4 ms·

I believe I understand you correctly. You want some type of smart system to heat/cool only what's necessary. Fair enough, and maybe there is even something to i

I believe I understand you correctly. You want some type of smart system to heat/cool only what's necessary. Fair enough, and maybe there is even something to it. I do see problems with it. If you are talking about a per-room system, latency becomes an issue. If I go from my bedroom to my bathroom, how long must I be in the room until the heat comes on? Moreover, won't turning heat on/off put a lot of strain on the system? This is not convenient. It's an actively worse system than what I have now. Additionally, I'll spend much more energy heating each individual room, unless I have insulated doors and inside walls: another huge expense. If you are talking about everyone wearing electric coats and blankets and their AC equivalents, forget about it. First, you have to carry a battery pack and charge it every so often. Second, where you used to be able to just turn up the AC a bit and wear shorts, now you have to wear a spacesuit to not suffocate in the summer. I think HVAC could definitely use innovation, and this goes beyond the really expensive geothermal systems or high efficiency condensers. Boring things like insulation and construction materials is what's going to make a huge difference here. Buildings with good insulation and little air exchange with the outside will use significantly less energy than those with poor insulation. Heating being the #1 consumer of energy in any given house, we need to trap it inside for as long as possible. Remember, it's much easier to insulate a wall that's not moving, sitting, bend, bathing, etc. than a human. In short, I understand what you are saying, and I think that others on here do too. I simply disagree with it.

freehunter 12y ago
Maybe you could have made that post first, rather than "you're wrong, we need AC exactly the way it is". Look at it like this: in 2006, who thought that having phone that needed to be charged every night and was crazy expensive and ridiculously fragile was a good idea? Sure, there were some people who had a Palm or a Windows Mobile phone, but they weren't very good. Just like people have hand warmers and electric blankets, which are bulky, inconvenient, and not very good. The the iPhone came along and was slightly better, but better enough that people would take it seriously. Maybe something like the Nest fits that analogy. Then suddenly with a few small tweaks and a change of public mindset, everyone is carrying a 12-hour-battery-life, $700, all-glass smartphone in their pocket, to the point where PCs are being phased out and hardly anyone has a house phone anymore. So what you're saying is, we need mainframes and house phones, but maybe we should have cordless phones and network those mainframes together, because the problem of making a smartphone is just too hard. So no, I don't think you understand. You know what's not convenient? Walking out the door and having my face frozen off by -30F weather. Having an AC unit in the living room where the cold air never reaches my bedroom at night. Bundling up in the winter. Sticking to the leather in the summer. You want to talk about convenience? That doesn't sound very convenient at all. That just sounds lazy, because it's what we have now. Lazy is not the same as convenient. Do you have a cell phone, or are batteries too inconvenient? With current HVAC systems, you only have them in your house, your office, or your car. I used to have a bag phone in my car that I could plug into the cigarette lighter. But now I can take my phone anywhere. Why can't I take my HVAC anywhere?
- pdonis 12y ago
  > now I can take my phone anywhere. Why can't I take my HVAC anywhere? You mention that you have a coat with electric heating. Is that literally the only "personal HVAC" product you've found?
  - freehunter 12y ago
    No, there are suits that circulate water to keep someone cool, hand warmers to use for hunting/ice fishing/etc, ice packs that you can wear strapped to your body, and probably many more I've not yet seen. Problem is, they're just not that good. But electric cars weren't that good not that long ago either, so there's room to grow in the space.

freehunter 12y ago

Maybe you could have made that post first, rather than "you're wrong, we need AC exactly the way it is". Look at it like this: in 2006, who thought that having phone that needed to be charged every night and was crazy expensive and ridiculously fragile was a good idea? Sure, there were some people who had a Palm or a Windows Mobile phone, but they weren't very good. Just like people have hand warmers and electric blankets, which are bulky, inconvenient, and not very good. The the iPhone came along and was slightly better, but better enough that people would take it seriously. Maybe something like the Nest fits that analogy. Then suddenly with a few small tweaks and a change of public mindset, everyone is carrying a 12-hour-battery-life, $700, all-glass smartphone in their pocket, to the point where PCs are being phased out and hardly anyone has a house phone anymore. So what you're saying is, we need mainframes and house phones, but maybe we should have cordless phones and network those mainframes together, because the problem of making a smartphone is just too hard. So no, I don't think you understand. You know what's not convenient? Walking out the door and having my face frozen off by -30F weather. Having an AC unit in the living room where the cold air never reaches my bedroom at night. Bundling up in the winter. Sticking to the leather in the summer. You want to talk about convenience? That doesn't sound very convenient at all. That just sounds lazy, because it's what we have now. Lazy is not the same as convenient. Do you have a cell phone, or are batteries too inconvenient? With current HVAC systems, you only have them in your house, your office, or your car. I used to have a bag phone in my car that I could plug into the cigarette lighter. But now I can take my phone anywhere. Why can't I take my HVAC anywhere?

pdonis 12y ago
> now I can take my phone anywhere. Why can't I take my HVAC anywhere? You mention that you have a coat with electric heating. Is that literally the only "personal HVAC" product you've found?
- freehunter 12y ago
  No, there are suits that circulate water to keep someone cool, hand warmers to use for hunting/ice fishing/etc, ice packs that you can wear strapped to your body, and probably many more I've not yet seen. Problem is, they're just not that good. But electric cars weren't that good not that long ago either, so there's room to grow in the space.