Wind tunnel effect through house to cool electronics.

el

nto

There is a fan you can buy for a house that goes up in the attic. I believe it is called a "total house fan". If you leave the attic door open and allow the fan to draw warm air out of the house.. it cools it substantially however if there is a fire your house burns down much quicker.

shortT

Hmm interesting theory.

I lived in a house with an air-ventilation system and it used hot air to warm the house.

The air goes in from the top, goes through the attic, is warmed there... (or is warmed down below?)... then it goes down through tubes and warms the house. (I could be mistaken but I thought that's how it worked)

I guess such a system would supply fresh oxygen and just maybe, just maybe the house would burn down a little bit quicker... ohoh.

Well better not to start a fire... but there are combatting systems for that... like smoke detectors... and maybe house could be equiped with water hoses... wow ;)

But then again... it's rare that electricity fails...

So I guess it's safe to simply connect the smoke detectors to the electricity... and then simply have batteries as a backup...

But how does one know if the battery/backup system really works during eletricity fail out ? ;)

Hmmm it must be a closed circuit so to speak without failling back on a secondary system... It must be one main system:

So requirements:

1. The eletricity must come from the batteries.

1. The batteries must be charged at the same time when eletricity net is available.

2. There must be some way to know if batteries can last a few hours when eletricity fails because for a example the house is on fire ;)

So I guess connecting smoke detectors to the electricity net could work after all ;)

Bye, Skybuck :)

Be no good in my other place, the outside is well in the hundred's this time of year.

-- John the West Ham fan C.E.T. snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com <

Battery-only smoke detectors are safer, so long as you replace the (9-volt) batteries every 18 months or less. They use no significant power when idle: but the battery charge declines (very slowly.) When needed, the battery need power the alarm for only two minutes or however long it takes to alert the family and identify whether the alarmm betokens real danger. Firemen tell you, whenever in doubt, simply get out (and ring 911.) If the house does not burn down, a new battery is sufficiently cheap.

Air is a rather lousy thermal conductor:

You could do better to cool your house with water, which has 20 times the thermal conductivity. The procedure is similar to using air cooling.

1. Close all the doors and windows.
2. Seal all the outlets, drains, and cracks.
3. Turn on all the faucets and allow the house to fill with water.
4. When full and adequately cooled, drain the water outside.
5. Repeat as necessary to cool the house and electronics.

Liquid whole-house immersion cooling may be a bit excessive for your application. Therefore, a hybrid approach, such as spraying your electronics with a water hose, where the mechanism is evaporative cooling, might be more appropriate. It also uses less water.

Another hybrid approach would be plumbing. The liquid would be transported through various size pipes and hoses, accumulate the heat, and empty it outside via a suitable radiator. Such water cooling is commonly used in high end over-clocked PC game machines.

It is also possible to operate some electronics under water. This requires low impedance design, which is not particularly efficient, but useful for such applications like marine radios. You could analyze the schematic to see if immersion cooling is possible, or you could simply run a test by dumping your electronics in a water bucket. If successful, simply emptying the bucket outside is equivalent to dumping the heat.

Please note that you are not really "cooling" anything. What you're doing is moving the heat from its source, in your electronics, to somewhere else. It's a good idea to make sure the destination is able to handle the added heat before dumping the calories in their back yard.

The ones we have emit an annoying intermittent beep before the battery runs flat - great as you are warned.

-- John the West Ham fan C.E.T. snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com <

The newer smoke detectors, with Lithium batteries, will last about

The AC powered smoke detector backup battery lasts about 8-10 years. That's roughly the self-discharge shelf life of the alkaline battery. The battery is only used when the AC power fails. One nice feature on some of these AC powered alarms is that they can be wired together. If there's a fire in a remote part of the house, the alarm will blast in all parts of the house. They are usually wired to the burglar alarm.

I recently replaced one smoke detector because they would trigger on my cooking. They have an "alarm silencer" button, which temporarily disables the smoke alarm for about 10 minutes. Very handy.

The NFPA recommends that smoke alarms be replaced every 10 years.

I can see why. I tested my 35 year old smoke alarms, with new batteries, and a piece of burning newspaper. Two out of four did NOT trigger. The ones that did trigger, required considerable smoke and time before the buzzer sounded. I replaced them all with newer models, which are allegedly more reliable. When in doubt, test.

Maybe the smoke detector is trying to tell you something ! :)

Of course, but I never get the clue until after dinner is incinerated. The problem is in the scheduler for my multitasking. It's not pre-emtive and it's ignoring interrupts. I'm usually reading email or usenet news while cooking dinner. It takes a while and I find it boring to just stare at the oven, pan, or pot while it cooks. So, I get immersed in something else, only to find my dinner incinerated. It happens often enough that I now prefer my dinners well done. I'm sure a clock timer would reduce the incidence of carbonization, but I detest being on a rigid schedule and refuse to let such time regimentation into the house. A sand hour glass or water clock would be acceptable, but are rather awkward to adjust.

(or

er

ing

if

is

You could have them on AC power but with rechargeable batteries as a back up. I think the new fire alarms use rf to talk to one another as well. Interesting... using warm air from the attic to heat your house. Thanks for sharing that.

shortT

el

nto

I purchased a single air-conditioning unit for my machines.....

Over clocked (over cooked more like), however local AMD and P4 are well happy, the planet fries in the mean time?

Need I say more? braiNs

--

Sounds like the reliable scheduling of windows Processes and threads!

'Whole house fan' and they are required to have a self closing shutter that closes if there is a fire. They are normally mounted in the ceiling at the center of a house, so it can pull the hottest air from near the ceilings, and force it through the attic to replace the hotter air above the ceiling. The grill and shutter are mounted flush to the ceiling, with the fan, shroud and motor sitting on top. they were VERY common in Florida decades ago, but have pretty much disappeared because of Central air. They cooled the house a lot, but pulled in lots of moisture, pollen, mold and dust.

I used to have a timer program for the computer to tell me when something would be done. It went off 30 seconds early, to give me time to get up and walk to the kitchen. I used it when i was making pizza.

Thanks for the info.

shortT

Technology is often a good solution to personal problems, but not for me. Approximately 6 years ago, my cardiologist, G.P., drug dealer, and a few friends all agreed that I needed to learn how to relax. That's fairly difficult for a lifetime "Type A" personality that runs on adrenaline and conflicts.

One of the ways in which I avoid stress is to not get overly excited about being early or late. I do not wear a wrist watch. My XP desktop does not have the clock showing. My cell phone does not prominently display the time. There is no clock in my vehicle. The VCR and microwave are stuck at 12:00. I removed the cycling computah from my bicycle. The beneficial result is that I'm no longer stressed with being on time. The detrimental result is that I tend to lose track of time. I'm not sure if this was such a great idea, but it seems to work for me. Your mileage may vary.

I will confess to having a weather station that displays the date and time. There's also a clock that displays in GMT. Those are the only clocks in the house (that functions). While I maintain a rather loose personal schedule, I don't expect others to do the same. Therefore, I make it a point of being early to appointments and not worry about time very much.

Time is natures way of keeping everything from happening at once.

Jeff, I stopped wearing a watch the day that I was told that I was

I only use the alarm clock to wake mew when I have an early doctor's appointment. I don't really care about missing something on TV, but I do display the clock on the task bar, so I can keep an eye on my dad & stepmother who live next door. I know their habits, and want to be able to help them when they need it, without intruding in their lives.

Death is God's way of telling you the game is over.

I installed a whole house fan in a hallway ceiling in my 1200 sq ft rancher. in the cool that follows a thunderstom, with the windows open, it cools the entire house in about 5 minutes.

There is a fan you can buy for a house that goes up in the attic. I believe it is called a "total house fan". If you leave the attic door open and allow the fan to draw warm air out of the house.. it cools it substantially however if there is a fire your house burns down much quicker.

shortT