Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Passive Cooling Solar Cooling: Use Heat To Cool
Previous: "Best Ways To Cool Your Home."
The previous article covered how the best "cooling" is not to heat in the first place (avoiding heat, so actual
cooling is unecessary). This article now covers how to remove any heat that does occur, using as many passive
cooling techniques as possible.
Solar heat for home heating is fine but you tend to want more of it when there is less of it (in winter). The
advantage of solar cooling or heat-powered cooling is, in a way, the hotter it gets, the cooler it gets.
Yes, you can use heat to cool by taking advantages of natural forces to passively pump air and transfer heat.
A solar chimney is a thermal chimney that would work if heated at night--but the Sun is the usual heat source.
Even wind power is solar power insofar as the Sun drives the wind by creating temperature and pressure
differences. Even evaporative cooling in the shade is solar power insofar as the Sun creates the ambient heat.
Passive Cooling Techniques (many overlap):
Solar chimney / thermal chimney / stack effect / convection vertical ventilation / heat-powered
pump: A heated chimney or vent stack collects and ejects heat from the home, which creates a
vacuum suction that draws cooler replacement air in from a lower vent. Any top vent (especially on a
domed or peaked ceiling) or at least a high open window (transom, clerestory) combined with a
shaded low vent (e.g. in door bottom out of sunlight) will use convection.
Wind chimney / windcatcher / wind tower / Persian bagdir / wind-powered pump: Whereas the
solar chimney can create its own wind by forcing a convection cycle, the wind chimney/catcher does
not create its own wind but does work at night. The windcatcher uses the Coanda effect (boundarylayer attachmente.g. your finger diverts faucet water) or Venturi effect to siphon air from the home.
You can open/close apertures according to wind direction to cause a downdraft if desired.
Venturi tube / Bernoulli principle / cross ventilation: This is another example of using constrictions
to create pressure differentials or vacuum effects to suck air. I list this separately from the last entry
but think of applications akin to a horizontal wind chimney. Any cross ventilation by opening
opposing windows can be good.
Evaporative cooler / swamp cooler / desert cooler / passive down-draft cooltower / spring house /
Persian yakhchal:Water absorbs heat to evaporate, which is why you sweat to cool yourself. Air
traveling over water cools. Use in low-humidity conditions and guard against health hazards from
standing water (mosquitoes, mildew, Legionnaires Disease, etc.).
Geothermal cooler / Earth cooler: Below the frost line can be 20-50 degrees cooler than surface
summer air (the principle behind the root cellar, fruit cellar, and Persian yakhchal). Guard against
standing water dangers when humid air in pipes drops below the dew-point temperature and
condenses water.
Solar ice-maker / solar refrigerator / solar air-conditioner:This variation on evaporative cooling
often uses fancy plumbing for the Sun to power a closed condensation-expansion cycle similar to that
of a conventional electric refrigerator.
Lunar refrigerator / moon cooler / night radiant refrigerator: Use solar-oven principles in reverse
to shed heat toward the blackest night sky (do not actually point at the Moon).
Passive Annual Heat Storage (PAHS) / Annualized Geo Solar (AGS) / Trombe wall / Morse wall /
thermal mass / thermal battery / thermal well / thermal sump: Whereas a PV solar panel with
battery diverts and stores light for later use, and a rainwater catchment with cistern diverts and
storeswater for later use, a thermal battery/well diverts and storesheat for later use. Trombe/Morse
walls usually are thick adobe/masonry walls or water containers that absorb daytime heat and then
release heat at night to moderate (average out) the daily internal air temperature (use low thermal mass
in areas with little day-night temperature change). Larger masses can moderate variations over days or
longer. PAHS/AGS are much larger versions of the Trombe wall to moderate temperature over the
entire year. PAHS/AGS usually specify a large, engineered, subterranean area and might take a few
years of supplemental heat to "charge" the system. Thermal "storage" is not actually static but controls
the direction and speed of heat by selection of materials and fluid/air flow.
You might augment these passive cooling methods with minimal active interventions such as circulation fans,
or water pumps, or opening/closing vents/windows by hand or with automatic sensors.
Use these methods in any combination with radiators (high surface area e.g. fins), heat exchangers (high
conductance), and thermal masses (high heat capacity) to pump, transfer, and store heat as needed.
Best Ways To Cool Your Home
The Best Cooling Is Not Heating in the First Place
Just like the best energy efficiency is conservation (not burning fuel), the best cooling is avoiding
unnecessary heat in the first place. Cool from inside by turning off unnecessary electric devices, etc. (each
one is an electric heater) but the big winner is cooling from the outside (stopping external heat sources):
Take your house out of the oven.
That big thermonuclear furnace in the sky, the Sun, will bake your house if you leave it in the solar oven so cut
the direct connection between the Sun and your home with these light blockers:
Natural shade (landscaping): Deciduous (leaf-losing) trees southeast and southwest automatically
adjust seasonally by shading in the summer but still allowing 50-80% of solar heat in winter. Hedges
(or fences) east and west can block the low Sun at dawn and dusk. Vine-covered (or even bare)
trellises also can shade walls. Substantial shading from the overhead midday summer Sun requires tree
canopies to overhang the roof (less desirable if the roof is a rainwater catchment). Proper landscaping
can save a quarter of your energy bill.
Structural shade; Fly roof / flying roof, shade cloth, fences, trellises, eaves,
outbuildings/sheds: Some of these can be part of the main building and some can be part of
landscaping but they do the same job as natural vegetation and can be any horizontal or even vertical
structure (e.g. shade-cloth "fence" or "hedge") that prevents direct sunlight from hitting the home.
Reflective building exterior; cool roof, reflective house paint: For maximum reflectivity, use
special materials suspended in paint to reflect light or suspended ceramic to reflect heat. At least use a
white or light color.
The simple difference between black and white can be 70 degrees F. Remember that even a small divergence from pure white can reduce reflectivity signifi cantly: Bone is about 3/4 as reflective and Almond is about 1/2 as reflective.
Exterior window treatments; eaves, window awnings, window shutters: Properly sized eaves or
awnings automatically will shade windows from the high summer sun yet allow the lower winter sun
to enter the windows--but fixed overhangs are a compromise and seasonal adjustment is more
effective. Homes in primarily hot zones should have minimal windows east and west unless they are
fully shaded on the outside.
Interior window treatments; shutters, shades, blinds, drapes: These ideally use a reflective facing
plus a thermal material (e.g. "solar shade" or "thermal shade") plus seal the window (caution: you
need an escape valve or heated, expanded air can crack a window). Door-like interior shutters can
have a gasket seal. Shades can mount in an edge-sealing frame or box, although even standard roomdarkening shades are better than transluscent shades and any shade is better than nothing.
The Sun is on the south side in the northern hemisphere and north side in the southern hemisphere.
All these passive light barriers can make a big difference. Then addthermal barriers (conduction insulation,
radiant barriers, caulk for air infiltration, etc.), especially if your area suffers from "heat island" effect, such as
in the heat-trapping asphalt jungle of cities.
Remember, active cooling is always a last resort. Minimize or eliminate the need for active cooling by
intelligent design.
