It seems funny to think about cooling my house right now with it being the beginning of February, even though temperatures are more like April or May but a friend gave me an idea the other day and I wanted to throw it out for others to ruminate on with me.
She mentioned when she read the technical paperwork that came with her wood stove years ago, it mentioned that since the stove has a blower ice could be put into the wood stove during the summer with the blower running to cool the house.
Her concern was that this would 1. waste a lot of water and 2. would put a lot of humidity in the air when we are already in such a humid climate. My thought was to take half gallon glass jars (I imagine even gallon vinegar bottles would work), fill them up about 3/4 and freeze them. Then, place a few into the wood stove and turn on the blower. The coolness from the jars would be sucked out into the room by the blower.
Granted, w/o electricity this won't work unless we have a solar panel but it's worth trying out. I normally keep the house fairly comfortable during the summer but on those extreme 100+ days, it might make it even more comfortable.
Any thoughts on this?
2 comments:
where does the ice come from in the middle of the summer? the energy to get/keep it cold has to come from somewhere.
frozen ice from lakes stored in sawdust underground would be an old-school answer. that type of ice still has to bought and would probably be more than using a freezer. i say cut out the middleman and turn the AC.
we don't have a/c and i don't care to ever install it. i'm more interested in this for the novelty of it. :)
my idea is to fill the jugs and store them in the freezer to keep the freezer full and running efficiently. typically during the summer, there's not a lot to put in it but enough that we need to keep it running. i would just have 2-3 sets and swap them out. therefore, never having to refill/waste water and just refreeze them.
it doesn't freeze cold enough around here to do the old ice blocks....so it would have to be ice i can generate.
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