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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (82933)	9/8/2008 6:58:22 PM
From: Stan J. Czernel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541877

What you describe is a concept that already exists. It's called "rental." A paradigm shift from ownership to rentalship of household goods is interesting, but a tough sell, I think. Given the stigma attached to rental now and the pride of ownership, it's unlikely to take off in the market on its own. You'd have to implement it by fiat. Dunno who might have the political clout to pull that off. Here is what I said: Carrier corporation is now selling a cooling service ("Coolth"). It sells the client a guarantee of comfort. Carrier is not buying the building - they are contracting the service of keeping it warm and cold according to the tenant's needs. Nothing about 'rental'. Carrier works with the owner of the building. New building, old building - whatever. If the building is rented, the tenant(s) could be involved - don't know. One of the big problems that this deals with is the age-old problem of split responsibility: when a building is built, "X" builds the buildings; "Y" (occupant) pays the bills. Owner does not pay the bills, and tenant does. The builder builds a typical building - leaky and inefficient, with over-sized equipment designed to avoid litigation. For example, the designer of the cooling system - being paid according to the size of the equipment - puts in the safest (biggest) system his conscience will allow. Oversized equpment is expensive and wasteful of energy because it operates in inefficient bursts rather than (more efficient) long cycles. There is so much room to save money and energy here - and Carrier is making it. Another opportunity for vast savings: building code revision. We build buildings using obsolete thinking - codes generally designed when power was dirt cheap. One small change in building codes - requiring that wiring gages be bumped down 1 unit from current code - would save a huge amount of electricity (the thicker the wire the lower the gauge, the lower the gauge the lower the electrical resistance of the wire, the lower the resistance the lower the energy transmission loss). In the industry, the choice of wiring gage is sometimes half-jokingly called "wiring for fire" - choosing a gauge just large enough to prevent fire and litigation. The English refer to this sizing philosophy with the acronym CATNAP - Cheapest Available Technology Narrowly Avoiding Prosecution. Before you respond. I know that code change is difficult. And I know that a provison must me made to apply the wiring change only to new construction or complete remodeling of a building: noone wants someone who is replacing a roof to have to rewire their building to be 'up to code'.