Bloody hell it's hot

[Clot]

It was 01.45 when I had the windows and curtains open!

[Steve Firth]

Yes of course you do Drivel. In Drivelland where the sky is lemon yellow with pink polka-dots and the trees are blue.

That explains why my home stays a a reasonale temperature without air conditioning all year round, whereas people in single brick skin boxes sweat and freeze and curse, despite several inches of insulation.

[Tim S]

NT wibbled:

On an aside to your cooling system - I was wondering - say if one happened to be digging with a digger in the garden for other reasons down into wet clay >0.6m below the surface:

Could a few runs of cheap drain pipe down at that level be used to provide a source of cool air to select locations in the house?

There are a few unaddressed problems to solve like how to vent air into the pipe without it getting full of bugs and trying to prevent standing water lying in the pipe which would probably be bad for health.

But as a wacky off the wall idea - merits - or not?

Or as a variant - lay a grid of water pipe to use as a chilled water source. The obvious problem here is that even if one gets water at around 10C (guess) you have to then convert it into a source of cool air (car radiator?).

It's probably stupid - but sometimes interesting things come from the seeds of insanity ;->

[Andrew Gabriel]

I made up a second loft hatch with a 10" (IIRC) Xpelair fan mounted on it, which gets installed during the summer. It switches on when loft goes above 25C.

Original intention was to prevent loft baking as there is some low power electronics in there, but I suspect it only makes a few C difference to the loft temperature. It would help with better high loft vents too, although the felt does have gaps at the overlaps. It does help cooling the upstairs though, when there's absolutely no breeze outside.

[John Rumm]

could be...

A variation on the heat recover ventilation idea perhaps - don't use the air in the house directly but use it to cool house (or external - whichever is cooler) air via a cross flow heat exchanger.

What you have described is basically a ground source heat pump of sorts (or in this case - ground sink)

[dennis]

I just booked Cernterparcs and have been relaxing in the pools. 8-)

[NT]

These sort of sytems are in use, so it can work. For whole house cooling a whole lot of pipe is needed, but if you only want to knock

5C off one room of course far less is required.

Condensation in the pipe is generally addressed with drainage, I'm not convinced that would rule out mould though. Water pipe has 2 advantages: as well as eliminating mould it also has some coolth storage effect, so additional coolth is getting stored in the water before the system gets switched on each time. The fatter the pipe, the more conctact area with the soil and the more coolth storage.

A car rad & fan sounds good, you may want to run the fan at less than

12v though.

NT

[Tim S]

dennis@home wibbled:

I love CP, no - the kids do, I only go for them *cough*...

The best one I found was Erpeheide in Belgium - which one are you at?

Can't get me out of those tube slides :)

[Frank Erskine]

On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:55:31 +0100, Tim S had this to say:

What - you got stuck? :-)

[Tim S]

Frank Erskine wibbled:

If I went this year, probably :)

[ARWadsworth]

Like hell it is.

I am having aircon fitted.

Adam

[The Natural Philosopher]

The key is mass inside the house insulation..

Yesterday the hall temperature was 23C or so.

Which is about the median between night and day.

It takes several days for this house to adjust its temperature without assistance.

And at least its not totally humid. Not like the tropics.

[The Medway Handyman]

Got it! Angle Grinder with a fan on it! 11,000 rpm - what a hand held fan!

[Tim S]

The Medway Handyman coughed up some electrons that declared:

I'm not putting that down *my* underpants!

Unless we change the thread to "DIY vasectomy"

[Owain]

Won't the neighbours use the outside unit for airgun practice?

Owain

[ARWadsworth]

No. That neighbour pissed off 8 months ago.

Adam

[Rod]

Have a look here:

They sound pretty effective in drier areas.

[neverwas]

I know you'll say this guy ought to have used an angle grinder but with what tool?

[Doctor Drivel]

See The Whole House Book.

You need tagging.

[Clive George]

a Fein Multimaster will have something suitable?