Alan J Fletcher wrote:
Then primary went to the usual drain, just round the corner. We don't
know if he shook out any accumulated water before he measured.
The long, long hose was the secondary.
I know, but even the primary hose was long. Lewan says he measured the
flow rate. That would have to be at the end of that hose, just round the
corner. I wonder how he did it? I suppose the way to do this would be:
take the hose out of the drain, hold it up for a while until it fills,
and then measure the flow rate as it overflows. If he did not do that, I
suppose the flow rate might have varied quite a bit, because the hose
would have a lot of air and gaps in the hose.
Maybe I should ask him . . .
His log shows the temperature of the condensate coming out of the hose
was 23.8°C. That is impossible. Something is wrong there. That is colder
than the inlet water. Quite an impressive heat exchanger! Operated by
Maxwell's Demon. I believe that was with his own thermocouple. He said
the readings "did not make sense." I'll say they didn't!
You have to give Lewan credit for putting numbers into the log even
though those numbers do not make sense. That is the correct thing to do.
A lot of people would just throw the numbers away.
This illustrates an important point. Handheld instruments and manual
techniques for measuring the flow rate should be used. They are
valuable. But they should only be employed as a "reality check" or
"backup" for electronic instruments that record on a computer. Trying to
figure out what happened from sporadic measurements made with handheld
instruments is nearly impossible. You need a full set of data taken at
regular intervals with proper timestamps. The electronic instruments
must be properly calibrated and tested in a blank run. This is
experimental science 101 -- the kind of thing they teach in high school
and college. (At least, they taught it to me.) As I said, if Rossi was
an undergraduate I would give him a C or a D for this test.
I realize I am preaching to the choir here. I & others told all of this
to Rossi but he didn't want to hear it.
- Jed
