him)!]
Background: 28/M/Bi-Sexual; Owner of a Linux company; MBA Harvard 2003; B.S. Comp Sci MIT 2000
for non-eXtreme geeks like myself, HVAC stands for Heating, Ventilation, & Air Conditioning.
Not that it would matter to you if you are working on it by yourself, but without support for the technologies that the spec requires going forward, you face the unenviable position of being stuck with some out of date specs.
I have been pwned because my
Complaining about TVA rates? Haha... You are getting some of the cheapest, subsidized electricity in the country.
Read this:
http://www.nemw.org/tvareport.htm
As an ex plumber-pipefitter, zoning is a must for any eficient system.
,it is looks like a full blown commercial install, When I was out of town once the boiler went out (flooded expansion tank) so my wife called the company I worked for, my friend glen cam out and said , "uhhh youre gonna have to call in a commercial outfit were all residential and Ive never seen a system like this before Chris (me usually handles all our commercial stuff"
Take this house for example, 2000 sq ft 2 story farmhouse, 1950's anderson windows, still nice but not real tight, no in wall insulation, attic is aesbestos (but now sealed)
The house is set up into 3 zones, on an old , circa 1950 American Standard electro-mechanical zone system, it is hot water heat, about half baseboard, the other half cast radiators, the heat throught the hose is awesome, never too cold anywhere. Now, the fun part, we dont have gas, and electric was way too ineffecient to heat this house soooo, my grandfather a pipefitter as well installed the system back in the 50's
The wind up of all this , my heating bill for the entire year ? Under $600 Thats 350 gallons of oil, I only took 310 or so after 13 months last time I topped off. And I live near Cleveland Ohio (Akron), not exactly warm winters here ya know
The project was born out of a total and absolute frustration which in turn was a result of a fruitless search of information about existing temperature zoning solutions. The only information available on the zoning system manufacturer web sites was usually "call us for an estimate". The estimates were usually being performed by salespeople. Technical people were difficult to get. Read the complete story for details.
The author obviously didn't look in the right places. Here are a few links to get started:
SmartHome
HomeTech Solutions
Bass Burglar Alarms
I've done business with all three, and have retrofitted my home with a two-zone system powered by an RCS zone controller and electronic dampers. All three have been extremely helpful in providing technical advice.
One thing to remember: The HVAC business (as well as the burglar alarm business) are very protective of their turf. You stand little chance of finding an HVAC contractor willing to work with you on designing a custom HVAC system.
This site includes a number of ideas for reducing that energy bill, including zoned heating/cooling. There are several interesting real-time graphs of current energy use.
I found the site while searching for information on heat pump water heaters. One example graph they give shows the heat pump water heater using less than half the energy as resistive heating.
If installed properly, a heat pump water heater will also help air-condition your house. A good place to put ducts is in the kitchen, where the waste heat from cooking can be removed and used to heat water. Ideally, the returned cooled air can be directed at your refrigerator's condenser coils for increased efficiency.
Insulate your house. Insulate your attic, insulate the walls, insulate the pipes and add secondary glazing. It's the cheapest and most effective thing you can do.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Not as good as using dampers, but much simpler. I put a copy of the webpage for this system on my website:
System_Hvac
- Install stormwater tanks. Hook them up to your roof's stormwater system, with the excess (that the tanks can't store) going into the stormwater drains, as the whole lot used to do. Use this water to flush toilets, water gardens, and possibly wash clothes and shower in (depending on the quality of the rainwater you get).
- Redirect water from your shower to gardens, toilets, etc. You may need to treat it to get rid of soap, shampoo, etc. residues.
- Fix those leaking taps.
- Take shorter showers.
- Install a water-saving shower head.
- Stop hosing down the damn concrete driveway. Use a broom, or a blower if you're that damn lazy.
Here in Australia, stormwater tanks used to be illegal! That's changed, though, as the Powers That Be came to the realisation that our water resources are limited, they won't be expanding, and yet they have to support a growing population. The scary thing is, since my father installed stormwater tanks for our showers, toilets, and laundry, our water bills dropped by a third (or more).As an aside, there's one place in Melbourne (Aus) that has no water bill. None. Zero. Zip. They were actually investigated pretty thoroughly when this happened, because authorities assumed they were stealing water from their neighbours. Not so, though; they were just very efficient with their water use and recycling, and were able to fill their needs from stormwater.
I do believe that is false economy. The wear on the receptacle and plug itself will likely cause premature replacement of either. Meaning...
You will pay more for parts than for the electricity ($1.25 for the entire lifetime of the device, or, about 30 cents yearly).
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
According to my schedule the episode of This Old House on PBS this week will show how in Bermuda it is standard practice to collect rainwater for all a house's water needs - in fact if a family uses too much water, they're forced to buy water from the government. Show info here shows up to last week's episode: This Old House
I just couldn't let this pass by -
"I worked it out once...100-200W over 24x7x365 equals a LOT of money per year!"
First - that math is for 7 years, it should be 24 x 7 x 52.179 or 24 x 365.25
200W x 24hrs/day x 365.25days/year = 1753.2kW-hours / year.
At a rate of $0.08/kW-hour = $140.
Now - that is assuming that it is using the full 200W all the time. A 200W or 300W power supply is needed because there is a lot more power used when the disks are spinning up or that CD/DVD is spinning and writing. Even a more busy CPU and graphics card will draw significantly more power. So that box is probably drawing only a fraction of that power on average which means that it isn't really close to that much.
Now if I could just find my clamp-on amp-meter to give some real power numbers on my own boxen.........