Monday, August 25, 2008

House idea: Improve A/C efficiency with cold water

Can the cold water coming into your house be used to make your air conditioning system more efficient?

Consider a system like the following:
When the cold water comes into the house it goes into a tank (like a water heater) and the A/C system heats up that water to a set temperature (only to the point where it was still cool). So instead of having cold water at the tap you would only have cool water.

Notes:
  • The A/C system would have to work less because it is more efficient to pump the heat to the cold water than to the hot air outside.
  • The hot water heater would work less because the cold water was already warmed some.
  • Maybe there could be one hot water unit with 2 tanks -- one for the cool water and one for the hot water. The A/C system would warm both(to different temperatures) and there would be a normal heater for the hot water when the A/C system didn't heat it enough. There could also be one tank for hot water and the cool water could be made by mixing some hot water with the cold water.
  • Some of the cool water would still need to be cooled but probably very little of it (drinking water in the refrigerator, ice cubes, etc).

How much would this help? Is there a better way to use the free "coldness" of the cold water.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

How is money created?

As amazing as it sounds, most money is created from debt! Banks actually get to create money and they create much more money than the government does!
Watch the video below for an explanation. There is also more info on wikipedia.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Joel Amos

Joel Amos Stauffer was born at 1:00 AM on April 22nd.
He is 6 lbs 7 oz and 19 in. long, Joel and Annette are doing well.







Monday, April 21, 2008

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Wisconsin Primary

If you live in Wisconsin, don't forget to vote today! I'm planning to vote for Ron Paul.

Friday, February 01, 2008

Morality: Government vs. Church

Government can and should "legislate morality" in certain cases. I think everyone agrees that murder should be illegal.
The church (or any non-governmental) group should handle other morality issues because the government can't reach the heart of people. i.e. "Love your neighbor".
Some issues should be handled by both (murder) but all issues should be handled by the church -- the church should handle all moral issues and the government should also handle some of them.

The questions is: How do we decide which issues should be handled by the government and which should be left to the church? (The answer may vary by level of government but for this post I will consider all levels as one).

Questions that might help us answer the question:
  • Is the issue easy to define and judge? (murder vs. hate)
  • Does the issue affect the rights of other people?

I don't know the exact answer to this and I would appreciate your comments.