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Stay Cool in The Hot Desert
Stay Cool in The Hot Desert
When the thermometer starts to hit 90F nearly every day, even though "it is a dry heat"
as we say here in the desert , we start thinking seriously about ways to stay cool. More
than 14 years ago when we were planning to build a renewable energy powered home,
cooling our home was the big question.
We had no doubt our new home, to be constructed on a 20 acre hilltop near Vail,
Arizona, would be powered with wind and solar. We chose the site with wind power in
mind. The domestic hot water system would be a passive solar system. We would use
solar for space heating the structure, but how do we cool the home using alternative
energy?
Folks that live in places other than the desert may not be familiar with an evaporative
cooling system. Blowers are used to move air through wet pads. As the air flows
through the wet pad, water evaporates and cools the air. You cannot recirculate this air
because the humidity increases and evaporation stops. At that point your evaporative
cooler becomes a humidifier only. With evaporative coolers you must leave an exit for
the air to escape from your house. Many newcomers to the desert don't realize you
must open a window to make an evaporative cooler work properly.
My Cool Tower
I never do anything the way most people do a similar task. Maybe my situations are
always different. I wanted to reduce the cost of the system as much as possible. The
pads are expensive, so the fewer pads used that still accomplished the job, the better. I
also used some cooling tube ideas in the design of the cool tower. Since the wind blows
at a good steady pace here most of the time, I wanted to use wind power directly to help
move the cool air through the house. To create the additional flow down the cool tower I
installed one large upwind scoop above the pads in the cool tower. This is an air scoop
with a tail to keep the scoop oriented into the wind, thus creating a positive pressure.
Instead of one large outlet for the hot air, like a solar chimney, I installed smaller
openings in the roof with down wind scoops to help remove heat. With these scoops the
wind can blow from any direction and the cool tower continues to work properly.
On my design the pads are just below the scoop. This reduces the size and area of the
pad, thus reducing cost. I have 18 square feet of four inch thick pads in my tower.
Placing pads at the top of the tower would have required 72 square feet of pads. Pads
down below the scoop are protected from direct sun, so they last longer. The tower itself
is six feet square and 27 feet tall. The air scoop occupies the top three feet. Two pads
three feet square by four inches thick are located just below the air scoop. Just below
the pads is a tank containing 20 gallons of water with a float valve keeping this tank
topped up. Located outside the tank is a small 12 Volt Teel bilge pump. This is a
submergible pump, but I found the hard way not to submerge this pump. The first pump
only lasted two months. The replacement pump mounted outside the tank lasted six
seasons.
Evaporating water is what creates the cooling and makes evaporative coolers and cool
towers work. Rain water is the perfect source for the water used in cool towers because
it does not have dissolved salts or minerals. Well water can contain dissolved minerals.
As the water evaporates from the pads, whatever minerals it contains are left behind.
This buildup will eventually clog the pads and block air flow.
We chose to get water for all our needs from the water harvesting systems we installed.
Yes, we live in a desert, with an average annual rainfall of only 12 inches and we have
plenty of water for all uses. The CEL-dek pads in our cool tower have only had rain
water on them since 1986. They have a very small amount of mineral buildup on the
surfaces.
Normally you can expect to replace cooler pads every year, or at best every other year.
I have seen cooler pads fed with ground water that have more buildup after less than
one season than my eight year old pads fed with rain water.
Conclusion
We started construction on the cool tower in the spring of 1985 and used it that
summer. The system has undergone several changes. The first upwind scoop was
metal, and not a good choice unless you use aluminum. Our scoop now has a
framework of steel covered with heavy canvas. The cool tower has been in operation
nine years. On a hot dry day (100F with 10% humidity) the air coming from the tower is
65-70F. We are very pleased with the performance. I am saving the finishing touches
for a 110F day that's when working inside the cool tower is quite enjoyable!
Access
Author: Charles Van Meter, Alternative Research Center Inc., PO Box 383 Vail, AZ
85641-0383; 602-647-7220
Custom Cool Tower & Solar Design, Bill Cunningham, 5085 S Melpomene Way,
Tucson, AZ 85747; 602-885-7925
Suppliers of CEL-dek: Munters Corporation, Mrs. Pat Thomas, Box 6428, Fort Myers,
FL 33911; 1-800-446-6868
12 Volt Teel bilge pump: Stock # 1P811, W.W. Grainger Inc., local phone book
by Charles Van Meter
copyright 1994 Charles Van Meter