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People have been moving heat around with water for
ages,
and for good reason, it's plentiful and has a great specific
heat capacity in a convenient temperature range. It is
however, nasty when it inevitably leaks out of some tiny
pinhole, somewhat corrosive and prone to destroy the
pipework
in a freezing situation.
So, as an alternative, how about a load of balls? Steel is
about 1/8th the specific heat capacity of water, but it's
about 8x denser, so it's essentially the same. Steel ball
bearings are tough, relatively cheap and totally frost
proof. A leak would need to be pretty serious to let even
one ball pop out unexpectedly. The pump would have to
be
slightly modified and the corners would need careful
radius
control. On the plus side, instead of the dowdy boring
near-silent sound of water moving around in pipes and
radiators* the comforting and relaxing sound of
thousands
of hot ball bearings clanking around would fill the whole
house.
The radiators could be designed as minimal wire frames
to
allow much better surface area for desirable ventilation
of
the hot balls, and bingo enthusiasts could invest in the
numbered ball upgrade package.
*air water heater heat exchanges, radiation is a very
minor
component here.
Sherlock Homes and the ...
https://drive.googl...-AYkDWoeQgtH_tqU47T
[not_morrison_rm, Jan 23 2018]
How about big ass chains?
https://12hb401d0fh...012/07/P1030318.jpg
[doctorremulac3, Jan 23 2018]
[link]
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75mm steel spheres. Heat them in a tank of oil, have them roll down pipes and trackways onto cooling racks; bimetallic mechanisms keep them captive until they cool enough, then drop onto the return channels to a central hoist (archimedian screw ?) which raises them back to the oil tank. |
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Very Steampunk, very Heath Robinson. Very good. [+] |
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Extra points if the lifting mechanism is driven by a Stirling engine with lots of polished brass and mahogany, and a centrifugal governor on top. |
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... but also entertaining, and great for cracking walnuts. |
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//how about a load of balls? |
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<Austrian accent> "Zer subconcious mind is zer complete bugger"</AA> |
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Err, this does look a wee bit similar to zer....dammit the keyboard's gone all Ostreich on me ... |
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to the one in "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Etheric Engineers" ( c link) on page 14 (?) about halfway down.. |
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The noise could be significantly reduced by having the balls circulate in a double-walled pipe, with vacuum between the inner and outer layers. |
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It would make sense for the balls to circulate
downwards through the house, dispersing heat as they
go. To get from the ground floor to the top floor,
they should be flung on a parabola through the house
(which has strategically placed holes in the floors)
with the vertex of the parabola being a collection
pipe on the top floor. The entertainment value of
seeing heavy steel balls being shot upwards through
the house every few seconds would make this idea
worthwhile. |
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//heavy steel balls being shot upwards |
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...with sufficient dexterity, a magnetic post-it note with
"Was that with 2 sugars?" might be slapped onto the ball
going up, and get a reply from the upper floors. |
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Additionally, a small array of pieces of steel (of varying
lengths) could be struck by the spheres, playing "God Save
the Queen" at appropriate moments. |
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// heavy steel balls being shot upwards through the house // |
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// balls were replaced by bells // |
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Solid balls, tuned resonant guide pipes - tubular bells ... |
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Some animals have a dramatic drop in body temperature
when they hibernate, presumably losing heat to their
surroundings, so I wonder if you could do
central heating with an animal - say, hamsters -
engineered to have a very rapid hibernation cycle,
crawling around the house in ducts... |
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Conveniently you could use the hvac ducting as the major
support structure for the house, as it would need that sort
of structure. |
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Alternatively, liquid mercury isn’t terribly corrosive, and
could be pumped. |
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//to the one in "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the
Etheric Engineers" ( c link) on page 14 (?) about halfway
down..// |
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huh? I'm confused, so I checked the pages either side of
14 and found "export-sized drum of Rentisham's Flenting
wax" half way down p15. "Rentisham's" and "export" are
not words you want to casually throw about the place.
Much like any large container of the aforementioned
product. There's a rumour that the concept of "critical
mass" moved very much into the realm of reality when
Los Alamos technicians improperly stored some of the
rare wax exported following certain wartime agreements. |
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//The noise could be significantly reduced by having the
balls circulate in a double-walled pipe, with vacuum
between the inner and outer layers.// |
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double-walled tubing is easy enough, double walled
tubing with vacuum between gets very tough with all the
entrances/exits and custom bends that are required for
this installation. To achieve the exact same effect, simply
remove the balls from the system. |
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///To get from the ground floor to the top floor, they
should be flung on a parabola through the house (which
has strategically placed holes in the floors)// |
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If you don't have pre-positioned holes, simply buy the
more powerful pump from the range of options at the
back of the catalogue. A powerful pump allows you to
heat almost anything nearby, a garage, shed, cat or
greenhouse for example. It's possible that the unfortunate
situation at Mers el Kebir was a misunderstood attempt at
experimental projected heating. |
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//Some animals have a dramatic drop in body
temperature when they hibernate, presumably losing
heat to their surroundings,// |
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They're always losing heat to their surroundings, dropping
their body temperature is one of the ways they lose less
of it, it's all in the delta t. Then they turn on a bunch of
mitochondrial uncoupling proteins which preferentially
burns fat and spares metabolites while not
interfering with all the other signalling systems. |
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//Alternatively, liquid mercury isn’t terribly corrosive,
and could be pumped.// |
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Sadly mercury is poor as a thermal transfer medium owing
to it's low specific heat capacity. Where it does shine* is
in density. A modest industrial heating system might have
3000 litres of water in circulation. Replace that with
mercury and get it going nice and fast, then ask a
disposable colleague to quickly shut a valve. The inertia
would be equivalent to the crash of a medium military
vehicle. |
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*apart from in pretty pools under the leaky radiator in the
nursery |
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//the comforting and relaxing sound of thousands of
hot ball bearings clanking around// |
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I didn't realize that nostalgia for the Morris Marina
still ran so deeply in Britain. |
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Chains might make less noise. Eliminate noisy pipes and
balls altogether. Have the chains slowly turn on a
well oiled series of sprocket equipped wheels in a loop
between the heater and the room to be heated. Big ass
50 pound chain links slowly moving from one side of the
room to another along a track at say, 4 foot off the floor. |
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Relaxing to watch. Nice, warm 50 pound chain links,
slowly moving along the wall. |
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Also useful to bury those ghastly ghost noises when
you go to sell. |
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There's this video game I used to play back when I played
video games called "Silent Hill". |
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The chain thing would fit very nicely in one of those scenes. |
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I'd like some mechanism whereby hot metal balls
circulate round the house, rolling on two rails which
are carefully spaced apart such that, as the balls
cool and contract, they will fall through the space
between the rails and return to the basement furnace
for reheating. |
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//for the balls to circulate downwards through the house, dispersing heat as they go// Surely better to let the hot balls rise under theur own convecyion? |
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I find that balls tend to sink when too hot... |
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