It’s hot hot hot! Cool your building with no electricity, no moving parts and no noise

Conventional air conditioning burns a hole in your wallet and if the electricity is generated from fossil fuels it contributes to climate change.

So cool your building with no electricity, no moving parts and no noise.

Solar Cooling Spain

Solar Cooling with Salts

It’s a brilliantly conceived system. It just uses the energy from the sun itself to cool your building. The hotter it is outside the cooler you can have it inside. How cool is that?

Let me explain the science. Imagine two sealed chambers connected by a pipe and a tap which allows you to close off that pipe. There is salt in one chamber and water in the other. What you do is heat the salt which dries out forcing the moisture into the water chamber. Now close the tap connecting the two chambers and stop heating the salt chamber. In fact allow the salt chamber to cool, and you have stored a cooling potential. When you open the tap, the water chamber will cool as the water evaporates and seeks equilibrium with the chamber of salt. You can use this cooling effect to cool water in pipes which you can use to cool the building.

The system needs to be carefully designed to suit the design of the building and well installed.

Don’t Cool the Air : Dry it!

Humidity levels have an enormous effect on how hot or cold we feel: far more than most people realize. We sweat to regulate our body temperature, how effective our sweating is depends on humidity levels. Removing moisture from the air will make us feel a lot cooler, even at the same temperature.

Desiccants draw the moisture from the air. A simple example is salt. Various descants are available in solid and liquid form.

What about a liquid desiccant waterfall!

Here is a video of one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtFd2NEj9yw

Author: John Wolfendale
Bio: John is a founder of Eco Vida and is passionate about bringing modern design and construction practices to Spain. He believes a home which is warm in winter and cool in summer is largely a matter of design and selective use of materials. He is British and a Chartered Surveyor with 19 years experience living and working in Spain.