4 ms·
> The pile of rock required to heat an average home for a couple of weeks handily outweighs the house itself. Maybe I'm failing to follow the intended argument
by Veedrac 1y ago
> The pile of rock required to heat an average home for a couple of weeks handily outweighs the house itself.
Maybe I'm failing to follow the intended argument here, but I do not see what is expensive about this. Houses are hollow; they do not weigh all that much. Dirt is cheap, especially when sourced locally.
- jacquesm 1y agoThe only place where you could conceivably store this without having another conversion or lossy transport loop is under the house. It's not exactly trivial to excavate that much space under an existing structure without having the whole thing come down. I think I've figured that part out but it would still be legally quite shaky and it might destroy the resale value of the house unless it can be made compact enough that it would fit within a standard basement. Insulation is the key problem to solve here.
- Veedrac 1y agoThe article never frames this as off-grid storage for individual homeowners. They say > A typical site is a factory, power plant, or town with a large earthen mound at the edge. The mound might be the size of a house for a smaller factory, and up to many football fields for a large power plant. Surrounding the earthen mound will be high-density, low-profile solar arrays. I agree that trying to give every suburban house its own rock pile would not be very practical.
- jacquesm 1y ago> The article never frames this as off-grid storage for individual homeowners I know. See my original comment at the top.