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If houses were designed so that they form an airtight seal around them, and the walls and everything inside the home was capable of handling relatively high levels of ATM's, and assuming that the walls also have an adjustable R-value on them, then it would be possible to cool an entire house down to
freezing cold in a matter of seconds.
(I do realize that what I just said there goes against everything that is architecturally conventional, but I'm going to move on to the main part of my idea)
First, lock the house with an airtight seal and slowly compress the air of the house to some arbitrarily high level of atmospheres. Second, either by some kind of crystalline material that changes R-value under pressure, or by having a retractable outer layer of insulation in the walls (like blinds), or by some other means, completely strip all of the home's insulation while under high pressure and allow it to cool back down to outside temperatures again. Then, thirdly, remove the airtight seals and allow the house to rapidly (or slowly if there are people inside) decompress down to atmospheric pressures again, and then fourthly, put the insulation back on.
.... the end result of this process would be that you would have a very cold home and you would have successfully gotten out of the heat (or, more precisely, successfully gotten the heat out of your home).
SCHBA
Self_20Contained_20...eathing_20Apparatus
[theircompetitor, Jun 27 2007]
[link]
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And everyone in the house writhes on the floor from nitrogen narcosis. Nice. |
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This works better in an airplane. |
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Narcs and the bends.
Nice. Bone. |
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Perhaps you've missed something: |
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//(or slowly if there are people inside)// |
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I do not intend for people or pets to be harmed, so perhaps people could evacuate the house beforehand, however, bugs and pests would be destroyed by such a rapid decompression.... either that or just do it slowly enough over the course of hour(s) so that it doesn't hurt anyone inside. |
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If you reduce the temperature slowly enough to avoid negative effects on the occupants, I doubt you are going to be able to avoid temperature equalization with the environment. |
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Just for fun, lets do the math. The standard R value for insulation is an inverse of the thermal conductivity of that same installation. In other words if you have R-20 insulation in your walls, you are transmitting 1/20th of a watt per second through each square meter of wall. |
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As an example, lets say your house is a ten meter cube. Each of its six sides is 100 square meters. So 600 square meters of surface area. And lets say you have R-20 everywhere. That is about five centimeters of Aerogel, or about twenty centimeters of fiberfill. No windows, doors or anything else. 600 square meters losing 1/20 watts per. That means 30 watts per second of heat loss or 30 joules (A joule is a watt per second). |
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How much heat is it going to take to warm the house back up. Air has a thermal capacity of about one joule per gram. Air has a density of about a kilogram per cubic meter, so our house at a volume of 1000 cubic meters has a million grams of air in it. Divided by thirty joules. |
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This all means that the house is going to warm up (or cool down) at a rate of 3/100,000 degrees C per second. Or just about a tenth of a degree an hour. |
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Ok, I am sure you can decompress at a slow enough rate to keep the occupants from suffering the bends. |
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Objection withdrawn. Nicely halfbaked. |
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/bugs and pests would be destroyed by such a rapid decompression..../ |
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Mammalian pests perhaps, but in my experience, insects are amazingly tolerant to pressure changes. |
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There's a large mouse enjoying my kitchen this week and my cat doesn't even know it. |
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Perhaps I should put my scuba gear on my cat, and sign up for this service. |
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ooooh, I think there's a way to make this workable. If you use an uninsulated loft as the compression chamber, you can pump air into it, cool it via the roof and then let some of it into the rest of the house where it can expand and cool. |
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Reversing this to a near-vacuum loft for heating may prove somewhat troublesome though. |
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"Whole House Decompression Cooling: For when you absolutely, positively, have to burst your eardrums right now." |
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I think an idea for just "Rapid House Compression" would be more useful. Pocket homes for instance. |
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//insects are amazingly tolerant to pressure changes.// |
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Um, I take comfort in the fact that cockroaches explode when I suck them into the vacuum cleaner. Eh, at least I think they explode in there, but maybe not due to air pressure changes, of course you could consider doing a high speed nosedive into the vaccuum bag to be a rapid change in pressure. |
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Your roachy victims are probably disemboweled by the suction fan before they are deposited in the bag. |
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Depends on the kind of vacuum, too. Some of them might buffett...bufett..smash the little guys against the walls of the tubing. It could also be that the rapid decompression causes an outward expansion of the soft underbelly, which may or may not rupture. |
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Yeah, vaccuum cleaners are a complete nemesis to my little adversaries, thank goodness I have one of those R2D2's on my side! |
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Dysan's make great ant farms. It's like watching people living in tornado alley. |
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It's only the cruder vacuums that have the fan in the dirty airflow. Your better ones have the fan downstream of the filter, which is downstream of the bag (or vortex chamber, if you buy into the hype of the Dyson). No pureed cucarachas. |
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However, a great deal of the crud within the vacuum's dirt chamber is very fine indeed, and clogs the roaches' spiracles, their breathing orifices along their abdomens. Assuming they survive the trip through the hose, they suffocate shortly afterward in the bag. |
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