how too cool w/o electricity

There have been pople living in your area for hundreds of years without electricity for cooling. I'd suggest finding out how they survived.

My recommendation mirrors some of the others. Thick wall insulation, thicker ceiling insulation, continuous attic ventilation on roof eaves and on the roof peak, and many, many windows on all four walls.

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We had an old house for storing fisheries gear in AL. It had really tall ceilings and when you walked in you'd swear it was air conditioned.

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The cheapest way there ever was and the same way I grew up with. Open your windows at night and close them during the day until you can't stand it again or if there is a breeze keep them open. It will add a little character to your life for sure. And I promise you, you'll be okay. You might even swim more than your used to. Hehe.

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I built a solar envelope home in the 80's and we had no A/C. The home used convective air flow to move the air. When it got really warm in the summer, (actually just humid), I had a massive whole house fan in the attic that I turned on. Additionally, I had a cooling tube that was located on the north side of the house. When the fan kicked in, it pulled all the hot air from the house and the house drew in warm outside air down the tube and into the basement. By the time it passed through the length of the tube, it dehumidified and the cool air was pulled into the living area.

In the winter, the large solarium with a trombe wall, captured and held the heat which was released through the night. Our heating and cooling bills were quite low.

It was a great system but, as with all things, envelope homes fell out of favor and now nobody seems to understand when I try to explain it to them. For your situation, it might be worth a look.

RVcook

Hi,
Quite a few passive cooling ideas here:
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects...ve_cooling.htm

In some climates is fairly easy to provide cooling without electricity (or without much electricity), but climates that are both hot and humid are tougher.

Gary

There have been a number of gas air conditioning systems in the past, but I don't know that they make any today. Decades ago York was a big player in absorptive gas air conditioners, which worked similar to the way gas refrigerators still operate today. Those units were phased-out in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

More recently, within the last 10 to 15 years, York offered the "Triathlon Heating and Cooling System", which was a heat pump that operated on a specially designed Briggs & Stratten engine that ran on natural gas (not sure about propane). I don't know if York still makes the Triathlon system, but you might Google for it. I suspect that it has been phased-out, since it was more pricey than most homeowners wanted to pay (10K to 12K).

Compressive refrigeration is simply not practical for off-grid use. There have been a number of projects where people use cooling tubes and ducting of various sorts, usually buried in the yard to exchange heat to the soil. The problem is in keeping the cooling pipes clean, as they typically take-on a musty odor in a pretty short amount of time.

As many posters have already suggested, you might try evaporative cooling.

A new method that you see in a lot of new houses with in the Phoenix area is a down-draft evaporative cooler with no blower, mounted on top of a 25-foot or so tall chimney-like structure. It operates on the theory that a 25-foot column of cool moist air weighs more that a 25-foot column of hot dry air, so there is a natural down-draft created to circulate cool air into the house. The only power consumption is the little water pump. I can see that being a terrific off-grid cooling technique.

What I do is to use a low-power portable evaporative cooler that only draws about 60 watts maximum. It's just enough to cool me and my laptop. It's satisfactory. Here's a link to the product.

http://store.advancedmart.com/susfevairco.html

But I'm out of the off-grid business as of the next month or so. I bought a home in Las Vegas with central air, so I'm moving back the the land of the all-night generator.

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We bought an old abandoned hunting camp. For what ever reasons the previous owners loaded it with insulation (even the interior walls). It amazes me how cool his place is in July and August!


Diane
http://www.frombeyondthegrid.com

I live in a temperate climate so cooling isn't a big deal but it does get hot for a day or two here each summer. Our solutions for keeping warm also works for cooling:

Insulation

Thermal mass - http://images.google.com/images?q=si...tiny%20cottage

Earth Air Tubes - http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2008/09...air-tubes.html

Sun/Shade Control

Basically control the energy flow, the more passively the better.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop

Save 30% off Pastured Pork with free processing:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa

Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop

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Hi Nevada,
Do you know where I could find out more about the scheme you mention above? Sounds very interesting.

Gary

Interesting article on the earth tubes.

I've often thought that a person could sink dry wells in a 5'x5' grid to store the winter cold. Just insulate the area and during the cold of winter take the tops off the wells to let the frigid temps freeze the whole area. Then in the summer you'd have cold you could extract.

A similar method could be used on a smaller scale to dry and cool feed sheds. Just sink some dry wells into the floor so the air could drop in to dry and cool before being returned to the shed. It could be powered with an inner pipe extending from just above the bottom of the well through the roof and painted black.

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"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

I think you've got a cement floor, right? you're way ahead then, when you get hot, lay on the floor. the cement floor will help cool(if the house is shaded)--thermal mass in reverse.

Hopefully you positioned you house to catch the breezes, with enough windows etc to throw open. Condition yourself to stand a little more heat.

PS, when my sis lived in Africa the days would be 120 and the night above 100, they would lay on the tile floor and it was a relief.

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I live in Alabama and all I can say is, without air conditioning we are not cool. We did not have AC until my youngest(36) was probably around 10. The best thing I found during that time was shade. You might not be cool but you will be cooler. We did have a whole house fan but it just pulled in more hot air because, north or south window, in AL in the hot humid summer, there is not cooler air. It seems so much hotter outside when you stay under AC all the time though.

Oh, for sure. There no way you're going to get away with an evaporative cooler where you live. The humidity is way too high for that.

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I don't have a lot of information, but they do have a wiki on the subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_chimney

You might do more Googling to find technical details and field experience articles.

As you can see, there are two basic methods. The method I described previously is the most common that I've seen in Phoenix. It works like this.



An alternate method, which produces breeze but not any actual cooling, heats air in a "solar chimney" to force it up and out of the house, which can be used in conjunction with other cooling methods, as shown below.

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You people need basements! It's never hot down there during the summer. And, it's relatively warm during the winter (compared to outdoor temps).

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Thanks all for all the info. Can you do radiant cooling with cold water in the radiant heating pipes?

I did want a basement..actually an earth bermed home. ...and if i could have afforded it I would have gotten one. But since i wasn't willing to wait until I was 70..I will just have to make what I have work

If you could get sufficient cooling through radiant floor systems, I'd try that... I could pump cold water from 30' down in the lake, push that through the floor, and have it drain back into the lake. My only worry would there be condensation forming on the floor?

Everyone else has already covered the obvious... shading and movement of air... my house in the summer stays about 20 degrees cooler than the outside temp, just by being in the shade.

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Do not draw air in windows that is warmer than the temperatures inside. I learned from experience in our humid climate. I was a day sleeper in upstairs un-airconditioned bedroom. I even put windows down. Put bed covers over the windows. As soon as cool evening temperatures arrive open the windows & run the guts out the fans.

We do not have AC. I prefer not to have it as I have seen too many people that can not tolerate the heat at all because they go from their AC house to their AC car to their AC job. When they do need to be out in the heat it is just unbearable. We have trees along the west side of the house & also now have good size trees on the south. Took awhile to grow them, but they were worth it. Open windows at night to suck in the cool night air. I guess I am really the odd person out as I do not want it. We added on to our house & people thought we were nuts because we did not install central air. Your body really will acclimate to different temperature changes fairly well if you allow it. Sweat was put in our body for a reason.

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I can't believe I deleted it!

I moved from AK to AL and spent a couple of years without air conditioning. The first year I rarely wore long pants because I was adapted to the cold.

What really helped was to put a box fan in the living room window at night after closing all but the window in my bedroom. It exhausted the heat from the house and pulled in cooler nighttime air over my bed. I slept just fine.

The vines to keep the sun off the walls of the house will grow in one year as you wait for the trees to grow.

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