[vmike]

This is not exactly solar heating, but looked like a good place to discuss this. Background; I've been playing with solar hot water heating systems for many years. My house is retrofit solar heated since 1987, with only a wood stove for back up. The house is 2750 square feet, to make this more dramatic. Over the years I've collected a number of pieces of water source heat pump stuff to experiment with, which has stimulated an idea that I first toyed with in the 70s when I started this solar heat adventure.

So, I'm throwing out the idea for cussing and discussing.

What I've been thinking about is placing an unglazed set of collectors to face the north sky to collect the cold at night, to be stored for daytime cooling use. I, years ago did the experiment of putting a thin film of water on a black painted cookie sheet at night and freezing the water when the ambient air temp was above 60 degrees. I figure if I could store enough cold to greatly improve the water source air conditioner, it'd be cheaper than drilling wells or digging trenches. Or even putting hundreds of feet of plastic tubing in the creek I have on the property. This would also be much easier for the in town experimenters to pursue.

I plan to build this up in the near future, I deliberately oriented one of the buildings on the new place with a north facing roof with this in mind. I not certain that the cold collecting water panels would have to have any particular angle, just a clear view of the night sky. The reason for my north facing thoughts was to keep the daily panel heating as low as possible.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling, I think much faster than I can compose this.

What think?

mike