For high rises, why not stick a turbine on the outlet for waste water at the bottom of the building? You’ve already spent the energy to pump it up dozens of floors why not recoup some of it when it falls back down?
You monster
Turns out: nothing really.
Nice to know that someone already did the math (the monster math!)
That’s a really stupid way to do it, you connect the water turbine directly to the faucet. Why water all the tap water pressure.
You didn’t read past the first paragraph.
you can just hook the faucet up to your device, and let the water pressure drive the generator directly. In either case, for a bathtub faucet, this works out to almost 200 watts, or $25 per month
Though what you could do is place small turbines in your piping so that any time you use your water for normal uses, it would generate some electricity at the cost of a loss of pressure once it passes through. Though it would be more efficient to just turn down the pumps generating that pressure to the new pressure setting and using the electricity saved there (if you are the one running the pump, water included in rent would transfer some energy to you but lose some overall).
Most apartments with water included in the rent price (Sorry kids, there’s no such thing as “free water”) closely monitor their usage on a per building or floor basis. Whenever they detect irregularities they schedule inspections with the tenants to check for things like leaking toilet valves and such.
“free water” just means that they’ve calculated the cost of installing the meters and additional plumbing and determined that monitoring global usage and including it in the price of rent is cheaper.
Source: I have water included in my rent, I pay about $50 more a month than a similar apartment without.
When I moved to Tennessee a few years back I looked all over trying to figure out where our gas bill was. Water/electric/sewage/internet, I actually got through one company now which is kinda neat, but our heater is natural gas, and I haven’t been billed for it yet, which never makes sense to me. I keep wondering if the management company just covers it or something, but I should see a usage bill I would figure somewhere…
Small towns don’t manage much though. They came by to do an inspection a couple months ago and I was like oh shit, they had not stopped by since I moved in back in 2021. (Guess a new management company absorbed them). I’ve got a chicken coop and put chicken wire up around about 1,000+ square foot and I was wondering what they were going to say about it. They never ended up even going out back. Next year’s problem I guess.
I bought a house two years ago and had a plumber come out to install a new water heater. He asked me where the water meter was and I had to say “fuck if I know”. He said lots of people just let their water account lapse and then remove the meter and tap directly into the water line in the street and get free water. He assumed that the previous owner of my house had done this; I was pondering whether this was a bad thing or not when he found the actual water meter out in the yard under a metal cover. Good news? Probably not – it turns out my house water is supplied by a very cheap independent local water authority, but they had to go into bankruptcy along with the city and apparently some Saudis are planning to buy it to provide water to grow alfalfa for their racehorses.
You would be that asshole who ruined it for everyone else.
Not to mention considering most water pressure in… well, any country. They may be able to charge their phone and run a lamp at best.
No tv, no water heater, no fridge, no ac or heat, no white noise fans to fall asleep to.
Wth water running 24/7 there’s no need for a white noise machine any more, just listen to the water.
That is a very good point.
If they don’t punish you specifically they’ll punish everyone with you.
This is a great comment. Only January and this is my comment of the year (so far).
And here I thought I was being clever. Thanks for sharing! That was great.
And either way, eventually someone from the city would probably show up to ask why you’re using 40 tons of water every day.
lol
I am DELIGHTED
Love this article, but they kinda bury the lede making the Coca-cola joke about bottling and selling water.
Most bottled water you buy in stores is, in fact, tap water. If you think they’re getting it from a mountain spring, even if there’s a mountain on the label, you would be mistaken. You wouldn’t want mountain water (with bear piss) anyway, the water you buy bottled is filtered and treated. It’s good tap water, but it’s still tap water. So next time your water bottle runs out, just refill it from the tap. Assuming your tap water is potable and doesn’t taste like shit.
That’s only correct if it’s labeled as “purified water.” If it says “spring water,” then it came from a mountain spring.
The thing about being bottled at the source, is that it’s upstream from all the “bear piss.”
I grew up drinking mountain spring water. It’s way better than “bear piss”. Filtered and treated doesn’t mean better. Some natural water from springs is perfectly fine.
some
He says all mountain spring water is bear piss. I say some is good. You downvote. classic fediverse.
I definitely want mountain water, it’s delicious. 100x better than any bottled water.
The flavor is E. coli
Wow. I never thought of bottling and selling water.
Was surprised xkcd didn’t mention steam boiler turbines.
Wow. I never thought of bottling and selling water.
ah. yes. the nestle way.
What does that have to do with water pressure? In that system, the energy comes from the heat.
True – it would require a external heat source (wood, gas, coal, concentrated solar, etc) to boil water for turbine generated electricity.
Why is it necessary for the water to go up and down to turn the turbine? Isn’t the pressure already added to the water and you can directly use it to drive a heavier turbine at ground level?
Second, as you can probably guess by looking at the above picture, pumping the water up 40 meters with water pressure and then back down doesn’t accomplish anything—you can just hook the faucet up to your device, and let the water pressure drive the generator directly.
You’d be an asshole.
An asshole to whom exactly? A landlord?
Also this is a shower thought. What’s with this moral crusade?
To the people their arbitrage would harm because it would result in the landlord ending the free water provision. If you abuse a good thing, even the most good-natured people eventually get fed up and stop providing it, to the detriment of those who used it fairly.
Think of it this way; 70% of the planet is water. Of that water only 2.5% is fresh water, 68% of that is held in glaciers. About 1% of the fresh water on earth is liquid.
That 1% is the absolute maximum quantity of what’s used for drinking, and the steps between ground/reservoir water and the tap in your home involve MASSIVE quantities of electricity and effort to make it so it won’t kill you.
What you’re suggesting doing is turning the tap on and sending that fresh drinkable water right back into the sewer to generate a miniscule amount of power, since the average tap pressure at 1 bar means you’ll be making sub 100W of power, hardly enough to power the big light in your kitchen if it’s got more than two incandescent bulbs or spotlights, let alone a kettle or a microwave.
What aren’t you understanding? The water is free to them
By this definition, let me guess, you also think the fine folks over at Nestle are assholes too?
Tap for spoiler
If we ever do make it to the riots stage, I hope we can all agree Nestle goes first.
spoiler
But water isn’t a human right, that’s the job of datacenters!
You guys get nestle, meta is mine.
You are the one who isn’t understanding but yeah, fuck Nestle!
Lol I understand it perfectly, I was joking
It’s like they say: Comedy is hard.
I mean, to be fair, my writing may not have been funny to you, but it didn’t leave any room for whether or not I understood.
Depends. If you’re in a metropolitan city modern condo, there’s a good chance water is provided for all by the condo corp. The condo corp pays the city and adjusts the yearly budgets accordingly, which are then used to determine condo fees. So indirectly every resident pays for the water.
He’d be an asshole because he’d need loads of water he would waste
Droughts
Oh shit, mine gives me free heat…I could just strap a Stirling engine to my radiator!
Or peltier modules
Think harder next time. They’ll be able to figure out that you’re not filling an Olympic sized pool every week and water/sewer use that excessive is gonna be a breach of contract aka eviction.
What if I live in a country with renter-friendly laws where landnobility can’t just kick out their tenants but have to give them opportunity to correct their behaviour? And also there is a reason that right now eludes me why my landnobleperson or anyone else won’t be checking water consumption for the foreseeable future?
If they’re paying the water bill they’re going to know.
Yes but that’s future me’s problem. Present me wants to know if the thing OP is suggesting would work now.
Sort of. You could probably get enough out of it for lights and maybe an appliance, but eventually if you’re using a lot you’ll hit a power consumption ceiling where the water pressure even with the valve wide open is insufficient to turn the generator. In case you don’t know, as demand increases the windings of a generator (any generator) get harder to turn.
You could cheat a little and have the water turn a big heavy flywheel that in turn turns the generator, it would be slow to start up but more resilient to demand spikes once it’s up to speed.
There’s also the noise any of it would make turning and vibrating but that can be future you’s problem too.
Noice. You’re now tagged as “dis dood hydrates” :D
I’m OK with that 😆
Well, there’s one way to find out: make it happen, cap’n! No time like the present, no day like today!
Unfortunately I do in fact pay for my water. Not to mention I lack the technical knowhow.
Looks like you’re faced with a current you problem. Best kick that can down the road for future you to solve, eh?
Oh definitely. I’ll be waiting for future me to learn all that stuff so we can demolish my bathroom. It’s going to be absolutely smashing.
You’ll be using less water than an AI data centre
Also consider running cold water through some sort of radiator if you want free AC
Not all places have cold water during summer (did the greedy water company already run a heat exchange there?)
This would work but don’t use a conventional central heating radiator system: moisture would condense on the radiators and pipes, potentially causing wet floors and walls, and eventually mold. A radiator that deals with moisture well is an indoor AC unit, plus it has a fan, thermostat and remote control, and presumably they’re cheap to get when the more complicated outdoor unit fails. Just pump water through the coolant pipes! The water mains pressure is probably enough. (Don’t get an overly smart one or it will complain about lack of communication with the outdoor unit. Or hack it if you’re good at that.)
Alternatively, an air-to-water heat exchanger (heat pump whose condenser is submerged and evaporator is a conventional indoor AC unit) is way more practical. With cold water, it will use very little electricity and has all the convenience of AC. The output water can be used as preheated feed into your boiler.
i have cold water in the ground, but once it gets to the roof pipes it heats up fast in the summer. we’ve got them insulated but not insulated enough. i keep arguing with the landlord to let me go up there and put some pool noodles around them. so if you’re in the part of the house that gets its water from roof pipes, in the summer sometimes the hot water comes out colder than the cold (that pipe already has a pool noodle around it don’t get me started)
pretty sure there’s an old copypasta about this or something
Stupid question.
NOT a shower thought.
OP is a dipshit verbatim ripping off an XKCD video no way in hell they came up with it themselves BTW.
I feel pretty confident they were in the shower when they thought about this question.
It may not be the kind you like but it (most likely) meets the community rules definition.
Fill the water in bottles behind your generator and sell it at cheaper rates to folks who pay for their water…even more profit!
what he said ⬇
stiffyGlitch’s mum should have her own category on PornHub
what why
deleted by creator
wait why are we talking about my mum
what
No idea
