Energy savings, do you care?

The type you mention lasting 36 years is a very in-efficient one, so if you had switched to the inverter based ones 20 years ago, you would probably have saved a lot. In the EU, only the high efficiency types is allowed for sale

The inverter ones we produce has +10 years lifetime at elevated temperatures. We see little return from the marked. Small return is blocked motor from the standstill of the pump in the off-season

Thanks for the comments :-)

Cheers

Klaus

Correct. New regulation actually demand that the user press a button before using the faucet, so that the heat recirculation pump had time to get the water warm right before the user needs it

Cloud solutions should be with the big vendors, so little risk of a dead device. Glad you got a cheap NAS :-)

Cheers

Klaus

Many do. Most people cba though, would rather pay pump prices. There's a good bit written about using waste veg oil & used engine oil online.

It's also possible to thermally decompose plastic waste into various fuel grades, most of which are usable in diesel engines as long as they include oil.

Didn't know that. Every old diesel engine I've had or used has been very reliable.

NT

Yer nuts, but I knew that.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com

But why the need for The Cloud, at all?

Can't your device PHONE you and SPEAK the message?

Or, SMS an alert?

Or, email using your ISP (without adding yet another "service")?

Or some ordered combination of the above?

Jabbut.. the salesperson cannot bleed you for more profit. You MUST open a Paid For Account. We must money keep floating the right way you know. With a new device for each upgrade of Android of course.

The risk of the cloud service disappearing increases dramatically once the warranty expires.

--
  Jasen.

Yes, everything should be RENTED -- with the "initial purchase" being just a sort of "application fee". :-/

What happens to your "investment" when the vendor decides to stop supporting it (with their "service")? Does it magically lose it's previous functionality -- just because it can't phone home?

Offer value. The world doesn't need to turn into a bunch of "toilet paper salesmen"! (dispenser is free but ONLY works with one particular toilet paper manufacturer's product)

"For only $99/yr you can upgrade the GPS maps in your new car!"

"Yeah, but the GPS implementation SUCKS. What do I care if the maps reflect the latest road additions in my area??"

Well, I'd start with fixing all the drafts and other air leaks.

Never mind all the noise about R-numbers of insulation and windows until the air leaks are plugged. The classic method is a fan in a doorway slightly pressurizing the house, then wander around with an incense stick and follow the smoke.

My house (in the Boston area, built in 1929) is uninsulated, but is stuccoed, so the only air leaks were largely the old windows. When those were replaced, the boiler runs little, and hardly notices the wind.

The noise about R-numbers is basically marketing mis-direction. The problem with plugging air leaks is that it doesn't cost enough.

Joe Gwinn

Don't ever complain about anyone else being rude.

--

  Rick C. 

  --+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging 
  --+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

for a 50% duty ratio)

move to a better climate. ;)

Your opinion about R-values is not based in fact. I've seen large houses w ith huge window walls that clearly are difficult to heat. Even my smaller house with a few patio doors leaks heat like a sieve. In the winter I can stand in front of the door and feel the heat radiating out the door. If I turn away the difference is obvious. For a couple of years I used bubble w rap on them, but it's a tremendous pita so I stopped using it. It did appe ar to save money and the room felt warmer. Hard to say about the money for certain, that would take years of averaging or calculations taking weather into account, but I definitely felt differences standing in front of the d oors. Drapes would help as well, but who has those anymore, especially whe n you have a view.

You do realize that air is very, very inexpensive to heat, no?

--

  Rick C. 

  -+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging 
  -+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

Here we (I) use Taco brand water pumps. I had a new furnace installed ~20 yrs ago and the taco pump stopped working about 10 years later. Turned out (when I read the pump installation instructions) that the plumber had mounted the pump axis horizontally instead of vertically. The instructions said horizontal was OK, but vertical was recommended for long life. I had plumber back, installed new pump 'correctly'. I then took apart the old pump, got it working, and it lives as a spare. ('cause the pump will always fail on the coldest Saturday night of the year. :^)

George H.

You're Dutch, right? ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com

So, you'll see a wide plume running out the combustion relief for the furnace and water heater! (e.g., a square foot hole to the out-of-doors for each).

[When there are forest fires nearby, we can smell them inside the house, despite all doors and windows being closed. Likewise if a neighbor is burning fireplace *or* anyone is having their roof repaired/replaced]

In our case, we have a lot of west-facing glass (basically, most of the back wall of the house!). We keep the blinds closed during the day as they help deflect the heat radiating inward.

[slowly replacing the windows but when their each ~30+ sq ft, it's not a trivial (or inexpensive!) task!]

And, with a "frontier style" elevation, the "attic" is a mere 10-12 inches "thick" -- not much opportunity for insulation, there.

Thanks Klaus, I am not convinced the savings are very big at all. Assuming zero inflation and a fixed pump price of $150 and electricity a pessimistic 20cent per kWh then a rough calc goes like this: The inefficient pump uses circa 90W and runs about 4 hours per 24 hours averaged over a year. Over 30 years life that burns 3942kWh or $788.

The efficient ones use 30W so burn 1314 kWhr or $262 of energy but last ten years so I need to buy two at $150 each during that same period and spend about $150 each for the professional installation also, so over 30 years cost is $862.

Conclusion: if there is a saving it is likely only small and only if the pumps really last longer than 10 years or you can get cheap labor to replace them.

piglet

The highest ski resort in the Netherlands gets up to almost 700 feet above sea level! 60 meter vertical runs! Well, that's indoors. I'd expect a fully-charged Tesla with snow tires might manage to get up there, but maybe you shouldn't run the heater.

We don't see many Teslas in Truckee.

Safeway shoppers park their Jeeps in those slots when it's crowded.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

Science teaches us to doubt. 

  Claude Bernard

The perfect place to go when driving a Tesla, no crowding at the chargers. Wonderful!

Teslas are selling so many cars these days they are having a hard time grow ing the charging as fast. They've got new faster chargers now. It's hard to have enough time while charging to go in and so your shopping. What is better is having 240 volt charging at the rental units. Nearly all the hot els have them now. Still not enough of them though. They are usually full if you try to plug in late. Too many EVs on the roads. I guess some peop le are a bit slow on the uptake and haven't figured out yet that it's not a matter of "if", only a matter of "when".

It's a good idea to once in a while pull your head out of the computer and look around. Life is not just about electronics design.

--

  Rick C. 

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  -++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

Who comes up with such weird laws? Now every house needs a button wired to each sink and shower? Which, of course, needs to be very well safety-isolated. That drives up the cost of homes.

Here in the US we simply don't have recirculating pumps except maybe in upscale mansions where the cost for the energy to heat water doesn't matter much.

If it absolutely has to be done I'd automate that. Asking a resident to remember to press such a button does not make sense to me. People will forget. How about this: A sensor detects that a person is near a warm water tap or on the toilet. If the person doesn't quickly move around or away this starts the recirculating pump. When the person surprisingly walks away again or if the person turns on the warm water (flow, pressure drop) the pump turns off again.

The problem is different and also happens with big vendor clouds (which are generally used as a contract service). Goes like this:

A sales droid at Supergizmo Corporation has a smashing idea: Let's offer Gizmo at or below cost, with "free" cloud service but when customers want to use the cloud more extensively they can buy a $4.99/month cloud upgrade. Then we make money. Hopefully.

Now they rent cloud space at big fat Supercloud Corporation. They must pay hefty monthly fees for that. Several years down the road the board of directors isn't all that happy about finances at Supergizmo Corporation, so they hire a new CEO. He discovers that, hey, we do not make any profit with Gizmo. Way fewer people opted for the $4.99 extra package than we hoped and now we are subsidizing the rest of the customers that don't buy into the extra subscription. Let's stop this! ... Poof, cloud gone and everyone now has a brick.

I have helped design several cloud-based systems but they were different. Commercial or high-end residential customers, forced cloud use for every client, and reasonable monthly fees (low single digit dollars). I cannot imagine a homeowner going for that just for a pump. Unless it is part of a larger system with surveillance and all so the added value is palpable.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Did you leave your common sense at home today? Low voltage wiring like thi s needs NO protection. The protection is on the high voltage wiring. Yes, it adds the cost of the button and the wire. Not sure you can sell a hous e for $300,005 dollars when they should be $299,999.

It would make sense to save water perhaps, but much easier and more cost ef fective to use an instant-on water heater. Why bother with the whole hot w ater plumbing system, much less a recirculating loop with it's operating co sts.

Yeah, that's a very simple trouble free approach... really??? What's wrong with instant on? In the households in the EU the house current provides fo r more power availability in a standard circuit, over 2 kW vs about 1.4 kW here. That's plenty for instant on.

You do enjoy your fantasies, don't you?

Of course it would be part of a larger system. Not many will automate one recirculating pump in their home.

I have a single outlet switch that I use for timing my car charging or a wi ndow fan. Right now it's on the fan. If I find better units that I can co ntrol when the Internet is down I'll get more. For now this one is good en ough, but I'd like to do more like control my water heater.

--

  Rick C. 

  +-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging 
  +-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209