Learning Stuff About ‘cooling home’
DIY: Make Your Own Air Conditioner
An earlier post explored some ways to cool down your house during the summer without AC. The problem with air conditioners, is that they tend to use a lot of electricity, thereby increasing the utility bill. I came across this video which shows how you can make your own air conditioner (AC), and so thought it would be a good addition to this section, as it might do the trick of providing the cooling you desire without incurring as much expense as having a real AC.
Tags: air conditioner, cooling home
Idea For Cooling Down Home During Summer
Where I live, during the summer time, it can get really hot inside. I have a slab roof, and this seems to just drink up the heat and transmit it inside. So usually when I get home on a typically hot summer day, it feels really hot inside, and it is a most uncomfortable feeling.
A mind like mine naturally is inclined to come up with a solution to this problem. And I have an idea that I want to try some day. That’s correct, I haven’t tried it yet, so I don’t know how well it works. But I post my idea here in case someone wants to try it before me and report back on the kind of results achieved.
Since the main cause of the problem seems to be with the heat from the sun being absorbed by the concrete roof, then if I could reflect the light/heat hitting the roof, then it should help. Seems logical to me. So there are a couple ways I have thought of to do this.
One is to place a big mirror on the roof to cover its surface area, or use several small mirros. This should reflect most of the light and prevent most of the heat from being transmitted through the roof to the inside. The problem I have with implementing this, is that it seems to be somewhat expensive. It also seems to come with certain risks. For eg. I would have to ensure that the glass cannot be easily moved, lest a strong gust of wind lift a fragment off and deliver it to a passerby or some other innocent person. So while I think the idea should work beautifully, it has challenges in being implemented. This brings me to the alternative idea.
The second approach I thought of, would be to paint the roof white. I don’t think this would be near as effective as the former idea, but I believe it should have some noticeable effect. As one should know, white reflects more light than any other colour, so this should reduce the heat transmitted through the roof. To supplement this method, I thought maybe throwing some glitter on to the paint would produce even greater cooling.
I hope someone tries any of these ideas. I’ve toyed around with them for a couple years now, but still have not put them to the test. If I manage to do any though, I’ll report back to let you know how effective it is.
Tags: cooling home, summer heat