29 Aug
2013
29 Aug
'13
3:01 p.m.
On 29/08/13 13:09, Les Kitchen wrote:
{Replying to Daniel Jitnah
<djitnah(a)greenwareit.com.au>au>:]
Absolutely, I did same a long while ago, replacing my proxy server and
email server with a laptop instead of PC. And I can genuine say I
saved at least $50 on my electricity bill if not more (that was a good
4-5 yrs ago, and I dont remember the figure, but it was significant).
Having said that, that laptop will suffer the same fate as soon as I get
a chance.
On this: if any one has a ducted heating system of some age, it pays
itself back multiple times to install a $15 timer on the power supply to
the heater. (New ones more likely have electronic timer control - that
why I said older ones). You can buy one for outdoor use at a hardware
shop. There are the ones that can be set to turn the power on and off
every 15 minutes. You can set the timing to suit your needs. Depending
on the time, I sometimes set it to come on only 15 mins in a 1 hr period
on a typical evening. Its mostly off during the day. You can set it to
give a real temperature boost in that 15 mins that last the rest of the
hour.
I can say that the first time I did this, my gas heating bill move from
not a much below $400 to about $180, for the same period in the year, at
the peak of winter!! No exaggeration!! When you think about it it
makes sense. It gives me very fine control on the heating.
However it seems that this does not work well with all heater model. At
a friends place, his heater did not like the frequent on-off cycles.
And the pilot lamp tended to go off every few days. Not sure why.
Cheers,
Daniel
FWIW, I have no doubt in my mind that the heat
from the 400W power
supply in my PC is contributing to heating my house! The room where
this PC is located is distinctly slightly warmer than the rest of the
house and there is no other obvious reason for this to be so. In fact,
this room should be cooler as is one of the rooms further away from the
ducted heating unit, but it is not.
Going in the other direction, towards lower
power use:
In fact that's one of the reasons why I switched from a regular
PC tower (at 140W) to a Fit-PC (2W idle, 8W at full tilt) for my
home server. I figured it would pay for itself in a couple of
years of power bills savings. Those little Android dongles,
like the RK808, sometimes styled "Google TV" are pretty cheap
(around $50 these days) and would make that trade-off even more
attractive -- though it depends on what your needs are. There
are efforts going on to run say Debian natively on such devices
(rather than in say a chroot). I use my Raspberry Pi often as a
low-end desktop machine and it's mostly usable for simple things
-- if a bit laggy at times. I wonder how much faster it would
run off an external USB drive instead of the SD card. I suspect
that swap is the main laggy factor.
-- Smiles, Les.
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29 Aug
29 Aug
3:21 p.m.
And I forgot to say, If this was implemented where ever possible, at
$15 - it could even make a noticeable dent in the green gas emission in
Victoria, given there would be a large number of houses where it could
appy. .... possibly many "pinkbats" layers equivalent for a fraction
of the cost!!!
Someone else might do the sum for me!
Daniel.
PS: Unless proof to the contrary is provided, I hereby claim first
rights to this idea, and releases it under a GPL 3.0 license!!
every 15 minutes. You can set the timing to suit your needs. Depending
on the time, I sometimes set it to come on only 15 mins in a 1 hr period
on a typical evening. Its mostly off during the day. You can set it to
give a real temperature boost in that 15 mins that last the rest of the
hour.
I can say that the first time I did this, my gas heating bill move from
not a much below $400 to about $180, for the same period in the year, at
the peak of winter!! No exaggeration!! When you think about it it
makes sense. It gives me very fine control on the heating.
However it seems that this does not work well with all heater model. At
a friends place, his heater did not like the frequent on-off cycles.
And the pilot lamp tended to go off every few days. Not sure why.
Cheers,
Daniel
I figured it would pay for itself in a couple of
years of power bills savings. Those little Android dongles,
like the RK808, sometimes styled "Google TV" are pretty cheap
(around $50 these days) and would make that trade-off even more
attractive -- though it depends on what your needs are. There
are efforts going on to run say Debian natively on such devices
(rather than in say a chroot). I use my Raspberry Pi often as a
low-end desktop machine and it's mostly usable for simple things
-- if a bit laggy at times. I wonder how much faster it would
run off an external USB drive instead of the SD card. I suspect
that swap is the main laggy factor.
-- Smiles, Les.
_______________________________________________
luv-talk mailing list
luv-talk(a)lists.luv.asn.au
http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-talk
_______________________________________________
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http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-talk 
8:06 p.m.
Daniel Jitnah wrote:
And I forgot to say, If this was implemented where
ever possible, at
$15 - it could even make a noticeable dent in the green gas emission
in Victoria, given there would be a large number of houses where it
could appy. .... possibly many "pinkbats" layers equivalent for a
fraction of the cost!!!
Or you could just put on a flipping jumper.
3:50 p.m.
New subject: Fwd: Re: The cloud that keeps you warm at night
On Thu, 29 Aug 2013, Daniel Jitnah wrote:
On 29/08/13 13:09, Les Kitchen wrote:
And we come full circle. My raspberry pi controls a relay that is
effectively in series with the gas central heating's thermostat and fan
control (in place of your timer - which suited me well for a couple of
years, but lacked the ability to ssh into it from work). Now I need to
start working on the 15A air conditioner version before Summer. Damn,
wait, it's already summer.
Which reminds me, I really should ssh home and change the cronjob now that
this season's patching cycle has come to an end and I no longer need to be
at work at 0730.
{Replying to Daniel Jitnah
<djitnah(a)greenwareit.com.au>au>:]
Absolutely, I did same a long while ago, replacing my proxy server and
email server with a laptop instead of PC. And I can genuine say I
saved at least $50 on my electricity bill if not more (that was a good
4-5 yrs ago, and I dont remember the figure, but it was significant).
Having said that, that laptop will suffer the same fate as soon as I get
a chance.
On this: if any one has a ducted heating system of some age, it pays
itself back multiple times to install a $15 timer on the power supply to
the heater. (New ones more likely have electronic timer control - that
why I said older ones). You can buy one for outdoor use at a hardware
shop. There are the ones that can be set to turn the power on and off
every 15 minutes. You can set the timing to suit your needs. Depending
on the time, I sometimes set it to come on only 15 mins in a 1 hr period
on a typical evening. Its mostly off during the day. You can set it to
give a real temperature boost in that 15 mins that last the rest of the
hour. FWIW, I have no doubt in my mind that the heat
from the 400W power
supply in my PC is contributing to heating my house! The room where
this PC is located is distinctly slightly warmer than the rest of the
house and there is no other obvious reason for this to be so. In fact,
this room should be cooler as is one of the rooms further away from the
ducted heating unit, but it is not.
Going in the other direction, towards lower
power use:
In fact that's one of the reasons why I switched from a regular
PC tower (at 140W) to a Fit-PC (2W idle, 8W at full tilt) for my
home server. I can say that the first time I did this, my gas
heating bill move from
not a much below $400 to about $180, for the same period in the year, at
the peak of winter!! No exaggeration!!
I got rid of my girlfriend and adjusted the thermostat down by 5 degrees
:)
--
Tim Connors
3495
days inactive
3495
days old
3 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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Daniel Jitnah -
Tim Connors -
Trent W. Buck