Does anyone have any tips on where I can look for details on how to go about designing/specifying/building a passively-cooled larder for a kitchen? We are having some structural work done, and being able to incorporate something like this would be great.
I've done a little search, but not really come up with anywhere good to start.
-- JJ
I'd love to do this too but it seems, after 43 years of thinking about it I can only come up with: excavate a cellar.
Our pantry is a wallk in, I think that's the problem. Every time you open the door the temperature rises, even with a ventilated opening to the outside and being on a sheltered east side of the house.
The house we had before this was very small - one room on the ground floor, one on the first floor, but it had a cellar, it was wonderful!
Mary
dunno, but suggestions where I'd look:
Centre for Alternative Technology texts on passive solar building John Seymour's 'Self Sufficiency' (book)
I'd guess that the principles are to have a poorly-insulated floor in contact with the ground, a poorly-insulated outside wall that doesn't get sun (so it tends to radiate heat), heavy (high thermal mass) materials (e.g. traditional slab shelf) and good insulation from the inside of the house. I don't see why you shouldn't also build-in a fridge and/or freezer through the wall of the larder and with the back of the appliance outside the larder.
Build it on a North wall. Not next to oven, fridge, washer/dryer etc. No windows. Tile it throughout. Tile or marble shelves. Insulate side walls, and door if possible. Airbrick top and bottom, with closer for summer.
We've got one with most of the above. I made a sandwich today and the butter was still a little firm!
Good stuff; I'd think the north wall & cellar ideas are as far as you'll get with passive cooling, unless you can find a way to incorporate some evaporative cooling.
CIBSE have a non-members discussion forum here;
How about arranging for the air to come from under the centre of the house (assuming a suspended floor) where it is presumably cooler than inside or outside the house?
DG
In message , Mary Fisher writes
Yep, great, currently posting from my lovely cool basement office/workshop while the rest of the house bakes.
I've often though about this to cool a room, decided I'd run out of cold air very quickly.
I guess with a larder a small slow fan would work OK.
I only started thinking about it at 23-30pm last night when my little Chinese weather station told me it was 26c inside the house and 16.6c outside. Thinking at the time that running a ventilation system overnight might result in the house starting the day cooler, bearing in mind that hot clear sunny days tend to be followed by clear cool nights.
Not passive but a fan and a "smartbox" of electronics could make a worthwhile improvement and be better for the environment than air conditioning. On a smaller scale it could be applied to a larder where most probably the whole lot could be solar powered.
DG
Most of the house has a floor raised about a metre above the soft ground. Being near the sea, there seems to be no lack of moisture in the ground, so any air flow would be cooled down pretty well through evaporation, so perhaps that would work. However, the bit of the kitchen we would like to extend has a solid floor, but depending where the larder is built, it may be adjacent to the step where the raised floor meets the solid floor - an airbrick or two may work there.
-- JJ
Tempting! We are built on soft clay, and there is a metre or so access to most of the underside of the house. I expect it would be quite a major job though, underpinning all the walls (I'm not sure there is much of a foundation for this Vistorian house - it just kind of floats there on a few lines of bricks).
That's what I would ideally like. I guess the temperature rise will depend on the thermal mass inside the room - lots of heavy brick and stone would help, and that would need to be on the inside of any insulation.
Thanks for the suggestions and tips everyone! Some good leads to follow up, confirmation of what I suspected was needed, and confirmation that I'm not mad wanting such a thing in the first place.
-- JJ
There are some ideas about passive cooling on these pages which might be useful:
Marble slab shelving used to be a feature of all the pantries I remember.
Colin Bignell
The OP did specify passive ... there are lots of non-passive methods :-(
Mary
Our house is an interwar semi - 1937 - but it has no foundations either, just 'a few lines of bricks'. That's why we've never excavated a cellar. That and being on a hill ... the drive is all that's between us and next door's - 4' below.
It would have been a major job but worth it in the long run except that we had no money all those years ago. Now we have money but less energy and time :-(
I hadn't realised you were in UK, sorry.
Yes, but when the ambient temperature rises (like recently) the temperature of that mass rises too. It also keep that temperature for longer than we'd like.
Mary
Oh you're not! I'd LOVE a cool pantry.
I can't understand how people manage in modern houses where there's no food storage at all except cupboards in the kitchen. But it seems to me that many people don't store food, just packets, tins and freezer packs :-(
Mary
Air intake from below plants, natural evaporative cooling and from a shaded area. I think most of keeping a space cool is down to thermal interia of the materials it's made of, so the suggestion of good solid stone, concrete (not lightweight blocks...) walls, solid non insulated florr, brick supports for slab shelving all make for a lot of thermal interia.
Our solid stone house stays lovely and cool (lower 20's) in the summer despite a south facing living room and external temps well above 25C and people and electricals all pumping out heat.
I guess even a tiny fan to help now and then would be fine. Passive is ideal, but if a helping hand improves it beyond what passive could provide, then so much the better.
I've seen the ultimate lader at Woodchester mansion, that has a chimney on the roof designed to draw up air in the slighest breeze from any direction. The 'flue' opens up in the larder room, and through evaporation, manages to keep the room a good 5 degrees cooler than just outside the room.
-- JJ
"nightjar .uk.com>"
Some of the council houses around here, built in the fifties, have solid concrete slabs about three inches thick. I suspect they were cast in-situ, and serve the same job as the marble.
-- JJ
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