Oscar

iTrader: (2)

In b4 trackspeed rad and 12" spal. For them cold winter nights.

Scrappy Jack

iTrader: (2)

If you find a woman that is legitimately impressed by both the concept and actual implementation of this in your bedroom, I implore you to propose marriage or some other form of commitment.

hornetball

iTrader: (4)

But if he's trying to save money, how can a female make any sense whatsoever?

LOL at the overall concept though. Even if it does nothing, it gives some satisfaction.

Harv

iTrader: (4)

I think you should just turn your apartment into an Asian bath house. Have various tubs of water around the place with the water constantly circulating.

hornetball

iTrader: (4)

Oh, I get it. You can add females to this mix and then come out with positive cash flow.

y8s

iTrader: (8)

I hear that NYC tap water is what is used for most bottled water sold on the open market.

You see where I'm going with this Joe?

You're wasting profit down the drain.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Working in Manhattan on E 42nd, living in Hoboken, which is literally on the shore on the Hudson river just on the other side. It's what you see when you stand on the east side of lower Manhattan and look towards Jersey, just north of the Holland Tunnel.

So my commute is Jerseybike from my apartment to the Hoboken PATH terminal, PATH train to 23rd & 6th in Manhattan, and then Citibike to either 42nd & Park Ave or 39th & 2nd, depending on my mood.

For my 1 bedroom apartment on the 11th floor, the rent is $2,800. This is about average for this area, and roughly $1,000 less than what I'd be paying for a comparable place in Manhattan.


It's downright cheap as compared to car ownership pretty much anywhere in the US. Hell, even the LIRR and Metro North railroads are pretty reasonably priced for what you're getting.

And in terms of the quality, I gotta say, it's pretty good. Yeah, some of the trains are getting on in years, and some of the stations haven't been remodeled since their original construction over a hundred years ago, but for the most part the system is pretty damn fast and reliable. Certainly faster and more reliable than commuting on the highway around any major city.



**** marriage, I'll propose the formation of a corporation!



It's actually among the cleanest in the whole US, and undergoes virtually no processing / chemical treatment.

I know, you wouldn't think it, but NYC literally has some of the best tap water around, straight from the catskill mountains.

Scrappy Jack

iTrader: (2)

DINK. I didn't pay for an M3 and a Miata on my income alone.

z31maniac

Yes, this.

And we keep our finances separate.

Harv

iTrader: (4)

The highways, parkways and bridges in and around NYC are a ******* disaster for traffic at most times of the day whether it's a weekday or weekend. I try to avoid going through there whenever possible.

And yeah, the mass transit system is definitely going to be better, but if Robert Moses had built mass transit out more instead of spending so much damned money putting parkways all over the ******* place through Long Island and CT that can't have a bus driven on them as well as building highways every which way and around the island we would definitely be better off.

y8s

iTrader: (8)

missingthepoint.com

hornetball

iTrader: (4)

I'm obviously doing it wrong. But my grandson thinks I'm God (for now anyway).

Harv

iTrader: (4)

I still think having a water wheel to grind grain would be fun, well, along with the Japanese bath house.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

No ****.

Don't get me wrong- there are times when I do think it would be nice to have a car. Like to go pick up groceries when it's 35° and raining. But then, even if you handwave over the cost, I'm not sure I'd want to deal with the hassle of car-ownership in this town.



The point being that you want me to go into business selling bottled water from my apartment?

Have you ever actually seen the machinery which is used to fill, cap and label drink bottles? Even the "small" ones are ******* enormous. Like, if I got rid of the sofa and TV, I still doubt if I could fit a single station into my living room. Never mind that I don't have three-phase power available.

What are you smoking?

Scrappy Jack

iTrader: (2)

Nope. You are only doing it wrong if you got married, she never worked, and you had no offspring.

We need good people to breed, preferably at above average rates in constructive and positive family units, to offset my lack of progeny.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

Returning to this point --

Okay, so using the water pressure to power the fan isn't going to work, but there's got to be some way to capture a bit more energy before dumping it back down the drain, right?

I can't think of any useful way to use whatever residual heat remains after passing through the radiator.

But maybe you could use the water pressure to turn a small generator. You could use that to power a small lamp for a few minutes, maybe.




I have another concern, however. The city services here in the grand metropolis of Ridgeland, MS has a system that records when a water meter has been running continuously for 24+ hours, and sends an automatic notice to the resident to check for possible leaks.

Do you not run the risk of triggering some similar system for your building with your new heating device? Does the fact that individual apartments are unmetered (for billing purposes) mean that they definitely have no way of tracking usage per unit? Presumably your lease agreement includes some clause that regulates "non-standard water usage amounts" or some such language.

y8s

iTrader: (8)

like an AT&T style data cap on his pipes?

I think a series of small hydrodynamic generators could potentially provide power for enough CFM to move that air.

Of course just turning the whole thing so that free convection moves the air is probably sufficient.

Barring that, I'd say just put down a layer of floor heating tubes and run your water through that.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

Yes, except that I doubt they have the ability to throttle his water. More likely to just send him a huge bill.

Yes! Or maybe keep a hot (warm?) tub running at all hours.

18psi

iTrader: (76)

YOU FORGOT THE RE-ROUTE

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

If I wanted to maximize the efficiency of the system, I would use the hot water to warm the evaporator of a heat-pump style heater. This would make the system more than 100% efficient from the point of view of extracting thermal energy from the water (eg: the water could exit the system at below ambient temperature.)

Of course, that would cost *me* more to run, since I'd have to pay for the electricity to run the heat pump. And, of course, I'd have to buy the damn heat pump in the first place, since the noisy old PTAC HVAC units in my apartment use conventional resistive heating elements- the second-least-efficient possible way to heat a building (right after passing potable hot water through a go-kart radiator and then dumping it down the drain.)



Understand, I do not have a torrent of water going through this system. It's more of a trickle. Here's the actual water flow as I have it set now:



I'm just not going to extract much useful mechanical energy from that.







I just did a quick measurement, by capturing the output water in a container while timing it with a stopwatch. At the current flowrate, I'm passing around 18 gallons per hour, or ~200 gallons per day. (I've been turning it off when I'm not home.) In a hi-rise complex with approximately 500 apartments in it, that kind of usage seems unlikely to arouse suspicion. Granted, the flowrate will go up once I get a more powerful fan and the really cold weather sets in, but even then we're talking, what, 500 gallons per day? That's about 1/2 extra toilet flush per day per apartment. (And some of these apartments have 2 bathrooms.)


Well, let's explore the possabilities:

One, of course, is that my usage goes un-noticed given how insignificant it is in the grand scheme of the whole building.

Two is that they do, in fact, have the ability to individually meter my apartment. If they admit this, I will then raise a stink and demand that my billing be based on my usage.

Three is that they literally go from apartment to apartment, performing an inspection to determine who is using all of this freaking water. When they find me out, they will demand that I stop. I will point to my lease (see below) and ask on what ground they make this demand. I will then call my old high school buddy Pat, who used to live in this very same building, holds a grudge against the management, and (to the best of my knowledge) is still licensed to practice law in the state of New Jersey.



You know, it's interesting that you ask this.

I just went back and carefully re-read the lease document.

In fact, even though the incredibly lengthy and detailed lease contract describes specifically how I agree that the apartment complex will contract with a third-party company to not only bill me at a flat rate for water whether I use it or not, but to also bill me for the service of billing me (I can't make this **** up), it says absolutely nothing whatsoever about my use of said water needing to be reasonable.

So, yeah.


See the above video. Extracting useful work out of the flow of water which I'm consuming is not an option. And, sadly, the sink drain doesn't work well enough for me to flow much more water than this on a continuous basis.



Hmmmm........