Filler’ up, Phil.
This is kind of a play on words. Assuming our AC tech’s name is Phil. It seems the trend to change our way of thinking about how we treat the environment is moving in the right direction at 1 mph. 1 mph may be sufficient if you are driving to your neighbor’s home down the street but it will take for ever if you have to go to Alaska from here. I want to instate a minimum speed of 40 mph similar to what is posted on the interstate. Not fast enough to cause havoc but fast enough to get us to where we need to go.
Watching an interesting ABC documentary on the History channel tonight in combination with some recent service calls sparked my inspiration to write this post. The show was called Earth 2100. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_2100 
You can see clips from it on You Tube as well. The recent service calls have been pretty typical for this time of the year. Most people require charging or adding refrigerant to a conventional air-conditioning system that has a slow leak and it hasn’t presented itself until the summer heat kicks in. The refrigerant typically used is R22. The production of R22 was banned as of Jan 1 2010 thus starting the runup of pricing on the liquified gas similar to the end of R12 production in 1995 thus giving it the street name of “liquid gold”.
Understanding it is a rough economy and these customers would rather patch up the problem and get a few more good years out of their old gas guzzler of an air conditioning system I comply with their request, fill them up and I’m on my way. After all, the kids need shoes.
What I would like to see since it seems it is the only way change in our behavior actually happens, is government regulation enforcing stricter requirements and deadlines thus raising the bar on efficiencies of what we drive, the type of refrigerant we use, the amount of water we use and so forth. I think the challenge in doing this is to not come across as a communist power in doing so but merely a recommendation to not kill ourselves with our pollutants, wastage and ignorance.
I am not an expert in global economy or global power production but these are my ideas and I think they will work if there were no lobbyist in the world working against positive change in our environment but unfortunately there are along with CEO’s and bad lawyers.
Require all coal power plants in use to be converted to a different form of power plant / geo / fusion / solar in the next 10 years. All newly constructed power plants should be of the above nature.
Require low flow plumbing fixtures in place in all new construction projects beginning Jan 2011. Stop production of anything that is not low flow as of today.
20 SEER HVAC systems are the code minimum by 2013 and 25 SEER HVAC systems by 2015. The water source geothermal heat pumps my company http://www.ecomech.net installs here in 2010, are around 25 – 40 SEER so please do not state these time frames are too stringent.
All homes should be equiped with self-sustaining principles such as ones used in Guatemala and Bermuda by 2015. I’m talking about rainwater collection systems. If you were stranded on an island with no springs or rivers it would probably be the second thing you would construct (after you build your lean-to out of palm fronds that is.)
Each home, new and old should be able to produce at least 10 percent of its energy consumption by 2015 and 30% by 2020 and 10% increments every 3 years after that. In some cases people may say this is not possible due to the angle of the roof or shading for solar panels. Firstly proper design and layout of a home is key to how it accepts the suns rays. If proper design is taken into account every home should be able to do this with solar panels alone. In no case should you cut down trees to feed solar panels. Wind turbines do work. Newer technologies exist that turn the turbine at minimal wind speeds.
Building and home air infiltration should be cut in half by 2012. This can be accomplished in both homes and large buildings with the use of bipolar ionization and spray applied insulation techniques.
Vehicles should get a minimum of 45 mpg by 2014 and 80 mpg by 2018 So 
what if your hybrid, fuel cell, water powered or electric car doesn’t go as fast. You wont necessarily be going slow since everybody else is driving the same type of car. Current vehicles will need to be retrofitted to these new technologies by 2016 or remain at car shows remembering the past.
San Deigo at night
Light pollution should be reduced by 75 – 85% over what is allowed in most cities. I’m not sure how much of an environmental impact this actually has because they claim the power plant have extra power at night-time since the cooling and electrical loads are less in commercial and some residential buildings. I just remember the GA power man coming to my school when I was a kid and passing out stickers to put on our wall switch plates that said turn it off when not in use. Its kind of hypocritical when I look out in front of my house and there are the streetlights glowing away. Vegas is a major violator of this request. It is pure wasted energy multiplied by 100. Think about this wouldn’t it be nice to stare at the stars at night from the middle of a city. This is something I miss about growing up in the country, I would love for my children to experience night-time = dark.
De-corporatize America. Large corporations make decisions you and I would never make as a small business owner. See Food Inc. & the Meatrix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_inc & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEkc70ztOrc These practices are the exact reason our economy is the way it is today and partly why our health and diet is what it is as well. Unethical decisions are made on our behalf in order to increase the bottom line of a company so the stockholders will approve the $350 million bonus of a CEO somewhere. My rant about CEO’s is in a fourth coming post.
The point of my ramble is we as the human population have to stop and change everything we are doing immediately including “topping off” our air conditioning systems. Go ahead and make a difference in the world. Replace it to an efficient one, it will reduce your bills and increase your comfort. Small incremental steps to make a change for the better is what our children and grandchildren will thank us for. As kids we didn’t take our vitamins even though we knew they were good for us. Lets make an effort to take our environmental vitamins and do the right thing.
My changes are abrupt and quick but lets remember, the movie that aired tonight wasnt called Earth 4100, it was called Earth 2100 – 90 years from now and it doesn’t look good doing 1 mph.
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Can propane possibly be more efficient than Geothermal?
I know many people are dependent upon propane because they live in rural areas. Some of our natural gas providers do not deem it necessary to run natural gas pipes to the areas that these people are living in. This takes place a lot in the mountainous N.Georgia areas due to the increased costs of running the lines to the less populated areas in conjunction with the rocky soil found in these parts.
The lack of natural gas leaves the rural residents with two options. One being the use of propane to heat their homes, which works well, but at $2-$3 per gallon this can be quite expensive. Option Two is to install an electric heat pump with electric resistance heating “auxiliary heat”. Electric heat pumps do work well in the more temperate climates, but fail to work well in the harsh winters found in the N.Georgia mountains. Which leaves the residents in that area with only one choice, propane.. so they think!
According to the propane cooperatives it appears that in a retrofit replacement, a high-efficiency propane furnace costs 12% less to install than an electric heat pump. Additionally, the propane cooperatives are stating a high-efficiency heat pump with propane backup recoups installation cost 40% faster than a geothermal heat pump with electric backup.
I would like to shed some light on this information and give my “two-cents”. I agree that the installation cost of a propane furnace is 2 times less expensive to install than a geothermal heat pump however the operating expenses of a propane furnace are 2.5 times more. This is because of a very simple science principle which is that water removes heat and adds heat faster than air.
For example:
If you were to boil a pot of water and place a thermometer into the pot you would see that the temperature will rise very fast. Now, if you were to turn on your oven to 250 degrees and place a thermometer inside yet not letting it touch anything then see how long it takes the mercury to rise inside the thermometer. I am not asking you to literally conduct this science experiment as I am sure few of you possess a thermometer that raises to 250 degrees and we don’t want any one getting hurt. So please do not conduct this experiment. However, I am sure you can visualize what the outcome would be.
Another experiment to prove how water removes heat faster than air.. Let’s heat up two frying pans on the stove. Take one off and place it into a sink full of water. How long did it take to cool off? Now, take the other frying pan and wave it around in the air. How long did it take to cool off? The answers: The pan that you stick in the sink would cool off within seconds versus the one that you waved around in the air. That one would take up to 3-4 minutes to cool.
I think I’ve proven my point.
Now, let’s look at how a furnace works- Historically speaking, a typical furnace operating at 80% efficiency would utilize 80% of the fuel that it burns to heat your home while 20% goes up the flue as exhaust. A geothermal heat pump converts one unit of energy purchased from the power company and puts out 5 units of energy in heat output. Giving an efficiency rating of 500%!!! Under no circumstances ever can a furnace operate above 99%. Or, simply stated “the more efficient your system, the less your operating costs, less your dependence on foreign oil and the less your carbon emissions.”
