Off topic galore

[TN Mtn Man]

If you thought Toronto streetcars were the problem here is another FSD edge case:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1509253049440739332

And I thought Spokane's potholes were a problem!

 

[inconel]

Next Bond movie: Bond flees villain in his Tesla roadster, encounters land mine in middle of road, engages cold air thruster, hops over mine, villain hits it and explodes. This stuff writes itself.

Will Bond be allowed the use of a Roadster though if Tesla does not pay for product placement?

 

[Artful Dodger]

Finally I understand why Tesla is talking about adding cold air thrusters and flying to the Roadster.

HP air from cold gas rocket nozzles flying in ground effect would likely cause those mines to detonate anyway. Touchy things, those fuzes. And some fuzes are MAGNETICALLY activated (even with carbon fiber / non-ferrous chassis components, there's still the magnetics in the motors which will be detectible by the mines).

 

[Ogre]

HP air from cold gas rocket nozzles flying in ground effect would likely cause those mines to detonate anyway. Touchy things, those fuzes. And some fuzes are MAGNETICALLY activated (even with carbon fiber / non-ferrous chassis components, there's still the magnetics in the motors which will be detectible by the mines).

Or potentially air could catch underneath the mines and flip them over which would be equally bad.

Hopefully not something I'll ever need to worry over. Cybertruck won't have air thrusters anyhow.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Or potentially air could catch underneath the mines and flip them over which would be equally bad.

Hopefully not something I'll ever need to worry over. Cybertruck won't have air thrusters anyhow.

You'll know Elon is serious when "Tesla Active Defense Agency" (TaDa) builds a Cyber-version of this type of APC:

Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected | armoured vehicle

Other articles where Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected is discussed: armoured vehicle: Wheeled armoured vehicles: …thousands of Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected (MRAP) wheeled armoured vehicles. MRAPs are designed with a V-shaped hull to deflect explosions upward and away from the troop...

www.britannica.com

Will need a non-flammable battery chemistry to be usable in service...

I sure this V-bottomed hull, flat-panel type of ACP is what inspired Cybertruck design for Elon in the first place. It is remarkably similar to the 1980's South African G-6 Rhino SP Howizter (6-wheeled, v-bottomed, mine-resistant).

Cheers!

 

[JRP3]

I sure this V-bottomed hull, flat-panel type of ACP is what inspired Cybertruck design for Elon in the first place.

According to Elon it was Blade Runner, with obvious similarities.

Cybertruck looks nothing like that ACP.

 

[dm28997]

I just listened to Dandelionenergy.com interview with ARC. Heat pumps going about 8 ft. underground can heat homes in cold winters and cool homes in summer. Just using energy from heat underneath the earth's surface. This is already happening in the NE US. I would think Germany would love this as alternative energy sources from gas. Combined with solar and batteries no oil/gas needed.

 

[Xdama]

I just listened to Dandelionenergy.com interview with ARC. Heat pumps going about 8 ft. underground can heat homes in cold winters and cool homes in summer. Just using energy from heat underneath the earth's surface. This is already happening in the NE US. I would think Germany would love this as alternative energy sources from gas. Combined with solar and batteries no oil/gas needed.

It works in Nordic countries as do air source heat pumps. I have seen videos on YouTube by a guy who reckons they won’t work in UK very well due to the crap sealing on housing stock obviously old houses primarily but even the newbuild stuff is nowhere near as sealed as Scandinavian houses. I’d be happy to see some proper evidence from someone with a better understanding of them though.

 

[JRP3]

I just listened to Dandelionenergy.com interview with ARC. Heat pumps going about 8 ft. underground can heat homes in cold winters and cool homes in summer. Just using energy from heat underneath the earth's surface.

Ground source heat pumps have been available for years using either vertical wells 100ft or more deep or horizontal trenches hundreds of feet long but only 6-10 feet deep. Dandelion has been focusing on reducing the costs of drilling vertical wells by building smaller dedicated drilling rigs instead of the typical water well drillers that have been used to date. If they were talking about 8 ft. underground that must have been referring to horizontal trenches, which can only be done if you have enough acreage.

 

[Terminator857]

Ground source heat pumps have been available for years using either vertical wells 100ft or more deep or horizontal trenches hundreds of feet long but only 6-10 feet deep. Dandelion has been focusing on reducing the costs of drilling vertical wells by building smaller dedicated drilling rigs instead of the typical water well drillers that have been used to date. If they were talking about 8 ft. underground that must have been referring to horizontal trenches, which can only be done if you have enough acreage.

I've been told the water table in the bay area is only 6 ft below the surface. You'd think with water running down there, it wouldn't take much to tap into that cold/heat reservoir.

 

[UncaNed]

I just listened to Dandelionenergy.com interview with ARC. Heat pumps going about 8 ft. underground can heat homes in cold winters and cool homes in summer. Just using energy from heat underneath the earth's surface. This is already happening in the NE US. I would think Germany would love this as alternative energy sources from gas. Combined with solar and batteries no oil/gas needed.

They've been around in USA almost 40 years.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Do people ever tell you take we should solve all the problems on Earth before we waste billions of dollars going to Mars? Well, ask them it they own a digital camera, and if they would prefer to go back to film cameras, with silver developing chemicals and day- (or week) -long wait times to get the pictures.

Then inform them that the World's first digital camera was developed by NASA/JPL for the Mariner 3/4 missions to Mars in 1963.

2JPL and the Space Age: The Changing Face of Mars (2 days ago)

What else will we invent to allow the first humans to visit Mars? Only one way to find out...

Cheers!

 

[samppa]

I just listened to Dandelionenergy.com interview with ARC. Heat pumps going about 8 ft. underground can heat homes in cold winters and cool homes in summer. Just using energy from heat underneath the earth's surface. This is already happening in the NE US. I would think Germany would love this as alternative energy sources from gas. Combined with solar and batteries no oil/gas needed.

going a bit off topic.
I really doubt your 8 ft figure.. we have geothermal heat pumps at the attached houses where I live, and the heat wells go 200 meters underground. Ok climate is colder than Germany. System has a cop of 4-5, and provides only heat (no cooling).

 

[SmokyPeat]

going a bit off topic.
I really doubt your 8 ft figure.. we have geothermal heat pumps at the attached houses where I live, and the heat wells go 200 meters underground. Ok climate is colder than Germany. System has a cop of 4-5, and provides only heat (no cooling).

The deeper the better, but many air source heat pumps manage to extract heat from -15F surface air. Ponds are also great heat sources for geothermal heat pump systems.

 

[petit_bateau]

It works in Nordic countries as do air source heat pumps. I have seen videos on YouTube by a guy who reckons they won’t work in UK very well due to the crap sealing on housing stock obviously old houses primarily but even the newbuild stuff is nowhere near as sealed as Scandinavian houses. I’d be happy to see some proper evidence from someone with a better understanding of them though.

I have just installed a 14kW air source heat pump (ASHP) on a large (240m2/300m2 = c. 2,400 / 3,000 sq ft) and old (1840) house in the UK. It works just fine and is more economical to operate than the oil-fired boiler it replaced that was of approx 45kW. This ASHP is operated entirely off renewable-origin electricity.

One key is to insulate the building correctly. However understanding heat pumps and sizing them correctly is the other key. Of the six heat pump installers I approached only two came forwards with sensible proposals (i.e. which matched my own engineering calculations*) and only one gave a sensible price. Most of the rest thought the building could not be fitted with an ASHP, or could not do the sums correctly, and plain overcharged, or all of these points.

EDIT : To add that ~90% of typical UK properties can accept an ASHP, whereas only ~5-10% of UK properties can accept a ground source heat pump (GSHP) irrespective of whether it is a borehole style (n boreholes each 100-200 feet deep) or 'slinky' style (n length of trench typically 4-8 ft deep). The UK % I have given would be equally applicable more widely in Europe for similar reasons. Bottom line, we need to focus our efforts on ASHP rather than GSHP.

There is an appalling level of knowledge in the UK heating-engineer community (aka "plumbers") and builders/architects on the use of ASHP and on how to insulate older properties (without creating more problems than one solves). Unfortunately to fix this requires them to throw out bad knowledge ("draughts are good"), learn new knowledge, and adopt very different business models.

It is somewhat different in other countries in Europe, mostly between 10 and 20 years ahead of the UK in these respect. For example I am currently in a property in Greece where the newbuild wall insulation is 70mm, which is thicker than most people would consider installing in the UK. The Greeks are correct, and the UK is wrong. For insight for the UK property I have described the retrofit loft insulation package that I installed now averages 300mm depth, and the wall insulation retrofit package varies between 50-100mm depending on where. The whole world needs to get good at this as part of the energy transformation, and the UK especially needs to pull its socks up and tackle its woeful performance in this area. Keeping this on topic, a side effect of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will be to accelerate this transition in all respects, worldwide.



(* I have the advantage that I was one of the technical oversight team that first approved the development of the standard UK calculation template about 10-years ago. Needless to say my bu11sh1t detector was triggered on many occasions discussing this project with four of the six candidate installers. I should add that the six I approached were the upper quartile of installers in this area of the UK, i.e. all the others are worse. There is a lot of improvement required.)

 

[Tiger]

going a bit off topic.
I really doubt your 8 ft figure.. we have geothermal heat pumps at the attached houses where I live, and the heat wells go 200 meters underground. Ok climate is colder than Germany. System has a cop of 4-5, and provides only heat (no cooling).

You can have vertical or horizontal collectors. There is cost difference and ofcourse for horizontal you need the land.

 

[samppa]

The deeper the better, but many air source heat pumps manage to extract heat from -15F surface air. Ponds are also great heat sources for geothermal heat pump systems.

Yes, but the COP suffers. You are looking at cop of 1-2 in the cold, instead of 4-5 that you can get with geothermal. Cop means how much heat you get from used electricity, ideal conditions and cop 5: 1kwh electricity generates 5kwh of heat.

 

[Surfer of Life]

I have just installed a 14kW air source heat pump (ASHP) on a large (240m2/300m2 = c. 2,400 / 3,000 sq ft) and old (1840) house in the UK. It works just fine and is more economical to operate than the oil-fired boiler it replaced that was of approx 45kW. This ASHP is operated entirely off renewable-origin electricity.

One key is to insulate the building correctly. However understanding heat pumps and sizing them correctly is the other key. Of the six heat pump installers I approached only two came forwards with sensible proposals (i.e. which matched my own engineering calculations*) and only one gave a sensible price. Most of the rest thought the building could not be fitted with an ASHP, or could not do the sums correctly, and plain overcharged, or all of these points.

EDIT : To add that ~90% of typical UK properties can accept an ASHP, whereas only ~5-10% of UK properties can accept a ground source heat pump (GSHP) irrespective of whether it is a borehole style (n boreholes each 100-200 feet deep) or 'slinky' style (n length of trench typically 4-8 ft deep). The UK % I have given would be equally applicable more widely in Europe for similar reasons. Bottom line, we need to focus our efforts on ASHP rather than GSHP.

There is an appalling level of knowledge in the UK heating-engineer community (aka "plumbers") and builders/architects on the use of ASHP and on how to insulate older properties (without creating more problems than one solves). Unfortunately to fix this requires them to throw out bad knowledge ("draughts are good"), learn new knowledge, and adopt very different business models.

It is somewhat different in other countries in Europe, mostly between 10 and 20 years ahead of the UK in these respect. For example I am currently in a property in Greece where the newbuild wall insulation is 70mm, which is thicker than most people would consider installing in the UK. The Greeks are correct, and the UK is wrong. For insight for the UK property I have described the retrofit loft insulation package that I installed now averages 300mm depth, and the wall insulation retrofit package varies between 50-100mm depending on where. The whole world needs to get good at this as part of the energy transformation, and the UK especially needs to pull its socks up and tackle its woeful performance in this area. Keeping this on topic, a side effect of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will be to accelerate this transition in all respects, worldwide.



(* I have the advantage that I was one of the technical oversight team that first approved the development of the standard UK calculation template about 10-years ago. Needless to say my bu11sh1t detector was triggered on many occasions discussing this project with four of the six candidate installers. I should add that the six I approached were the upper quartile of installers in this area of the UK, i.e. all the others are worse. There is a lot of improvement required.)

Why can only 5%-10% have ground source? 70 mm thick insulation only? That’s thinner than a stud wall.

 

[petit_bateau]

Why can only 5%-10% have ground source? 70 mm thick insulation only? That’s thinner than a stud wall.

For GSHP to be suitable for a property the following conditions need to be met:
- sufficient accessible land, that is not rocky, to dig slinky trenches; or
- sufficient accessible land, that is not rocky and which has a decent aquifer, to drill boreholes;
- and either the trenching must be cost-effective (which, to be fair it often is) or the boreholes must be cost-effective (which thety seldom are).
Almost all urban & suburban properties fail the "sufficient accessible suitable land" test. Of those that pass the boreholes are almost always too expensive, and thus the majority of the 5-10% cost-effective installs tend to be slinky trenches. Boreholes tend to be either rich people or (occasionally) multi-occupancy housing. But ~90% can accept an ASHP so best to go with an ASHP almost always, and they are now at the "good enough" level from a CoP perspective.

Re 70mm insulation, yes the world is generally putting far too little insulation into buildings. That is the truth. Overall construction techniques matter as well - the Greek house I referenced is [render, blockwork, cavity+ 70mm insulation, blockwork, plaster] for a U value of approx 0.4 W/m2K (*). Contrast that with nothing in the cavity and one is more like U=1.37. But at least these buildings have solid inner or outer wall (leafs) so the thermal mass is higher and so temperature swings lessened. Contrast that with clpaboard + studding and there is no thermal mass so the rooms get very stuffy in summer (due to solar gain) if they are insulated. It is a complex area and (imho) a difficulty that most architects/developers/plumbers/builders/etc are ill-equipped to properly understand.

(* the table I have to hand does not have this exact construction, but it will be about this from interpolating some others)

 

[dm28997]

I have just installed a 14kW air source heat pump (ASHP) on a large (240m2/300m2 = c. 2,400 / 3,000 sq ft) and old (1840) house in the UK. It works just fine and is more economical to operate than the oil-fired boiler it replaced that was of approx 45kW. This ASHP is operated entirely off renewable-origin electricity.

One key is to insulate the building correctly. However understanding heat pumps and sizing them correctly is the other key. Of the six heat pump installers I approached only two came forwards with sensible proposals (i.e. which matched my own engineering calculations*) and only one gave a sensible price. Most of the rest thought the building could not be fitted with an ASHP, or could not do the sums correctly, and plain overcharged, or all of these points.

EDIT : To add that ~90% of typical UK properties can accept an ASHP, whereas only ~5-10% of UK properties can accept a ground source heat pump (GSHP) irrespective of whether it is a borehole style (n boreholes each 100-200 feet deep) or 'slinky' style (n length of trench typically 4-8 ft deep). The UK % I have given would be equally applicable more widely in Europe for similar reasons. Bottom line, we need to focus our efforts on ASHP rather than GSHP.

There is an appalling level of knowledge in the UK heating-engineer community (aka "plumbers") and builders/architects on the use of ASHP and on how to insulate older properties (without creating more problems than one solves). Unfortunately to fix this requires them to throw out bad knowledge ("draughts are good"), learn new knowledge, and adopt very different business models.

It is somewhat different in other countries in Europe, mostly between 10 and 20 years ahead of the UK in these respect. For example I am currently in a property in Greece where the newbuild wall insulation is 70mm, which is thicker than most people would consider installing in the UK. The Greeks are correct, and the UK is wrong. For insight for the UK property I have described the retrofit loft insulation package that I installed now averages 300mm depth, and the wall insulation retrofit package varies between 50-100mm depending on where. The whole world needs to get good at this as part of the energy transformation, and the UK especially needs to pull its socks up and tackle its woeful performance in this area. Keeping this on topic, a side effect of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will be to accelerate this transition in all respects, worldwide.



(* I have the advantage that I was one of the technical oversight team that first approved the development of the standard UK calculation template about 10-years ago. Needless to say my bu11sh1t detector was triggered on many occasions discussing this project with four of the six candidate installers. I should add that the six I approached were the upper quartile of installers in this area of the UK, i.e. all the others are worse. There is a lot of improvement required.)

Thanks for your comments and sharing your experience. Kathy at Dandelion said the conductivity of the soil is very important and water works well as it is very conductive. Going 8 ft. down I wonder what technology they use; horizontal drilling or how about Elon's boring device on a small scale? In the US NE she claims that the system costs around 20-25K with incentives(heat-pumps have similar incentives as PVs.
New homes would be the most cost effective. In Ukraine they might require new homes after the Russians demolition of structures.
The economics of PV's with GSHP might work well. I also thought that converting heat to electricity and storing it in batteries or EVs might be more economical. Also someone thought doing BTC mining would be another benefit.
I personally might be interested in doing something along these lines in property in California.