stone age simple geothermal

scottorious · 04-23-13, 08:54 PM

Ok, we all know the benefits of thermal mass and using the ground as a wonderful heat sink. Just for the sake of experimenting I have come up with an interesting experiment. I have a rather small house and I live alone so I think I can get away with this. I have posted an statement to all friends and family asking for donations of empty milk jugs. I will clean and fill these milk jugs with water to the tune of near 1000 or more of them hopefully. I will attempt to place them all throughout the house in areas out of the direct sunlight. My plan is to use them as thermal mass and see exactly how much I could offset the running of the AC in the summer. Now clearly I will still have to potentially run the AC the same amount to remove the heat but I have 3 plans for that.

Plan 1: If the nighttime low will cool enough to assist in cooling my thermal mass I can open my windows and blow all the heat back out.

Plan 2: This is wear the stone age part comes in, I could store a reserve of 200 or so milk jugs in the basement on the concrete floor where they would release their heat into the concrete and hopefully equalize around ground temp. I could manually make 100 trips or maybe 50 if I could devise a way to easily carry 2 in each hand. I would then rotate my thermal mass slowly and take 200 warm jugs down and bring 200 cool jugs back up.

Plan 3: I signed up for a program with my power company called power smart pricing where I will pay market price for power which changes by the hour. Last year on July 25th the cost of one KWH between 3 and 4 PM was over 11 cents however the cost of one KWH between 3 and 4 AM was at 2.5 cents. This means that I could pre-cool my thermal mass for around 25 percent of the price I might pay during the more demanding parts of the day.

Where are any large flaws anyone sees with this idea. In some ways it relies on me being single and young and especially cheap.

04-23-13, 08:54 PM	#1
scottorious Helper EcoRenovator Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: bloomington IL Posts: 46 Thanks: 0 Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post	stone age simple geothermal Ok, we all know the benefits of thermal mass and using the ground as a wonderful heat sink. Just for the sake of experimenting I have come up with an interesting experiment. I have a rather small house and I live alone so I think I can get away with this. I have posted an statement to all friends and family asking for donations of empty milk jugs. I will clean and fill these milk jugs with water to the tune of near 1000 or more of them hopefully. I will attempt to place them all throughout the house in areas out of the direct sunlight. My plan is to use them as thermal mass and see exactly how much I could offset the running of the AC in the summer. Now clearly I will still have to potentially run the AC the same amount to remove the heat but I have 3 plans for that. Plan 1: If the nighttime low will cool enough to assist in cooling my thermal mass I can open my windows and blow all the heat back out. Plan 2: This is wear the stone age part comes in, I could store a reserve of 200 or so milk jugs in the basement on the concrete floor where they would release their heat into the concrete and hopefully equalize around ground temp. I could manually make 100 trips or maybe 50 if I could devise a way to easily carry 2 in each hand. I would then rotate my thermal mass slowly and take 200 warm jugs down and bring 200 cool jugs back up. Plan 3: I signed up for a program with my power company called power smart pricing where I will pay market price for power which changes by the hour. Last year on July 25th the cost of one KWH between 3 and 4 PM was over 11 cents however the cost of one KWH between 3 and 4 AM was at 2.5 cents. This means that I could pre-cool my thermal mass for around 25 percent of the price I might pay during the more demanding parts of the day. Where are any large flaws anyone sees with this idea. In some ways it relies on me being single and young and especially cheap.