laptop heater

Kinda reminds me of the NASA space pen story, I have no idea if it's true, but it is a natural human tendency to make things overly complex, particularly technical minded people.

BTW, if you want dramatically longer life, wire two bulbs in series. The light-producing efficiency will drop substantially but you don't want light anyway, you want heat, so it's a win-win situation.

Or cook it, when I was a kid I had a toy oven that used a lightbulb to bake cookies. It was only 60W as I recall.

Ken

Crazy is it not. Its a pump house and the computer was being used to keep track of the temperature in a above ground cistern and outside. I have a solar water heater and long term I will use that to keep the cistern from freezing when I get all the parts working. I did not like running all those temperature lines 100 feet from the pump house then the control lines back (especially since the house is not heated yet).

Your next question, why not put it underground. Rocks and money. The money to dig a hole that big, the money to dig through the rocks around here and finally the money to buy a 1500 gallon undergound concrete cistern when you can get one above ground twice that size for half that. Then the fun part of tinkering with all that stuff to get it to work.

george

AZ

That is the problem. There were significant times this winter when it was down to 20deg F.

I can't help it. I have been using deg F too long. They will bury me with it.

george

AZ Nomad wrote:

Graham

Its amazing how we send ourselves down the wrong path with names. Thermostatic switch means to me the little button thingys with two leads. Look like a watch battery. I took one of those thermostats you described out of a house I lived in thirty years ago. Its is still in my junk box. I took it out and dusted it off. It still works.

george

Eeyore wrote:

control

Hi...

Don't feel bad; I'm in Canada where we've been metric for years and years, and I still think imperial measures... still have to translate before I can discuss temp with others, or decide what to wear.

Finally getting a bit used to traveling kilometers per hour, but fuel economy expressed as liters per 100 km drives me nuts :)

Take care.

Ken

Hi George...

One more thought just came to mind; being that the laptop is left on all the time, I wonder if the power supply wouldn't generate enough heat all by itself if it were kept in the same insulated enclosure as the laptop?

Take care.

Ken

The cpu in a modern laptop certainly dumps enough heat.

Well technically both are correct, though I'd call a central heating control just a "thermostat", while "thermostatic switch" would imply one of the little Klixon buttons you refer to.

If the computer is/was being used to keep track of the temperature, why not do away with it totally & replace with a wireless weather station? Such as the following,

taharka

Lexington, Kentucky U.S.A.

I suspect that thermostat may be a trade name long passed into common use - like Hoover.

There is always more to the story. You never know where to stop. I wrote the software to read the temperatures and average them and on and on because I don't trust solar controller freeze protection they supplly with solar systems. I also need to write software to do the control functions. Doubt I can do that with the wx station.

george

taharka wrote:

Hi...

Are you going to circulate the "consumable" water itself through the solar panels? Or are you going to circulate an anti-freeze based coolant through your solar panels and extract energy through a heat exchanger?

Take care.

Ken

True, it really depends on how big of a box you use and cold this lappy will be getting.

- Mike