Hi Mike,
Hi Phil,

     About "Air conditioning" of July 10 and 11:

MS> ...i thought i could try a question of my own.  ...temperature in
MS> homes...  Persons like me who pay a rent don't always find it
MS> suitable to have an air conditioner...  I'd like to know what
MS> alternatives other than removing humidity are available or, at
MS> least, imaginable...  I'd like to read the users here about it.
MR> Lately I've seen these portable air conditioners on wheels for rent.
PM> Prices of window A/Cers BTW have dropped...  The new ones are
PM> relatively quiet...  And it doesn't really use much electricity...

     Thank you both for keeping me up to date, we don't really have many
stores to visit in my sector;  even in their traditional Sunday adds bag
local businesses will ignore the people of St-Cecile (Trois-Rivieres)...

MR> ...I had this little old bar fridge which worked on electricity but
MR> there was no motor...  ...instead of a compressor, a heat source
MR> causes phase changes in 2 different liquids...

     Intreaguing!  I can't pretend to be at ease with the idea of making
use of heat somewhere to remove some more elsewhere but it certainly has
the merit to be really original.  I'll take your word that it works so i
might even add ingenuous...  Perhaps not everyone would feel secure with
ammonia and/or hydrogen around, though;  i confess i'm one of them.  %-)

MR> I was thinking that such a system could be adapted to
MR> air conditioning and directly powered by sunshine, say with a
MR> parabolic concentrator mirror of some kind.  Thus the brighter the
MR> Sun shines the more the system cools!

     Now that would be great if this principle remains applicable there!

PM> A couple of hours a day will keep a small room comfortable.

     I've taken notes of how fast the temperature could raise during the
cold night we got, two days ago.  I had below 18 degrees Celcius outside
so i used that oppotunity to vent the place until the inside temperature
dropped to 23.8 degrees Celcius.  At 4:00 in the morning i shut down the
fans then closed openings, fifty minutes later the temperature had risen
to 24.9 degrees Celcius - i'm not too certain that the sun was up yet...

     This building is full of leaks, i think the neighbour downstairs is
contributing to my misery and it's quite possible the refrigerator could
be generating more heat than i suspected as well.  Only the lower halves
of our windows let air circulate, that puts a lot of distance between it
and the ceiling which is more than a meter higher - some heat reservoir!

     So, if the insulation or whatever fails in my refrigerator that's a
source of heat too!  The men who built homes eighty years ago didn't use
refrigerators but at least they should have known heat tends to go up...

                                  %-o

MS> May it be worth the trouble to try to capture heat generated from a
MS> refrigerator and evacuate it outside before it compounds...
PM> In the 4 houses I know about, the frig happens to be next to the
PM> stove and its heat is evacuated via the exhaust hood on top of the
PM> stove.  More or less.  Can't say how efficient this is.

     I wish i could try this but i got the water-heater beside the stove
and my refrigerator lies in the vestibule!  A gyy who never lives in the
places he works on shouldn't be the one who decides how much plumbing is
to be saved as he redevides an appartment.  If the decision were mine my
water-heater would be in the vestibule where it might use less space and
with both the store and refrigerator in their niche it would no problem:
the exhaust hood on top of the store would have its usefulness extended!

     Of course, i got no exhaust hood at the moment neither...  That was
somewhere in my projects (i can do some transformations) but no money is
coming from the landlord and i must choose amongst few other priorities.
     
     Since air conditioners seem to have gone thru the same evolution as
colour television sets and VCRs i guess it may be my solution next year.
     
PM> Or, if you think your frig is generating too much heat, you can run
PM> a plastic exhaust tube from behind the frig to a window...

     I'm considering this alternative closely, my stove and water-heater
niche happens to be right beside my refrigerator;  a wall seperates them
that could be no real problem.  I was thinking of a piece of furniture i
could build around the refrigerator to collect its heat, some thermostat
might even start the fan only when required...  On the other side of the
niche i have the toilet room and that one too could use some form of fan
so it would make sense to develop further around the projected fan which
may, one day, fit right below the toilet room's ceiling, if i stay here!

PM> ...If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

     The kitchen is the only other room after the bedroom!  My vestibule
will be turned into a better computer post by the fall, when temperature
has dropped a little;  i happen to have the drawing on my ~WEB~ site for
mom to look at it:  http://public.sogetel.net/bicephale/Vestibule.GIF...
The other half is where that refrigerator is, next to the main entrance.

     Even at that, the kitchen will remain a key room in this appartment
so it only leaves my balcony.  I shure ate lots of sandwiches lately!...

                                                        Salutations,  :)

                                                        Michel Samson
                                                        a/s Bicephale


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