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Old 08-29-09, 11:45 PM   #6
NiHaoMike
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Christ View Post
Also - now that I'm thinking about cooling again -

If you happen to have a cold water source, or you don't pay for water (if you live in the country, and have a well) you can easily source a used car radiator that has been cleaned/brazed cheaply, and add it to your existing HVAC system. Piping cold water through it, then blowing through it with your normal HVAC blower (probably a part of your heater) will easily cool your home like A/C, without the electric/fuel bill. Natural well water can be as cold as 55*F, and you can allow/restrict water flow as much as you like to fine tune the temperature gradient.

If you have access to running cold water, such as a stream, and there is a section of it that is above your home (up a hill or something), you could use gravity to drop the water through a DIY line into your radiator, which would also save you the electricity of the pump running to keep water flowing.

Ideally, if you have to run a pump, you'll keep a bulk tank with a level switch, which pumps cold water into the tank, slowly drains it through the radiator (Flow restriction happens on the outlet side of the radiator, so that it stays full of water), then when the level gets too low, it turns the pump on to refill the tank again. In this way, you can fine tune the water flow to keep from wasting energy by constantly pumping water and then not using it's full cooling potential before discarding it.
Recently, I moved into an apartment for college, and from what I can tell, the hot water is produced at their end since there is no water heater in the room. (I'll have to verify it.) If it means that water and hot water are included in the rent, I'll build a heater from some computer fans and a cheap heater core to make use of the hot water for heating instead of using electricity. Incidentally, if the hot water is made with natural gas (or even better, from the CHP plant on the nearby campus), it would still be more efficient than using electricity for heat since generating electricity is not very efficient.
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