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This 'Cold Tube' can beat the summer heat without relying on air conditioning:
"Air conditioners work by cooling down and dehumidifying the air around us—an expensive and not particularly environmentally friendly proposition," explains project co-lead Adam Rysanek, assistant professor of environmental systems at UBC's school of architecture and landscape architecture, whose work focuses on future energy systems and green buildings. "The Cold Tube works by absorbing the heat directly emitted by radiation from a person without having to cool the air passing over their skin. This achieves a significant amount of energy savings."
The Cold Tube is a system of rectangular wall or ceiling panels that are kept cold by chilled water circulating within them. Since heat naturally moves by radiation from a hotter surface to a colder surface, when a person stands beside or under the panel, their body heat radiates towards the colder panel. This creates a sensation of cooling like cold air flowing over the body even if the air temperature is quite high.
Although these types of cooling panels have been used in the building industry for several decades, what makes the Cold Tube unique is that it does not need to be combined with a dehumidification system. Just as a cold glass of lemonade would condense water on a hot summer day, cooling down walls and ceilings in buildings would also condense water without first drying out the air around the panels. The researchers behind the Cold Tube conceived of an airtight, humidity-repelling membrane to encase the chilled panels to prevent condensation from forming while still allowing radiation to travel through.
A new cooling system for your home?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday August 22 2020, @01:10AM (1 child)
If you've got artesian you may not need a submersible- a normal self-priming centrifugal might be enough, or a jet pump for sure. Unless the level occasionally drops way down.
Interesting it's shared. I'd think the agreement would disallow one party making absolute decisions unless they're willing to pay 100%. That'd be my terms anyway.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 22 2020, @02:49AM
The agreement is a handshake - property used to be single owner for the two houses, prior buyer lost the deal by trying to lawyer up the shared well agreement. Truth is, you can sink a whole new well, with pump, for about $3K - so there's little point in engaging lawyers over an agreement. Neighbor didn't demand payment, but the poor schmuck lost his $400K/yr job with Microsoft that he's been working at for 15+ years and is selling real-estate now, so I figured least I could do was chip in what I would have paid to have the whole thing done myself.
Most days we don't need to pump at all, when the submersible pump goes out it has typically taken us weeks to months to notice that it happened - never had the water table drop below about 6' of head around here. Same aquifer 200 miles south in Orange grove country, when a freeze is coming the groves crank up the 1000hp diesel pumps sucking on 12" boreholes to feed their "microdrip" irrigation systems, saturating the citrus trees before the freeze event, which apparently helps the fruit and tree survivability through the event. When the groves do that, our 6' of head drops to about -6 feet, we can still use a suction pump - have a hand powered pitcher pump on the wellhead for just those occasions, but even the 4hp gasoline pump won't fill the pond the way that the natural flow will when it's up.
🌻🌻 [google.com]