On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 3:46 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I have thought about that. During the initial warm up phase you would get > an interesting result. After that, when it reaches a steady state, you > would maintain the entire body of water at a certain temperature for weeks. > The body (the bath and its container) would be losing heat into the > surroundings. It amounts to more or less the same thing they are doing now, > with a bigger body and more thermal mass, plus evaporation and other > complicated stuff. I do not see an advantage. > > Heat loss is of course an obvious problem in heating a large tank of water. But if it were simply ignored, and the tank still heated up, it would strengthen the claim of excess heat, not weaken it. Moreover, a blank run could be used to verify the effect of the ecat. A modern hot tub at 37C loses about 100W to 200W in ambient temperature, if covered. That would increase as the temperature went up, but presumably losses could be significantly reduced with a better cover, and possibly more insulation. But with an ecat producing 1.5 kW like the December run, it should be possible to demonstrate excess heat pretty clearly. > It does not avoid the steam question! On the contrary, with a body water you are right back to that problem, with evaporation. With a covered tank below the boiling point, evaporation can be ignored. > The present method is the simplest. Using a body of hot water heated to terminal temperature would be more complicated. But far more direct and unequivocal. It has a visual way of integrating the heat that spot temperature measurement does not.
