Almost free cooling

[Basil]

I was 8 or so in the summer my grand dad would pull water up out of the well and it was ice cold. I wonder if you took an central unit and ripped out the compressor and used a solar pump to pump that cold water from the well into the condenser coil then back to the well or something more useful if the well has enough water to let you do so. I know well water is around 56 deg's or so year round. Any one know why this would not work? A well is not hard to dig. I have dug several in my time. If this is workable I'm doing it. It's hot in the South. Oh Yea I'm still testing the wind gen.

[spinningmagnets]

There are several types of systems that use the 55F-ish ground temps to heat or cool. Once you find some of the buzz words and popular terms, it will help your search.

geothermal, earth tubes, German passive house, ground source heat pump, etc. Good info and also over at builditsolar.com

Here's a project that I found doable for the home enthusiast that sounded reasonably affordable and effective:

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2007/11/3/542/37792

[Basil]

I was looking at the cheapest and most efficient way to get cooling. Something almost any one and I can do at very low cost. The one thing I was looking at is any landowner can dig a well by hand. It's not that hard. Not much money in it, just time. My though was the water is always being replaced in a well. There is the exchanger. No digging up the yard to install hundreds of feet of pipe, (A lot of people don't even have the space or money to dig up there yard) no buying a lot of pipe. (The people that need this the most don't have the money.) Dose anyone know of it being done the way I pointed out and it work. I think it would work and be very low coast.

[Basil]

Thanks for the reply.

I want to keep it simple. Hoping it's something almost ever one can do. Geothermal earth tubes have a good deal expense if did right.

[fcfcfc]

Hi: Ok, here are the key points to keep in mind. The whole trick with cooling is to drop the outgoing air below its due point. It is the drying of the air in combination with the temp drop that results in a comfortable environment. If you are using non compressor based solutions, then the exchanger areas have to be large and the air flow velocities low so as to allow the air cooling to get as close as possible to the cool water temp. Again, its the due point that is key. Now, the due point varies with the amount of water in the air and the air temp, but most of the time in the "sticky" Summer weather, if you can drop to 57-60DegsF for an outgoing temp you probably are shedding some water. In the beginning of the Summer, ground water temps can be anywhere from 45-50 DegF depending on where you are and the depth of the well, so it is VERY doable. The keys are; heat exchanger area, air flow rate, and the water flow rate which you want to be high....

[Basil]

Found this and it makes me belive the simple way will work.

 Search (Homemade Air conditioner) Git to learn to do links here.

[spinningmagnets]

Basil, I certainly appreciate your mindset. Even if a small and inexpensive system has a minor effectiveness, if it can be done fairly cheap with DIY labor, it is certainly better than nothing.

If you are discharging to the same well that you are drawing from, there may not be any circulation with the aquifer, and your single well would warm quickly enough so as to be not be worth the digging.

Rain will percolate down through the soil across a large area, until it hits the highest sandy layer that is just above a layer of clay. The water will then spread out in a fairly flat shape.

If you drew water from a well on one end of your property, and discharged it to a well on the other end, the height of the water level in the discharge well would push water through the sandy layer, using a large mass of the soil as a heat sink.

I wouldn't put the two wells in a location with a house or any other important structure in between them, in case the higher-than-natural aquifer flow causes erosion and surface sinking, but it might be worth considering.

Best of luck

[Basil]

Thanks

I have been reading up on this. Searching the board (Well Water)and found many different ways of doing it. Nothing as simple as what I said. Remodeling the inside of the house now but as soon as I can I am going to do it. Wife said remodel and insulate money better spent. Right as always.

[spinningmagnets]

Here's the link I think you're talking about:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-air-conditioner/

A tiny aquarium water pump circulates ice-water from a cooler/trash-can through a copper/aluminum coil in front of a fan. Since college students don't pay for the ice or electricity, this was a clever use of resources. Just enough to cool down a small dorm room on a warm evening until after dark when you can just open the windows.

Even so, it doesn't use much electricity, and its cheap!

If the coil is made of "S" turns that start at the bottom and curve around up to the top, you can achieve a certain amount of "thermosiphon". Heat rises, so if the bottom of the heat-exchanging coil draws water from the bottom of the ice-water drum, and the top of the heat exchanger dumps to the top of the drum, there will be a certain amount of flow without any pump.

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[Basil]

Search (Homemade Air conditioner) on this board. Thats the link I dont know how to make yet. Have not read up on how to yet. It looks like the well water for cooling will work. My wife wonts the ice cooler with a pump and fan.(air conditioner)

[spinningmagnets]

This one?

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2003/7/13/12457/1571

I had a computer for about a year before I saw somebody do a "copy and paste", until then I had to write web addresses with a pen into a notebook!

When I'm surfing the web and see an address of a website of a paragraph I want to save, I copy it onto a document I keep handy in the lower right of my screen that I labeled "Notepad".

If you look here:

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2007/10/12/45544/517

This is typical of how I store a file of ideas that look like they would apply to my future plans.  I have a page for "electric bike" links, another page for VAWT's, etc

Copy and paste is probably one of the most useful functions on a computer.

A. highlight a web address or paragraph by holding down the mouse button and dragging the cursor over the section you want to save.

B. Hold down the "control" key, then tap the "C" button (for "Copy") this will store it on an invisible clipboard.

C. Bring a document up to the forefront of the screen, and click on its page to bring up the cursor.

D. Hold down the control button and then tap the "V" key, and presto!

[Basil]

http://www.waterfurnace.ca/Howitworks/howitworks.htm

I found this. Looking better. I may start digging.

[Basil]

Rub it in. Kidding But I known how now and that's the link. See the cost and size.

I'm talking well(hand dug) 3 1/2 to 4 ft wide like the old days. Once you hit water you did not or could not go much deeper. Try to go as deep as you can after you hit water. When I dug my grand mother a new well. we did not have pumps to keep the water out so you could not go 2 or 3 ft deeper. The well would fill up few feet or more than where the water was hit so onece water was hit you had to dig fast to get deeper.

[Basil]

Ok to sum it up I know it will work. Here is the plan. Dig the well. Just time.

Find an old central unit. (easy part) Use coil and blower. Check valve on pipe in the well. Water line in the ground to unit. A pump to pump the water through the coil them spray it on the out sideof the coil. Let the water run off in a drain.

Not going to run this in the well or ground.

[kurt]

most places won't let you pump anything back down a well because there is great risk you will contaminate the well and possibly the entire aquifer we are talking huge fines here if you get caught so therefor you would have to find a way to dispose of your discharge water. i heard of one person in Mn that helped cool his house by pumping cool creek water through a huge radiator with a fan behind it and back into the creek so i suppose your idea is not imposable. just have to find something to do with all that water.      

[huntedheads]

Whether it's legal or not I did this for a bedroom and it worked GREAT!

We had a well I never remember it going dry so here goes.

 1 box fan in front an air conditioner condensor (cooling) coil from a car,

I used an old Chrysler something? zip tie the coil to the fan run it on low get a water line kit for a ice maker and run the line to the bedroom you will need two brass shut off valves first one wide open the second one controls flow adjust it untill your coil sweats just short of all the way to the top (no use wasteing water and feed from the bottom) the second is the on-off valve bend some aluminum foil to make a water catch along the bottom and feed it to a tupperware glass because you will get a full glass every night in the humid summer at least here. I used it for several years, got lots of distilled water for the plants too and slept well!

 

[CmeBREW]

I don't know much about such things yet, but I've had an idea that does NOT remove ANY of the cold water from one's deep well.  Rather, it is a CLOSED LOOP type system that has two lines (just normal 1/2" CPVC pipe) that go all the way down to the bottom of one's deep well and hook to two 10 foot long vertical pieces of 1/2" COPPER pipe.

 And the two pieces of copper pipe are soldered together with two elbows at the bottom.  

So the whole CLOSED loop is filled with water and it is circulated with a low power water pump from the radiator in the house down thru the CPVC piping and then the copper pipe that is lying totally emersed in the cold water deep down in the ground, thereby cooling the temperature of the water progressively and being used to cool one's house. Maybe it would only work for one room in the house-- I don't know.

I suppose it would increase the temperature of one's drinking water in the afternoon somewhat. No big problem-- just put drinking water in the frig.

But I would think the water temperature at the bottom of the deep well would get cold again during the nighttime to further allow house cooling for the following day.

I'm sure this type of a system has been done countless times, and has a name ()- - since it is quite obvious.  And I am sure there are serious codes even against doing this.  However, It seems to me that a system like this would work and be perfectly safe in a CLOSED LOOP if it was done correctly without any contamination.

I can see how RETURNING water down into the water table would be unwise and unsafe.

It would be a real pain in the wazoo to have to boil your water every time you wanted to get a drink of water.  I quess there would be a lot more beer drinking going on.  It is an Interesting subject-- because all that 'cooling potential' IS down there just waiting to be used for cooling your house above if you can figure out how to do it safely.