Water Cooling?

[bicker]

Just out of curiosity... Does anyone know why it isn't practical to use the cold water coming out of our faucets to cool our homes? It must be something like it would spike your water bill too much, or the water just isn't cold enough to have any significant impact regardless of how it is implemented into a cooling device, or invoke some water company rule or something, but I really have no idea.

 

[Dax]

I just wish the water coming out of my faucets was cool...It comes out BOILING, then drops to a lukewarm temp...

 

[okeydokey]

The water coming out of my faucets isn't actually cold. I live in Fl so this time of year I'm lucky if it's sort of cool.

 

[MushyMushy]

Yeah, I agree it's not that cool. Mine is lukewarm.

 

[Octoberbride03]

I imagine if there were actually a practical way then someone would be doing it. Personally i can't imagine how much water it would take to cool the home I don't even know how you would do it I know you can use water to alternately humidify/dehumidify a home but actually cooling it I've never heard of.

Maybe you could ask Mike Holmes that guy knows everything about houses. I love his show. He has a FB page.

 

[wendy46001]

FL. tap water is lukewarm at best

I'd imagine that if the water was cool enough to use
you would end up having some sort of condensation issue to deal with

 

[Frantasmic]

I'm not an engineer, nor have I stayed at a Holiday Inn lately.

However, the swamp coolers in dryer (less humid) climates do something similar with water cooling thick sponge-like pads that air is run over and dispersed through the house. Growing up in the Texas Panhandle, the water to the cooler was just a small line off the outside water faucet.

If you used a mist-like system (mimicking the wickering aspect of sweat), your house would be all slimy and moldy.

I remember my father stating that while growing up on his family farm, they would wet their sheets with water each night and use a fan in the warm and that was their air conditioning.

 

[Tinkermommy]

I am posting this link because I cannot copy the text on the house, but this is in no way political.

George Bush has a house in Texas that is heated/cooled by ground water. It is a very "green" house. So yes, it appears you can heat and cool a house by water but the technology is probably new and costly.

Here's the link of the info. It's from Snopes and talks about another political person's house as well. It's really the only non-bashing type info I could find.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp

 

[Octoberbride03]

I am posting this link because I cannot copy the text on the house, but this is in no way political.

George Bush has a house in Texas that is heated/cooled by ground water. It is a very "green" house. So yes, it appears you can heat and cool a house by water but the technology is probably new and costly.

Here's the link of the info. It's from Snopes and talks about another political person's house as well. It's really the only non-bashing type info I could find.

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0429-03.htm

Geo-thermal pump right? (without looking at the article)

I thought that use the temperature in the ground to regulate the house. But I don't much about it. I know they started popping up while I was in college, so that was early 90s. Don't know why they are not more widespread now, my old Dr. did it for his house and loved it.

 

[bicker]

Wow... I always thought of geo-thermal as a means of heating things.

Learn something new every day!

 

[Tinkermommy]

Geo-thermal pump right? (without looking at the article)

I thought that use the temperature in the ground to regulate the house. But I don't much about it. I know they started popping up while I was in college, so that was early 90s. Don't know why they are not more widespread now, my old Dr. did it for his house and loved it.

Yep, the water must be from deep in the earth where it is a constant temperature.

Also, I edited the link since I put the wrong one in and it bashed GWB. I don't want to get any points!!!

 

[brerrabbit]

Actually the concept was widely used in the South for a while prior to the widespread use of air conditioners. The affectionate term for the device was a swamp cooler. The idea was that you ran water over thin pieces of metal that looked the fins on a radiator. A fan blew over the metal and produced air that was cooler than the ambient temp and cooled the room. This process had a couple of problems, first it took a lot of water, and second added a tremendous amount of humidity to the air. My grandparents lived in the country and had a swamp cooler. The idea of an air conditioner is to transfer heat and dispite what we believe about them they don't actually produce cold air so much as they remove heat. Freon is a much better conductor of heat than water so it is what is used. The freon has return air from the house blown over coils that contain the freon and it absorbs the heat. The freon is then taken outside to the evaporator where the heat is disapated. That's why when it rains your a/c gets colder, the water on the evaporator coils disapates the heat more effciently. Water in the place of freon would not conduct much heat at all and be less effcient.

The best way I have seen for using water to cool homes are in certain areas in "green" homes. A closed system of piping circulates water through pipes in the house in the floor and walls and returns the water to pipes buried in the ground outside. The water is essentially cooled in the summer and heated in the winter by the ground temp and helps regulate the indoor temp. The system is cheap to operate as the pump takes very little energy anf the ground is heating and cooling, however in many areas the ground will maintain a constant temp at certain depths so that may be say 65 degrees which would be a constant and help in the summer and winter but have a hard time significantly changing the temp. Thus far all I have ever seen use water in heating or cooling are these geothermal type systems.

 

[FireDancer]

I would imagine that it is a cost and efficiency issue. If you are going to use either circulating water (or air really) to cool your home (geothermal) it is better to use a closed system the recirculates the same water as opposed to buying water, circulating it, and then dumping it into the sewer. Up here there are quite a few homes that use geothermal heating and cooling (using the constant ground temperature to heat and cool as a PP posted) and they are all closed systems.

Even swamp-coolers are using an open system and are not very efficient, especially in an area where water is expensive.

 

[ChrizJen]

My guess is that it's like any "alternate" form of energy (solar panels, windmills, etc.). Sure, in the long run it's much more economical and ecologically responsible, but it's just too costly to retro-fit houses and other buildings. While I have not done my research on the issue, I would imagine that cost-efficiency is also what's keeping this technology out of new contruction as well. Except for extremely customized homes/buildings, most new construction is going to go with the least expensive methods of building construction in order to pass savings on to new home buyers.

As soon as we see more incentives (lower costs, tax breaks, etc.), we'll likely see more of these types of energy-responsible building methods.

 

[ilovesugar]

Geothermal is extremely expensive. When we were looking at building a home a little over a year ago, going the geothermal route added more than $50,000 to the price of the house and the return on it was not good at all. You did not make that money back in savings for A LOT of years.

DH is a mechanical engineer and I can ask him this question and see what he has to say.

 

[NotUrsula]

My BIL had a geothermal system put in two years ago. Their home was built in the 1940s. It's a closed system with two 600 ft. wells under the front yard. It cost them upward of $30K to install, and IMO it really is not effective enough for the climate where they live. We were there a couple of weeks ago when it was 90 outside, and the interior temp in their south facing rooms was still very uncomfortable to me.

The other issue for modern construction in many parts of the US is that a geothermal system does not de-humidify. Most modern homes built in Florida, for example, will develop serious mold problems very quickly if they are not mechanically dehumidified in summer -- they are too airtight.

 

[legalsea]

Just out of curiosity... Does anyone know why it isn't practical to use the cold water coming out of our faucets to cool our homes? It must be something like it would spike your water bill too much, or the water just isn't cold enough to have any significant impact regardless of how it is implemented into a cooling device, or invoke some water company rule or something, but I really have no idea.

Years ago my brother-in-law (here in Fort Worth) did just that during a particularly hot summer when his AC unit was not working well.

He put a sprinkler on top of his roof (it is not that big of a house), turned on the hose, and watered his roof. It was his belief that it kept the house a couple of degrees cooler and helped keep the central AC unit from running full time.

However, I do not know if he ever did this again after that one summer. I guess if you had a good, efficient sprinkler it would not spike the water bill too much.