this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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If a machine is never 100% efficient transforming energy into work because part of the energy is converted into heat, does it mean an electric heater is 100% efficient? @[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

There's an interesting aspect of this that I have not seen mentioned yet. While this is true you are usually better off using your residential heater rather than an electric space heater because residential heaters are frequently over 100% efficient. That is, they deliver more heat for the energy expenditure than if you had converted the energy directly by redirecting ambient heat. Heat pumps are this same principle taken to the extreme.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

But there's a flip side to that as well - if you've got heat pump heating your whole home but you only really need to heat 1 room, you may be "wasting" a good chunk of that bonus efficiency.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

If you dont want certain rooms heated you close the doors to those rooms. And place the heater such that the airflow goes trough the rooms you want heated.

Also the house should be heated evenly unless you have really poor isolation and that should be addressed way before the minutia of heat pumps gets discussed.