permaculture

["elijah smith" <elijahs@earthlink.net>]

The factory's fan & sponge arrangement is a simple evaporative cooler, or swamp cooler - popular in the arid south US as a poor mans AC unit.  Requires a lot of water (on the order of a few gallons per hour, if I remember correctly...) but is really really simple other than that.  Basically - blow air over a wet surface; the evaporation cools the air, the air sinks, keeps your house cool.  I've heard of people that just harness the prevailing winds, if there is one, or maybve with some sorta vaning wind scoop - no electric fans that way.    Or just hang wet blankets in the window...

 

Don't work so well where it's humid, though - then the wet surface just mildews..

----- Original Message -----

From: Marsha Hanzi

To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 11:03 AM

Subject: [permaculture] Keeping your cool....

The late Joe Domingues of the Simple Living network argues that once we have the essentials ( including a few personal luxuries), getting more "stuff" just brings on more confusion. Stuff has to be taken care of.  So reducing on consumption actually means  getting back more free time-- an interesting tradeoff where time has become the scarecest commodity.  It is such a RELIEF to  have less. I think I already mentioned the car-less Sundays in Switzerland in the 80s and how wonderful and fun they were...

 

By the way Robert, I am most interested in your strategies for keeping your house cool, am already gritting my teeth for the cruelly hot Brazilian dryland sumemrs.  Built a little house with a passion-fruit-vine varanda around it to try to create a micro-climate.

There is a small factory in São Paulo which produces fans with sponges in front of them- they say it reduces the heat by 8 degrees, while needing the energy only of a fan...What have you done? I imagine it gets really hot in Oklahoma...

 

Marsha

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