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Oct 04, 2008
Snalliestfrog Cakes 6 posts

Topic: Tech Talk / relaunched in open source?

Does this mean I am at the wrong forum? it does look very sparsely populated here. is there a more populated version of corrections.com somewhere?

 
Oct 04, 2008
Snalliestfrog Cakes 6 posts

Topic: Tech Talk / TV Transmitters

u can try asking at consumer reports forum: http://discussions.consumerreports.org/n/pfx/forum.aspx?nav=index&webtag=cr-ecz

or maybe better yet www.diyaudio.com

 
Oct 04, 2008
Snalliestfrog Cakes 6 posts

Topic: Tech Talk / Cutting energy costs…how?

and here is a correction of the very first paragraph of the very first post:

the lights out after leaving a room.[/quote] That statement reminded us of a motion detector but detectors can backfire if a light has to turn off and on a lot due to a motionless room user. the constant restarts can draw 100% or more power than steady usage.
 
Oct 04, 2008
Snalliestfrog Cakes 6 posts

Topic: Tech Talk / Cutting energy costs…how?

third time is a charm?

re furnace costs: passive heating can be one of the easiest and cheapest things to do in the ‘alternative’ energy field; the water gets hot in the solar panel and then flows in a pipe down to warm the living space/having cement or stone walls to retain that heat is optimal.

 
Oct 04, 2008
Snalliestfrog Cakes 6 posts

Topic: Tech Talk / Cutting energy costs…how?

re furnace costs<passive>

 
Oct 04, 2008
Snalliestfrog Cakes 6 posts

Topic: Tech Talk / Cutting energy costs…how?

turning the lights out after leaving a room<<that>

tv can also be put on a timed shutdown; or a shutdown based on no activity/no response to an onscreen prompt

number one electricity saver for lights is when LED is used on a special timer. the timer can make an LED turn on only [b]ten percent[/b] of the time but the flashes appear as one continous light to the human eye similar to the way fluid cartoons can be made from partial drawings. LED is an electricity saver in other ways too; like it has a rep for delivering ‘brightness’ with low watts the same as a CFL. also it has no warm up draw when starting like an HID can. it has no ballast so no power loss there either.

A good HID ballast will have a power factor above 0.9 (i.e. more than 90% of the power it draws is used to power the bulb). Cheaper (lower quality) ballasts often have power factors of 0.5 or less; only half of the power gets to the bulb. So a 150W lamp would be drawing 300W of power. An old ballast can have it’s power factor decrease by 20% due to degradation of metal. Old bulbs lose brightness rather than actually costing more; 20% brightness can be lost in a year and another 20% the next year.

an old HID ballast might also mean you have a mercury vapor or a metal halide and those are considerably more expensive to run than a high pressure sodium. It should be easy to switch a MH to a HPS by adding an ignitor which is a ten dollar part or so and two/three wires.

re the example of a cheap 150W lamp>>that lamp can draw 300W as it operates BUT it can draw around 535W when it starts and until it warms<<this>

some sensors that are facing the wrong way or maybe in the shade of a building/etc will flicker but some will never turn off. the sensor can be easily bypassed and the wires sent to a timer instead.

maximizing efficiency of a lighthood’s reflecting ability can mean less lights are needed (or maybe smaller wattage is needed). Dimpled metal is best over all others including mylar and mirror; it has a reflecting % in the high nineties. the dimples mean more surface area is available for reflection; dimpled metal foil sheets/rolls for this purpose are relatively cheap from stage/theatrical supply. Flat white gives good reflection too, like if the light hood can be painted; heat resistant paint is best.

re smaller wattage>>most low wattage CFLs seen for sale are 28W but they come half or less of that wattage. Their brightness does not really decrease but their projection power does. i.e. if you look at it from far away it is likely to be seen quite easily as a bright speck but the floor area/wall area around it that is lit will be proportionately less than the stronger CFLs.

an effective lighthood is most loved by a bill payer if the bulb is shaped or mounted so that some of it faces upwards. example: some finger shaped HID bulbs can only be mounted horizontally, so the top half shines upwards towards the lighthood. but some can be mounted vertically so the tip points straight to the ground..that means all light goes to the sides or down; the sideways coverage will be more glaring in some situations but otherwise the sideways projected light can mean more square footage is lit than when a light projects only downward. If a light shines into a lighthood then the shape/square area that it lights up on the ground can be heavily influenced by the shape of it’s lighthood. a square hood of the right dimensions for a square area means more efficient coverage of the area than a round hood would give.

re light direction>>just because an HID ballast is currently having a bulb in it that says horizontal mounting only, it does not mean that all bulbs that will fit that ballast will have that restriction. Also color of bulbs can bvary a lot. like if a certain spectrum lights up your conditions most efficiently than you can probably find a bulb of that color to fit existing fixtures.

wind power? tread mills?

re the furnace filters:

Carbon filters are often used as prefilters for heating, air conditioning, ventilation and air cleaning equipment. The carbon prefilter helps a bit with particle control meaning media filters can last longer but also carbon removes two classes of gas very well>ether/acetone types and smelly organic ones like from toilet odors, rancid oils, decaying fruits, etc. Carbon filters can be used as the only filter in the hvac system but cannot be relied on to gather dust the way a media filter will. carbon can be made by simply building a burn pile in the right way so cost to aquire or replace it could be real minimal.

re furnace costs<passive>




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