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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 $200 electric bill, this sounds like a good solution for those who are getting screwed with outrageously high electric bills due to their HVAC unit especially since organizations like TVA have raised the electric rates."
Is going on a lot here where I live. Berea College has completely rebuilt many of their buildings to make them more environmentally friendly, and to cut down on their "outrageous energy costs". Not to mention that Berea College owns all the utilities here anyways.
;).
I really don't get why this kind of project is really worthy of doing anyways. May save some money, but most people's houses dont use more than 1500 kWa of electricity a month... ~140$ of electricty around here (considering we pay the "Berea College Utilities" tax). Now a worthy project would be covering your house with solar panels and breaking even on your utility bills
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
It's quite simple, really.
:)
/. readership are bachelor males. Of course, a fantasy alternative would be to get a girlfriend with her own place and just crash over there.
Learn to do without.
I know it sounds contrite, but hear me out.
Do you really need both of those monitors? If not, chuck one, or turn it off. Monitors draw quite a bit of power. Also, make sure you turn off your monitors when you're not using them, or make sure their power saving modes are on. Alternatively, you could go LCD to help reduce the costs, but I've always looked at that with some suspicion in that the prohibitive costs related to 19" and higher LCD's offset the potential savings.
How many computers are you running? If the answer is more than one, ask yourself if you really *need* to be running the others. Sure it's nice that you've gotten that old P233 up and running as your firewall, but frankly, a Linksys dedicated router/firewall is going to draw much less power, with fewer moving parts.
Air Conditioning: Learn to live a bit warmer. Learn to open windows instead of reaching for the thermostat. You'll find that your body can and will adjust to warmer temperatures if you let it. I live in the South with oppressive humidity and heat during the summer and my dad tells me stories of him growing up when they didn't have A/C. It can be done. And, if you follow the first 2 items above, you'll find your house isn't as hot. Computers + Monitors == lots of heat. Now, in my apartment, I don't have central A/C, only a couple window units, unfortunately. A trick I've learned is to shut the door to my bedroom, which happens to be decently sized, and only run the A/C in that room. It gets downright cold pretty fast. Now, it does make me somewhat of a prisoner in that room, only venturing out to use the can or to cook something in the kitchen, but I've learned to cope. Besides, I can grab my laptop and browse the web wirelessly from anywhere in my house. Also, at least here, the hottest part of the summers is only one or 2 months that you have to "suffer" through. Actually, if you work a lot, here's an excuse to work some OT.
My bill dropped from $150/month to less than $50/month once I adopted these measures.
If you're married with kids, feel free to ignore because I'm assuming most of the
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
So this is essentially a programmable thermostat for your PC with some more advancded features like zones, right? Or am I missing something?
The HVAC community is definitely different from Open Source community, and whenever they get close, it gets quite hot
Doesn't seem that hot - fun reading I'd say! The idea is great though (not new, but great) - As open source branches in to more and more area, the people involved with open source software are more likely to adapt OSS principles to non-software aspects of their work.
"An open-source future is one in which we realize that reality itself is open source" to quote an unknown guy on the internet. Hope it happens this year!
I think the idea of open source energy solutions is a great idea. Right now, we have NO choice of who we buy our electricity from. The situation with electricity and fuel is 20X worse than Microsoft's control of the computer industry. What happens when petroleum gets too expensive and runs out?
Its time to do something about it.
While there's no good reason I can think of that retrofitted zoning would be a zoning problem, sometimes what's permissable and what's not isn't always self-evident.
It would royally suck to need something inspected later on, such as when selling a house, only to be told it wasn't code and had to come out or be expensively upgraded to meet code. I've done a ton of electrical work (some in conjunction with remodeling which was heavily inspected) and nobody said boo, but it was all code-compliant.
And speaking of resale, even though a zoned hvac system would be nice, one that's more complicated than your grandma can operate will actually lower your resale value to most people since it will be seen as a maintenance liability. I put in a Honeywell 7 day programmable thermostat and my wife hated me for a couple of months until she figured out how to work it. I can only imagine what she would do with something that made one room cold and another warm without being totally obvious (like a 15" LCD touch screen with a floor plan of the house and car-type heat controls).
Actually I think you do have choice.
Here you can buy from the government regulated electrical power grid. Or you can generate your own electricity. Solar cells, gas generators, waterfalls or whatever you want.
But there is a reason most people don't do this, the utility price is easy, cost competative and reliable.
I think rates aren't all that high, most people waste huge amounts of electricity. I read somewhere the average household in my area uses 750kWh/month, I just just over 300 kWh.
Sounds like a pretty cool idea, and cheap. From reading the site, its definetely cheap. Somewhere around $20/room for tempature controls/etc. I just don't like the idea of it being computer-controlled, in areas like where I live, it would suck if the controller crashed, and it was -40 out. Frozen pipes/kitty cats.
Bored? Why not join a decent mess
This whole submission is a sensationalist troll. "this sounds like a good solution for those who are getting screwed with outrageously high electric bills due to their HVAC unit". According to the article rates went up 7.4%, hardly a 'screwing'. Thus, if your bill was $200, that means it was $186.74 before, which means your "HVAC unit" (the definition left as an exercise to the reader) is pretty much shit anyway.
How does this stuff make the front page, is the editorial staff of Slashdot the Socialist Worker's Party or something?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Well, it is a matter of what you get use to. I grew up in Southern Wisc/Northern Ill. During the 70's, we had times for several weeks, the temp never got above -20F (I remember one week, where the temp never got above -35F). I did not mind it one iota. Later, I would run around with a windbreaker when the outside temp was 20F.
Then I moved to Colorado in 1979. After being here for 2 years, I went back for a middle of winter visit with an ex-girlfriend. I dicided to walk up the road to where she was working, after all I grew up with -38F, still had the same clothes, and it was only a 20 Minute walk. Well, I almost lost my ears for that little stunt (yes, they turned black due to severe frostbight and the docs waited for 1 week before deciding that they did not have to go).
That showed that anybody can get use to anything if they are exposed and acclaimate to it slowly. Several seasons will help. Personally though, I would turn on the heat. You will find it easier to deal with others.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Time, time, time. DIY Zoning is modular, and in the very beginning I hoped that TINI (that runs native Java) will be able to host one of the modules. Alas, never had time nor chance to get my hands on it. Still, thinking about rewriting the project in C++, after all the architectural things are done.
Java can be compiled to native code. Why would you rewrite something just to change the language!?
My other car is first.
Beg to differ - I did look into those places, all three of them.
:)
SmartHome - X10? A device with unreliable delivery? One network failure, and Boom-Puff up goes in smoke your expensive equipment. Thank you.
And the others - well, they may have not existed at the time the project was started - that was about three years ago.
As for your warning - yes, that's right. If you read the articles on the site, you'll find that this exact warning is written in bold face all over. Too bad. Go read the history of the project, and you'll see how they treated me back then
Fuck you. My stuff, my rules. Who lets shit like building codes fuck our society?
Well, yeah. I'm quite a Libertarian, but unfortunately this is just one of those things where there have to be government-enforced standards. (You're certainly not going to trust contractors to do the right thing, are you?)
Why are building codes important? Look at fire and earthquake damage in third-world countries like Taiwan and Iran... 300 people die in department store fire in Taipei... Notice that sort of stuff doesn't happen in the US, Canada, EU or Australia very often?
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Hehehe, well, those funny blue discs in my tank tank beg to differ with you.
I guess his point may have been a valid one for potable water, although, I would probably opt for bottled water from the local store.
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
Two very good points.
That's why, ideally, I'd like to see a commercial product designed to retrofit a home HVAC system to be zoned, and I'd like to see the following features:
Basically, everything but the last one is a simplification of the user interface. You don't really necessarily care what temperature your house is (in most cases), you just care if you're comfortable or not and what compromise you are making between being comfortable and saving energy. If you can just adjust both those things, then you get everything you need and the system is easier to operate than a normal system, and not really much harder to maintain.
...and electric was way too ineffecient to heat this house
Electric resistance heating is 100% efficient. What you really should say is the cost of electricity in your area makes electric heating too expensive.