Subject: Re: Any solar powered A/C?

From: [email-masked] (Edith B. Smith)
Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 19:36:08

In article <[email-masked]> Terry Norton <[email-masked]> writes:
>From: Terry Norton <[email-masked]>
>Subject: Any solar powered A/C?
>Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 04:11:07 GMT

>Haven't done much of anything related solar for about 12 years.  At that time I
>remember reading   
>some info about using solar heat to do cooling. 
> 
>Have any advances taken place so that a DIYer could construct something without
>having to be a   
>rocket scientist?  The only thing I really knew of that was being tried was
>Absorption Cooling.  But   
>that seemed rather complicated without some specific plans to work from. 
> 
>I live in Vermont, the humidity makes things rather sticky in the summer.  I'd
>like to tinker with this   
>idea somehow if anyone has some ideas.

>Terry Norton 
>[email-masked]

Try a solar chimney. The basic idea is that you have an area of  "coolth" like 
a basement or some mass under the house below the frost line were the 
temperature is around 55 F. and you provide for a current of air to be sucked 
up from that space by the thermal energy of the suns's rays striking a dark  
hollow column on the south side or roof of the house. If the column is 
attached to theside of the house you will need to insulate it from the house 
so that you do not defeat your purpose of cooling.