Ice Box with Geo Thermal Cooling?

[yeah]

I was looking at the Ice Box for cooling of a sealed room and saw that you need a water chiller (a large one). Does anyone have experience with geo thermal cooling? The soil where Im at is a constant 62. Can I get a 100 gallon res and burry a bunch of cooper coils and run the water through them to keep my res cool. Then have a separate pump to run the Ice Box chiller. It seems like in theory it would work but before I dig a huge hole I would like to get some input. If anyone has experience with this how much copper line do I need to burry. It will be cooling 12 600w, dehumidifier and a co2 burner. Figured this might spark up some conversation.... This is all hypothetic of coarse...

 

[montanaorganics]

Doing it with copper piping is wholy unfeasible due to the cost of copper, but...
I believe PVC works fine. There is a guy in Kansas who grows fruit trees in his greenhouses. He uses geothermal heating to heat them.
The basic setup is large pvc piping buried like 4 or 5 feet down. It moves through a underground lung room, and into whichever greenhouse he has the air turned on in.
SOunds like the piping has to cirlce the house a few times, but he has been using the same heat pump for the last 25 years. He claims his greenhouses, of which there are acres, only cost 400- 500 dollars total a year in supplemental energy.

 

[yeah]

what about using pex. I was thinking copper cause it conducts heat really well. If I was to go with plastic I think pex would be superior to pvc

 

[Rocky Mtn Squid]

I was looking at the Ice Box for cooling of a sealed room and saw that you need a water chiller (a large one). Does anyone have experience with geo thermal cooling? The soil where Im at is a constant 62. Can I get a 100 gallon res and burry a bunch of cooper coils and run the water through them to keep my res cool. Then have a separate pump to run the Ice Box chiller. It seems like in theory it would work but before I dig a huge hole I would like to get some input. If anyone has experience with this how much copper line do I need to burry. It will be cooling 12 600w, dehumidifier and a co2 burner. Figured this might spark up some conversation.... This is all hypothetic of coarse...

Pex piping is the way to go. It's almost indestructable, which is what you want. The last thing you want is for your geo thermal piping to break.

To have any kind of cooling effect, your water temp in the ice box lines has to be 10 F cooler than your room temp. I've been contemplating doing the same thing you're thinking about for quite some time now. I don't think a below ground temp of 62 F would be cold enough to chill more than a 600 watt light at best. especially during the summer heat. If you had multiple lights with multiple ice boxes, and mutiple SS coils chilling your reservoir's, you would need to have your water temp's in the 50-55 F range.

If you lived in a colder climate, you would need to run food grade glycol in your lines to prevent freezing in winter. The best way to do it would be to bury your cooling lines in a slab of cement that always stays cold. A covered deck, a garage pad, or a slab of cement that's buried deep undergound....depending on how deep your frost line is. Run your pex piping through it, hook it up to a pump and you're off to the races.......

 

[yeah]

Im trying to keep my room at 88 with co2. If my ground is around 62 Im guessing I could get my res temps to the mid to low 70's which is still 10 degrees cooler then my room. so in theory it shouldn't be and issue. Im just curious how much line I need to run and what size pump I need to get the cooling effect I want. Anybody know if there is a formula out there? My room now doesnt run too hot. I run 10 600w with a igs 8 co2 burner air cooled and my dehumidifier. it takes about 1.5 hours to get to 88 then my exhaust fan kicks and drops the room down to 78 in less than 5 min. it takes 5 min to get my room back to 1500 ppm. So im dumping a lot of co2 and my room temps bounce around a lot. I would like to try the ice box instead of getting an ac unit because I dont want to kick my e bill up that much more. I also like the idea of not having run my lights exhaust into the attic. So is this Geo thermal Ice Box idea even practical or should i just go with the ac

 

[Lazyman]

You need 120' of tubing buried ten feet underground in a slinky to get 1k btu of cooling. It will take a BUNCH of trenches and tubing to do this, I've already looked into it a bit. Check out the big watercooling thread in here for more info.

 

[yeah]

thanks lazy.... You totally killed my buzz! thats way too much digging. May have to go to home depot and hire labor. A/C is sounding a lot more appealing. I was hoping to only do like 4-5 feet not 10!!! Guess thats the end of this thread.

 

[Lazyman]

Yep, I had the same sticker shock. Sorry buddy. Drilling a vertical loop for geo cooling is about 10K per LOOP for drilling alone, and I'd need at least 3. Ouch.

Try a chiller with a heat exchanger, a pump and a 100g reservoir. Put them on thermostats and you'll find it takes about 2/3 the energy for the same amount of cooling as an AC unit. Check out chillking chillers and heatexchanger.ca for exchangers.