"Earth cooled" condensing

[Zeig]

Wondering if anyone has attempted/considered an Earth cooled condesnor. By this I mean having a condensor coil burried in the ground. A possible setup would be with the boiler and equipment at the bottom of a trench and the condensor runs into the ground with the outlet coming out at the bottom. The average temp of the Earth is about 54 degrees F around 2-5 feet below ground level and additional cooling could be added by using moist ground or dumping water over the area used if the soil is permiable enough.

I'm bored and procrastinating so if anyone still doesnt understand just ask and i'll make a 3D model of it for ya.

[ga flatwoods]

Sounds like it would work. Go ahead and build it into the walls of your bug out shelter before you bury it. Would be a good reason to go practice your preppin!
GA Flatwoods

[Prairiepiss]

I've actually thought about this. Not sure how much line you would need to put into the ground. But a underground reservoir wouldn't be a bad thing. But then again I'm lazy. So this is a project I will probably never try.

Sounds like it would work. Go ahead and build it into the walls of your bug out shelter before you bury it. Would be a good reason to go practice your preppin! GA Flatwoods

LOL good ol shipping container in the ground. Good hiding place.

[Sungy]

I have worked on some schools where they had a heat pump loop and a ground loop. The ground loop was 1 inch poly pipe and buried 3 foot deep. Canada after all. They ran the pipes under the football field. This worked well for the first little while until some of the pipes started leaking glycol under the football field. Messed up the pumps and a lot of the heat pumps as well. Point is ya cant freeze it up.

[Prairiepiss]

When I was in the military they put those systems in base housing. Except they drilled straight down. And ran the poly tubing down the hole and back out the same hole. I thought that was weird. But it worked I guess.

[Zeig]

I have worked on some schools where they had a heat pump loop and a ground loop. The ground loop was 1 inch poly pipe and buried 3 foot deep. Canada after all. They ran the pipes under the football field. This worked well for the first little while until some of the pipes started leaking glycol under the football field. Messed up the pumps and a lot of the heat pumps as well. Point is ya cant freeze it up.

They prob didn't clear the line before it froze. Every fall we run pressurized air through our underground sprinkler system so that doesn't happen. How cold did it get that glycol froze??

EDIT:Melting point −12.9 °C, 260 K, 9 °F

Haha i thought about the bug out shelter having a still!
I'm glad i'm not the only one who has thought of this though, then maybe someone out there has tried.

[heartcut]

In the type of situation where you might need a bug out shelter, seems like one of the desireable skills to a newly formed community might just be the ability to make beer, wine and spirits. I like the idea of scouting out a suitable hill instead of a stream for your condensor power.

[woodshed]

We've been tossing around this idea at the distillery for about the last month. We operate out of a recirc tank. During the winter tank temp is easy to maintain @65F. Summer a little tougher as only two rooms here are cooled. The tank is in an uncooled location. Water temp has been as high as 80F.
And we use a chiller then. Looking to harness what's already available and energy wise.
Pretty good but could be better. Plenty of space out back. Sunny side but I envision a shed over it to keep the ground in shade.

[Zeig]

We've been tossing around this idea at the distillery for about the last month. We operate out of a recirc tank. During the winter tank temp is easy to maintain @65F. Summer a little tougher as only two rooms here are cooled. The tank is in an uncooled location. Water temp has been as high as 80F.
And we use a chiller then. Looking to harness what's already available and energy wise.
Pretty good but could be better. Plenty of space out back. Sunny side but I envision a shed over it to keep the ground in shade.

I'm assuming you're talking about the fermenting vessel? I know there are a lot of systems that work that way for operations other than stills, best part is the consistency of the temp gradient. The earth is just one large heat sink!


Now that I'm thinking about it, I bet different soil types/consistencies/density/water content/etc. have VERY different thermal properties, soil may be cool but once heat is absorbed it could be too insulating. (ex: dry sand of a beach staying warm into the night)

[woodshed]

The recirc tank is for cooling water to the condensers.

[Zeig]

oh yea.. shoulda known that.

[woodshed]

I have an engineer friend scoping it for me. Looking specifically at structure around the tubing.

[varocketry]

The vertical loop drilling is used where land access is limited. You can put a lot of 100' holes with copper pipe pretty close together. Black polypropylene pipe usually is placed in 300' drilled holes. I seem to recall the a 100' vertical drilled loop of copper pipe would yield you one (1) TON of cooling capacity. If you are replacing a five ton A/C system, you need something like 5 vertical runs (of this copper pipe design). It varies greatly by materials.

If you have land, a backhole can dig out a ditch or a swatch to lay horizontal loops of the polypropylene pipe runs. It has to be installed several feet below the frost line.,

Geothermal ground source heat pump heating systems including pond loops, closed, open loops, horizontal and vertical loops -


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_heat_pump" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKqZV60vQ8A" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow