(no subject)

[nibot]

This is sort of a physics question: Could you pump cold water through radiators to cool your house? The obvious flaw is something like "cold doesn't radiate," but, then, don't we have the general principle that a good antenna for transmission is usually a good receiving antenna too, and hence the cold "radiator" should absorb thermal radiation from other objects? (In addition to cooling by convection.)

Comments

[wanton-adonis.livejournal.com]

they used to run water over something like that(open to air I believe) in FL and from that devised the concept of refrigerators....so I'm sure if you could circulate it fast enough with good contact to air...without it picking up too much friction.....it works....(James Burke Connections).....really old desert houses used to have walls of water for cooling......personally I prefer hoses

[surpheon.livejournal.com]

On Stanford campus we did a building that runs water over the roof at night. Heat is radiated from the large surface area to the approx 0C sky at night (the atmospheric temperature - space is about 0K, but you have a bunch of air that increases the apparent radiant temp). The cooled water is stored in an insulated tank and used to absorb heat from the building during the day.

Desert houses use 'walls of water' as heat sinks. When it is 50F at night and 90F during the day, if you could just average those two temperatures you will be a comfy 70F all the day. A huge thermal mass of water can be easily set up just by filling barrels and clever things can be done to passively control the heat transfer (air flows and solar exposure/shading). Water is very heavy, easy to work with, and very good at soaking up/releasing heat.