Dave Jackson

How interesting! Did a search for this and the fifth item down was this post on StackExchange. Seems like it might be a good place to get more information on this amazing topic!

Well, let's say that I, theoretically, do want to reach much higher heat temperatures in such an arrangement. Are there any options?

Been seeing some interesting things from Green Power Science on YouTube such as his work with a Sterling engine powered by a fresnel lens. I was really intrigued by his 3800ºF solar foundry video.

It got me thinking, how hot can this really go? For example, it is known that if you add water (perhaps mineral oil would do similarly and be more permanent in an enclosure?) to the back of a fresnel lens, you can roughly double or triple the distance of the focal point. I wonder if one can combine multiple fresnel lenses in order to perhaps have a multiplicative effect on the heat level that the solar rays can output? Can this temperature of 3800ºF be raised to 1.5-2x this level by such an arrangement?

Any thoughts?

This is very interesting. I am very interested in this as well as I just realized that I have these enormous fans going perpetually to heat and cool my home and office that are essentially going to waste. I figure I should be able to harness some electric back off of them to help improve efficiency of the devices, but also realized that I can circulate air in our attic, thus helping a bit. Seems like this could be something quite useful to add to this, especially in the winter for adding some heat to the mix.

What would be the use of the rock bed? Water is a good idea.

Of course it would be nice to eliminate, but I have a lot of electronic equipment that must have active cooling from AC and so that's unfortunately not an option.

I was doing some work outside this morning when I realized that a tremendous amount of energy is just going to waste from my heat pumps. The fans on them seem to blow about 85% of the time during the summer and I started wondering about potential uses for the massive amount of air being blown through them as well as the additional heat.

Has anyone thought of creative uses for these before? I thought perhaps about rerouting them to our sealed attic to keep the temperature down during the summer up there. I am sure there could be many other potentially beneficial uses for these as well vs just blowing into void and wasting all energy.

We also have a creek right behind the house and high ground water content at just a couple feet down about 90% of the year. Not sure what the implications are there yet for that, but I thought it interesting.

What I had in mind was perhaps some way to use convection from inside the house where we can bring the temperature up and then push the water in the circuit down to create the flow in a closed circuit sans pump...

Some good input here guys! Thanks. He's in Ohio where the cattle can stand way below zero when needed (read: plenty of hair and very hearty). He's doing embryonic work at the moment as well. Amazing stuff and he's working to get some bulls into an AI stud. When I say "Best" I'm talking this is comparative to everything in the entire Angus breed for highest desirability EPDs. These cattle do well in everything from *highly* humid 90º+ to -30º (just speaking experientially from our winters) and then of course everything in between. I just don't know what he's willing to or wanting to do. He's being exceptionally selective right now in his work to take these super cows up even higher and to elevate predictability through embryonic implantation of super cow embryos after doing the genomic testing. He's working to hit some home runs before he dies (since he's up there in age) and so his family will have a stellar operation to carry on.

It is sad for the primary reason: he's definitely no marketer. He's one of those "what you see is what you get" kind of people who speaks his mind and doesn't sugar coat things whatsoever. You probably get my drift here.

I've been trying to get him to write a book on everything he knows as he has many decades of invaluable experience, a masters degree in animal husbandry, and was a college professor for nearly 40 years.

I don't have his permission to talk about anything really here and I feel kind of uncomfortable getting into details, but if you can PM / instant message me on here I'd be happy to have a dialogue with you off-board. Would enjoy brainstorming some and perhaps hooking you up with him personally so you can have a phone chat with him.

We see a lot of talk about rocket mass heaters and heating in general, but what can be done to keep places cool? Are there any devices that can be built using ground temperature cooling through radiators and copper conduit / piping, etc?

Particularly in my case I have an office with a lot of high tech equipment, computers, etc. that get quite warm. It usually raises the temperature of the room anywhere from 10-20º F. I am, therefore, interested in figuring out some kind of environmentally driven cooling mechanism, even if at the least to deliver cooler temperature to the central air blowers vs using aging air conditioning units.

It seems to me that it should be possible to create a convection system that will naturally push water (+ perhaps antifreeze) through a set of tubes from the ground and up into the house and office and then allow it to descend again for cooling.

Hey folks, wanted your input. I have an associate with quite literally the best genetics on the planet in his black Angus herd. He's been selecting for very specific traits for over 60 years. These cattle are genomically tested at are literally in the top 1% of the most important EPDs based on the Pfizer HD 50K. This herd is not only bred to produce maximum growth and muscle on grass, but these guys thrive on fescue pastures.

So I'm wondering... These are the top of the top notch animals here. He is doing things way ahead of most of the multimillion dollar herds out there, but he's operating on a shoestring budget so to speak. Any ideas on how he could / should capitalize this proverbial gold mine?

It seems that it's nigh impossible for him to penetrate some of the larger rangers simply because he can't fly around out west to wine and dine them; much of the larger ranches simply scratch each others' backs and falsify their ages in order to show larger gains, etc. Folks accuse him of falsifying ages because he does such an amazing job of growth at the test stations and such, but he just simply has the best cattle in the business and out of any breeds. Sooo... I'd like to help him by perhaps brainstorming here. Perhaps we should put his operation up for a Kickstarter even to help him to build out the operation? Dunno, just thinking and thought you guys might have some interesting thoughts.