off grid? how to Air condt. in OK

I think they covered all my methods that work better than AC..
a 5000cfm attic fan in the backroom (the sunny side) pulling the air OUT of the house and the windows on the shady side open. always a cool breeze (or wind ad the case may be)
I cut holes in my floor and shut the windows to suck the cooool air off the ground into the house. if you have a basement thats not a musty hole, sucking this cool air UP and inletting groundlevel air from outside into the basement should work as well.

the metal roof works super, if any doubts, walk across it on a sunny day.

even on super hot/humid days I often have to shut the fan off as it gets to cold in here. fast moving air does more than cool you, it cools the walls and floors of the house, and every mass in it.
keep the structure material cool, and the ovverall temp stays cool.

when designing one yourself just remember however hot it is at your head level, its much cooler 12" off the ground, and even cooler below ground.

I had an idea till i was satisfied with my present system. Dig a 50 foot ditch and lay as large a culvert pipe in it as can be afforded or stolen, at one end an elbow up to the surface with a hood cap as an intake and the other end with a fan to suck air thru the tube and into the house. (a basement would serve the sane job, I dont have a basement)
my theory was the air in this pipe would always be cooler, and if drawn slowly out of it, it would not warm up underground, and provide a constant feed of cool air.
now mind you "cool" is relitive; air thats 6 or 65 or even 70 degrees when the temp outside is near 90 is cool. COOL isnt COLD. if you want cold get an AC.

I live in the OKC area(on grid) & it's going to be 95+ today. Although I grew up without AC, as soon as I experienced it I LIKED it! It's very true that most houses are not built with the idea of no AC. High ceilings, large windows,ceiling fans, & attic fans will help to make it more bearable, but they cannot help with the humidity or the actual temps. If I were going to live off the elect grid in OK, I would think seriously about a generator that runs off propane or NG. I'm Old, I work at night, sleep in the afternoons, & I wouldn't care to try to live without AC. Good Luck, stay cool, & let's hope it doesn't make it to 100!

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Freedom isn't Free

I was visiting with a customer yesterday, and she mentioned that she never uses her A/C. Here in Houston, 96 degrees, and 100% humidity, sounded like a miracle to me. Here's what she does:

1. House is completely shaded with trees
2. Every door and window always open
3. Fans in every room
4. Mid-afternoon, she takes a swim, and leaves her hair wet, which provides significant cooling

Don't know that I'd have the guts to do it, but more power to her...and you!

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Shelby Brown
Anala Goat Company
Beasley, Tx. (near Houston)

www.analagoatcompany.com

I'm glad to see this discussion. I've been thinking about off-grid or at least minimal grid use for several years for North Central Texas. Most of the magazines focus on heat retention rather than cooling and ventilation probably because they are based farther north or in mountainous areas.

Has anyone heard of a photovoltaic system that will generate the three phase voltage and the amp loads needed to run an A/C compressor? Most PV systems seem to be fairly low voltage and amp management is a major issue. Maybe a PV system could run a 120v attic fan adequately to at least keep the air circulating.


Thanks for letting me in.

Visitor

I'm with countrygrrrl and chickflick on this one. Burmed or underground housing is the solution to many problems. You never have to clean gutters again, you don't have to clean your roof, you have minimal area to have to paint, your heating and cooling cost are cut by about 90%-100% (with temperatures between 60-70 degrees F), your water pipes will never burst, you are protected from the majority of natural disasters, your house fits into the natural landscape better, you have more room to garden (ie your roof [you cover your house with 3 feet of soil]), etc., etc., etc. The benefits go on and on. While Underground homes are more costly then wood frame to construct, they are comparable in price to CBS and will save you tons of money over the long run. If you have the opportunity to build your own home this is the way to go!

We're in Arkansas without AC. You get acclimated. Also we build our house tall (12' walls) with large windows. I am making the windows so that the entire window opens in like french doors. That way we get maximum air flow. It stays pretty cool in there...well, at least slightly cooler than outside. That's good though because some houses trap heat in them so that it's hotter inside than outside....especially mobile homes. When it's really hot, we find a nice swimming hole to cool off in. Don't over exert yourself when the temps go up suddenly. Your body needs time to adjust. When my husband was in the marines, they used to have an annual 2 week summer camp in the California desert. He said that the first day there, they were all pretty useless......just laid around trying to adjust. Of course, most of them were going from 70 degrees to 100 degrees....a big adjustment. You'll rarely have to adjust to more than 10 degrees. I find that after I've adjusted to 86 or 90 degrees, normal air conditioned houses are so cold to me that I have to cover up or bundle up just to stick around in there...burrrr. Last night our nightime temps were around 70 and we got the quilts out...we thought we were freezing to death! LOL.

The high ceilings work for us....lots of nightime ventilation. You can shut in the night time air before things heat up. Sometimes that works. I think a house built directly on the ground would help keep things cool too.

Good luck...let us know how things go.

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Shae in Arkansas

I'm trying out the ground tube idea. The tubes themselves have been installed but not hooked up to the house yet. I have four 4" tubes just over 100 feet long. They will come in through the foundation and into vents in the floor of different rooms. (I have a small single-story house.)

There will also be vents in the ceilings of each room on the opposite side. Tubes will lead from them to the gable ends of the house and outside.

Theoretically, since the air in the attic will be hot, the air in the attic tubes should flow up and out through the gables, thereby pulling in cooler air from the ground tubes. But I suspect that this won't be enough. Next I'll try solar fans connected to the attic tubes to pull out the air. If that doesn't work, I'll try regular electric fans. But I'd really like to try and do this using no electricity at all so I hope the solar fans will do the trick.

Wish me luck!!

I have a friend that lives off grid. He took a a/c unit off a boat and converted one bedroom to be the "cool room". It's overly insulated, windows blacked out. The a/c unit works off 12v and he has 2 deep cycly batteries hooked up to a $78 dollar solar charger. It may be 89 in the living room but that "cool Room" is about 68. At night trying to sleep that makes a big difference. He also has a fan that runs off 4-D cells. When the room gets cool he turns off the a/c and turns on the fan to circulate the cool air.

I believe he has about $450 in the whole set-up. Just another idea for keeping cool

I live in NW Arkansas, in a reefer trailer, and I have no electricity....I just use those small battery powered fans, and keep the windows open all the time. I am fortunate, in that I am in the hills, so there is most always a breeze....I too, grew up with no ac, and very rarely did we even have a car with ac....I still don't, and to be honest, I don't like having ac, as it just makes it more difficult to get out in the heat. I drink a lot of water also.... I've also on really bad days, wet a big towel down, and put it over me...it works....

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I support our troops, I love my country, but fear my government.....

Visitor, you can run absolutely anything you want to off pv. IF you buy a beefy (pricey) enough system. BIG IF. Some people do have enough money to do this.

You would be better off in terms of power usage to go to a dc 12 or 24 v fan rather than ac. There are some big powerful ones out there. Backwoods solar sells several.

Barbarake, Have you looked into those wind turbine vents? They are cheap and really do work.
Let us know how the cool tubes do. I really want to try them when I get my own home again.

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I believe in God's willingness to heal.

Cyngbaeld's Keep Heritage Farm, breeding a variety of historical birds and LaMancha goats. (It is pronounced King Bold.)

A quick and fairly cheap way to stay cool at night is to use a water bed with a home-made frame. My first water bed had a home made frame out of 2x12s and rested on the floor. The first fill will be cold, well water temperature or whatever the source, and water will keep the average temperature of the air eventually (roughly.) 85 degree water doesn't sound cool until you lay on it and try to sleep. Water, even in a water bed matress and a sheet on it, will pull the heat right out of your body. I had to put a quilt on the water bed in order to stay warm enough even the summer heat with high humidity! Of course, it takes a lot of water for the initial fill-up.

If you want to go hi-tech you could get an absorbtion style air conditioner- it runs off of a propane pilot light. I know they work great for refrigeration, but I'm not sure how efficient they are scaled up. I don't know where to get one either, so you might need to get creative and cook up one yourself .

If you want to go 19th century, grow plenty of shade trees around your house. I've seen some 19th century houses with a cupola for ventalation on top of the attic. They were designed to take cold air from the basement and completely circulate it throughout the entire house. I'm not sure how easy that would be to retrofit, but it is something to keep in mind when building new.

I used to use a swamp cooler and it is quite noisy. They work best if the humidity is lower also. Some folks here mount them on the roofs so the noise is absorbed by the attic. An alternative cooling method I read about some time ago involves burying pvc pipe (about 200 ft or so) and drawing air from the outside into your house. The air gets cooled trough heat exchange with the
soil temperature, which in your area should be around 66-68 degrees (maybe less). You need to screen the pipe to keep varmits out, and small
muffle fans (like those used on PC's) can be used to draw in air. The added advantage is the same system can help reduce heating needs in the winter as the soil temperature should be about constant year round (usually the mean temperature of the area in which you live). Obviously, the larger the number of pipe systems, teh more effective this becomes. You will need to experiment to see what the best configuration, length, etc. works for you.

I always heard that sleeping on a cold waterbed was BAD for you? It lowered the body temp TOO much. Can anyone verify, etc.? When I did this I was young and 'bullet proof', but I did feel a bit fatigued; (or was it the '60's lifestyle??

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"TIMSHEL"
Spoiler ALERT: For those of you who've never read Steinbeck's "East of Eden".... timshel means "thou mayest".