OWB as an airconditioner?

[YCSTEVE]

If you stuffed and Outdoor Wood Burner full of ice would it act as an airconditoner? Kind of like a geothermal unit? Can you run a geothermal unit through an OWB?

I'm know this is a stupid question but someone jokingly said this to me this morning. I thought if there was any group of people in the world that could figure this out this website is the place.

By the way it's 102 degrees in Southeast Kansas.

 

[Mike Van]

If you run cold water through the pipes into the house, when the warm damp air hits the pipe, you'll probably drown from the condensation dripping off them. Sorry.

 

[urhstry]

Yeah but that's just water... no reason to be afraid of that. I'm all ready to go buy pounds of block ice!

 

[GSP]

I thought about that myself with my wood boiler.It's in my garage and holds about 52 gallons.I have infloor heating so it would work similar to an ice hockey rink.Hockey rinks use freon and ammonia which is below freezing, but you could use ice cold water from an isulated tank like a comercial fishing exactic tank thats used to keep the fish fresh.Cut an intake and return in the tank and hook the circultor pump up.The question is how long would ice melt in those tanks.I think 1 gallon bottled water jugs frozen in a deep freezer would work better than loose ice.

 

[YCSTEVE]

How about filling the lines with an alcohol soulition so it won't freeze, then placing a drip pan under the coil to collect the water, then duct tape a 110 airunit in the loading door of the OWB.

 

[ms310]

well water

I was going to run well water threw mine and dump it out in to the pond, but the only thing stopping me is the condensation issue with the coil overtop of the burner on my furnace..... i cant come up with a way to catch the condensation while letting the air go threw it

 

[mga]

install an amonia based cooling system.

let your OWB be the source of heat to activate the amonia.

this concept has been used for years for large freezers, usually heated by LP gas or propane. problem is, would the heated water be enough to work the system's amonia........or, maybe run seperate lines to the OWB and let the amonia heat out there.

there are some refrigerators that use the absorption system of
heat transfer. These refrigerators are operated usually by natural or LP gas.
In these refrigerators a strong solution of ammonia in water is heated by a
gas flame in a container called a generator, and the ammonia is driven off as
a vapor. The ammonia vapor then goes into a condenser, where it is changed to
its liquid state. The ammonia then flows into the evaporator, just like a
conventional system. But, instead of the gas being brought into a compressor
after leaving the evaporator, the ammonia gas is reabsorbed in the partially
cooled, weak solution returning from the generator, making it a strong ammonia
solution, again. This process happens in another small container called, you
guessed it, the absorber. From there this concentrated solution flows back to
the generator to complete the cycle. This is the type of refrigerator that is
seen most often in campers and RV's.

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/askasci/1993/eng/ENG30.HTM

 

[YCSTEVE]

GSP, I wondered about freezing 2 liter bottles and stacking them in the firebox I wondered how long they would last.

MS310 I thought about the well water also. Some of that stuff comes out of the ground cold. I thought if you had a well close by you could filter the well water and once it ran through the system you could dump it back in the well.

mga, that's some good reading material. I will have to look at that a little closer.

I know there are much easier ways to cool a house. I just thought it would be neat if you could use and existing system.

 

[Scootermsp]

Oh please!

Save youself the aggravation and go to Home Depot to get a window A/C unit for $69.00

 

[urhstry]

Yeah but what fun would that be?

 

[oneoldbanjo]

Unless you are getting to freeze the water for free or saved up a lot of ice from last winter (or bottles of water) you won't be saving any money....as it will cost you money to make the ice and it is probably more energy efficient just to run an air conditioner.

Also you have the problem of the condensation as others have stated - the warm moist air will condense water onto the coil in the furnace (or onto the floor if you have radiant heat). My pole barn has a concrete floor and is not insulated. When we have cold weather the floor can get very cold and then when we have a warm rainy winter day - if you open the door the warmer moist air from outside comes into the pole barn and when the air hits the cold concrete floor the water condenses and it looks like the outside of a lemonade pitcher...it can even get so wet that water begins to run off the floor. If it has been below freezing long enough it will actually start to make frost and/or ice on the floor.

You wil probably also start having a rust problem inside the boiler. The ice will melt and have lots of dissolved oxygen to rust the metal. The water inside the boiler is oxygen deprived and does not cause rust problems as it does not have any oxygen that it needs to rust (oxidize) the metal.

Using the pond water is the best solution I have seen posted so far - you will just have to make a heat exchanger that has a drip pan under it to catch and dispose of the condensate water.