Redneck AC on the cheap

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ttystikk

ttystikk

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Geothermal cooling for grow rooms? Umm someone help please lol

First, you'll most likely need to put that excess heat into a medium that you can easily carry outside and into the ground. Air is an option, but that incomes a lot of tunneling and ductwork is not an efficient way to transfer heat for any distance. A more popular and compact option is water. Since a chiller system works by cooling the water used to transfer heat from growrooms, it's the ideal starting point for a geothermal cooling system.

Water lines can be run under driveways, sidewalks and layoffs to keep them ice free. They could go to icebox style air/water heat exchangers and keep outdoor greenhouses warm in the winter. They could go to an outdoor pond, even maintain a tropical temperature for aquaponics... If all else fails, anytime the outside air temperature falls below the desired water temperature, you could pass it through a coil outside; 'compressorless chilling'.

So, now that you know where the heat could GO, you need to get it there. Icebox heat exchangers in the growroom soak up heat- and manage humidity at no extra charge, lol- and the water carries the heat away. Ordinarily, that water goes to a reservoir that is cooled by a chiller, maintaining system temperatures and moving the heat ultimately outside through the chiller itself.

Geothermal cooling replaces the chiller with any or all of the above options, depending on availability of resources and the season.

While not all of those choices are strictly speaking 'geothermal' or the practice of moving heat into or out of the Earth, they nonetheless show the possibilities for putting it to useful service. This concept is called 'multiple use' and shows how it's possible to reuse the waste from one process as input or support for another.

Heating a greenhouse, fish pond, hen house, your own house... these are all places to put excess heat, and they all represent cost savings, productivity improvements or both.

That was easy- pass the bowl?
 
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