Re: Interesting Data Center

On Sun, 30 Nov 2008 08:46:13 -0600, "Amused"
<jamescopeland@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<snip>

Back in the 70's, some of the hippies (yes, hippies!) were designing very
low-power "air-moderation" systems. Usually, it entailed burying a long
culvert-type corrugated pipe about five feet deep in the ground and then
circulating air through the fifty or one hundred feet long pipe to moderate
the temperature. Didn't work nearly as well as expected. Water would
condense in the pipe and eventually start growing some really strange
microscopic creatures. It take a good bit of engineering (power) to force
air through a 100 feet of 24 inch pipe. Cooled air is not the same as
conditioned air. Refrigatorited air, with high humidity is very "clammy".
De-humidifiers had to be added to the system.

Eventually, the "free" systems were as complicated and energy-intensive as
just about any other system.

I have seen some of that out West. There was some sort of house
built near, or in, Death Valley, that had a system like that.

You are right that there are considerations. Not sure about the, As
energy Intensive as," part, but they can be complicated systems.

Underground homes, built 50 years ago are probably still running
dehumidifiers full time.

Heat pumps have particular limitations all their own. I had one for almost
30 years. Life expectancy is 10 to 15 years and experience has shown,
counting on ten years is not a given. Heat pumps "barely" heat (or cool)
the air. There is only a degree or two difference between the inside
temperature and Freon flowing between the exchanger and the compressor. So
while it will heat or cool a home, it'll take hours and sometimes days for
the temperature to stabilize. At about 30 degrees, with normal heat loss,
the pump simply couldn't keep up, and normally straight resistance banks of
heating coils would kick on. (In my mind, heat pumps maybe appropriate for
the South, where most of the need is for cooling with very occasional need
for heat.)

Agreed. I once looked into a home that was heated by Heat Pump.
Even though the temp was set, the house felt cold. I like the blast
of warm air that comes out of the register when the gas furnace comes
on.


Deep well, heat moderation was next. And it works pretty well, except wells
require maintenance just like anything else. Also, there is power
requirement of forcing water down and then up. (Although, it's not as bad as
you might expect since the weight of the water will help push water up the
opposing pipe.)

The power for that is a predictable thing. It is basically
circulation plus the effect of friction. Not all ground systems
require deep wells either. Some depend upon sufficient area below the
line where temperature does not affect ground temperature
significantly. In some slimes, that can be just below the frost line.
In harsher areas, it can be deeper.


Underground facilities are not without their own special problems.

In Kansas City, there are at least several cave systems in use. (BTW, I
seriously doubt that the Swedish system could actually stand a direct hit
from an H-Bomb. 90 meters just isn't enough)

I didn't think their security issues really included thermonuclear
war. I figure if that happens, my cable Internet isn't going to work
anyway, so who cares.<g>

In one of the caves, the SS Administration has a gigantic files storage
"warehouse". It's approaching 500,000 square feet. I've been in it many
times. You drive in the front entrance, and then follow the fully paved
road (with shoulders) in a series of loops back a mile or so, and then park
in one of the controlled government parking lots. Special tricycles and
electric golf cars are used extensively by the cave-people to move the
folders around.

Full sized tractor-trailer rigs regularly come and go, all day long.

Security is a breeze.

Since the SSA warehouse houses hundreds of millions of paper file folders,
fire is their greatest concern. A good friend of mine spent almost 14
months of his life writing the specs for the sprinkler system.

(There was extensive testing done to get the water droplet size, exactly
right. Droplet is the key word. Not a "rain", but heavier than a "fog", it
produced a "heavy mist" Yes, each one of the tens of thousands of sprinkler
heads was specially ordered and expensive as hell. The fire protection
system was a double redundancy system, in that every sprinkler head had to
have at least two sources of water to it. And, in addition, the grid system
set up was very complicated. It would do to have several hundred million
SSA folders water soaked just because a small fire in a trashcan.)

Every half mile or so, there are "downshafts", about 100 feet in diameter,
that have been punched through to the surface. In addition, there are
gigantic air handlers that continuously force outside air throughout the
entire cave system. While the road system is plenty large enough to allow
even the largest fire fighting equipment to enter the system, calculations
have shown that a large, uncontrolled fire would quickly build up trapped
heat to awesome levels.

As far as I know, it's the one (or one of very few) place in the SSA system
where assignment to The Cave can be refused without prejudice. And if
someone asked for re-assignment out of the cave, it's honored almost
immediately.

I do not suffer from claustrophobia, but even I was aware of the massive
amount of rock that was over my head every time I had occasion to go to the
cave.

"My" experience has taught me to be very wary of "free" anything.

TANSTAAFL!

Take, wind generators, for example.

When you really start investigating, you'll find there's all kinds of
limitations. To start with, there's a couple of tons of equipment a couple
of hundred feet in the air, balanced on a single pole, that must be free to
rotate into the wind. You don't just pour a concrete pad. That whole
apparatus has to be anchored into bedrock. And it better be done right,
otherwise there will be pieces and parts spread over two counties. (How
many building inspectors do you think there are in Kansas that are qualified
to pass judgment on the base installation of a big wind generator? There's
probably a couple, but not many)

Wind generators require continuous maintenance. And that means people. And
people require an infrastructure. It's been estimated that a moderate size
wind farm in western Kansas would add three thousand jobs to the local
economy. There's places out there than don't have 3,000 people in the
entire county. It's been said that, at sea, the horizon is 40 miles away.
(I have no idea if that's true or not) Well there's places in western
Kansas, that you could test the theory.

Now you are sounding like those Democrats you dislike; picking at
the problems without any solutions. I saw a news story about a
vertical turbine that would work on a by home basis. No cite for it,
but it was small, and fit on a rooftop.

I don't know where it will all go, but anyone with sense knows that
there is all manner of energy available that is wasted; wind, tidal,
solar, etc. Why do we not put something into that instead of buying
foreign oil.


As I said at one time, there's places in Kansas that have so few trees that
the trees they do have each have proper names, like Ugly Oak Tree, Bent-over
Cedar, and Broken Elm.

They are building wind farms in Kansas, but if you really have a problem
with "big business", you're REALLY not going to like them. Because they are
NOT free.

Again, TANSTAAFL!

If you don't know what TANSTAAFL means, it is an acronym coined in a
Henlein book that means "There Ain't No such Thing As A Free Lunch."
Do you think we should not seek renewable power as a resource instead
of using up foreign oil, and spending our money elsewhere?


--

Why do they call it an asteroid when it's outside the hemisphere,
but call it a hemorrhoid when it's in your ***?
.