Using a woodstove for COOLING your house in the summer?

[tradergordo]

I stumbled across this today inadvertantly when searching for apple cider press plans:

(broken link removed)
Use your source of winter warmth to help cool the midsummer heat.
It's true, your fireplace or woodstove, can help cool your home from the hot summer heat. Just as they help heat your home in the fall and winter, they can help cool your home in summer. And the cost is almost nothing. You can use recycled materials to build a simple structure, and a fan to direct the air flow. All that you need are some art's and crafts skills and you can have a cooler home. This works especially well in the late evening and at night, allowing your family to sleep comfortably during warm nights. Even if your home is equiped with air condiitioning you can save money by using it selecively, only during the hottest part of the day.
And use your fireplace or woodstove to cool, in the cooler evening.
_________________________________________________________________

I don't feel like paying the $6 just to find out what they are talking about - but does anyone know what they are talking about? Do people actually hook fans or something up to their stoves or chimneys for cooling purposes in the Summer?

Just curious...

 

[elkimmeg]

Only the ones that do not mind the creosote smell. Me I try to block it off to aviod that smell

Why would one want to add to thier humidity when air conditioners are trying to get rid of it?

 

[webbie]

I have to think it is either evaporative cooling or else something stupid - like making ice blocks in milk jugs and putting them in there!

 

[jqgs214]

Maybe it allows for a path to allow warm air to rise up out of the house propelled by a fan?? then no smell? then cooler air form the basement gets pulled up and the stack effect for cooler air?? who knows

 

[titan]

Boy I'm glad I didn't waste time and money installing an ac system-with two stoves in my house now it should feel like a walk-in cooler come July!Seriously though,if this scheme "cools" your house via the wood stovechimney exhausting hot house air then the make-up air must come from outside;Where it's hot,and humid........Doesn't sound veryeffective or plausible to me.

 

[Mrs-GVA]

I've got an idea....when it is wicked hot outside, crank up the stove in the house....wood, pellet, NG, whatever you have....turn it up all the way....sit in front of it....let the warm air soak in.....then run outside and it'll feel like outside is air conditioned!

 

[jpl1nh]

This is weird! I was thinking the other day that there should be some way to use your wood stove to drive your air conditioner. Air conditioners use tons of energy right? Wood stoves produce tons of energy. Uhh...that's as far as I got. I don't think these folks got any further. Guess its time for another martuni

 

[mikeathens]

This is weird! I was thinking the other day that there should be some way to use your wood stove to drive your air conditioner. Air conditioners use tons of energy right? Wood stoves produce tons of energy. Uhh...that's as far as I got. I don't think these folks got any further. Guess its time for another martuni

F'n awesome! I was thinking the same thing First time I got a really good laugh from these forums!

 

[Corie]

You could use a gasifier to create wood gas to run a gas turbine which would then turn a generator which could power your air conditioner.

 

[Bill]

I know what it is, you just slip an air-conditioner in the firebox, wolla, you got cool air. Kids don't try this at home, were professionals.

 

[webbie]

This is weird! I was thinking the other day that there should be some way to use your wood stove to drive your air conditioner. Air conditioners use tons of energy right? Wood stoves produce tons of energy. Uhh...that's as far as I got. I don't think these folks got any further. Guess its time for another martuni

On theory you are correct - there are many industrial and commercial air conditioners powered by natural gas, etc.

But the engineering the design would be expensive - and how many folks are going to feel good splitting wood and loading it in the summer (It would have to be an outdoor unit!)......

 

[Jay H]

Fill your stove with liquid nitrogen?

Jay

 

[Andre B.]

Crosley IcyBall?
Making cold from fire.
http://www.ggw.org/~cac/IcyBall/crosley_icyball.html

 

[Highbeam]

I have always been amazed by propane powered refrigerators such as those in an RV. You burn a fire in the back of the fridge to cool your fridge and make ice cubes. Heat is made by propane which does magic to make your whiskey cold.

 

[youngstr]

Actually, I do cool the house......with the fireplace. The blower for my Fireplace Xtraordinair sucks it's air from the basement.

In the winter, we're heating basement air and blowing it into the family room. In the summer, we just blow the basement air into the family room.

 

[jpl1nh]

Hey Elk, I gotta really marketable name here, the new VC HVAC, clear glass doors in the winter, frosted glass in the summer! I can see you tech guys chewing on this concept already. Gasification, turbines... God, can you imagine how many cords a year you'd need now?

 

[keyman512us]

I've got an idea....when it is wicked hot outside, crank up the stove in the house....wood, pellet, NG, whatever you have....turn it up all the way....sit in front of it....let the warm air soak in.....then run outside and it'll feel like outside is air conditioned!

Mrs. GVA....You SADO!...BBBWWAGHH!...lol

...During one of the local board of health meetings (proposing OWB regs) The talk was about limiting/restricting OWB's "From X date to X date"...(finally 5/15 to 9/15)...anyway Someone made the argument (because DHW can be made from OWB's) "You aren't limiting woodstove use from X-X...If air quality is what is so Important why don't you limit woodstove use"...

..The local BOH director (Being somewhat "a dry type" of person whom I have never seen laugh let alone get an entire room to laugh, until this meeting) retorted with "Well that might be a good argument...but you OWB folks aren't subject to the same "constraints" as a woodstove owner...True there is no law to prevent someone from using a woodstove in their home in the summertime...but even you would have to admit for someone to sit around their woodstove fired up in their living room in July they would have to be a little SadoMasachistic..."

 

[keyman512us]

ROFLMMFAO...It hurts...ohhh...

For "^hits and gigggles" I decided to check out the link you posted (I can hardly type...can't see the screen through the tears in my eyes I'm laughing so hard)

"Build your own cinder blocks"..."Now make sure you hide them well...my first batch disappeared on me"

Some of this old "Fuddy Duddy's Ideas" must make his neighbors love him "I'll fix that Macgyver next door...Those homemade cinder blocks are gonna disappear"

I thought I was bad This guy gives "New Meaning to the term 'The ^hit you think of when the lights are off and the TV is busted'..."

 

[seattlepioneer]

I have always been amazed by propane powered refrigerators such as those in an RV. You burn a fire in the back of the fridge to cool your fridge and make ice cubes. Heat is made by propane which does magic to make your whiskey cold.

Very good, Highbeam. You identified an appliance that could be a model of a wood fired air conditioning system.


A convention AC system uses usually uses an electric motor to turn a compressor which converts hot refrigerant into a liquid refrigerant, "squeezing" out the heat while doing so to permit the gas to condense into a liquid.


A gas fired refrigerator uses aqueous ammonia as the refrigerant --- pure ammonia dissolved in water, but at a higher concentration than the ammonia you buy in a bottle. The heat from the flame boils the ammonia and water solution, distilling the ammonia out of the water, at which point the distilled ammonia is cooled into a liquid. The liquid ammonia can then be used in an evaporator inside the refrigerator box. The heat in the refrigerator causes the liquid ammonia to boil, absorbing the heat and thus cooling the refrigerator. The gaseous ammonia is then allowed to dissolve in the water reservoir, and you are back to boiling the ammonia out again.


There is no reason a wood fire could not be used on a larger scale to air condition a home. Indeed, I've seen plans the Peace Corps used to construct village regrigeration systems that used steel pipe and screw fittings to make this kind of absorbtion refrigeration system work with a wood fired boiler.

It's not uncommon to have large office buildings cooled by absorbtion chillers, although if memory serves they use some kind of boron related chemical as the refrigerant rather than ammonia. Boilers can be scaled up to very large sizes, and this system permits the economy of natural gas to be used rather than the higher cost of electricity for cooling.


A few years ago, Carriers introduced a natural gas fired air heat pump, which used natural gas to power an internal combustion engine which turned the compressor rather than using higher cost electricity turning a motor. I never heard much about how well that system worked.




Seattle Pioneer

 

[tradergordo]

Natural gas air conditioning
"Natural gas can keep you cool during warm weather with significant operating cost savings compared to electric alternatives.

"Natural gas air conditioning is not new. In the 1930s and 40s, most United States cooling needs were met by natural gas. Electric cooling was introduced to the market in the 1960s, and its use grew because of lower capital costs, good efficiency, and very low electric rates (remember Gold Medallion Homes?). By the 1970s, use of electric air conditioning increased while natural gas air conditioning declined, and by 1990, only 5% of all air conditioning in the United States was fueled by natural gas. However, during the 1980s, the Japanese government backed efforts to accelerate the development of more efficient natural gas air conditioning, and by 1991, nearly 30% of Japan's air conditioning needs were met by natural gas.

"Southern California Gas Company proudly supports the many new developments in natural gas air conditioning systems. The new generation of natural gas air conditioning technology provides much higher levels of energy efficiency and reliability than older systems. They are also now available in a variety of sizes to meet most every customer's need-from homes of all sizes to the largest commercial buildings.

Additional information may be found at http://www.gasairconditioning.org/

 

[Gooserider]

Not quite on the same level, but I saw a site on the net a few years back (sorry no link) about some Kiwi's that were building a propane powered jet engine beer cooler... They built a homebrew jet engine, driven off a bbq size propane tank - stuck the tank in a bucket of water along with the beer. The propane going to vapor chilled the tank and the cold tank chilled the water and beer. :coolgrin: Reportedly it worked well, but wasn't terribly efficient - took 20 minutes and one tank of propane to cool one sixpack. The other problem was that everyone in the neighborhood was going deaf...

Gooserider

 

[titan]

One time a"friend" chilled an 8-pack o beer with a well-aimed blast from a co2 fire extinguisher.Liquid refrigerant works in a pinch too, but can get expensive-best to use someone else's.