Americans rank dead last in sustainability

[Omaha Rocks]

Originally Posted by supernerdgirl

Have you been to a really poor area recently? I'm sure there's a difference between food available to the poor now versus the types of food available to the poor during the great depression. More like bread and beans vs. highly processed convenience foods.

For instance, if you've ever been to a very poor neighborhood in Chicago, you would see that a. many people don't have cars and depend on transit to get around to get groceries. in the poorest areas, transit is hard to come by. and b. the only types of food establishments are either convenience stores, where you're lucky to find a fresh loaf of bread and milk, or fast food joints, that serve hot dogs, burgers, fried chicken, etc etc... It's hard to find an established grocery store with fresh foods in these areas.

It's hard to make GOOD food choices when you don't have the resources to get good, fresh foods.

I agree.

On the other hand, why don't any of these people grow gardens? Yes, I know that some of them are living in rented houses or apartments, but it's mind-boggling how much produce you can raise out of a few planters on the patio.

Much of the problem comes down to choices. And those choices are often obscured by years of being told that it can't be done.

[rlchurch]

Originally Posted by BrokenTap

Sustainability is hard to calculate. Take the Icelander's for example, they probably rank pretty high in sustainability, but the other day I was fascinated to learn that they take geothermal water, drive turbines to make power, then bring that wasted hot water to another plant to make domestic hot water.

Nothing wrong with that and kudos to them, but here is the kicker.

The 140º water is NOT hot enough for their tastes, so they spent millions of dollars adding another plant to up the heated water to 190º. Again kudos for using geothermal power to do it, BUT they would have been better off if they could have reduced their lifestyle to deal with 140º water and saved themselves millions in building costs...heck this unsustainable American gets by just fine on 115º water.

The answer to a better environment is learning to get by with less in my opinion. Misering KW's, misering BTU's, misering carbon...

The higher temperature is for space heat, not domestic hot water. My hydronic heating system operates at 180 degrees F. It would take a much larger hydronic system in a building to heat it effectively with 120 degree water. It gets cold in Iceland.

[ladycat]

Originally Posted by BrokenTap

I recently read a report by the USDA that did a study on this very thing. They took a 1 square mile block of Hartford CT and checked all the food sources within that 1 mile area. There was 14 places that sold food, and only 1 that sold fresh veggies. When they asked the proprietor why, he said that it was for the elderly that liked that kind of food. To even come close to competing with other fast food places nearby, he sold Chester Fried Chicken and other quick fast food meals like that to the younger generation.

After reading that article, I realized that you two are both right. People continually make the wrong food choices, but it is debatable as to how much is choice and how much is availability.

People eat what they were raised on. If their mother fed them fast food, that's what they will eat. If they never ate veggies as a kid, they won't eat them as an adult.

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by BrokenTap

Time to upgrade your boiler I would think. My boiler operates between 80º and 150º to conserve fuel consumption.

I have a coal boiler and will always have a coal boiler, they operate slightly different since it needs to be constantly lit.



This ones about 25 years old, there's no official rating but it operates about 80 to 85% efficiency. A similar unit that uses a slightly different design called the anthratube was tested back in the 50's over a two year stretch reaches almost 90%. Coal boiler technology was getting this efficiency ratings long before it became the thing to do. Since you need to keep a draft you can't make them any more efficient than that.

They have hot water coils for DHW, during idle times this will recover a lot of the excessive heat. In our setup all new incoming cold water is piped directly through the jacket then goes into the hot water heater as temperature is well above what the Hot water heater is going to produce, hot water at my house gets hotter instead of colder as you use it. This sis similar to most coal boilers:

http://www.keystoker.com/images/ph_diagram2.jpg (broken link)


The Electric hot water heater acts as temepering/storage tank for the most part when the boiler is going which is almost 24/7/365. We shut it down in the summer for a few days for maintenance so it provides all the hot water then.

In addition to preheating hot water before it goes into the DHW we utilize a thermal siphon loop which naturally circulates the hotter water out of the coil into the tank so it's always being replenished.

It's quite an efficient system. We run it year round for two reasons, A)It costs less to heat hot water and B) more importantly if you keep one of these boilers running 24/7 they can last a lifetime. I'll venture to guess more environmentally friendly than using the electric becuse of the great efficiency of both the unit and delivery system but I'd have to sit down with a calculator and get some real numbers on how much coal we use during the summer to figure it out exactly. Roughly speaking it's about 10 to 15 pounds a day in a 24 hour period.

[ladycat]

That looks interesting. I assume coal boilers go in the basement? Where I live we don't have basements or a source of coal.

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by ladycat

That looks interesting. I assume coal boilers go in the basement?

They have makes an models for every need from small hand fired inserts for fireplaces that do about 30,000BTU, small hot air stokers like the size of a pellet stove or up to a million BTU boilers. A boiler like the one pictured should go in the basement as it will provide some residual heat in the winter from the flue, water pipes etc. Its no different than a gas or oil fired boiler except a few minutes work each day. They could be placed inside a stucture ground level if you wanted and that's been done, they are not designed to be fully outside in the elements like the outdoor wood boilers. No need.