Steam bath

[altivo]

It rained about 1.5 in (4 cm) last night, then quit around sunrise. The humidity all day has been somewhere close to saturation, as temperatures crept into the 80s (high 20s for you Celsius folks.) Almost no breeze, lots of mosquitos, and the sky mostly gray. Forget Dante's imagery of people boiling in hot pitch or frozen forever while demons gnaw on their feet. This is my idea of hell.

While I was out finishing up chores for the evening, it looked as if the power had gone out in the house and I thought "Oh great, a night with no breeze, no air conditioning, and 100% humidity. Fortunately not. There just weren't any lights on in the house that I could see through the windows. We used to survive this stuff when we lived in the city. Our house had no air conditioning and really, it wasn't essential. Out of a year we used to really wish for it only four or five days. Things have changed, though.

Of course, this house does have A/C, and because I paid to replace it shortly after we moved in, it's an energy efficient system that uses geothermal cooling and heating. We don't usually hesitate to use it. Still, the cooling runs about 30 to 40 days a year now, and I can't imagine trying to live here without it. Mostly it's the humidity that matters. I can set the thermostat to 80 F. and as long as the thing runs once in a while, it's comfortable because it removes humidity.

Did stuff today: more spinning, weaving, knitting. Not done, but progressing.

Comments

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Don't you just love 100% relative humidity :)

With my new job coming I might get split systems put in, though we only really need cooling only. Still the roof and insulation need doing before all that.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

If you're going to have heating-cooling work done, yes, it usually is worthwhile to update the entire system to the latest best energy saving version you can afford.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Problem is, the house is a split level, the lower level has high ceiling so there's no actual insulation in that part. The upper level has lower ceilings and a space in the roof with terrible insulation, so basically all the heat from the lower level goes straight into the upper level. I'd love a cardif-air http://www.cardiffair.com.au/ which would help ventilation enormously. You could remove all the hot air before switching airconditioning on, we'd need at least two 3kw units, those panasonic oxygen shower units are good (inverter of course) they actually add fresh air from outside, I can't remember if they have an ioniser in them or not.

What's this Geothermal one you have?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The maker's name escapes me at the moment, I'll tell you when I can remember it (probably not available in Oz anyway.) It uses wells drilled about 100 feet down into the same area we draw water from. They have sealed heat exchange lines that allow the actual heat pump to either dump out heat underground or draw it up in winter. The year-round temperature down there is something like 55°F/13°C. It makes the cooling in summer very cheap to operate, but it cost more to install because of having the wells drilled.

In our climate we can't rely on that alone for winter heating, but it does help there too. It can easily keep the base temperature of the house at around 60°F. We use a woodstove and an electric furnace to make up the difference. Fortunately the house was built in the 1970s, during the first "energy crisis", so it's well-insulated and pretty efficient.

[keeganfox.livejournal.com]

My folks had a heat pump installed in their house in New Zealand, but they didn't get a 100 foot deep well. It only went a fraction of that, but by all accounts it works very well. I wonder what the differences are?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The well systems can be laid out in many different ways. They can even do it horizontally in some places and only put it down ten or fifteen feet. We happen to live on top of a glacial moraine, which means about six to ten feet down you hit gravel. Gravel doesn't have much heat transfer ability. So they went down until they hit the water table, which transfers heat in and out nicely.

Most heat pumps in the US are air to air transfer systems. The one I replaced was that type. They work well for heating in the southern states, and are moderately good for cooling if they have fans to draw air through the condenser coils. However, those are not nearly as good for heating up here in the north. They are still used, but I wanted to reduce the electric bill. It took about five years to save enough on electricity to make up the difference in the installation cost. Since we have no plans to move, that made good sense, and we are now in the seventh year since installation. The only problem we've had was caused by a mouse chewing through a wire once.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

That's extremely uber techy cool that is :) That's how New Zealand generates a lot of its power. I can imagine that'd be expensive to set up. What with the bad drought we've had the lines would probably crack because we've had real problems with concrete shifting etc.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

ClimateMaster is the manufacturer of the system I have. There are actually about fifteen US companies with EnergyStar certification on their geothermal systems, but most of them wouldn't install anything this far north or had no agent or dealer in Illinois. ClimateMaster is based in Oklahoma but had a dealer in Rockford who sold us the system and installed it.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

It was 33 (91.4F) in the shade yesterday at noon where I was. Humidity according to the BBC was around 76%. Can I borrow your air con, please?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid packing it up and shipping it would be prohibitively expensive, but if you want to fly over and cool off, sure.