Mini Split Heat Pumps: Not Significantly More Than You Reasonably Need To Know
- 37
- 28
What is this place?
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
If in doubt, please post it!
Rules
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I have a blind spot on vertical ones because they're definitely not an option here; my well wouldn't qualify as "marginally acceptable" as a water source in most places, and you'd have to be impossibly lucky to get a shaft with enough water layer and flow to work as a ground source. In a place like florida they'd be amazing, but in florida you could just warm your pool instead.
Geothermal in general has that "as much art as science" problem. There's research asking "wait, how much heat could pump from the ground below a city without causing problems?", and there's not much in the way of hard numbers yet, especially in the cold climates where a ground source is important.
That's one reason I think co-gen will be a big deal. Having a huge volume of power plant condensate to work with takes out the guesswork, and there's no technological advances needed over current high-temp cogen systems.
In yet another victory for thermodynamics; it turns out that a large thermal mass is just fucking better for the shit we want to do if you can max out capacity.
It's like that old tmblr post; that no matter what you are doing the most efficient form will always be whatever the train equivalent for the field is.
is it entire interesting part? Or have they got interesting examples?
A conceptual train.
Imagine you are, for example, lifting mass into orbit, or moving people between floors in a building, or cooking food, or digging a big hole.
What is the most efficient way to do all those things? Orbital elevator theoretically/BIG ROCKET currently, Escalator, BIG pressure cooker, BIG bucket wheel excavator.
The more the spirt of the thing is akin to a train, the more efficient the thing is, and also the more RIGHTOUS the thing is because trains are fucking sick
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link