A fun project to see if cool water stored underground would work to cool my shop in the mild Northwest summers. Mild? Over 108F this past summer! Two water filled radiators; one inside to transfer heat into the thermal battery (cooling the shop), one outside to transfer heat out of the thermal battery during the cool summer nights. The thermal battery is 275 gallons of water contained in (5) drums connected in series, all buried about 1 foot underground. The system is controlled by an Arduino housed in an old movie projector. I discuss the design flaws and effectiveness of this system. I have two years of data to plot so I better get cracking!! I heartfelt thanks to my brother Mike, If it not for his tireless efforts to create a viable stable controller I would have controlled this with a plug in and out of the wall! CORRECTION: Temp sensors are DS 18B20 Dallas One Wire sensors.

, https://i.ytimg.com/vi/j3JvZUGjcq8/hqdefault.jpg

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6 Comments

  1. Why not put a 6th barrel in the corner of the trench? Something I'd like to see is a swamp cooler with an air-to-air heat exchanger so the increased humidity stays outside.

  2. Would have been better if the tops of the tanks were at the frost line. They need to go down way deeper where the ground is much cooler and will never freeze.

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