About neil

sustainable budhism

The local buddhist temple has just been completed. AirScape provided several whole house fans. The building itself is constructed with ICF (insulated concrete forms). This makes for a high mass, well insulated and sealed building envelope, perfect for whole house fans.  Total airflow from the whole house fans is 9200 CFM – the building is 6,000 sq. feet. That’s a good lot of air, but this is the only form of cooling, so the amount of airflow has to be high for the peak conditions.

If you want to design your own temple, Carlos Delgado is the architect.

If you are considering a heat pump

This article by Henry Gifford, an energy saving specialist discusses why heat pumps are no panacea.  His points, well made, bring home the messages that building envelope efficiency is critical and the importance of examining the entire energy chain –  from power house to your house.  Not that readers of this blog need reminding, but Henry also points out that over half of this country’s electricity derives from coal burning . (BTW clean coal = oxymoron du jour)

www.energysavingscience.com/

http://www.finehomebuilding.com/departments/taking-issue/heat-pump-schmeat-pump.aspx

4.4e WHF ships

We’re happy to announce that the 4.4e WHF is currently in stock and we’re moving product out the door.

What makes this an “e” ?  The motor is an ECM (electronically commutated motor) which when matched up with the efficient blade design gives a great power profile and low noise.

See the details here: http://airscapefans.com/products/Shop/Natural-Cooling/Whole-House-Fans/AirScape-4.4e-WHF

The following graph shows the energy use profile of the 4.4e as compared to the theoretical efficiency of a fan system.

kohilo

The Kohilo Whole House Fan is designed to be more financially available (yes, that is a genteel word for cheaper) than our flagship units. How did we do this ? We replaced the motorized damper unit and electronics board with a backdraft damper.

A backdraft damper is pushed open with airflow and falls back (by gravity) when the fan is off. This provides a basic seal (nothing like our motorized dampers), but has no insulation.   In severe climates the Kohilo grille will have to be manually insulated at the end of the season.  We do provide an upgrade path for customers so that they can upgrade to the full AirScape functionality and convenience.

Railways should be open sourced.

Even though railroads are much more energy efficient and deliver lower transportation costs without federal subsidies, why are trucks the preferred mode of transportation?

I think that the answer lies in the fact that the highway truck combination is effectively open source.  The term open source is commonly used in the software world, but it applies here as well.

The platform is a highway, which just about anybody can use, provided they obey rules for weight, size, and safety of their modules (trucks in this case). This gives a tremendous amount of freedom to truckers and shippers to control their own destiny.  Ask anybody who has used the railroads for shipping and you will see that a rigid central planning department controls how and when your freight arrives.

How about this for an idea. Let’s make the railroads into a regulated monopoly. (It works for electricity, water, and gas BTW). The railroad makes its income by maintaining the infrastructure.