"But my wife refused ... because they are ugly." -- I think you just identified the real reason central A/C installation doesn't need to compete with window units. :P
Central AC is so much quieter too, plus the window units let in bugs no matter what you do. I hate them too... but, if the trade-off was "free" air conditioning, I'd take it.
@@F40PH-2CATThat's not illegal. That's a violation of contract. Very different. Though I can't speak to exactly how, pretty sure you're not going to jail for making the HoA mad at you. That said it is probably not worth trying to go down that road for most people.
Now we understand why our grandparents surrounded their houses with large oak trees for shade. Summer shade and in the winter without leaves the house would warm up.
Yep. Which is why if you notice my parking habits if your ever with me, your going to notice that in certain area's, I'll try and park in shaded area's during the summer, and in known sunny areas in the winter. Especially if your in those sinarios where you need to get frost off your windows and you know you have a little bit of time for the sun to do it's thing before you take off somewhere. Edit: ok, so, while what i said regarding me parking in certain spots is true, sometimes that isn't always practical. I have one of those things that you put in the windshield that i will put there during the summer, and in one perticular parking lot in a perticular area, I was able to park my cars nose east or west depending on the time of the year. Unfortunately, that lot is presumably now a paid parking lot and doesn't allow for overnight parking (although, what i said had not been confirmed with parking enforcement, and, the vehicle's that are parked in the lot seem to still be there in the morning. at least, that's the case right now in late February of 2024).
Used to have a couple of walnut trees in the back yard...after they died a few years ago, you can tell a pretty big difference in the back rooms of the house without that shade in the summer.
The doomsday music and temperature updates were hilarious. As a fellow Texas resident, I can relate completely! Unfortunately we experienced such an outage just a few months ago when a wind storm knocked out our power for more than 24 hours.
I think higher quality insulation could make a big difference - it would make your temperature rise much more slowly, require less power to maintain a given temp
I am rehabbing my back garage (20x20') and I have been adding 2x2's to the interior walls to make them 2x6 inches thick instead of 2x4 inches thick and also off spacing them to cut down on thermal bridging. This will one day be my year round woodshop heated and cooled by a minisplit. The added insulation will help a lot I'm sure. I have a dream and I want it comfortable :)
something I learned when I moved from MN to NC is the south does not use insulation! when i asked about it they always say "it doesnt get cold enough for it" for some reason despite their love of yeti coolers they have the impression that insulation only helps keep houses warm....
I'd highly encourage anyone reading this to spend the time to research installing mini-split systems DIY. With the rates HVAC companies are charging, you can literally save yourself thousands for a dozen or two hours of research. Like most watching these videos, I'm a software engineering nerd, and knew the biggest gatekeeping obstacle for DIY HVAC is the EPA 608 test. With a few hours of study, the test is easy, and then it's 100% legal for you to do your own HVAC work. I passed that and then did a fairly involved 18K BTU ducted mini install in my attic (3 rooms from a single unit). I was quoted $25K+ for the install, which I did for
The down side of mini split is that for big houses with a lot of rooms you will be running a lot of refrigerant lines across the rooms, Forced air duct system is much easier especially if the duct system is there and you are only replacing the condenser and the evap, My 4ton system cost me around $3500 and two weekends, I had to borrow the tools though from a friend but buying them is not expensive.
How common are inverter based whole home AC units in the US? In South Africa splits are overwhelmingly the most common, and the downsides are obvious with some homes and buildings having a long complicated runs. However at least with modern splits, most of them are inverter based and are really efficient and have super low inrush current. A win when the grid is out and have solar/battery backup.
@@stucorbishley You mean heat pumps? They started to spread in the US, They are just not common in cold areas, The heating mode requires additional furnace or electric element in the air handler to supply heat whin the heat pump can't keep up with the cold weather.
The window units that Dave (8-bit guy) uses are inverters. I have one too. They're very silent and pretty powerful and they allow a lot more visibility through the window, and allow the window to open and close when they're installed.
Man, it's like a blessing to me that I found your channel. You have covered everything on your UA-cam channel that I dreamed of. Be it solar, electrical, networking, eta etc. Even evolution of media storage. Thanks for everything.
I think we all despise single hose portable air conditioners because of Alec, I love your system, this feels like his vehicle to grid test and I love it!
Unfortunately most mobile ACs that you can get here in Germany are single hose. Window units won't work with our windows and for a mini split unit I would have to get approval from my landlord. Additionally, I live on the 5th floor which makes installation quite expensive.
Hvac guy here, you'd be amazed at what the materials alone are to install a central a/c system, labor varies greatly by the outfit. Condenser,evap cased coil, lineset,low voltage wire, bringing power to the unit or replacing existing wiring/whip,possible pad change or unit relocation/leveling of the unit due to settling,filter dryer.
Some other reasons are: tradition, looks, and a central control unit. One interesting advantage of multiple units is it, in theory, have a more accurate reading of the room temperature and essentially eliminate hotspots.
No it's not. Do you know how much louder window units are? You also aren't thinking about lifespan. Window units might be 5X cheaper, but they'll only last 1/5 as long if you are lucky. My central air unit is well over twenty years old.
Advice from Europe: In order to keep heat outside the house in summer and inside the house in winter, I recommend upgrading your windows with roller shutters. A good window can insulate against air (temperature, humidity, noise) but it cannot insulate against the energy of light. Everybody knows how hot an inside floor or a window sill can become when the sun is shining on it through a window. Blocking (and reflecting) the sunlight will help to keep your house cooler and as a result you can reduce the amount of electrical energy needed for air conditioning.
We like to use window quilts in my part of the US, the cold part of the US. But they work extremely well for keeping heat out as well when backed with white fabric. Combined with modern windows that filter IR and UV, at least until the gas insulations leak out, reducing the amount of overall energy outside of visible spectrums passing through, it works even better. You can also get treatments that reduce visible wavelengths, like polarized films... but then if you wear polarized eye glasses, you may have trouble seeing outside depending on the direction of the polarization in each.
Advice from a place where it doesn't get hot? He's in Texas, they are way more equipped to handle heat than anywhere in Europe, where 40 was considered a civilizational ending heatwave this summer. 40 is a mild summer in most of the US.
Triple glass windows CAN insulate against heat. I can be in the sun coming through my windows and feel NO heat at all on the skin, and everything it shines on is completely cold. And you still get all the sunlight.
I'd definitely say that a real power outage should be focused on keeping one room comfortable, and the rest just to essential power items, such as fridge and internet.
I agree and that is the scenario I have planned for and run tests to ensure this can be achieved. The power grid in the UK is extremely reliable such that unplanned power cuts as we call them are extremely rare. However we have a National plan of rolling cuts that can be implemented in the winter if Generation cannot meet consumer demand. That could have come into play last winter but as it turned out it was not required.
@@stephenwabaxterMy plan was/is to just have a couple of rechargeable torches, a high capacity power bank with some smaller ones and some food which can be cooked on a gas cooker. The freezer I have is rated for half a day which should cover most scenarios. I feel like going for anything more than this starts to enter questionable ROI territory, given that even the proposed power cuts were only supposed to be only for a few hours. I have a few UPS lying around and just maintaining those can be a pain at times e.g. replacing batteries
@@tech34756 Checkout South Africa with months of multi-hour rolling power outages. Granted unlikely for most countries, but those living in South Africa probably felt the same.
not totally agree, in case if you live outside of big city, and you haven't any convenience store around you, you probably will drive to the big supermarket then replenish food supplies for 1-2 week, of course part of them need to be stored in cold environment. If haven't deep cellars, fridge is only option.
I have similar thoughts; the factory engineer for the central HVAC systems told me that the actual factory cost is 1/20th the cost that is charged by the supply houses.
@@whatislovebutonelonggame5406 it's one of the latest videos on youtube channel technology connections, it probably mentions a fridge in the video title / thumbnail
I have one of those 8000 BTU Midea window units. Since getting it, I’ve learned a bit about Midea. The smart bits are actually used by a lot of companies and they allow for LAN based control without the use of cloud if you install the right addon in Home Assistant. Now, yes, the Midea system is going to be way more efficient. A bunch of them will be way more efficient. It’s not because they are window units, per se. It’s because they run variable speed compressors while the majority of central HVAC systems are not variable speed. They’re either on or off. And firing them up is a massive spike in power draw. But in Home Assistant, where I can see charted periods of when the HVAC runs and when the window unit runs, the window unit is almost always in “run mode” while the HVAC cycles when it’s below 100F outside, or just runs at full when above 100F outside. Logging the data in Home Assistant, I find many periods where my window unit is using as little as 100W, but maybe hits up to 400W or so. It’s a 710W unit, but I leave it in eco mode. The room I use it in stays cold. Midea makes mini split systems. They have options for ceiling cartridges and the traditional wall systems. I plan to buy a house in the next few years and I really want to buy one of their big ceiling cartridge based mini split systems. The evaporator part still runs a variable compressor like their window units so you get a lot of extra efficiency there.
If you want to go for mini splits (with ceiling cartridges) also look at japanese brands. Mitsubishi (heavy industries) and Panasonic are higher quality unit's in general. Midea is a chinese low cost suff (not that it's terrible :D) also sold under a ton of other brands. In regards to the smart home stuff: A lot of stuff just uses Tuya modules. They supply the infrastructure and hardware to do dirt cheap wifi/zigbee integration for stuff.
I'm late to the party but this was a great, classic 8 Bit Guy video. It's too bad your mad scientist UA-camr idea never took off.. you really seem to have a natural scientists' mindset. This 'experiment' was so well thought out and executed. Well done!
A major fail as day 2 would start with about no charge left in your batteries as night 1 would have depleted them unlike the charge that was available at the start of the test. An overcast day would have depleted them during the day. Time to look into evaporative cooling as it requires less power but requires water and only drops outside temperatures 30 degrees max for a single stage unit.
@@ka7hqp182 Indeed, I feel like more batteries would help a lot. That's the big problem we have in California. We get a shit load of power during the day from the sun. 15 GW. (well, at this very moment, 12.4 GW. Sun is not very high in the sky yet.) But we don't have enough storage to go through the night on batteries. YET. We're working on that. personally I figure we want about 216 GWh of storage, that would output 15 GW for 12 hours. But I believe the current goal is to get to 100 GWh, which would output 15 GW for roughly 7 hours. Which isn't bad. There's a company called hydrostor from Canada, they are building us some facilities that will store power in the form of compressed air. They dig a cavern underground, and put water to maintain the air pressure. It's like pumped storage, but not requiring a naturally occurring geography that's favorable to pumped storage. 🙂 Hydrostor's two facilities will be nowhere near 100 GWh though, we have to keep building more facilities. Of course solar isn't our only source of green power; we also have the world's largest geothermal facilities, which currently output 800 MW but they are being upgraded with some new plants that draw from the same heat source. (there's a huge blob of magma right underneath the north end of the San Francisco Bay. It causes naturally occurring steam underground.) Ultimately with the upgrades, "The Geysers" will output around 1.3 GW, 24/7 (no batteries needed). The other big geothermal source we are working on is the one down by San Diego, by the Salton Sea. Controlled thermal plans to build 1.1 GW of geothermal there. Some of the power will be used to extract lithium the hot brine. They think there is enough to get 300,000 tons of it every year for the next 100 years at least. California also has a lot of hydroelectric power, and we have one nuclear power plant. Unfortunately there are a lot of people not understanding the benefits of nuclear and basically afraid of it, so it's going to close down around 2025. If we get the geothermal fully built in the Salton Sea and Geysers areas though, that will replace nuclear as baseload. (I was a submariner, so I definitely support nuclear power. As the Captain of the USS Nautilus said, it is a "remarkable" form of energy.) 🙂
I think the hvac market is pretty well captured. Redundant, well priced individual units was the route I went. I did the same with my solar. Rather than upgrade and keep everything on one charging system I installed parallel systems to a single battery bank and output inverter. Works well. The parts are in a reasonable price range. More to manage but the redundancy is insurance.
Very entertaining video. One thing you might do (and make a video about it) is to get a professional energy audit, where they use a blower door to do a leak test and use FLIR cameras to find voids in your wall and ceiling insulation. Adding more insulation is usually the best ROI to improve the comfort of the house and reduce your electrical usage. Most older tract houses have pretty poor insulation in the walls and ceilings.
By my math he was born the same year as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, and Jaws. He's like the tech version of Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, and Richard Dreyfuss all mixed together
This was a wonderful educational video! Thanks for putting the time and effort into making it for us. I live in Central Texas and I know the heat and lack of rain has been brutal in 2023.
so yeah, basically whatever you do, wherever you live it is safe to say that you will need a small field of solar panels along with a small cluster of batteries in the basement to completely survive off the grid... the worst part is that either panels nor batteries won't last forever and you'll definitely need to replace them after few years, but still I'd go for it even tho.
@@mwk1 "after few years" Solar panels usually have a guaranteed work life of 25 years for at least 80% of the rated peak power. After that they still work but slowly degrade below the 80%. Batteries if handled well also last at least 7-10 years.
@@FutureChaosTV Studies show that Solar Panels are likely to run at 65%-72% after 100 years. No real need to replace them until they are damaged or New Panels bring a better output from limited space.
Two big things that should be considered before you decide to up your power capabilities. 1: How good is your thermal envelope? you might get significantly more effect if you spend your money DIY or even professionally upgrading your insulation. Air leaks in windows and doors among other places are a huge contributor to heat ingress, the next biggest being heat moving through poorly insulated walls/ceilings/floors. This is probably one big reason you couldn't cool your bedroom to your liking, the window was not sealed and despite having a two hose system it's still likely heat was getting in. 2: Shade shade shade shade shade! That was the whole reason why people planted those trees that are blocking your solar power, but trees aren't the only solution. Hell, even your solar panels could be lowering the heat input through your roof if you give them a nice air gap between them and the roof. This also helps keep them cooler and more effective in power production. And then there's that wall on the side of the house that gets hot, aside from checking/upgrading it's insulation, find yourself some shade net and hang it from your eves or otherwise use it to intercept the sunlight and give your wall a good couple feet of breathing room from the brunt of the sunlight! Bonus: If you can, and your insulation is good enough, get your ACs working overtime early in the morning. The cooler air outside makes them more effective at rejecting heat and more efficient, and you can store energy in the form of an air battery in the temperature difference between inside and outside. The lower the inside temps at the start of the day, the more of a head start your ACs have. This is also a great idea if you have peak and off peak consumption pricing for overall, if you have good enough insulation blasting your AC at night when the power is cheapest will reduce the cooling you need at peak or at least delay your draw.
@@cleekersneaker meh just get r90 windows and wall insulation and r180 in your attic and that little a/c can eventually cool his whole house all by itself😈
You can even get solar panels that use unused solar energy that the solar panel can't absorb as electricity and uses it to heat water running through them, which not only boosts the solar cells efficiency but allows warm water with no power or gas in the winter without drawing from batteries
@@jama211 it's weird but I've known some families personally in the south/southeast US that just prefer paper plates and bowls. I don't really get it at all, but it's not that uncommon for someone from those regions to happen to prefer paper stuff. I don't watch his vids a lot though, so maybe this is weird for him hahaha
I loved seeing your attic because when I lived outside of Plano that's exactly what my attic looked like - a series of crazy ducts angled oddly and held together with tape. Of course people outside of Texas often don't know the people in Texas have mostly slab construction with no basement. So there's no place to go for those ducts except in the attic where they're installed with an M C Escher geometry.
Same deal here in south-eastern Australia, I think there's a lot in common with our construction to Texas. That attic shot pretty much looks exactly like the roof space of my house! With the exception that our gas central heating system is up there, not A/C. We have decommissioned the gas heating and just use reverse-cycle splits to heat the house which work great, and our energy costs have plummeted as a result - gas is extremely expensive now here but solar electricity is plentiful. A/C wise, the splits also keep the house beautifully cool, especially when closing off unused rooms and turning on the ceiling fans.
Same here in my part of South Carolina right on the GA border, where the soil is too sandy to have a basement in most of the homes, so the duct work is either in the attic, or under the house in a crawl space like mine, and it's a nightmare to work on, that is if your not doing window/floor units, or mini splits.
Note that even if you had a basement in Texas, it would still be best to install HVAC in the attic. Cold air sinks, so placing the vents / intakes / machinery in the attic. When your primary focus is _heating_ then you should put the heater in the basement (and put the vents / intakes along the floorboards).
Man, I live in tornado alley and not having a basement spooks me too much. Plus if you go deep enough the earth cools you, I don't understand why they don't outside of cost.
@@jmr5125 The downside to ductwork in the attic if you have a basement is you have a/c ducts in a very hot attic vs a cooler basement/crawlspace. But if your house is on a slab you don't have much choice.
Amazing, your rant on A/C is an eye opener for me. You are totally right about the portable/window units. I cant afford central A/C: $30,000. Told 'em to shove it.
My biggest gripe with central ACs is that they're built like garbage. When you can buy an entire CAR with a 3-ton aircon which has 4 or more blower speeds...yet for the same price get a central AC with ONE speed... something's not adding up.
@@grayrabbit2211 Depending on where you are, the central AC unit uses the same air handler (fan) that the furnace uses. If it blows at a constant speed, that's what you are limited to. There are variable speed fans and DC powered fans available... they just usually cost more and people are fucking cheap and never go for them.
@@phandcorp That's only in the USA. They use much nicer stuff outside of there. Even at my home in the USA, we ripped out the crappy PSC motor and replaced it with a BLDC motor + controller, so it's basically a VFD. Speed is controlled based on evap coil temp (don't want to slug the compressor or freeze the coil) and dewpoint. No use removing latent load (humidity) unless there's a need for it. Likewise, if there's heavy humidity, it basically becomes a large dehumidifier and focuses on moisture removal first, temperature later. I would have gone with an adjustable TXV valve but that was going to get complicated. The cost was minimal to do this and far cheaper than the ECM motors HVAC manufacturers use in the USA. Far better performance and comfort as well.
Really have been curious about using small HVAC units vs central and your rant was well received. If I have a catastrophic Central HVAC issue I'll strongly consider trying a distributed group of small units. Also - props for doubling up one row of pickups to truly show 40 in the pickup/semi pic - that kind of attention to detail is why I love your content!
I use window units. There are advantages and disadvantages, as in anything. (Disclaimer: I am not an electrician or an A/C tech or anything similar. Also, I'm in the US so what I say may not apply to other countries.) Ideally each window unit should have its own separate circuit. If possible, they should be 20A circuits instead of the standard 15A circuits. Having a 20A circuit also gives you more options. You can get a more powerful A/C or even one with a built in heater since both of those will draw more juice than a 15A circuit could safely supply. A 20A outlet (female) will accept a standard 15A plug (male) but not vice versa so you could still use a unit with a normal plug. 20A circuits aren't just a special outlet, they also have more robust wiring and a special breaker. Of course, that's the ideal and most people just plug them into regular outlets. That can overload the circuit. If you plan on changing over, I would have an electrician add a 20A circuit to each room where you plan to add a window unit. At least do it for the larger ones.
David, as an experienced AC tech, your rant is absolutely correct. All of these small window units and ductless split systems are revolutionizing the industry.
That is interesting to hear from a German perspective. ACs are very uncommon over here for several reasons: electricity costs about 3 times as much, installation is more complicated (the window units are impossible with our style of window, a new wall opening in an insulated brick wall is costly, central ACs need ducts that can't be easily installed) and then new buildings have to be insulated so well by law.. that AC doesn't make much sens anymore especially because the costs are already on such a high level..
@@olik136 Well, that totally makes sense since Germany's hottest temperature is about 25°C right? I have no doubts that if Germans wanted to design something, they would have no problems doing so since some of the best engineering in the world comes from your country.
@@freddaniali Germany isn't Texas for sure.. but we have about 2 weeks per year with more than 30°C.. and in 2022 it was way hotter with several cities reaching 40°C
I think the main thing to take away is you could likely keep it under 80 and the fridge running in a 24hr power outage. 80 may not be completely comfortable, but cool enough to be livable.
You’d do well to energy wise insulate your home to a much higher R factor. It would hold heat and heat faster in the winter, and stay cold longer and cool faster in the summer. Would tremendously improve the efficiency and performance of your solar set up, furnace, and central air cond keeping your home at an even temp regardless of season and weather with ease at a lower cost.
@@Elemental-ITBecause there's a lot of newer construction that doesn't do enough to minimize future heating and cooling needs. The number one mistake I see is the roof is usually not insulated, just the floor of the attic is, so most have a free sauna in their attic.
Many don't consider the benefit of properly venting the attic. Reduce your attic temps and there's less heat for the insulation to have to stop getting into your living space. Improving venting is soooooo easy.
@@lightdark00 I had a rigid urethane foam roof sprayed on in 2019. For the first time in 35 years here, it's not boiling hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter inside the house. Half of the house has open beam ceilings that had no insulation. The attic gable fan very rarely runs now. It is set to go on at 95F and used to run 14-16 hours a day. Cost me $22,000 for the roof. Worth every penny. It cut my heating bill by 60%. I don't even have AC in this 2900 sq ft house. The foam is about 1-3/4 to 2 inches thick and you can walk on it without deforming it. The foam won't burn and has a tan mineral gravel coating on top with acrylic topping. This is the best single improvement I ever did here.
I think if the refrigerator had been prioritized a bit more it could have sustained itself for a full 24 hours - that's a significant achievement! Furthermore, your studio building seems pretty close to being able to endure a day or more without power. Perhaps a strategic move would be to enhance the solar and battery capacity there to provide a safe haven for your family. Meanwhile, the current setup in the main house can be utilized to maintain temperatures below 95 degrees F (the recommended ambient maximum for refrigerators) ensuring the safety of your food. Echoing some previous comments, given common building practices in recent decades, I'd speculate that enhancing the insulation in your main house might offer the best return on investment. This would reduce the external heat influx, making it more efficient for your house system to maintain desired temperatures.
It's always a good idea to actually test your equipment before SHTF. In a case of real emergency, I would probably suggest to prioritized only certain area of the house to be cooled, as the power budget to cool the whole house seems unfeasible at best.
To be honest , in SHTF situation there will be riots in all buildings and homes and so many will probably burn down. You would need a shack out in the mountains far far away from people and or a underground bunker. Keep in mind that in a SHTF situation public supplied water , electricity and gas will end at some point.
Each case and budget is different. The scenario I have planned for is a planned 3 hour power cut that would be part of the UK national plan that can come into play in winter time. I have a limited budget so currently have insufficient battery storage to operate an infrared heater but a future upgrade could incorporate this capability.
I would say the emergency plan should be to bunk in the office. It's small and well isolated. Run a few extension cords to link up the house power with the office power.
He kind of did that. During the day the power was more than enough to not draw from the batteries so it should have helped by using the house as a thermal storage.
These solar vids have become sort of my faves on your channel, a new hobby - solar - to see what works (and what doesn't!) ...could make a whole channel probably just for solar stuff like this. Very educational and interesting.
This guy should have his storage and system tied into the grid. He could probably be bringing his bills down even more with a proper monitoring system in place. There are some good videos showing the benefits of doing that. Also, depending on your system set up, their EV could also act as a batter to keep the house cool at night.
Why? Man lives like a crazy person shouldn't be a big draw, unless you are an unethical person that thinks that sideshow freaks are a valid form of entertainment.
@@artboymoy Grid-tied means regulations though. If you like to play around, then you want an island system. You can also split the difference, and add a grid-tie inverter to your island system, to turn on when your batteries are full
Great video. Enjoyed every minute. An interesting test would be to start your day at like 20% battery. Simulating what a second day without power may look like.
Man, if I were to do this test, I'm sure I could get more time. At 72 Fahrenheit , in shorts and a t-shirt, I start to get a little chilly. I'm perfectly happy at 75-78. Heck, I'm still quite comfortable at 80-82 as long as the A/C is running just enough keep the humidity down. As far as window units being ugly, if they keep me comfortable, I don't care what they look like. Them things get a lot less ugly when the central A/C goes out.
Yes, I was quite surprised at this, even as a Canadian. That's really cold. It must be a crazy shock going from indoors to outdoors, and outdoors to indoors
You should consider building a 5+kW battery (store in your garage). There are a ton of videos on UA-cam on how to do this and you def have the skills to put one together. This way, you will be using all your panels more effectively and able to store enough power in a battery of this size to last you through the night. Also maybe consider using your car batteries for this.
Every cat I've ever had (and I have had quite a few) have absolutely loved the heat. They curl up next to the radiator in the winter and sit in the windowsill in the summer. Cats usually hate being in front of a fan. OTOH, I did have a cat that loved the water. She loved pawing at it. Most cats hate water.
Definitely have a look at split units as they are the most efficient ones available at the moment. Cheap Asian unit can be found around 400€ here, the first propane (r290) ones begin to come to the market for around 1500€.
Man you 100% need to consider grid tying.. Your savings would be so much higher and you can still have a battery bank and options for emergency grid down situations.
Interesting that the heat can kill you if your AC quits. Where I live in Canada, the cold WILL (not could) kill you, if you lose heat. We're talking -30c to -40c for weeks on end in December, January or February.
He was taking a bit of license with that statement. Deadly heat scenarios always involve a second factor. If you're reasonably healthy, don't get too much direct sun and stay hydrated, there's almost no outdoor temperature high enough to actually kill you. In the case of the A/C quitting, either it's because the space becomes an oven and exceeds what you'd experience outdoors, or he was thinking of examples that involve the elderly or infirm.
I liked the test. Solar and wind are not the full solutions. Just like anything in life, diversification is the key. Being too reliant on too few choices will always leave you with Mr Murphy yelling "I TOLD YOU SO".
Central A/C condensers (the 'outside unit') cost quite a bit *because* it's the same as 4 of those 12k units. It has a huge compressor which is packed with copper coils and then it runs the freon up to the attic A-Frame and back down which is more copper tubing. There's also an electric motor for the fan and a radiator, all inside a casing. As for the attic unit, there's the A-frame which gets the cold freon and it likely has a heating element which uses an electric motor on a squirrel cage fan to blow the air into the duct work. The metal casing is insulated so it doesn't form condensation on the outside. The pan you mentioned isn't for emergencies, it's a drain pan as the A-frame forms condensation from the humid house air. There should be a pipe draining somewhere, often outside or into the shower/toilet breather pipe.
Because the companies we pay a lot of money to maintain the main grids just pocket the money and laugh at us whenever it goes down, so we have to do something to keep the reliability up, even if it means spending more money.
It’s difficult to cool a single room in a hot house. With the insulation between interior rooms like the exterior of your house has the heat will transfer relatively quickly between them.
I was thinking the same. With proper insulation he could have kept windows open at night. Starting with a much lower overall ambient temperature. I was mostly shocked how much the temperature changed during the day within the house. Even for a place with such higher temperatures. There is also very little shade to be found around the house/neighborhood.
@@p_mouse8676 The humidity here makes opening the windows a double edged sword, it can cool the house down but it quickly starts getting pretty swampy. In the summers where it's still around 85F/30C at night it can make your house get pretty gross.
One thing to also note about central AC is that home values skyrocket when you add it so people are just willing to pay the exorbitant price to add it. For example, my mom lives in California and she paid 8k for central air, and her home value went up by 20k.
Or in my case my unit is a gas heat pump that also heats my home in the winter, so it pulls double duty, and our one added on media/family room that does not have it(would have had to drill into the original foundation of the house to run a vent, and my brother who was an AC guy for nearly 2 decades said don't do it ), a portable floor AC that vents out a side window, and a floor heater work just fine for the time we spend in that room, and for the rest of the time we don't to keep it cool, we use a floor fan to pull in cool air from the rest of the house to keep it from not being a sweat box along with the ceiling fan, and during the winter we keep the ceramic floor heater on about 59f - 63f so nothing gets too cold, and it does not pull too much power when not in the room.
@AnonymousGentooman it's only higher taxes if the appraiser finds out. The appraiser has no idea I have a 5th bedroom, ef5 tornado bunker attached to my walkout basement, hard surface counter tops, and other electrical upgrades. They did find out about my screened in deck and fenced in trash & recycling cart area only because they found them while walking the perimeter of the property. Never pull a permit unless absolutely necessary. Especially don't pull a permit for electrical work. Never let the appraisers inside
This is a really scientific approach, putting a theory out to the test, while gathering useful data. Thanks for also displaying temperatures in Celsius.
Sorry, no. It would be scientific if he had a theory. He should have measured the energy consumption and the power generation first. He should shown clearly the battery capacities. It was indeed a fun test, without a theory. Also most of the numbers were not shown in C, which was annoying as a non-american.
It is really so fascinating because you and I are about the same age and experienced the tech revolution at the same time. What I have left to say is not hate for areas or whatever, just a contribution to the dialogue. I live in the Central Coast of California and run usually about $120 in the summer for electric and around $25 for gas. I don't have air conditioning or use heating in the winter. I've always wondered if it would be worth it to set up a solar installation, small like yours to provide electricity to the fridge and freezer during the summer. I am a bit confounded on whether the total costs of the batteries and setup would be worth it. Thank you for the really in depth analysis. I enjoy all your other videos too, thank you for them. Cheers.
It was you, David, that inspired my 2021 Bluetti purchase along with 6 100 watt solar panels (Renogy) for the roof of my 2600 sq ft home here in northwest Florida. There was some push-back from my wife 🤨, so I "experimented" as you did. I set up one section of the house to run on solar A.C. - I bought a Midea 8000 BTU, and installed it and the roof panels during the winter of 2021-22. My electric bill would sky-rocket during May (central A.C.), and it did go up, but not like I was used to. My highest bill was well below what I had come to know as normal. And I learned some new stuff in the process - so, thank you, David! 🙂
Another major difference with window-mounted air conditions and the portable little ones, is that the majority of the heavy-generating electronics, motors, etc are outside of the house. When your unit sits inside, it has to perform double-duty of cooling the room as well as the unit itself according to ambient temperature.
Main takeaway for me is that those peak hours are most crucial and utilizing them with more panels and batteries is the way to go, definitely. Basically you can't oversize a solar battery install and the only limiting factor should be ones pocket.
Curious what your home insulation situation is. Would it be possible to dramatically improve your home's insulation to be able to drive down A/C power consumption during the day?
I added 18 inches of blown insulation to my attic when I got solar (for a total of almost 2.5 feet). It was measured at R40 before and R80 after - and It barely made a dent. Texas bakes in the summer and no amount of insulation changes that. I built an addition onto my house and did a full spray foam envelope. It is no better at slowing the oven of a July day in Dallas. Assuming no one in Texas has thought of adding insulation to stave off the heat is insane.
While that might be useful for the theoretical power outage that he tested here, remember that he started off the video saying that he was trying to INCREASE his power consumption lol
Insulating your attic is valuable -- but to go along with that, proper attic ventilation is critical. If you vent properly, you can reduce your attic temps to (hopefully) closer to outside ambient, which will reduce the amount of heat your insulation has to resist heat radiating down into your living space. They go hand in hand. If your attic isn't properly vented, all the insulation in the world will not help like you want it to. You can also install radiant reflectors (foil looking things) to help as well. They're all complimentary approaches.
Nice video, thanks for taking the time. I have installed 3 mini-splits in the house for a total of 3.25 tons, and have not used the 5 ton central A/C in over a year. I like the fact I can control temps in 3 different zones, and they are super quite. Not to mention the cost savings, and the biggest plus is the fact I can run them on my solar backup power. I'm in West Texas, and Feb 2021 had me focused on having sustainable backup power. I had to use it 6 times since spring do to storms, and substation problems, and so glad I have it.
Interesting experiment thanks for documenting it so well and explaining it so clearly. Looking forward to getting my hands on it Commander X16 someday!
Great video David. I think one of the advantages of the mini split and central AC is that they can also be used to heat during the winter, consuming less power than a space heater for the same amount of heat. These makes them a better choice for solar power.
Another youtuber in Florida did a whole series of videos on converting his workshop to solar, with quite a fancy setup. They took a direct hit from the hurricane and won't have power perhaps for weeks. Huge amount of damage to trees. Powerlines are basically gone. So the solar is being put to a real test under actual need circumstances. He's also using multiple Ecoflows to run the house along with a propane generator. The Kelley's County Life is the channel. Quite good stuff.
Your studio and solar projects inspire me to build my own someday! I also find it incredible that you can cook food just by putting it outside in Texas 😂
Yep seatbelts can leave wonderful burns on your legs when wearing shorts and sitting on them too. Or park benches or sidewalks. Concrete, god it’s stupidly hot in Texas I don’t miss the heat at all.
I just wanted to let you know that I have really enjoyed your videos. This may have been the first time that I have commented about the content. I think the time I spend on the channel is very worthwhile. Thanks for sharing your videos with the community.
One tip i would give for in a real emergency, is to just all stay in only one relatively small room together and cool just that one and have the fridge and food there as well, so you don't have to waste resources to cooling (or warming) a whole house. (Mind fire hazards if places get too hot of course).
This is what we do (In FL). We may not even use an A/C. I was able to power our fridge, some lights, and some fans last year for 2 weeks on a 1/4 tank of gas (about 7.5gallons) using my F150 powerboost (hybrid). I'm sure we could have made it the same 2 weeks with a window unit in one of the rooms if we wanted to, but the truth is, even at 109F, if you open your house and run fans, you would likely still survive, albeit you would be really uncomfortable. (I also had another 50 gallons of gas in cans, our other car topped of, and the truck had 30 gallons to start... all in all I think we had about 100 gallons of gas which would have lasted us 2-3 months even with an A/C on in one room).
Wow great test, I loved watching this. I live in Alberta, Canada, I could not least in 41c in temperatures. With my C.O.P.D the heat cost my breathing in almost half. I donot know how anyone can least in that heat. I love the channel keep it up
As a South African who get's 2 to 12 hours of power outages everyday. This was pretty entertaining, also extremely thankful that our weather is quite fair here.
2 to 12 hours of power outages every day?!? Really? The last power outage here was in the spring, maybe in March, and it lasted 20 minutes. I didn't even have time to connect the inverter to my Prius to keep the fridge going.
@@SolarWebsite yeah south africa's electricity grid is beyond a joke due to corruption and the infrastructure breaking down since when it was built after ww2, google "load shedding" if you're curious, because honestly it is a pretty interesting topic as an outsider
@@SolarWebsite Yes, South African power plants are falling apart due to years of non-existent maintenance, so now we have rotational power cuts. 2 hour slots for up to 4 times a day, nationwide.
Its interesting what people find uncomfortable, and how used to hotter temps you can train your body for. I am in Canada, but live on the top floor in a non air conditioned building, and the apt also faces south, so lots of sun. It is 30-35c all summer, and as long as a fan is blowing on me, I am fine. Its currently 30c in here at 10pm, and it was quite a cool day outside (dont think it even reached 25)
@@rw-xf4cb Yeah, the humidity in Texas is really what makes the heat so bad. If you go outside during the day it doesn't take too long before you're completely soaked in sweat. My AC broke last summer and it only took a few hours for my house to start turning into a swamp, it was disgusting. Fans didn't help, and opening the windows just made it worse. I didn't stop sweating until the AC was fixed the next day.
@@MScotty90 Texas has one of the lowest humidity rates in the states. Sure its higher than Arizona and New Mexico, but not many more. I went to a Quakecon one year that it got up to 115, and all you needed to do was find some shade and it was tolerable. Was quite surprising.
@@_evildoer It depends on where in Texas you go, in the western half of the state it's a desert so the humidity is very low, but the Eastern half is much different. In Austin, Dallas, and Houston the humidity is usually over 70%, often much higher. The humidity here in Austin is 96% right now at 6AM.
I have been following David's solar adventures for the past view videos, and I have to agree with him on the absurd cost differential between individual A/C units and central air conditioning. My parents LOVE central A/C, so I was very surprised when rather than replace it when the system aged out, they switched to a Mitsubishi wall-mounted system. The simple fact is it's way cheaper, more customizable, more energy efficient and doesn't require them to wedge the unit in the window sill. Zero compromises. 💯
I'm fairly sure one of the big reasons window units aren't as common is because of the aesthetics - as well as the convenience afforded by having your heating and cooling from the same existing route with central. And while you could certainly be more efficient isolating your cooling to only rooms you occupy - which is a bit more difficult (and more expensive) with a central system, you're also missing out on overall airflow and compromising the air seal factor of your windows. I think the most efficient route available now would be those "central" heat pump systems. They're kind of bulky in rooms, but you can't beat that efficiency if you're in a location that doesn't sit in the extremes of weather.
Can't believe how much power you're using, nearly 4,000 kWh in August - is more than I use here in Ireland in a 4 bed detached house for the whole year 😅
Consider getting a solar oven (they can even be made; you did a primitive version of that with your Frito pie), and just fixing it in (or a little north of) your Retrobriting spot. It will really help with cooking without needing to engage the (hypothetical) rocket stove or anything electric.
I have my home emergency lighting running on a 12 VDC system with 400 amp hour LiPo4 battery bank with 12 VDC LED lamps and fans. The solar panels total 450W for about 4 to 6 hours of good production per day. Only use 12 VDC to 120 VAC inverter for the refrigerator as needed. The solar panel and MPPT charge controller all purchased used for about 20 cents on the dollar. Only the 400 AH batteries were purchased new at a total cost of $1,200. Over the past two years this simple system has handled all my needs running the house's security system and security / emergency lighting. The average total production / usage for my little home made system is about 900w - 1.2KW. Enjoyed your testing & video..... Yes it is hot in DFW this time of the year.
One change, get foam board. Cut them to fit the window wells. We have a cabin with no ac and it helps greatly reduce temperature swings, both in winter and summer.
Might not be the nicest thing in the world but works very well. A nicer option are external shutters which can help a lot by reducing the solar gains of the building.
@patrick_test123 Indeed. Although, in our case, it would be more expensive as they'd need to be bear proof! We've got old windows that are double pane, but the frame is aluminum (conducts heat well) and has gaps like swiss cheese. Unbelievably, we also got over 46 windows. Foam board reduces our heating costs drastically in winter, primarily by cutting down drafts.
Cooling and heating is only one part of the equation. My fathers house was suitable for fitting internal insulation in the form of drywall with rockwool behind it. It was winter time and the living space got finished first and he was shocked when he realized that the room was almost as warm as the other side of the house, he forgot to turn on the healing the previous night because he thought he already turned it on. But he didn't. And also he was worried about the electricity bill as we installed quite a powerful unit( i think about 24000BTUs), But what happened was the unit will turn on and like 15min later it's almost off, because the temps have reached the desired level. So yeah think about insulation too 😃
yes. The method provided in the video is the american way, basically brute force with energy. Isolation is the proper way. I'm pretty sure you could keep the house cool (and hot in winter) with good isolation. The inital cost is alot higher than buying this setup but in the long run especially with maintenance and stuff. Depending on your climate you could use the night cool to get your temps down and use the closed house suvive the day. Another option is using a heaat pump to use the cold "stored" in the underground. In the winter you could use the underground temperature to heat you house.
@@DoomWarriorX you cannot keep the house cool without AC, once the heat is in the isolation will make it stick longer, but the same applies for cold, but it probably will help to add another 5-6 hours to the emergency bridge time in this case. Have in mind that in Europe we use mostly solid material for house building which also acts as a heat/cold store, so you can prolong whatever temperatures you have for longer periods of time with the stone like materials as well, wood does not have this, it reacts rather swiftly to temperature changes. So even with isolation you wont get the same effectiveness on a wood building as you have with stone like materials. The next issue is the window, proper isolation means you need a completely different window design with multi layered windows and foam or rubber buffered connection points, which "shoots" the window splitters literally out of the list of possibly usable devices, which then increases costs for cooling again, because you then have to install a proper splitter device with an exterior unit instead of cheap window splitters (love the devices btw. but they really only can work with the US window design)
@@DoomWarriorX Not all American houses skip insulation. David's in Texas, where it rarely gets cold enough to need heating in the winter, so most houses there skipped insulation in the past. Now that climate change is giving them scalding hot summers every year, that's changing. New houses focus on sealing and insulating so that they're easier to cool in the summer. My house is in Tennessee and it's got insulation in all the outer walls, the attic and along the bottom floor joists.
its insulation bruh not "Isolation" And no it isn't the American way it's the moronic way. Smart Americans indeed use the correct insulation in their houses. Stop spreading Bs stereotypes around that oh all Americans stupidly just run their AC systems at max 24/7 instead of properly building the houses with insulation. Where did you even come up with such a stupid stereotype from. Your just making stupid sht up i guess. Get out of here with saying Americans do it as a insult to literally every person that is blood American.@@DoomWarriorX
@@ManabiLT I'm looking to build a small passive home on my property. Should be an interesting experiment and seeing if I can also make it a net zero home in WI.
This is our lives each summer here in Yemen, though most people can't afford a system that runs the AC, we only run the ceiling fan and hope the power comes back before the room becomes too hot (it usually doesn't)
If you do ever think you're going to be without main-grid power for a long time in that kind of heat, I'd really recommend keeping everything as low-consumption as possible. 72 in 103+ heat is a super luxury - if it's 78/80, consider yourself lucky and just chill out - it'll last much longer and keep you from dangerous levels.
My mother lives in a cabin in the woods with some solar panels and a diesel generator. She rarely uses the diesel, the solar panels keep most stuff she uses going. She doesn't use computers though.
If you're still reading comments; from this video it looks like your house could also use awnings -much more effective than blinds. Lowering your heat loading lowers your power demands. We put canvas window awnings over our South facing windows (2 windows ~3' x 4'+) and the inside temp in those rooms dropped like 10+ degrees. Well worth the cost. We also added an awning over part of our deck walkway to shade the kitchen west-facing window that got the kitchen super warm in the midafternoon, and that also made a significantly 'feelable' difference. (BTW we have new Marvin double-pane, argon, UV-coated, aluminum-clad wood frame windows.) You should look into canvas awnings; we used an installer who also does commercial buildings, and we used the commercial product lines for custom-fit shades. After 5+ years they still look like new.
Excellent episode! Also, if The Twilight Zone taught me anything, it's that you will have to add another measurement to your graph to represent the temperature change when all of your neighbors crash your place during an actual outage. 😉
I'm dying in temperature above 28C, so I can't imagine even breathing in 40C. Glad David is such a crafty man that he can keep his family safe from power outages.
I just went to Texas on vacation. During these hottest days ever. >110F on the car dash, below 20% humidity. Better than 90F with 60% humidity. It's "shit it's hot" vs "f... I am all wet from sweat".
emergency preparedness makes no sense here in europe, if the grid goes down, society is over... but i do like the idea of being grid independent. and i approve of the cat
He lives in Texas, the only US state with their own independent power grid. It's poorly made and maintained so it goes down 1-3 times a year nowadays. The rest of the US has a unified power grid like EU
What makes sense in the EU is having grid tied storage, solar and a tariff that charges you by the stock price of the energy. That way you can save quite a bit of money in the mid to long run.
@@breadcodes?! I've lived in Texas for my entire 50 years and have never had my power go out for more than 8 hours, usually because of a local storm or something taking out some power lines. Even Snowpocalypse (the event that hit David) didn't touch us here in Round Rock. Why would you make stuff like that up?
@@breadcodes ...the whole point of this video was for him to try his system out because he hasn't had another outage in the 3 years since this project began. 😆 I get 12-36 hour outages multiple times per year where I am. Living 90 minutes away for 10 years, I got one 12 hour outage once. It's been a random grab bag of reliability no matter where I've lived in the US. Some places are good, some are bad. 🤷♂
@@breadcodes Is 1-3 times a year even that bad ??? In India most semi-urban areas have power outages 4-5 days a week, with multiple power fluctuations per day ☠️
The mini split type of air conditioning are kinda best when it comes to cooling a room ,since cold air droops and hoot air rises, plus they are definitely not ugly compared to a window unit, but then again happy wife happy life , so if she says no then no it is 😂
72, wow! Another Texan here (Houston) and I have upstairs set to 77 in the day and downstairs at 76 (75 if we start feeling warm). We cool it down to 74/75 at night (for these 100 degree heats, that's scheduled to start cooling at 8:30pm)
Central air means you get to see out all your windows without a bulky AC unit in the way. And more importantly, it's a lot quieter than having seven window units rattling the walls of your house.
His Midea units are made so he can see out the windows around the A.C. Besides, that's the cost of having the convenience of window air units. In two places where I lived that have central air, I always had to have a window or portable unit in my upstairs bedroom.
@@TheKnobCalledTone. Us in the "third world" use air conditioners mounted to the upper side of the wall, with a pipe going out to the box that does the actual heating or cooling (and you control it with a remote). I've never seen anybody here using window mounted air conditioners, maybe that's an US thing.
"But my wife refused ... because they are ugly." -- I think you just identified the real reason central A/C installation doesn't need to compete with window units. :P
I really don't think that's going to be high on most people's lists.
Yeah their house is immaculate and looks like a model home. SMH.
Central AC is so much quieter too, plus the window units let in bugs no matter what you do. I hate them too... but, if the trade-off was "free" air conditioning, I'd take it.
Central is quieter and more convenient for use.
Believe it or not window units are actually illegal in some areas. Many HOA'S prohibit them.
@@F40PH-2CATThat's not illegal. That's a violation of contract. Very different. Though I can't speak to exactly how, pretty sure you're not going to jail for making the HoA mad at you. That said it is probably not worth trying to go down that road for most people.
Now we understand why our grandparents surrounded their houses with large oak trees for shade. Summer shade and in the winter without leaves the house would warm up.
Cargo ships are going back to sails, housing is trending back towards passive heating and cooling design.
Yep. Which is why if you notice my parking habits if your ever with me, your going to notice that in certain area's, I'll try and park in shaded area's during the summer, and in known sunny areas in the winter. Especially if your in those sinarios where you need to get frost off your windows and you know you have a little bit of time for the sun to do it's thing before you take off somewhere. Edit: ok, so, while what i said regarding me parking in certain spots is true, sometimes that isn't always practical. I have one of those things that you put in the windshield that i will put there during the summer, and in one perticular parking lot in a perticular area, I was able to park my cars nose east or west depending on the time of the year. Unfortunately, that lot is presumably now a paid parking lot and doesn't allow for overnight parking (although, what i said had not been confirmed with parking enforcement, and, the vehicle's that are parked in the lot seem to still be there in the morning. at least, that's the case right now in late February of 2024).
Another solution is painting the roof white.
Much older homes had 10 foot to 12 foot ceilings in them. The heat would rise, so temps, closer to the floor, in theory, was a little bit cooler.
Used to have a couple of walnut trees in the back yard...after they died a few years ago, you can tell a pretty big difference in the back rooms of the house without that shade in the summer.
The doomsday music and temperature updates were hilarious. As a fellow Texas resident, I can relate completely! Unfortunately we experienced such an outage just a few months ago when a wind storm knocked out our power for more than 24 hours.
I think higher quality insulation could make a big difference - it would make your temperature rise much more slowly, require less power to maintain a given temp
Insulation is so overlooked.
Are you from Dallas? I am. This place is as dependent on AC as Chicago is on heating.
I am rehabbing my back garage (20x20') and I have been adding 2x2's to the interior walls to make them 2x6 inches thick instead of 2x4 inches thick and also off spacing them to cut down on thermal bridging. This will one day be my year round woodshop heated and cooled by a minisplit. The added insulation will help a lot I'm sure. I have a dream and I want it comfortable :)
yeah, only rattlesnakes and hogs would be living in Texas if it weren't for AC
something I learned when I moved from MN to NC is the south does not use insulation! when i asked about it they always say "it doesnt get cold enough for it" for some reason despite their love of yeti coolers they have the impression that insulation only helps keep houses warm....
I'd highly encourage anyone reading this to spend the time to research installing mini-split systems DIY. With the rates HVAC companies are charging, you can literally save yourself thousands for a dozen or two hours of research. Like most watching these videos, I'm a software engineering nerd, and knew the biggest gatekeeping obstacle for DIY HVAC is the EPA 608 test. With a few hours of study, the test is easy, and then it's 100% legal for you to do your own HVAC work. I passed that and then did a fairly involved 18K BTU ducted mini install in my attic (3 rooms from a single unit). I was quoted $25K+ for the install, which I did for
The down side of mini split is that for big houses with a lot of rooms you will be running a lot of refrigerant lines across the rooms, Forced air duct system is much easier especially if the duct system is there and you are only replacing the condenser and the evap, My 4ton system cost me around $3500 and two weekends, I had to borrow the tools though from a friend but buying them is not expensive.
How common are inverter based whole home AC units in the US? In South Africa splits are overwhelmingly the most common, and the downsides are obvious with some homes and buildings having a long complicated runs. However at least with modern splits, most of them are inverter based and are really efficient and have super low inrush current. A win when the grid is out and have solar/battery backup.
@@stucorbishley You mean heat pumps? They started to spread in the US, They are just not common in cold areas, The heating mode requires additional furnace or electric element in the air handler to supply heat whin the heat pump can't keep up with the cold weather.
The window units that Dave (8-bit guy) uses are inverters. I have one too. They're very silent and pretty powerful and they allow a lot more visibility through the window, and allow the window to open and close when they're installed.
ILLEGAL.
only certified F-gas technican must work on equipment with refrigerant in.
Man, it's like a blessing to me that I found your channel. You have covered everything on your UA-cam channel that I dreamed of.
Be it solar, electrical, networking, eta etc. Even evolution of media storage. Thanks for everything.
I think we all despise single hose portable air conditioners because of Alec, I love your system, this feels like his vehicle to grid test and I love it!
Yes! Alec definitely schooled all us geeks on those!
I came here to say this. Alec kinda ruined those AC units for me. 😅
I hated them way before watching the video by Alec. He just confirmed what I thought of them.
Unfortunately most mobile ACs that you can get here in Germany are single hose. Window units won't work with our windows and for a mini split unit I would have to get approval from my landlord. Additionally, I live on the 5th floor which makes installation quite expensive.
Yep lol
3:55 And that's why Mini Split units with those ceiling inlay vents are so great! (at least if you can install them yourself)
The radiator-style floor consoles are also pretty nice.
Hvac guy here, you'd be amazed at what the materials alone are to install a central a/c system, labor varies greatly by the outfit. Condenser,evap cased coil, lineset,low voltage wire, bringing power to the unit or replacing existing wiring/whip,possible pad change or unit relocation/leveling of the unit due to settling,filter dryer.
It's honestly cute how Pigbunny helps monitor some tasks you were doing! She's been on the channel for quite a while now. Wonder how old she is.
She is sooo cute ❤️❤️❤️ I wanna see her in more videosss
I thought it was "pinkbunny". Is it really "pigbunny"?? 😂😂
@@AB0BA_69 it IS pigbunny. He had the name spelled out in a title card on the Cat Tree video
@@Sgt_Kilbornalso her name was written in the closed captions, which he hand wrote himself.
@@Sgt_Kilborn That's both weird and adorable at the same time. I love it
Thanks for the rant on AC, that's a good idea.
Some other reasons are: tradition, looks, and a central control unit. One interesting advantage of multiple units is it, in theory, have a more accurate reading of the room temperature and essentially eliminate hotspots.
The broad answer to 90% of these things is that labor is expensive and capital is cheap.
No it's not. Do you know how much louder window units are? You also aren't thinking about lifespan. Window units might be 5X cheaper, but they'll only last 1/5 as long if you are lucky. My central air unit is well over twenty years old.
Great channel. Every video is so down to earth, without funky music and without exaggerated emotions. great work.
because he's an adult haha
Really appreciate his videos not having exaggerated emotions, not to mention edgy vulgarity.
Advice from Europe: In order to keep heat outside the house in summer and inside the house in winter, I recommend upgrading your windows with roller shutters.
A good window can insulate against air (temperature, humidity, noise) but it cannot insulate against the energy of light. Everybody knows how hot an inside floor or a window sill can become when the sun is shining on it through a window. Blocking (and reflecting) the sunlight will help to keep your house cooler and as a result you can reduce the amount of electrical energy needed for air conditioning.
We like to use window quilts in my part of the US, the cold part of the US. But they work extremely well for keeping heat out as well when backed with white fabric.
Combined with modern windows that filter IR and UV, at least until the gas insulations leak out, reducing the amount of overall energy outside of visible spectrums passing through, it works even better. You can also get treatments that reduce visible wavelengths, like polarized films... but then if you wear polarized eye glasses, you may have trouble seeing outside depending on the direction of the polarization in each.
Advice from a place where it doesn't get hot? He's in Texas, they are way more equipped to handle heat than anywhere in Europe, where 40 was considered a civilizational ending heatwave this summer. 40 is a mild summer in most of the US.
Wow.. what an ignorant response. Let me guess, you are into alt right, watch russian propaganda like RT and Sputnik@@MarkusAnthony88
@@rowaystarco no one asked you dork
Triple glass windows CAN insulate against heat. I can be in the sun coming through my windows and feel NO heat at all on the skin, and everything it shines on is completely cold.
And you still get all the sunlight.
I'd definitely say that a real power outage should be focused on keeping one room comfortable, and the rest just to essential power items, such as fridge and internet.
I agree and that is the scenario I have planned for and run tests to ensure this can be achieved. The power grid in the UK is extremely reliable such that unplanned power cuts as we call them are extremely rare. However we have a National plan of rolling cuts that can be implemented in the winter if Generation cannot meet consumer demand. That could have come into play last winter but as it turned out it was not required.
right 🤣☠
this guy: "power outage? HONEYYY!!! TURN EVERYTHING ON, MAX POWAAA!!!"
@@stephenwabaxterMy plan was/is to just have a couple of rechargeable torches, a high capacity power bank with some smaller ones and some food which can be cooked on a gas cooker.
The freezer I have is rated for half a day which should cover most scenarios.
I feel like going for anything more than this starts to enter questionable ROI territory, given that even the proposed power cuts were only supposed to be only for a few hours. I have a few UPS lying around and just maintaining those can be a pain at times e.g. replacing batteries
@@tech34756 Checkout South Africa with months of multi-hour rolling power outages. Granted unlikely for most countries, but those living in South Africa probably felt the same.
not totally agree, in case if you live outside of big city, and you haven't any convenience store around you, you probably will drive to the big supermarket then replenish food supplies for 1-2 week, of course part of them need to be stored in cold environment. If haven't deep cellars, fridge is only option.
I have similar thoughts; the factory engineer for the central HVAC systems told me that the actual factory cost is 1/20th the cost that is charged by the supply houses.
17:55 - It was wonderful watching Alec go a little mad and make an hour ep trying to figure out that simple yet challenging fridge problem.
could you point me to that video pls, i have a fridge problem too, thank you
@@whatislovebutonelonggame5406 ua-cam.com/video/8PTjPzw9VhY/v-deo.html
@@whatislovebutonelonggame5406 ua-cam.com/video/8PTjPzw9VhY/v-deo.html
@@whatislovebutonelonggame5406 it's one of the latest videos on youtube channel technology connections, it probably mentions a fridge in the video title / thumbnail
@@whatislovebutonelonggame5406 ua-cam.com/video/8PTjPzw9VhY/v-deo.htmlsi=X-P3Q2qjNxGk5Qqx
I have one of those 8000 BTU Midea window units. Since getting it, I’ve learned a bit about Midea. The smart bits are actually used by a lot of companies and they allow for LAN based control without the use of cloud if you install the right addon in Home Assistant.
Now, yes, the Midea system is going to be way more efficient. A bunch of them will be way more efficient. It’s not because they are window units, per se. It’s because they run variable speed compressors while the majority of central HVAC systems are not variable speed. They’re either on or off. And firing them up is a massive spike in power draw. But in Home Assistant, where I can see charted periods of when the HVAC runs and when the window unit runs, the window unit is almost always in “run mode” while the HVAC cycles when it’s below 100F outside, or just runs at full when above 100F outside.
Logging the data in Home Assistant, I find many periods where my window unit is using as little as 100W, but maybe hits up to 400W or so. It’s a 710W unit, but I leave it in eco mode. The room I use it in stays cold.
Midea makes mini split systems. They have options for ceiling cartridges and the traditional wall systems. I plan to buy a house in the next few years and I really want to buy one of their big ceiling cartridge based mini split systems. The evaporator part still runs a variable compressor like their window units so you get a lot of extra efficiency there.
If you want to go for mini splits (with ceiling cartridges) also look at japanese brands. Mitsubishi (heavy industries) and Panasonic are higher quality unit's in general. Midea is a chinese low cost suff (not that it's terrible :D) also sold under a ton of other brands. In regards to the smart home stuff: A lot of stuff just uses Tuya modules. They supply the infrastructure and hardware to do dirt cheap wifi/zigbee integration for stuff.
You're also supporting the CCP, never forget
I'm late to the party but this was a great, classic 8 Bit Guy video. It's too bad your mad scientist UA-camr idea never took off.. you really seem to have a natural scientists' mindset. This 'experiment' was so well thought out and executed. Well done!
A major fail as day 2 would start with about no charge left in your batteries as night 1 would have depleted them unlike the charge that was available at the start of the test. An overcast day would have depleted them during the day. Time to look into evaporative cooling as it requires less power but requires water and only drops outside temperatures 30 degrees max for a single stage unit.
@@ka7hqp182
Indeed, I feel like more batteries would help a lot. That's the big problem we have in California. We get a shit load of power during the day from the sun. 15 GW. (well, at this very moment, 12.4 GW. Sun is not very high in the sky yet.) But we don't have enough storage to go through the night on batteries. YET. We're working on that. personally I figure we want about 216 GWh of storage, that would output 15 GW for 12 hours. But I believe the current goal is to get to 100 GWh, which would output 15 GW for roughly 7 hours. Which isn't bad. There's a company called hydrostor from Canada, they are building us some facilities that will store power in the form of compressed air. They dig a cavern underground, and put water to maintain the air pressure. It's like pumped storage, but not requiring a naturally occurring geography that's favorable to pumped storage. 🙂 Hydrostor's two facilities will be nowhere near 100 GWh though, we have to keep building more facilities.
Of course solar isn't our only source of green power; we also have the world's largest geothermal facilities, which currently output 800 MW but they are being upgraded with some new plants that draw from the same heat source. (there's a huge blob of magma right underneath the north end of the San Francisco Bay. It causes naturally occurring steam underground.) Ultimately with the upgrades, "The Geysers" will output around 1.3 GW, 24/7 (no batteries needed).
The other big geothermal source we are working on is the one down by San Diego, by the Salton Sea. Controlled thermal plans to build 1.1 GW of geothermal there. Some of the power will be used to extract lithium the hot brine. They think there is enough to get 300,000 tons of it every year for the next 100 years at least.
California also has a lot of hydroelectric power, and we have one nuclear power plant. Unfortunately there are a lot of people not understanding the benefits of nuclear and basically afraid of it, so it's going to close down around 2025. If we get the geothermal fully built in the Salton Sea and Geysers areas though, that will replace nuclear as baseload. (I was a submariner, so I definitely support nuclear power. As the Captain of the USS Nautilus said, it is a "remarkable" form of energy.) 🙂
I think the hvac market is pretty well captured. Redundant, well priced individual units was the route I went. I did the same with my solar. Rather than upgrade and keep everything on one charging system I installed parallel systems to a single battery bank and output inverter. Works well. The parts are in a reasonable price range. More to manage but the redundancy is insurance.
8-Bit Guy is like a farm-to-table restaurant... You'll never get the same menu, but you KNOW you will get the best product, so you keep on coming!
Well realistically at least the food in this video is on a memorable level of disgusting.
@@Breakfast_of_Champions L + ratio
he shows you how to cook your food using just the power of the sun I love it🤣🤣
@@Breakfast_of_Champions I think the commenter made a metaphor here
Doskonale powiedziane ;-)
Very entertaining video. One thing you might do (and make a video about it) is to get a professional energy audit, where they use a blower door to do a leak test and use FLIR cameras to find voids in your wall and ceiling insulation. Adding more insulation is usually the best ROI to improve the comfort of the house and reduce your electrical usage. Most older tract houses have pretty poor insulation in the walls and ceilings.
He's really like a dad who's in touch with the current generation
Between a boomer and Gen-X-er... just perrrfect. :)
Just someone who objectively looks at technology for what it is does and doesn't do.
@@ 1:56 wait... with weather like that, 100% cloud at this moment you producing 50% of max solar power?
@@ 100% LIE, YOU'RE A LIAR
How did you post your video five hours before release? Was it premiered? Where's the live chat?
By my math he was born the same year as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, and Jaws. He's like the tech version of Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, and Richard Dreyfuss all mixed together
This was a wonderful educational video! Thanks for putting the time and effort into making it for us. I live in Central Texas and I know the heat and lack of rain has been brutal in 2023.
so yeah, basically whatever you do, wherever you live it is safe to say that you will need a small field of solar panels along with a small cluster of batteries in the basement to completely survive off the grid... the worst part is that either panels nor batteries won't last forever and you'll definitely need to replace them after few years, but still I'd go for it even tho.
@@mwk1 "after few years"
Solar panels usually have a guaranteed work life of 25 years for at least 80% of the rated peak power.
After that they still work but slowly degrade below the 80%.
Batteries if handled well also last at least 7-10 years.
@@FutureChaosTV Studies show that Solar Panels are likely to run at 65%-72% after 100 years. No real need to replace them until they are damaged or New Panels bring a better output from limited space.
Two big things that should be considered before you decide to up your power capabilities.
1: How good is your thermal envelope? you might get significantly more effect if you spend your money DIY or even professionally upgrading your insulation. Air leaks in windows and doors among other places are a huge contributor to heat ingress, the next biggest being heat moving through poorly insulated walls/ceilings/floors. This is probably one big reason you couldn't cool your bedroom to your liking, the window was not sealed and despite having a two hose system it's still likely heat was getting in.
2: Shade shade shade shade shade! That was the whole reason why people planted those trees that are blocking your solar power, but trees aren't the only solution. Hell, even your solar panels could be lowering the heat input through your roof if you give them a nice air gap between them and the roof. This also helps keep them cooler and more effective in power production. And then there's that wall on the side of the house that gets hot, aside from checking/upgrading it's insulation, find yourself some shade net and hang it from your eves or otherwise use it to intercept the sunlight and give your wall a good couple feet of breathing room from the brunt of the sunlight!
Bonus: If you can, and your insulation is good enough, get your ACs working overtime early in the morning. The cooler air outside makes them more effective at rejecting heat and more efficient, and you can store energy in the form of an air battery in the temperature difference between inside and outside. The lower the inside temps at the start of the day, the more of a head start your ACs have. This is also a great idea if you have peak and off peak consumption pricing for overall, if you have good enough insulation blasting your AC at night when the power is cheapest will reduce the cooling you need at peak or at least delay your draw.
look it's a sandwich and some chips🤣💪🤣
storing energy in an air battery is my favorite idea I learned from this comment.
@@cleekersneaker meh just get r90 windows and wall insulation and r180 in your attic and that little a/c can eventually cool his whole house all by itself😈
You can even get solar panels that use unused solar energy that the solar panel can't absorb as electricity and uses it to heat water running through them, which not only boosts the solar cells efficiency but allows warm water with no power or gas in the winter without drawing from batteries
I love that you took the time to make a sidewalk Frito pie in the middle of all your testing. What a cool solar setup you've got there!
look it's sandwich and some chips🤣🤣🤣
that was the first meal, the second was the frito pie @@raven4k998
I'm more wondering why he was using paper plates lol, guess they had some to use up or something
@@jama211 it's weird but I've known some families personally in the south/southeast US that just prefer paper plates and bowls. I don't really get it at all, but it's not that uncommon for someone from those regions to happen to prefer paper stuff. I don't watch his vids a lot though, so maybe this is weird for him hahaha
You don't have to clean it and can throw it away when you're done 🤷♀
I loved seeing your attic because when I lived outside of Plano that's exactly what my attic looked like - a series of crazy ducts angled oddly and held together with tape. Of course people outside of Texas often don't know the people in Texas have mostly slab construction with no basement. So there's no place to go for those ducts except in the attic where they're installed with an M C Escher geometry.
Same deal here in south-eastern Australia, I think there's a lot in common with our construction to Texas. That attic shot pretty much looks exactly like the roof space of my house! With the exception that our gas central heating system is up there, not A/C.
We have decommissioned the gas heating and just use reverse-cycle splits to heat the house which work great, and our energy costs have plummeted as a result - gas is extremely expensive now here but solar electricity is plentiful.
A/C wise, the splits also keep the house beautifully cool, especially when closing off unused rooms and turning on the ceiling fans.
Same here in my part of South Carolina right on the GA border, where the soil is too sandy to have a basement in most of the homes, so the duct work is either in the attic, or under the house in a crawl space like mine, and it's a nightmare to work on, that is if your not doing window/floor units, or mini splits.
Note that even if you had a basement in Texas, it would still be best to install HVAC in the attic. Cold air sinks, so placing the vents / intakes / machinery in the attic.
When your primary focus is _heating_ then you should put the heater in the basement (and put the vents / intakes along the floorboards).
Man, I live in tornado alley and not having a basement spooks me too much. Plus if you go deep enough the earth cools you, I don't understand why they don't outside of cost.
@@jmr5125 The downside to ductwork in the attic if you have a basement is you have a/c ducts in a very hot attic vs a cooler basement/crawlspace. But if your house is on a slab you don't have much choice.
Sun cooked Frito pie is the most Texas thing I can imagine.
Amazing, your rant on A/C is an eye opener for me. You are totally right about the portable/window units. I cant afford central A/C: $30,000. Told 'em to shove it.
My biggest gripe with central ACs is that they're built like garbage. When you can buy an entire CAR with a 3-ton aircon which has 4 or more blower speeds...yet for the same price get a central AC with ONE speed... something's not adding up.
@@grayrabbit2211 Depending on where you are, the central AC unit uses the same air handler (fan) that the furnace uses. If it blows at a constant speed, that's what you are limited to. There are variable speed fans and DC powered fans available... they just usually cost more and people are fucking cheap and never go for them.
@@phandcorp That's only in the USA. They use much nicer stuff outside of there.
Even at my home in the USA, we ripped out the crappy PSC motor and replaced it with a BLDC motor + controller, so it's basically a VFD. Speed is controlled based on evap coil temp (don't want to slug the compressor or freeze the coil) and dewpoint. No use removing latent load (humidity) unless there's a need for it. Likewise, if there's heavy humidity, it basically becomes a large dehumidifier and focuses on moisture removal first, temperature later. I would have gone with an adjustable TXV valve but that was going to get complicated.
The cost was minimal to do this and far cheaper than the ECM motors HVAC manufacturers use in the USA. Far better performance and comfort as well.
23:31: I suspect the wife acceptance factor for the "man without help" patio-cooked bachelor cuisine meal can't possibly be high.
Really have been curious about using small HVAC units vs central and your rant was well received. If I have a catastrophic Central HVAC issue I'll strongly consider trying a distributed group of small units. Also - props for doubling up one row of pickups to truly show 40 in the pickup/semi pic - that kind of attention to detail is why I love your content!
I use window units. There are advantages and disadvantages, as in anything. (Disclaimer: I am not an electrician or an A/C tech or anything similar. Also, I'm in the US so what I say may not apply to other countries.)
Ideally each window unit should have its own separate circuit. If possible, they should be 20A circuits instead of the standard 15A circuits. Having a 20A circuit also gives you more options. You can get a more powerful A/C or even one with a built in heater since both of those will draw more juice than a 15A circuit could safely supply. A 20A outlet (female) will accept a standard 15A plug (male) but not vice versa so you could still use a unit with a normal plug. 20A circuits aren't just a special outlet, they also have more robust wiring and a special breaker.
Of course, that's the ideal and most people just plug them into regular outlets. That can overload the circuit. If you plan on changing over, I would have an electrician add a 20A circuit to each room where you plan to add a window unit. At least do it for the larger ones.
Mini Splits are a good answer to this!
David, as an experienced AC tech, your rant is absolutely correct. All of these small window units and ductless split systems are revolutionizing the industry.
That is interesting to hear from a German perspective. ACs are very uncommon over here for several reasons: electricity costs about 3 times as much, installation is more complicated (the window units are impossible with our style of window, a new wall opening in an insulated brick wall is costly, central ACs need ducts that can't be easily installed) and then new buildings have to be insulated so well by law.. that AC doesn't make much sens anymore especially because the costs are already on such a high level..
@@olik136 Well, that totally makes sense since Germany's hottest temperature is about 25°C right? I have no doubts that if Germans wanted to design something, they would have no problems doing so since some of the best engineering in the world comes from your country.
@@freddaniali Germany isn't Texas for sure.. but we have about 2 weeks per year with more than 30°C.. and in 2022 it was way hotter with several cities reaching 40°C
I think the main thing to take away is you could likely keep it under 80 and the fridge running in a 24hr power outage. 80 may not be completely comfortable, but cool enough to be livable.
Frito pie for dinner: Tell me you're a Texan whose wife left him unsupervised without saying it
You’d do well to energy wise insulate your home to a much higher R factor. It would hold heat and heat faster in the winter, and stay cold longer and cool faster in the summer. Would tremendously improve the efficiency and performance of your solar set up, furnace, and central air cond keeping your home at an even temp regardless of season and weather with ease at a lower cost.
OF COURSE!!!! Why did no one in Texas ever think of insulating their house?!?!?!?!?
@@Elemental-ITBecause there's a lot of newer construction that doesn't do enough to minimize future heating and cooling needs. The number one mistake I see is the roof is usually not insulated, just the floor of the attic is, so most have a free sauna in their attic.
Many don't consider the benefit of properly venting the attic. Reduce your attic temps and there's less heat for the insulation to have to stop getting into your living space. Improving venting is soooooo easy.
@@lightdark00 I had a rigid urethane foam roof sprayed on in 2019. For the first time in 35 years here, it's not boiling hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter inside the house. Half of the house has open beam ceilings that had no insulation. The attic gable fan very rarely runs now. It is set to go on at 95F and used to run 14-16 hours a day. Cost me $22,000 for the roof. Worth every penny. It cut my heating bill by 60%. I don't even have AC in this 2900 sq ft house. The foam is about 1-3/4 to 2 inches thick and you can walk on it without deforming it. The foam won't burn and has a tan mineral gravel coating on top with acrylic topping. This is the best single improvement I ever did here.
@@joshpayne4015 would that not let cold air in in winter though?
I think if the refrigerator had been prioritized a bit more it could have sustained itself for a full 24 hours - that's a significant achievement!
Furthermore, your studio building seems pretty close to being able to endure a day or more without power. Perhaps a strategic move would be to enhance the solar and battery capacity there to provide a safe haven for your family. Meanwhile, the current setup in the main house can be utilized to maintain temperatures below 95 degrees F (the recommended ambient maximum for refrigerators) ensuring the safety of your food.
Echoing some previous comments, given common building practices in recent decades, I'd speculate that enhancing the insulation in your main house might offer the best return on investment. This would reduce the external heat influx, making it more efficient for your house system to maintain desired temperatures.
the solar power content was golden. i’ve always been interested in self sufficiency. lucky enough I live in australia so we never need heating
It's always a good idea to actually test your equipment before SHTF. In a case of real emergency, I would probably suggest to prioritized only certain area of the house to be cooled, as the power budget to cool the whole house seems unfeasible at best.
To be honest , in SHTF situation there will be riots in all buildings and homes and so many will probably burn down. You would need a shack out in the mountains far far away from people and or a underground bunker. Keep in mind that in a SHTF situation public supplied water , electricity and gas will end at some point.
Each case and budget is different. The scenario I have planned for is a planned 3 hour power cut that would be part of the UK national plan that can come into play in winter time. I have a limited budget so currently have insufficient battery storage to operate an infrared heater but a future upgrade could incorporate this capability.
I would say the emergency plan should be to bunk in the office. It's small and well isolated. Run a few extension cords to link up the house power with the office power.
@@killerdeamonkingThat's prepper talk. A week long power outage wouldn't lead to societal decay.
He kind of did that. During the day the power was more than enough to not draw from the batteries so it should have helped by using the house as a thermal storage.
These solar vids have become sort of my faves on your channel, a new hobby - solar - to see what works (and what doesn't!) ...could make a whole channel probably just for solar stuff like this. Very educational and interesting.
This guy should have his storage and system tied into the grid. He could probably be bringing his bills down even more with a proper monitoring system in place. There are some good videos showing the benefits of doing that. Also, depending on your system set up, their EV could also act as a batter to keep the house cool at night.
Same here
Why? Man lives like a crazy person shouldn't be a big draw, unless you are an unethical person that thinks that sideshow freaks are a valid form of entertainment.
@@artboymoy Grid-tied means regulations though. If you like to play around, then you want an island system.
You can also split the difference, and add a grid-tie inverter to your island system, to turn on when your batteries are full
Great video. Enjoyed every minute. An interesting test would be to start your day at like 20% battery. Simulating what a second day without power may look like.
Man, if I were to do this test, I'm sure I could get more time. At 72 Fahrenheit , in shorts and a t-shirt, I start to get a little chilly. I'm perfectly happy at 75-78. Heck, I'm still quite comfortable at 80-82 as long as the A/C is running just enough keep the humidity down.
As far as window units being ugly, if they keep me comfortable, I don't care what they look like. Them things get a lot less ugly when the central A/C goes out.
Yes, I was quite surprised at this, even as a Canadian. That's really cold. It must be a crazy shock going from indoors to outdoors, and outdoors to indoors
@@_evildoer Well, 72 degrees *is* considered 'room temperature' (22C, I think?).
@@_evildoer
The first time it really struck me was as a kid. Going into a store would be like a freezer and coming out would be like a blast furnace.
Yeah, I don't turn on the ac until like 85, 72 is crazy
Man, I live in Brazil and I have never experienced such high temperatures. That’s crazy!
I'm in Australia and 40c temps drive me mad. Certainly not the days to experiment with cutting the power!
I guess you don't live in Rio de Janeiro, right? 42°C is really typical in the summer around here.
It's been over 100 here several times in Upstate NY
@@vinnycordeiro Manaus mandou um abraço pra você.
@@TonHet1 Eu nunca disse que temperatura alta é exclusividade carioca. Porra, tenho amigos no sul que falam que Porto Alegre é insuportável no verão.
I find it funny how the superimposed graphs at 29:25, specifically the garage line, makes the whole thing look like a sports car
You should consider building a 5+kW battery (store in your garage). There are a ton of videos on UA-cam on how to do this and you def have the skills to put one together. This way, you will be using all your panels more effectively and able to store enough power in a battery of this size to last you through the night. Also maybe consider using your car batteries for this.
Pigbunny is adorable. I can't imagine she's enjoying the heat with that incredible amount of floof.
Looks like any cat, surely?
@@ebridgewater that cat has longer fur than a regular shorthair.
Every cat I've ever had (and I have had quite a few) have absolutely loved the heat. They curl up next to the radiator in the winter and sit in the windowsill in the summer. Cats usually hate being in front of a fan.
OTOH, I did have a cat that loved the water. She loved pawing at it. Most cats hate water.
@@denimadept Ah, fair enough. Most cats looks to same, to me.
You know domestic cats evolved out of desert cats, right? They're bred for heat.
Definitely have a look at split units as they are the most efficient ones available at the moment. Cheap Asian unit can be found around 400€ here, the first propane (r290) ones begin to come to the market for around 1500€.
Man you 100% need to consider grid tying.. Your savings would be so much higher and you can still have a battery bank and options for emergency grid down situations.
Interesting that the heat can kill you if your AC quits. Where I live in Canada, the cold WILL (not could) kill you, if you lose heat. We're talking -30c to -40c for weeks on end in December, January or February.
He was taking a bit of license with that statement. Deadly heat scenarios always involve a second factor. If you're reasonably healthy, don't get too much direct sun and stay hydrated, there's almost no outdoor temperature high enough to actually kill you.
In the case of the A/C quitting, either it's because the space becomes an oven and exceeds what you'd experience outdoors, or he was thinking of examples that involve the elderly or infirm.
I liked the test. Solar and wind are not the full solutions. Just like anything in life, diversification is the key. Being too reliant on too few choices will always leave you with Mr Murphy yelling "I TOLD YOU SO".
I don't have to suffer this kind of heat, or have any kind of solar. But in spite of that, this was very entertaining and educational. :)
YES! MORE SOLAR EPISODES PLEASE!!
Keep us updated!
Loved the video
Central A/C condensers (the 'outside unit') cost quite a bit *because* it's the same as 4 of those 12k units. It has a huge compressor which is packed with copper coils and then it runs the freon up to the attic A-Frame and back down which is more copper tubing. There's also an electric motor for the fan and a radiator, all inside a casing. As for the attic unit, there's the A-frame which gets the cold freon and it likely has a heating element which uses an electric motor on a squirrel cage fan to blow the air into the duct work. The metal casing is insulated so it doesn't form condensation on the outside. The pan you mentioned isn't for emergencies, it's a drain pan as the A-frame forms condensation from the humid house air. There should be a pipe draining somewhere, often outside or into the shower/toilet breather pipe.
idk why im so obsessed with people making self-sufficient power grids but i can't get enough, do more!
Because the companies we pay a lot of money to maintain the main grids just pocket the money and laugh at us whenever it goes down, so we have to do something to keep the reliability up, even if it means spending more money.
It’s difficult to cool a single room in a hot house. With the insulation between interior rooms like the exterior of your house has the heat will transfer relatively quickly between them.
I was thinking the same. With proper insulation he could have kept windows open at night. Starting with a much lower overall ambient temperature. I was mostly shocked how much the temperature changed during the day within the house. Even for a place with such higher temperatures.
There is also very little shade to be found around the house/neighborhood.
Do you want shade or do you want solar?
@@p_mouse8676 The humidity here makes opening the windows a double edged sword, it can cool the house down but it quickly starts getting pretty swampy. In the summers where it's still around 85F/30C at night it can make your house get pretty gross.
@@p_mouse8676 opening the windows at night with lows in the 80s doesn't help.
You know it's high quality content when all the measures are translated to international metric system. Thank you from Europe!
Pigbunny is gorgeous, and with that long fur coat in Texas, I'm not surprised she spends so much time in front of the AC unit! ❤
One thing to also note about central AC is that home values skyrocket when you add it so people are just willing to pay the exorbitant price to add it. For example, my mom lives in California and she paid 8k for central air, and her home value went up by 20k.
Or in my case my unit is a gas heat pump that also heats my home in the winter, so it pulls double duty, and our one added on media/family room that does not have it(would have had to drill into the original foundation of the house to run a vent, and my brother who was an AC guy for nearly 2 decades said don't do it ), a portable floor AC that vents out a side window, and a floor heater work just fine for the time we spend in that room, and for the rest of the time we don't to keep it cool, we use a floor fan to pull in cool air from the rest of the house to keep it from not being a sweat box along with the ceiling fan, and during the winter we keep the ceramic floor heater on about 59f - 63f so nothing gets too cold, and it does not pull too much power when not in the room.
@@AnonymousGentooman This is not how property tax works, your tax is based on the price you bought the house for
@AnonymousGentooman it's only higher taxes if the appraiser finds out. The appraiser has no idea I have a 5th bedroom, ef5 tornado bunker attached to my walkout basement, hard surface counter tops, and other electrical upgrades. They did find out about my screened in deck and fenced in trash & recycling cart area only because they found them while walking the perimeter of the property. Never pull a permit unless absolutely necessary. Especially don't pull a permit for electrical work. Never let the appraisers inside
@@shaftandsack No, property tax is based off your home's assessed value.
@@ethann_browne yeah, and how often do they assess things
This is a really scientific approach, putting a theory out to the test, while gathering useful data.
Thanks for also displaying temperatures in Celsius.
Great video.
Sorry, no. It would be scientific if he had a theory. He should have measured the energy consumption and the power generation first. He should shown clearly the battery capacities. It was indeed a fun test, without a theory. Also most of the numbers were not shown in C, which was annoying as a non-american.
It is really so fascinating because you and I are about the same age and experienced the tech revolution at the same time. What I have left to say is not hate for areas or whatever, just a contribution to the dialogue. I live in the Central Coast of California and run usually about $120 in the summer for electric and around $25 for gas. I don't have air conditioning or use heating in the winter. I've always wondered if it would be worth it to set up a solar installation, small like yours to provide electricity to the fridge and freezer during the summer. I am a bit confounded on whether the total costs of the batteries and setup would be worth it. Thank you for the really in depth analysis. I enjoy all your other videos too, thank you for them. Cheers.
I love when he uploads, absolutely makes my day
Me too! :D
I live in the UK and when he posted it was 2am. Still I watched it all. ❤
It was you, David, that inspired my 2021 Bluetti purchase along with 6 100 watt solar panels (Renogy) for the roof of my 2600 sq ft home here in northwest Florida. There was some push-back from my wife 🤨, so I "experimented" as you did. I set up one section of the house to run on solar A.C. - I bought a Midea 8000 BTU, and installed it and the roof panels during the winter of 2021-22. My electric bill would sky-rocket during May (central A.C.), and it did go up, but not like I was used to. My highest bill was well below what I had come to know as normal. And I learned some new stuff in the process - so, thank you, David! 🙂
YES! MORE SOLAR EPISODES PLEASE!!
Keep us updated!
Another major difference with window-mounted air conditions and the portable little ones, is that the majority of the heavy-generating electronics, motors, etc are outside of the house. When your unit sits inside, it has to perform double-duty of cooling the room as well as the unit itself according to ambient temperature.
Main takeaway for me is that those peak hours are most crucial and utilizing them with more panels and batteries is the way to go, definitely. Basically you can't oversize a solar battery install and the only limiting factor should be ones pocket.
its nice to see UA-camrs homes like a normal home lol. sometimes it makes me feel lazy because the house is not perfect
Curious what your home insulation situation is. Would it be possible to dramatically improve your home's insulation to be able to drive down A/C power consumption during the day?
I added 18 inches of blown insulation to my attic when I got solar (for a total of almost 2.5 feet). It was measured at R40 before and R80 after - and It barely made a dent. Texas bakes in the summer and no amount of insulation changes that. I built an addition onto my house and did a full spray foam envelope. It is no better at slowing the oven of a July day in Dallas.
Assuming no one in Texas has thought of adding insulation to stave off the heat is insane.
While that might be useful for the theoretical power outage that he tested here, remember that he started off the video saying that he was trying to INCREASE his power consumption lol
Insulating your attic is valuable -- but to go along with that, proper attic ventilation is critical. If you vent properly, you can reduce your attic temps to (hopefully) closer to outside ambient, which will reduce the amount of heat your insulation has to resist heat radiating down into your living space. They go hand in hand. If your attic isn't properly vented, all the insulation in the world will not help like you want it to. You can also install radiant reflectors (foil looking things) to help as well. They're all complimentary approaches.
@@LunatheMoonDragonhe was trying to increase his SOLAR power consumption.
@@joshpayne4015 your entire list is like step 1 of Texas construction.
Nice video, thanks for taking the time. I have installed 3 mini-splits in the house for a total of 3.25 tons, and have not used the 5 ton central A/C in over a year. I like the fact I can control temps in 3 different zones, and they are super quite. Not to mention the cost savings, and the biggest plus is the fact I can run them on my solar backup power. I'm in West Texas, and Feb 2021 had me focused on having sustainable backup power. I had to use it 6 times since spring do to storms, and substation problems, and so glad I have it.
Pragmatic, honest, useful, entertaining, and real world information. Thanks.
Interesting experiment thanks for documenting it so well and explaining it so clearly. Looking forward to getting my hands on it Commander X16 someday!
Great video David. I think one of the advantages of the mini split and central AC is that they can also be used to heat during the winter, consuming less power than a space heater for the same amount of heat. These makes them a better choice for solar power.
Another youtuber in Florida did a whole series of videos on converting his workshop to solar, with quite a fancy setup. They took a direct hit from the hurricane and won't have power perhaps for weeks. Huge amount of damage to trees. Powerlines are basically gone. So the solar is being put to a real test under actual need circumstances. He's also using multiple Ecoflows to run the house along with a propane generator. The Kelley's County Life is the channel. Quite good stuff.
Your studio and solar projects inspire me to build my own someday! I also find it incredible that you can cook food just by putting it outside in Texas 😂
Yep seatbelts can leave wonderful burns on your legs when wearing shorts and sitting on them too. Or park benches or sidewalks. Concrete, god it’s stupidly hot in Texas I don’t miss the heat at all.
You can grow tomatoes in January though.
I just wanted to let you know that I have really enjoyed your videos. This may have been the first time that I have commented about the content. I think the time I spend on the channel is very worthwhile. Thanks for sharing your videos with the community.
One tip i would give for in a real emergency, is to just all stay in only one relatively small room together and cool just that one and have the fridge and food there as well, so you don't have to waste resources to cooling (or warming) a whole house. (Mind fire hazards if places get too hot of course).
This is what we do (In FL). We may not even use an A/C. I was able to power our fridge, some lights, and some fans last year for 2 weeks on a 1/4 tank of gas (about 7.5gallons) using my F150 powerboost (hybrid).
I'm sure we could have made it the same 2 weeks with a window unit in one of the rooms if we wanted to, but the truth is, even at 109F, if you open your house and run fans, you would likely still survive, albeit you would be really uncomfortable.
(I also had another 50 gallons of gas in cans, our other car topped of, and the truck had 30 gallons to start... all in all I think we had about 100 gallons of gas which would have lasted us 2-3 months even with an A/C on in one room).
One thought? The fridge heats up the surrounding air so maybe dont keep it in the same room
Wow great test, I loved watching this. I live in Alberta, Canada, I could not least in 41c in temperatures. With my C.O.P.D the heat cost my breathing in almost half. I donot know how anyone can least in that heat. I love the channel keep it up
As a person in Texas, 100F is barely warm. You haven’t seen hell until you’ve had marching band practice while it’s 109.
90 in FL is worse than 109 in TX. It really helps when the air is dry and your sweat can evaporate efficiently.
As a South African who get's 2 to 12 hours of power outages everyday. This was pretty entertaining, also extremely thankful that our weather is quite fair here.
2 to 12 hours of power outages every day?!? Really? The last power outage here was in the spring, maybe in March, and it lasted 20 minutes. I didn't even have time to connect the inverter to my Prius to keep the fridge going.
@@SolarWebsite yeah south africa's electricity grid is beyond a joke due to corruption and the infrastructure breaking down since when it was built after ww2, google "load shedding" if you're curious, because honestly it is a pretty interesting topic as an outsider
Yeah, I bet you had multiple power outages while writing out this comment...
As a lover of third world country I can relate.
@@SolarWebsite Yes, South African power plants are falling apart due to years of non-existent maintenance, so now we have rotational power cuts. 2 hour slots for up to 4 times a day, nationwide.
Its interesting what people find uncomfortable, and how used to hotter temps you can train your body for. I am in Canada, but live on the top floor in a non air conditioned building, and the apt also faces south, so lots of sun. It is 30-35c all summer, and as long as a fan is blowing on me, I am fine. Its currently 30c in here at 10pm, and it was quite a cool day outside (dont think it even reached 25)
humidity is usually the issue, low humidity and high temp with a fan is usually fine.
@@rw-xf4cb Yeah, the humidity in Texas is really what makes the heat so bad. If you go outside during the day it doesn't take too long before you're completely soaked in sweat. My AC broke last summer and it only took a few hours for my house to start turning into a swamp, it was disgusting. Fans didn't help, and opening the windows just made it worse. I didn't stop sweating until the AC was fixed the next day.
@@rw-xf4cb We do not have low humidity in Southern Ontario. The average humidity is higher than Texas
@@MScotty90 Texas has one of the lowest humidity rates in the states. Sure its higher than Arizona and New Mexico, but not many more.
I went to a Quakecon one year that it got up to 115, and all you needed to do was find some shade and it was tolerable. Was quite surprising.
@@_evildoer It depends on where in Texas you go, in the western half of the state it's a desert so the humidity is very low, but the Eastern half is much different. In Austin, Dallas, and Houston the humidity is usually over 70%, often much higher. The humidity here in Austin is 96% right now at 6AM.
I have been following David's solar adventures for the past view videos, and I have to agree with him on the absurd cost differential between individual A/C units and central air conditioning.
My parents LOVE central A/C, so I was very surprised when rather than replace it when the system aged out, they switched to a Mitsubishi wall-mounted system.
The simple fact is it's way cheaper, more customizable, more energy efficient and doesn't require them to wedge the unit in the window sill. Zero compromises. 💯
I like how the cat is like a tiny scientist assistant.
Great video, it's nice to see things working.
I'm fairly sure one of the big reasons window units aren't as common is because of the aesthetics - as well as the convenience afforded by having your heating and cooling from the same existing route with central. And while you could certainly be more efficient isolating your cooling to only rooms you occupy - which is a bit more difficult (and more expensive) with a central system, you're also missing out on overall airflow and compromising the air seal factor of your windows.
I think the most efficient route available now would be those "central" heat pump systems. They're kind of bulky in rooms, but you can't beat that efficiency if you're in a location that doesn't sit in the extremes of weather.
And don't overlook the noise issue.
Can't believe how much power you're using, nearly 4,000 kWh in August - is more than I use here in Ireland in a 4 bed detached house for the whole year 😅
Love what you've done here and how much of an extent you've went through to make solar power. All that being said I would not want to live like this.
Consider getting a solar oven (they can even be made; you did a primitive version of that with your Frito pie), and just fixing it in (or a little north of) your Retrobriting spot. It will really help with cooking without needing to engage the (hypothetical) rocket stove or anything electric.
I have my home emergency lighting running on a 12 VDC system with 400 amp hour LiPo4 battery bank with 12 VDC LED lamps and fans. The solar panels total 450W for about 4 to 6 hours of good production per day. Only use 12 VDC to 120 VAC inverter for the refrigerator as needed. The solar panel and MPPT charge controller all purchased used for about 20 cents on the dollar. Only the 400 AH batteries were purchased new at a total cost of $1,200. Over the past two years this simple system has handled all my needs running the house's security system and security / emergency lighting. The average total production / usage for my little home made system is about 900w - 1.2KW. Enjoyed your testing & video..... Yes it is hot in DFW this time of the year.
One change, get foam board. Cut them to fit the window wells. We have a cabin with no ac and it helps greatly reduce temperature swings, both in winter and summer.
Might not be the nicest thing in the world but works very well. A nicer option are external shutters which can help a lot by reducing the solar gains of the building.
@patrick_test123 Indeed. Although, in our case, it would be more expensive as they'd need to be bear proof! We've got old windows that are double pane, but the frame is aluminum (conducts heat well) and has gaps like swiss cheese. Unbelievably, we also got over 46 windows. Foam board reduces our heating costs drastically in winter, primarily by cutting down drafts.
Cooling and heating is only one part of the equation. My fathers house was suitable for fitting internal insulation in the form of drywall with rockwool behind it. It was winter time and the living space got finished first and he was shocked when he realized that the room was almost as warm as the other side of the house, he forgot to turn on the healing the previous night because he thought he already turned it on. But he didn't. And also he was worried about the electricity bill as we installed quite a powerful unit( i think about 24000BTUs), But what happened was the unit will turn on and like 15min later it's almost off, because the temps have reached the desired level. So yeah think about insulation too 😃
yes. The method provided in the video is the american way, basically brute force with energy. Isolation is the proper way. I'm pretty sure you could keep the house cool (and hot in winter) with good isolation. The inital cost is alot higher than buying this setup but in the long run especially with maintenance and stuff. Depending on your climate you could use the night cool to get your temps down and use the closed house suvive the day. Another option is using a heaat pump to use the cold "stored" in the underground. In the winter you could use the underground temperature to heat you house.
@@DoomWarriorX you cannot keep the house cool without AC, once the heat is in the isolation will make it stick longer, but the same applies for cold, but it probably will help to add another 5-6 hours to the emergency bridge time in this case. Have in mind that in Europe we use mostly solid material for house building which also acts as a heat/cold store, so you can prolong whatever temperatures you have for longer periods of time with the stone like materials as well, wood does not have this, it reacts rather swiftly to temperature changes.
So even with isolation you wont get the same effectiveness on a wood building as you have with stone like materials.
The next issue is the window, proper isolation means you need a completely different window design with multi layered windows and foam or rubber buffered connection points, which "shoots" the window splitters literally out of the list of possibly usable devices, which then increases costs for cooling again, because you then have to install a proper splitter device with an exterior unit instead of cheap window splitters (love the devices btw. but they really only can work with the US window design)
@@DoomWarriorX Not all American houses skip insulation. David's in Texas, where it rarely gets cold enough to need heating in the winter, so most houses there skipped insulation in the past. Now that climate change is giving them scalding hot summers every year, that's changing. New houses focus on sealing and insulating so that they're easier to cool in the summer.
My house is in Tennessee and it's got insulation in all the outer walls, the attic and along the bottom floor joists.
its insulation bruh not "Isolation" And no it isn't the American way it's the moronic way. Smart Americans indeed use the correct insulation in their houses. Stop spreading Bs stereotypes around that oh all Americans stupidly just run their AC systems at max 24/7 instead of properly building the houses with insulation. Where did you even come up with such a stupid stereotype from. Your just making stupid sht up i guess. Get out of here with saying Americans do it as a insult to literally every person that is blood American.@@DoomWarriorX
@@ManabiLT I'm looking to build a small passive home on my property. Should be an interesting experiment and seeing if I can also make it a net zero home in WI.
This is our lives each summer here in Yemen, though most people can't afford a system that runs the AC, we only run the ceiling fan and hope the power comes back before the room becomes too hot (it usually doesn't)
If you do ever think you're going to be without main-grid power for a long time in that kind of heat, I'd really recommend keeping everything as low-consumption as possible. 72 in 103+ heat is a super luxury - if it's 78/80, consider yourself lucky and just chill out - it'll last much longer and keep you from dangerous levels.
with 72 I'd put on a cardigan. do people really enjoy it this cold? especially if it's hot outside?
That’s pretty much his point. 78F isn’t optimal, but in an emergency it’s livable.
My mother lives in a cabin in the woods with some solar panels and a diesel generator. She rarely uses the diesel, the solar panels keep most stuff she uses going. She doesn't use computers though.
If you're still reading comments; from this video it looks like your house could also use awnings -much more effective than blinds. Lowering your heat loading lowers your power demands.
We put canvas window awnings over our South facing windows (2 windows ~3' x 4'+) and the inside temp in those rooms dropped like 10+ degrees. Well worth the cost. We also added an awning over part of our deck walkway to shade the kitchen west-facing window that got the kitchen super warm in the midafternoon, and that also made a significantly 'feelable' difference. (BTW we have new Marvin double-pane, argon, UV-coated, aluminum-clad wood frame windows.) You should look into canvas awnings; we used an installer who also does commercial buildings, and we used the commercial product lines for custom-fit shades. After 5+ years they still look like new.
Excellent episode! Also, if The Twilight Zone taught me anything, it's that you will have to add another measurement to your graph to represent the temperature change when all of your neighbors crash your place during an actual outage. 😉
I'm dying in temperature above 28C, so I can't imagine even breathing in 40C. Glad David is such a crafty man that he can keep his family safe from power outages.
It will be 38°c here soon
As an Australian, I would literally murder someone for only 28C weather in summer.
Must be a fellow Canadian, lol. Anything above 15 and I start to melt.
I just went to Texas on vacation. During these hottest days ever. >110F on the car dash, below 20% humidity. Better than 90F with 60% humidity. It's "shit it's hot" vs "f... I am all wet from sweat".
I HATE LIVING IN FLORIDAAAAA!
This was a GREAT experiment. While, I have no solar on my house, my work truck/RV does. Thank you!!
emergency preparedness makes no sense here in europe, if the grid goes down, society is over... but i do like the idea of being grid independent. and i approve of the cat
He lives in Texas, the only US state with their own independent power grid. It's poorly made and maintained so it goes down 1-3 times a year nowadays. The rest of the US has a unified power grid like EU
What makes sense in the EU is having grid tied storage, solar and a tariff that charges you by the stock price of the energy. That way you can save quite a bit of money in the mid to long run.
@@breadcodes?! I've lived in Texas for my entire 50 years and have never had my power go out for more than 8 hours, usually because of a local storm or something taking out some power lines. Even Snowpocalypse (the event that hit David) didn't touch us here in Round Rock.
Why would you make stuff like that up?
@@breadcodes ...the whole point of this video was for him to try his system out because he hasn't had another outage in the 3 years since this project began. 😆 I get 12-36 hour outages multiple times per year where I am. Living 90 minutes away for 10 years, I got one 12 hour outage once. It's been a random grab bag of reliability no matter where I've lived in the US. Some places are good, some are bad. 🤷♂
@@breadcodes Is 1-3 times a year even that bad ??? In India most semi-urban areas have power outages 4-5 days a week, with multiple power fluctuations per day ☠️
The mini split type of air conditioning are kinda best when it comes to cooling a room ,since cold air droops and hoot air rises, plus they are definitely not ugly compared to a window unit, but then again happy wife happy life , so if she says no then no it is 😂
I would argue that a proper heat pump is the best. It does double duty as well using less energy.
Leave it to a woman to rather have a hot room instead of an "ugly" air conditioner...
For the studio you should just plug one unit into the dead units ac input since you only need 120V for that.
I've always been interested in those solar ovens. It would be interesting to see your results with one of those. They require no power at all.
:) He didn't use any power this time either! I liked that bit too. I'm guessing the stone is an insulator storing heat.
This was a fun episode, always good to see a new video from the 8-Bit Guy.
72, wow! Another Texan here (Houston) and I have upstairs set to 77 in the day and downstairs at 76 (75 if we start feeling warm). We cool it down to 74/75 at night (for these 100 degree heats, that's scheduled to start cooling at 8:30pm)
Central air means you get to see out all your windows without a bulky AC unit in the way. And more importantly, it's a lot quieter than having seven window units rattling the walls of your house.
His Midea units are made so he can see out the windows around the A.C. Besides, that's the cost of having the convenience of window air units. In two places where I lived that have central air, I always had to have a window or portable unit in my upstairs bedroom.
Central air also stops your house from looking like something from a third world shanty town.
@@TheKnobCalledTone. I don't really understand how a window unit is third world
@@TheKnobCalledTone. Us in the "third world" use air conditioners mounted to the upper side of the wall, with a pipe going out to the box that does the actual heating or cooling (and you control it with a remote). I've never seen anybody here using window mounted air conditioners, maybe that's an US thing.
Yes, so you can stare out the windows and spy on your neighbors like a crazy old lady with nothing better to do.