eevBLAB #31 - Popular Science FAIL! (Water Seer)

[Don Hills]

...
In the Kalahari Desert the soil temperature at that depth is 18 degrees year round. Also the moisture during the night time regularly reaches 70% and the temperatures drops considerably.

So, operate the rig during night time and shut it down at sunrise to allow the soil to equalize.
...

Try again... Check the air temperature in the Kalahari Desert at night.

[thefatmoop]

A sucker is born every day, and you really can't prevent the general public from buying into this crap. Dave we're not the general public and we know bs when we see it -- we don't need you ranting on and on about it.

Dave I love your channel, i love the electronics design videos/how to design circuit tidbits like your explanation of how to build a voltage inverter with a pwm output and a few passives. Whatever happened to your power supply design?  How about how to design high power smps that use active components instead of diodes etc. 

Don't let the scammers control your channel/set such a negative tone through you Seems like half your videos lately have you going off on a rant about batteroo at least sometime through it.

[CCitizenTO]

Would the ground not just work as a giant heat sink? It's what geothermal heating and cooling solutions rely on the fact that temperatures underground remain relatively constant and at a temperature that most fine relatively comfortable (around room temperature or 20C). In the winter they take warmth out of the ground. In the summer they put warmth into the ground.

I figure the amount of heat dissipated into the ground is likely to be underestimated but I think it's spot on that it might work but odds are unless they're doing something really interesting the chances of it hitting it's claimed spec of like what was it 40 litres a day will be slim to none.

Better off handing out lifestraws  ($20) to people in third world countries they're good for like 1,000 Litres. At least then they could use stagnant water and the like as potential water sources for drinking purposes or you know use the community grade one ($330) which will do 70,000-100,000 litres.

[EEVblog]

Would the ground not just work as a giant heat sink?

Yep, but go look up the thermal conductivity of typical soils and clays.

[EEVblog]

A sucker is born every day, and you really can't prevent the general public from buying into this crap. Dave we're not the general public and we know bs when we see it -- we don't need you ranting on and on about it.

You don't speak for anything other then yourself. Please don't use "we".

Don't let the scammers control your channel/set such a negative tone through you Seems like half your videos lately have you going off on a rant about batteroo at least sometime through it.

Sorry but you are demonstrably wrong.

I've been doing debunking videos since 2009, it's a part of my channel.
And I can't stress this strongly enough, I like doing them.

[rrinker]

 Yes, geothermal heating/cooling works on a similar principle but the holes go down a lot more than a couple of meters. Local railroad museum installed geothermal cooling a few years ago - this is a huge open space with lots of skylights so you can see and photograph the exhibits, but all those skylights made it unbearably hot to visit in the summer. Cooling such a huge space with traditional electromechanical air conditioning was far beyond the budget of a publicly funded museum - we're talking enclosed stadium size space here, locomotives and railcars are NOT small. Instead what they did was rip up the entire parking lot and drill a series of wells - there used to be a video online of it from a local news station but it has disappeared - and installed a geothermal system to circulate chilled water. The difference once it was operational was amazing. Not like stepping from a hot summer day into an air conditioned home or office, but it was very comfortable, like being outdoors on a warm summer day instead of a hot one. All basically for the electric power to run some water pumps and fans.
 But yes, this required serious well drilling rigs, this is not just some person in the desert pulling out the collapsible spade and digging a quick hole. You get far enough down - it indeed works very well.

[Money4Nothing]

It's so obvious that this wont work, you don't need to know anything about heat exchangers.

The outside wind will be at lower pressure than the air inside the hole in the ground, so the air won't be able to be pumped into the hole from outside by the stupid little wind-powered fan. Also, hot air won't want to be pushed down, it will obviously want to rise.

Also, if you did manage to create an air flow circuit with some kind of clever pressure differentials, flowing air won't be in the ground long enough to cool down and condense.

There's no way to force hot air down into the hole, keep it there to exchange its heat with the ground, and allow water to condense out.....all without application of external power.
Not gonna happen.

Hell even if you had a powered fan that could force the hot air down, and the water DID condense out, it wouldn't take long for the water to re-evaporate, so you'd pretty much have to harvest the water within a few hours of it condensing. I guess you could get a few cups of water out early in the morning at best...but 11 liters a day? Good Lord how stupid.

[jancumps]

Would the ground not just work as a giant heat sink?

Yep, but go look up the thermal conductivity of typical soils and clays.

Thunderf00t's video covers that part very well.

[jonovid]

final word on this from me, rant- science has lost its innocence.  times have changed science and scientists are no longer pure! just as the news media has political agendas. so scientists have political agendas too! when "scientists say" this or that or publish this or that.
the question needs to be who's agenda are you following? atheist or christian? red or blue?
how old do you believe the earth is? -  how old is the earth?    is it 4.543 billion years? or is it 6.000 years?
pure science will prove that a big lump of earth is a rock! the next question now is how old is it? now we get in to agendas.
pure science will prove that the weather is changing over many generations. the next question is how?  now we get in to agendas.
my point is Water Seer has a political agenda
 

[Scutarius]

A sucker is born every day, and you really can't prevent the general public from buying into this crap. Dave we're not the general public and we know bs when we see it -- we don't need you ranting on and on about it.

You don't speak for anything other then yourself. Please don't use "we".

Don't let the scammers control your channel/set such a negative tone through you Seems like half your videos lately have you going off on a rant about batteroo at least sometime through it.

Sorry but you are demonstrably wrong.

I've been doing debunking videos since 2009, it's a part of my channel.
And I can't stress this strongly enough, I like doing them.

I am probably the first to ask a video about basics in thermodynamics, of course, focused on the electrical techonology.

 
 
 

I liked this video, but as a matter of fact I'll like to see more teardowns of bad/buggy/scam products, I have been lately at Home Depot and they proliferate more and more.

[trophosphere]

I am probably the first to ask a video about basics in thermodynamics, of course, focused on the electrical techonology.

Whenever I hear someone mention anything related to heat/energy and electronics, I immediately think of this

[EEVblog]

LOL!

[Kleinstein]

They only claim it is giving you 37 L of water under ideal conditions:
 - even in a desert there is a small chance for a strong thunder storm with lot of rain - so maybe this way they could catch up some rain, though something like 1.5 in of rain is a lot. So this might be ideal condition. They only have arrows for "air" flowing in - so this should be a hint.

Right from the start or the video, they begin with "Because the the soil is always colder than the air ...." - already this is bullshit: the soil temperature will be about the average surface and thus average air temperature.

So if you want to use the soil as a buffer for cold, maybe learn from the Alaska pipeline: they have clever heat pipes to cool the soil more efficient, to a avoid meting the perma-frost ground due to the hot oil in the pipeline. This way the is minute change it could work on a few days a year, though not as efficient as promised. Still not sure the water would be drinkable - more like average surface water.

[StillTrying]

Perhaps it could be used as an insect collector.   

How tall/deep is it these days?

[MacMeter]

LOL!

Are "Thunderf00t's" waterseer videos marked the same? I'm assuming only the uploader can see that "ad" message, but I don't know how YouTube functions.

[nidlaX]

LOL!

Damn unicode fail on this forum.

That is hilarious though, would love to hear what they say when you ask for a review.

[StillTrying]

I'd guess that the advertisers' algorithms don't like the negative FAIL! word, they'd probably be very happy with Successfully Debunked!

[open loop]

Saw the Lindybeige video as well as Dave's and my intuition says this is probably not going to work because of one simple fact.

They DO NOT HAVE A WORKING PROTOTYPE!   

What is concerning is that Youtube don't seem to like this video and say it's not advertiser friendly. I know Dave won't care but I think it is disturbing that Youtube google are not encouraging content creators to make this kind of video. Or am I being a little paranoid.

[Pilleville]

So, the fan will push air down the same way air is escaping? Or am I missing something ...

[Brumby]

What is concerning is that Youtube don't seem to like this video and say it's not advertiser friendly. I know Dave won't care but I think it is disturbing that Youtube google are not encouraging content creators to make this kind of video. Or am I being a little paranoid.

Advertising = Revenue

... join the dots.

[EEVblog]

What is concerning is that Youtube don't seem to like this video and say it's not advertiser friendly. I know Dave won't care but I think it is disturbing that Youtube google are not encouraging content creators to make this kind of video. Or am I being a little paranoid.

I don't know the reason for that, but I disputed it and it was re-monetised in a few hours.

[StillTrying]

They DO NOT HAVE A WORKING PROTOTYPE!   

A prototype could consist of just a container, a length of pipe and a 12V fan. if they haven't done this rather than the hi-tech version there might be a good reason. 

[Oli.vias.Kinder]

[Brumby]

Sign them up for some maths and economics courses.