# Air conditioning With Hot Water



## chrisl (Jan 20, 2006)

I own a hydronic wood furnace, I currently heat my home, domestic hot water, and I'm working on hydronic conversion on my clothes dryer. I would like to tackle cooling my house with my wood furnace. I know its possible, through heating up a lithium-bromide solution or ammonia-water. Does anyone have plans or the know how to build a 2-5 ton absorption chiller?
Thanks for the info ahead of time.
chris


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## Harry Chickpea (Dec 19, 2008)

Ammonia is WAY too dangerous to be fooling with. You may be thinking the diluted stuff used to clean with, this is about twenty times more potent and has killed many people. It rates right up with live steam.

There is another way of air conditioning that is a lot safer than either. Calcium Chloride (aka DampRid) draws moisture out of air. In doing so it heats the air, so it works against cooling. However, the dried air can be cooled to ambient temperature with a heat exchanger. By then re-inserting a mist of water, the air can be cooled below ambient temps and still be at a reasonable humidity. (Think swamp cooler) 

The energy using part of the whole process is the drying of the calcium chloride. It takes a lot of heat to drive that moisture out of it. Boiling it off with a wood fired heat source seems like a natural.


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## Guest (Oct 23, 2009)

How about a passive cooling system that uses the ambient temperature of a deep well to cool the place. It's basicly a circulating pump that has coils in your well and attic. Nothing poisonous at all.


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## watcher (Sep 4, 2006)

Yes working with NH3 can be dangerous but so can working with gasoline and propane. In all cases you just have to be careful and take the necessary safety precautions. One thing it has going for it is you will KNOW when you have any leak. 

I don't have any plans but I have looked into NH3 cooling and it is doable. How piratical I haven't really figured out. There are several things working against it. The first is you really should use stainless steel. Second, meth cooks use it therefore it can be difficult to get it and keep it. Third is it takes a lot of energy to run the system (I was looking at using solar for heat).


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## Harry Chickpea (Dec 19, 2008)

I am so sick of the meth idiots, eco-nuts, paranoid twits, and the over-response to them I could scream. The vilification of everything that we use gets old. We saw on the news where an entire town and its police department was in an uproar because some family took a couple of old car batteries from a recycling center. The fear was that they were going to be used to make drugs, and that there were kids in the car that was videotaped by the security camera. What next? All the lead acid cells in off-the-grid homes being confiscated?

Try to get plain old lye lately to try making soap? Not available locally. Yeesh. Will the government PLEASE go bankrupt so life can get back to normal?

Sorry for the rant. The info that ammonia is now joining freon on the "no-no, too dangerous" list is sickening. I'm waiting for burning wood to be outlawed.


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## oneokie (Aug 14, 2009)

Harry Chickpea said:


> Try to get plain old lye lately to try making soap? Not available locally. Yeesh. Will the government PLEASE go bankrupt so life can get back to normal?
> 
> I'm waiting for burning wood to be outlawed.


Or Iodine for treating animals and mixing in mineral supplements for livestock?

The government is bankrupt, they just won't admit it.

Wood burning won't be outlawed, it will be regulated out of existence. (emissions you know)


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## mamagoose (Nov 28, 2003)

Since we discovered that mosquitos won't come in the 2nd story door to the balcony during the night, we have put a fan on the balcony a few feet out directed into the bedroom. If the fan is just in the doorway, it's warmer air. We have the attic steps pulled down in the adjacent bathroom area to cause a flow. As long as it is cool at night outside, this works great. It's a "real" cool, cooling the log walls (which store heat quite well after a couple of 90* days) down from the inside. We've been doing this a few years and it works great in our climate. We re-roofed spring 08 and used metallic shingles and have noticed a difference. No a/c here on pv power.


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## chrisl (Jan 20, 2006)

thanks for the replys, as far as passive cooling, opening the windows,ect...I understand all these methods and will incorporate them as the fit, but my first question still stands. How can a guy build an absorbtion chiller using wood boiler to provide the heat for the absorbtion cycle. They are doing this in europe, but getting info from these people is like trying my chickens to talk to me. As far as ammonia being dangerous its no more dangers than propane or as a matter of fact R-12 or R-22, my camper fridge is ammonia driven and so are all these off grid propane ice boxes. Its more likely to use Lituim-bromide as the absorber and water as the refrigerant, I understand the concept but need help puting it togather on a small scale useable unit for the home.


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

one thing i learned first hand about ammonia systems and ammonia as a coolant is that you can smell it right away if there is a leak. in that sense, it is far safer than any freon. i was evacuated from a factory where we had a large ammonia leak. several hundred people and all residents within @ 1/4 of a mile in the low lying area were evacuated. i was probably 50 yards away right after it happened, a large refrigeration system developed an oil slug that popped a valve, and the smell was very strong. my eyes watered and stung and i knew it was time to move away. if it had been a freon leak, i may never have known.


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