Summer house cooling idea?

[kickinbull]

We have a wood fired boiler with radiator and fan to heat our house and hot water. In summer we can shut off the house heat part. If I ran a water filled ground loop buried deep, and pumped with circulator pump hooked up to the same radiator with shut off, would it cool a house? Thanks. Brad.

 

[Nesikep]

I don't know how effective it would be.. the temperature difference for cooling is isn't that great... Say you get your water to 40F (optimistic), that's only a 30 degree difference from your room temperature, while in heating mode, you can easily heat the water to 140F if needed, which would give you a 70 degree difference.

I was wondering if you could make a wood furnace operate a freon system like the way a propane fridge works? would be a neat way of doing it, but probably pretty complex

 

[kickinbull]

The loop would only be used as a cooling unit. The wood boiler stove would not be used for cooling. If the ground is 55F, running water with a circulator pump through a loop then into the exchanger would cool the house?

 

[Hook]

Geothermal heating and cooling works both ways. Around here the ground temp is 68-72. You could plumb it like the swamp coolers we had in Arizona

 

[Jogeephus]

If you are talking about the radiators with fan units in each room I would be afraid of condensation and water damage with your humidity. If you are planning on digging a trench anyway what you might look into is a simple open pipe system. Friend built his home and ran an 18-24" pipe underground for so many yards then had the opening screened at the far end. This pipe was hooked to his duct work in his home and all he needed to do was let the fan draw the air and it was a constant temp year round which was nice.

He got the idea from Popular Mechanics. There was an article in this about 30 years ago but I'm sure you can find information elsewhere.

 

[tripleBfarms]

I've got a hardy stove and thought about trying that with cool well water. Draw it from the deepest point, and return it at the top, but I figured it wouldn't cool back down quick enough. As Nesikep said, the temp difference isn't much, at 56 degrees, it would probably help cool on an 80 degree day, but would never work on 100 degree hot humid day. I guess you could run it at night, and on cooler days, it would save a little cash.

Nesikep, that an interesting thought on the freon. If would think if you could figure out a way to regulate the heat you'd have it.

 

[highgrit]

My thoughts are that cooling in the floors isn't going to work very well. Heat works great because it rises.