Heating on Europa!

[Brandemihl]

How would you do it?
I hear to use the gasses from the smelter. Is there a machine I can print?
thx

[God, owner of the Universe]

Indoor furnace (Not the Arc Furnace though.) gets you warm in no time - cooling will be your concern, but until you need a CO2 atmosphere for plants, you can just open the door. Automatically, for example. And/or you could have your furnace in an extra room so you could let its heat in when you want it but otherwise keep it separate.

Tossing down some volatiles and lighting the air on fire also works - filter out the pollutant after, and you got heat and also nice CO2 for plants.

[JeanDeaux]

If you can build a radiator, I like to use the exhaust gasses from my furnace to a pipe into the hab that'll allow me to build a radiator on the interior. A couple of manual valves early on allow me to control entry and exit for regulating temperatures until I can make digital valves and a holding tank to automate that process. Obviously don't exhaust your hot waste gas into your hab, just grab the heat on it's way out for exhaust or processing.

[Obsidiac]

That stack of flares you spawn with? Works pretty nice for getting started, if you make your starter room small enough. They don't pollute.

[ardbeg74]

For the initial atmosphere i like to use the arc furnace with oxite. This has the advantage of giving 10% nitrogen which is useful for some plants later, but the main reason is that the gas comes out around 0C as opposed to the -140+ C outside atmosphere. Then is just a case of throwing down some flares until it gets to around 25C. I vent the suit waste tank in there too for a bit of co2 for plants. I do this for all worlds with oxite not just europa.

After that its more about cooling than heating. Really early on im also using that to fill the suit tank... which requires a nitrogen filter in the suit.. but thats only a consideration for a brutal start.

If i were to build heating, i would probably have some co2 or nitrogen in an insulated tank, attach that to the hot line from the furnace or gas fuel generator via a heat exchanger, and then run the line from the tank into a set of radiators. I'd have a volume pump to pull hot gas back into the tank and a valve to allow it into the radiators. Turbo pump would be better but im usually cheap D. Anyways that would allow stopping heating once the base is warm enough.

For a really tiny survival 1x2 + 1x1 airlock, you can use a wall heater to keep it warm, i.e. accounting for heat loss from uninsulated pipes in the airlock. It will drain your batteries quickly if over used though. Better letting it get to zero and then popping a flare if you don't have a ton of power generation. For larger rooms they are nearly useless.

[Brandemihl]

Thanks all! I appreciate the input! Never played Europa before. I've had stable stations on moon and mars.

[Patrik_Airboy]

My soloution. Build two rooms, not connected, two different entries/airlocks. One smaller room that is the place for a furnance and one that is the "main base room". When I have all the basic production machines in place and build a furnance and place it in the smaller furnance room. I build pipes from the furnance out gas to main room and and to that radiators and add some possibilites to manually turn of the flow if it's too hot or to cold in the pipes. I have a extra door in the furnance room that I connect to a system that checks the temp inside the furnance room and if it gets a bit too hot (+50C) the door open and lets it heat out. You also need some possiblity to let out some gas from the system now and then. After that just fire the furnance up and always have it hot enough so it's warm enough in the room to prevent freezing in the pipes. Biggest problem is liquid in the pipes if pressure is high or to cold.

[MAup]

vaccum out the cold air, drop oxite in your airlock, open your waste canister, open the airlock to indoor and drop more oxite.
Now you only need to deal with cooling instead

[DECAFBAD]

We dropped volatile ice and ignited it with the blowtorch, then used the portable scrubber to get the smelly air out.
You don't want to do this in the room you keep your supplies in as some will likely combust. Learned this the hard way, haha

[ardbeg74]

Originally posted by MAup:

vaccum out the cold air, drop oxite in your airlock, open your waste canister, open the airlock to indoor and drop more oxite.
Now you only need to deal with cooling instead

Nice one!
gonna use this for my standard start. easier than hauling the arc furnace into a 1x2. Will keep that for getting atmo in a bigger base quickly.

[NoxicTonic]

The base heats up alone you only need to cool.
I use 1-3 volatiles depending on room size to heat up from -140°C to approx. 20°C.
Most people i know are afraid of this method but i used this many times and im thinking thats safe.
You just have to remove pollutants but you have already CO2 with this method.

[God, owner of the Universe]

At 5:29, in a 5x5 room with pure Europa atmosphere, I show (In super fast-forward, so you will have to pause, then you can also see the amounts used.) heating via ...

• indoor furnace
  
• burning volatiles
  
• two stacks of road flares (insufficient for this big room)
  
• heating pipe (too short / no radiators, so it would take verrrry long; and the canister exploded)

https://youtu.be/qa8mdiuOsqg?t=329

[froggx]

Originally posted by God, owner of the Universe:

Tossing down some volatiles and lighting the air on fire also works - filter out the pollutant after, and you got heat and also nice CO2 for plants.

leveled the base

[WussyBoy]

Originally posted by froggx:

Originally posted by God, owner of the Universe:

Tossing down some volatiles and lighting the air on fire also works - filter out the pollutant after, and you got heat and also nice CO2 for plants.

leveled the base :erune:

Not a whole stack! ;)

Not to fifty![www.ar15.com]

[PhotonTurtle]

On Europa, I used the (not arc) furnace indoors and then vented out later. Although next time I may try that brilliant vacuum-based method.

[Delle(DK)]

on europa i start with a simple setup.
First make a 1 box room example an airlock where you use manual doors.
So when you need to drink or eat go in the room and drop some flares on the ground and let it heat up to +1c and then eat and drink.

Next when you can turn off your helmet lamp it uses a bit of power.
Also be aware that on europa batterys get cold and wont work as good.

About heating.
Build a furnace and then build some yellow pipes ( or better insulated ones if you can )
And then run the pipes in the ceeling of your little base. Now put two valves in each end of the pipe so yo ucan open/close it from inside your base.
Now turn on your furnace and melt something. The very hot gas will go into the pipe inbetween your furnace and the first valve,.
Now go into your base and open the valve for ½ second this will allow some hot gas to get into the pipe. Now the room will start to heat up.
If it get to hot then open the other valve and let the hot gas excape, so put an
passiv vent on the pipe so gas can escape.
And when you can put some radiators on your pipe then the room will heat up allot faster.

it can also be a good idea with some kind of back presure regulator so that if presure get to high it will let gas escape.
And it might also be a good idea with some kind of valce that can slow down how fast gas can move from a-b in your pipe since it can be hard to control how long to open close the valves.
But in general you can do things manual and survive this way.

Keep in mind to keep an eye on how hot it is your building when you grow plants.
So checking 2 time a day is important.. you want to aim for like 20-30c