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Insomniac Stream of Conciousness

May 13th, 2009

Ever find yourself unable to sleep because you’re working through an idea?

Right now I’m wondering if there’s a good way to make up a metric that describes a building’s overal level of thermal insulation.  Well, I’m sure that metric exists, somewhere.  The real question is whether or not you can infer that metric for a specific building by looking only at the HVAC usage records of that building, along with a log of the outside ambient air temperature.

This would be simple if the buildings are empty, right?  People and computers generate heat.  As does industrial equipment.  It probably gets really complicated when you factor in stuff like building albedo and solar heat gain, or the fact that people (300 Watts of heat each) are allowed to leave the building whenever they feel like it.  Maybe that constraint should be changed (they can never leave!).

I guess I’ll ask Rhiannon about that tomorrow morning.  Maybe there’s a baseline formula that architects use to calculate cooling loads which will provide insight to the problem.  Maybe there’s a way to install cheap restraints to prevent people from moving around, and messing up the math.   Wait.  That last one probably violates some sort of fire code.  Maybe it would be okay if the restraints had magnetic seals that open when a smoke detector goes off?  Like fire doors?

Rhiannon is going to love tomorrow’s breakfast conversation.

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