DIY Wind & Solar Cooling Methods

The best way to cool your home is to avoid using heat. But if can’t completely avoid the use of heat, and you certainly can’t prevent the heat which comes from the sun.  Wind and solar cooling are among your options.

Solar heat can actually help cool your home. When a solar cooling system is set up properly, the hotter the temperature gets, the cooler your home will be.  You might wonder how this works …

You can use heat to cool your home by using the forces of nature to pump air and drive the heat away.

Here are some DIY projects that you can consider, in the quest for a cooler home:

• You can try building a thermal or solar chimney. This is a heated chimney that collects and ejects heat from the interior of the house. Once the chimney collects heat from the sun, it creates a vacuum effect that sucks in cool air, while hot air exits through the top vent. Your chimney can be in the form of a hole in the floor with ducts through the roof. You can cap the chimney with a turbine that will catch air, to help release hot air out of the structure. If you set it up in this fashion, your thermal chimney will be a wind chimney as well. This solution will make your cooling system work during the day, when the sun is up, as well as during the night, when the wind is blowing.
• You could also use an evaporative cooler. We all know that when water absorbs heat, it evaporates. Thus, when air travels over water, it cools down. This method should be used when there is a low level of humidity. And be sure to use preventive measures against health hazards that can be presented by stagnant water – such as malaria, mildew, and Legionnaire’s Disease.  The size of you evaporative cooler would depend on the size of your home. It usually consists of a box containing the fan, and a wet pad. It can be mounted on your roof, or at the side of your house. You can use a windmill to circulate the water that keeps the pad wet. The fan will blow the air through the pad and, and the air will eventually enter into the house via open windows or vents.

These are just some of the ways you can use solar and wind energy to cool your home. There are also kits you can buy – but like most DIY projects you can purchase what you need in a local hardware store. Commercially available kits are likely to cost more than what you would spend if you buy your parts separately, although they might also be faster and easier to set up.

For a more complete and step-by-step guide on DIY Wind and Solar Power projects, along with videos and diagrams, please visit Make Electricity.