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The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

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Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#131

Post by Enginerrrd »

bradfa wrote: post #24
Enginerrrd wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have no information about this, but I would expect that homeowner's insurance should get much more expensive for these locations as without access to water it's quite hard to have firefighting infrastructure. Without firefighters, homes and humans are at much higher risk. Maybe insurance economics will help to resolve this? It's pretty normal in rural areas to basically not have a fire department for all practical…

Right, but even with a volunteer fire department, at least there's normally water that they can use to save the neighbor houses once they arrive on-scene. If there's no water then there's no way to save anything from a fire.

>Right, but even with a volunteer fire department, at least there's normally water that they can use to save the neighbor houses once they arrive on-scene.

Lol... no. There are so many flawed assumptions here I'm not sure where to start. Basically everything you said was wrong.

First, the "neighbor house" would typically be hundreds of yards away at the absolute closest.

Second, the availability of water for fire fighting purposes in rural areas is commonly dubious normally. It's exceedingly rare that a residence will have any form of pressurized water like "personal hydrant" type of system. At best, they might have a 2,500 gallon polyethylene tank, or a pond they could dip into, IF the volunteer fire department has a pump and hose setup, which is itself kind of rare or slow to arrive.

Third, a lot of the efforts on scene are unlikely to involve water at all. It's more like wild-land fire style where you might try to cut fire lines and stuff to try and prevent igniting surrounding areas, evacuate and render aid to affected people, etc.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#132

Post by coryrc »

clairity wrote: post #114
coryrc wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heat pumps have COP of 2-4, so in either heating or cooling mode, they generate more heating/cooling than electricity used. But the reason cooling is cheaper is the temperature differential. AZ might get to, say, 110°F peak (and far cooler at night), for a temp delta of 35°F while the Midwest will stay below 20°F for months, and even colder at night, for a temp differential no better than 50°F during the day and 60°F…

> "...they generate more heating/cooling than electricity used." that's thermodynamically impossible. @dktoao, being a mechanical engineer, surely understands this, and made a statement that is different, and more plausible. COP is a ratio of change in energy (e.g., temperature) produced against a common benchmark (running electricity through a resistive element, for example). that's how it can be greater than 100%.…

Basically no common A/C is 30% efficient in any sense of the word. There's a scenario where you can argue it can get as low as 50%, but no common A/C I have ever heard of is using moving less than 2x heat power as electricity power used. 30% is wrong no matter how you cut it.

And, "efficiency" doesn't matter. COP does. COP is what is reflected on your electrical bills.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#133

Post by legitster »

Scoundreller wrote: post #77
D13Fd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what the other poster meant is that “cooling in a warm client is less energy intensive than heating in a cool climate” which is generally true. This is partially because the temperature deltas are smaller. If you are aiming for 70 inside and you have 95 outside, you are fighting a 25-degree delta. But if you want 70 inside and have 25 outside, that’s a 45-degree delta the system has to overcome.

Delta is one thing, but you're also fighting solar gain when trying to cool. Sure you can mitigate, but when heating, the sun is working in your favour. Winds are another variable.

If you are in a weird climate that gives you cold temperatures but consistent sunlight maybe?

But you are also dealing with angle of declination. Solar gain will be diminishing the further north you go even if you get sunlight.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#134

Post by Balgair »

mechagodzilla wrote: post #113
crikeyjoe wrote: post #83

California refuses to desalinate, which would solve all the problems. I thought they were smart, instead they're political. They'd rather kill off the southwest. Assholes.

Desalinated water is $1000+ per acre-foot, while water from existing water infrastructure is heavily subsidized and sold for a few dollars per acre-foot to farmers. There are many reasonable arguments as to why we should not be building new infrastructure that produces water at 100x the cost it is currently sold at. Nearly all water projects in the west in the last hundred years are “political”, not economic.

OP sounds like someone not from 'the west'. Water has always been political in the western US and will always be. Like, there is this little Rep.-Dem. divide out here, but when push comes to shove, the real divide is water rights. Hell Chinatown was all about water. California's water wars [0] go back a long ways, and those struggles are emblematic of all western US states to some degree.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#135

Post by woodruffw »

legitster wrote: post #118
woodruffw wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The desert is probably the best place to build sprawling metropolises with the lowest ecological impact (overall) Ecological impact includes draining aquifers and diverting rivers. Human civilizations, particularly dense ones, have preferred oceans and rivers near temperate rainforests (like the entire Northeast) for this reason. The marginal advantages of less heating aren't outweighed by the resource and economic…

That doesn't mean it has to be the case. Israel is a good model for how you can invest heavily in desalination and irrigation efficiency and support profitable agriculture, even in wasteland spaces.

Sure. It's all a manner of economic and political pressures and weights. We can also colonize the Moon or fill in the New York Harbor, but there are much cheaper and more realistic alternatives.

Israel is an unusual case: it's a state that exists more or less by religious mandate, meaning that its residents have gone above and beyond ordinary economic and political forces to make it livable. Lots of individual outcomes there can be applied elsewhere (like drip irrigation), but much is also politically infeasible in the US (like Israel's central authority that progressively taxes commercial water use.) Ecological variables also differ: the majority of people in Israel live in the Northern half of the country, which is wetter and greener than the American Southwest. That's also where agriculture is concentrated.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#136

Post by BaseballPhysics »

phpisthebest wrote: post #74
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, it's the same logic when people move to coastal areas that will be impacted by sea level rise. No one can imagine they'll be the ones who get screwed over, and certainly not if they're wealthy. As such, I'm not sure I would call it chilling so much as entirely predictable. The real failure is in the states and municipalities that are approving the building in the first place.

Well in their defense the government has a long history of bailing out politically connected people before they have to pay for their poor choices

Privatize gains, socialize losses!

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#137

Post by eesmith »

D13Fd wrote: post #128
eesmith wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passive houses are much easier to build in cold climates than warm. Your analysis left out that the occupants and their machines generate heat. "Together with the comprehensive energy conservation measures taken, this means that a conventional central heating system is not necessary, although they are sometimes installed due to client skepticism." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house#Space_heating . See also…

Neither of your links say that passive houses are easier in cold climates.

Under the section "Tropical climate needs" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house#Tropical_climate...

> Passive cooling, solar air conditioning, and other solutions in passive solar building design need to be studied to adapt the Passive house concept for use in more regions of the world.

> There is a certified Passive House in the hot and humid climate of Lafayette, Louisiana, USA, which uses energy recovery ventilation and an efficient one ton air-conditioner to provide cooling and dehumidification.

Earlier, "In August 2010, there were approximately 25,000 such certified structures of all types in Europe. The vast majority of passive structures have been built in German-speaking countries and Scandinavia."

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#138

Post by woodruffw »

caramelcustard wrote: post #32
crooked-v wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this particular situation, that's a lot of money to spend just to serve already-well-off people willingly choosing to live in the desert in a drought.

Almost any significant technological innovation was expensive to provide to the public in its infancy but as the time went on, it became more accessible to the public. Right off the bat, i could name airplane transportation as a fine example.

The flaw in this reasoning is that it requires corresponding demand among the non-wealthy. It was true for airlines (everybody likes to go on vacation); is there a particular reason to believe that the average American wants to live in a desert, particularly as the resource limitations become more obvious?

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#139

Post by D13Fd »

eesmith wrote: post #137
D13Fd wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of your links say that passive houses are easier in cold climates.

Under the section "Tropical climate needs" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house#Tropical_climate... > Passive cooling, solar air conditioning, and other solutions in passive solar building design need to be studied to adapt the Passive house concept for use in more regions of the world. > There is a certified Passive House in the hot and humid climate of Lafayette, Louisiana, USA, which uses energy recovery…

I saw that, nothing there says that cold climates are easier.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#140

Post by throwaway193948 »

pj_mukh wrote: post #33
bradfa wrote: post #5

I can feel for the people who have been living there for a long time and now have to deal with the water situation. But I can't understand the attitudes of people who are choosing to move to such a place where access to water is such a risk. I have no information about this, but I would expect that homeowner's insurance should get much more expensive for these locations as without access to water it's quite hard to h…

This is a real problem in California and is some how ingrained into the political structure and hard to shake. The Governor last year: "“There’s something that is truly Californian about the wilderness and the wild and pioneering spirit,” Newsom said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’m not advocating for no (building).” [1] AFAIK, lawmakers are actually considering subsidizing insurance costs for exurbs i…

> in places that were never meant to host human habitation year round.

and which places on earth were meant for humans exactly?

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