Copper floor with pennies

Paul Pollets

Hmmm...radiant potential!



<a href="http://todaynews.today.com/_news/2013/01/21/16623719-couple-glues-60000-pennies-to-bedroom-floor?lite=">http://todaynews.today.com/_news/2013/01/21/16623719-couple-glues-60000-pennies-to-bedroom-floor?lite=</a>

Mark Eatherton

Some peoples kids...

It cost them around $2.63 per square foot to do this. A good tile floor runs around $1.00 per square foot.



The Feds have a law against doing this. If they get caught, it will cost them a whole lot more than the $1,000 they spent on it.



If it had a radiant heat source built into the floor, it would affect the ability of the floor to emit heat.



When the Feds come knocking on their door... they will regret what they did to their floor....



And, if they thought their hands got black handling the coins, what do you suppose the soles of their feet look like?



ME

Paul48

No

They are just storing the pennies in an unconventional way.

Gordy

Ditto

Some people's kids. Scrap price was probably more than cheap tile.



I bet you could get a nice dance going with wet feet

, and a frayed extension cord on the floor.

hot_rod

what a great radiant surface

talk about a long lasting thermal conductor

Gordan

It depends

Chances are, most of the coins are copper-plated zinc. Zinc has only a quarter of the thermal conductivity of copper and one-half that of aluminum, but that is, of course, still far better than most materials. Scrap value is not likely to be high. The biggest issue with using this for a radiant floor is not going to be the low emissivity of copper (the clearcoat will take care of that) but the fact that the pennies can't be packed so that they touch each other at more than a single small point (if that.) Think of it as an extreme case of staple-up-itis.



Now if they had cut the pennies into regular hexagons and silver-brazed them together...

Mark Eatherton

Copper as a heat emitter...

You guys may not remember this, but I made a copper panel radiator for the ceiling of my office here in Denver a LONG time ago. I made it out of the same copper used for copper gutters. It was a BEAUTIFUL looking radiator, and it sat directly above my desk/chair.



As I sat there, with 140 degree F water pulsing through its veins, laying back in my overstuff office chair, it just didn't feel right. It never really seemed to get real hot, radiation wise.



I had a flow meter on teh system, and also had a digital recording thermometer across the S&R lines. In a fit of frustration, I finally broke down and grabbed a paint brush and painted the radiator to match the ceiling with a flat white latex paint. The fluid delta T DOUBLED. It went from a 2 degree drop to a 4 degree drop. And when I sat back in my chair, it felt like the sun was shining down upon me....



I also had a customer with a stainless steel gym (Floors and walls) that had RFH in the floors. It "felt" warm on your socking feet, but the room felt rather cool... I don;t know what they did to rectify that problem. We just proved to them that our floor was hot and the problem was really ours.



Strange but true...



ME

Gordan

You know...

If you'd painted it with a clearcoat you'd have solved your emissivity issue. It doesn't have to be opaque... most clearcoats (and glasses) have quite high emissivity in the IR range.

Mark Eatherton

We will never know on this one...

Already taken down and turned into large X's for giveaways at my mountain home (XanaX Ranch) my adopted "brand"...



Brand X, get it... :-)



In most cases, X marks the spot. But in this case, Mark X's the spot. You'd have to see it in person to understand my humor...



ME

zacmobile

penny floor

A friend of mine did this last year when he renovated his kitchen, I can't remember how many he used but it was few thousand anyway. All of them he either saved or was donated by friends. Here in Canada they stopped minting them in May 2012. They also have been 98% zinc then 94% steel since 1996 or so as they were costing more to make than the actual face value.