Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Making ice in winter to cool the house in summer

Pyro_cat - 28-7-2019 at 08:53


This started here https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/viewthread.php?tid=15...

Was calculated that it would take 1000lbs of AN to make that work and that would never gain widespread acceptance. The thread is still going and maybe a way around that can be found.

Here is what I got for making ice in winter to cool the house in summer.


Quote: Originally posted by wg48temp9  
Quote: Originally posted by Pyro_cat  


"Four Instant Ice Packs provide you with the same chilling power as 10-20 pounds of ice." https://icemakergeeks.com/do-instant-ice-packs-work-an-item-...

If the above is true then a few hundred instant cold packs are equivalent to a one ton air conditioner.


I don't know what the weight of AN in the instant ice packs above are. I estimate it would be about 1/2 lbs. So if four such packs have the same cooling capacity as 10 t0 20 lb of ice that would make the heat of solution per g of of AN five to ten times the heat of fusion of water.

i thought the heat of fusion for water was one of the highest so I was surprised that just dissolving a salt in water would be so much higher.

So I checked, assuming I did my sums correctly the heat of solution per g of AN is about twice that of the heat of fusion per g of water. So it is high but not 5 to 10 times greater than melting ice.

The definition of ton in connection with AC systems is how many tons of ice an AC system can freeze in 24 hours. So assuming American tons (1 ton = 2,000 lb) 1,000 lb of AN would have the same cooling capacity as a one ton AC unit. That's 2,000 1/2 lbs instant ice packs. That's a lot more than a few hundred. I checked, many instant ice packs are only about 1/4 lb so 4,000 of those packs would be required.

I was unable to check the ref provided as it would not load.



I thought that was not right, the cold pack itself doesn't even freeze. 1000lbs of AN, that will never go over.

Time for a new direction.

In northern climates just make ice in the winter and save it for summer.

Water is 8lbs a gallon 2000 / 8 = 250 gallons for one ton of cooling.

25,000 gallons for 100 days @ 1 ton

https://www.swimmingpool.com/testing-water/pool-volume-calcu...


Making ice in winter is easy.

To cover several ski trails with manmade snow, you need a lot of water. According to SMI Snow Makers, it takes about 75,000 gallons (285,000 liters) of water to create a 6-inch blanket of snow covering a 200x200-foot area (61x61 meters). The system in a good-sized ski slope can convert 5,000 to 10,000 gallons (18,927 to 37,854 liters) of water to snow every minute!

Wow, central cooling for a whole city at that rate. I just want to start with one house.

A big cooler is needed. How many gallons fit in a 40 foot shipping container ?

40 foot shipping container dimensions will have some variations because they are manufactured in different ways. However, the industry standard is 40′ 0″ x 8′ 0″ x 8′ 6″ (L x W x H). In the metric system this is 12.192 m x 2.438 m x 2.591 m.

Using the pool calculator 20345.6 gallons

Shipping container cost $1500 to $2500

I already played around years ago and made a few feet of ice by putting a pulsating sprinkler outside @ 5 degrees Fahrenheit and made several feet of ice on the ground in the shaded north side of the house years ago. That was still there a month after all the snow had melted.

Next up insulation !

"After an installation that can cost between $3,000 and $7,000 – or up to $15,000 and beyond if you need to install or repair duct work – the cost to run your central air conditioner will vary by how many watts it consumes, how often you run it and how much your electric company charges per kWh.

"It's common for a central air conditioning system to use 3,500 watts, so let's roll with that and the average national kWh cost – that's 13.2 cents – to get an idea of a rough average running cost. Let's also assume that you're running the unit for eight hours per day. This setup will cost you $3.70 per day to run. Per month, that comes out to $110.88. On the higher end (running for more time each day in a large space), Realtor.com's 2017 estimates place central AC cooling homes of over 1,200 square feet at an average cost about $245 per month."

https://budgeting.thenest.com/much-cost-run-air-conditioner-23306.html"

I really think this could work and be cheaper then traditional AC

Pyro_cat - 28-7-2019 at 09:46

Is 10 Days Ice Retention Really Possible? NEW Pelican IM Elite Cooler Challenge, Pelican Vs Engel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GMjDjUsRGY


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage#Ice-bas...

Ubya - 28-7-2019 at 10:28

not everyone is able to store a few tons of ice in the backyard. your idea is valid only if you have lot's of space, lot's of time and cold winters, i live in an apartment, on the third floor, in a crowded city, the temperature can reach 40°C easily in summer, but rarely go under 0°C in winter.
nope i don't have AC, i just suffer the heat (34°C in my room right now)

mayko - 28-7-2019 at 11:13

Economy of scale might make it work on the level of neighborhoods/cities.... you could get Cold as a utility from a pneumatic outlet next to the electrical one xD

RedDwarf - 28-7-2019 at 11:26

This used to be all the rage back in the 1800s, landed gentry used to have an ice house in the grounds of their mansion, and enough servants / workers to hack the ice out of the rivers in winter (or import it) and bring it to the house in the summer. This was all before the development of refrigeration and the primary objective was to keep food cold. The ice houses were usually built half underground to take advantage of both the insulation and the fact that underground temperatures are lower than ground/air temps in the summer (and vice versa in winter).
A better bet instead of looking to store ice (which as a solid isn't easily handled - you want it as close as possible to your cooling pipes) is to look at ground heat pumps for summer cooling and winter heating.

Edit: But you still need quite a lot of land for the ground heat pump networks.

[Edited on 28-7-2019 by RedDwarf]

wg48temp9 - 28-7-2019 at 12:10

An American ton is about 0.9 metric tons and a metric ton of water is one cubic meter. So 100 american tons of ice is about 100m^3. that's a big block of ice 5 x 5 x 4m.

It was common in some areas to store winter ice. I know someone with a very old farm cottage with a large cellar. The cellar has a sloping floor and troughs that lead to grid. The cellar also has a large chute from the outside. I assume it was once used for storing winter ice. Interestingly they only get significant snow now at most every other year. The old farm house is probably hundreds of years old built from stone with oak beams and perhaps built when winters there were colder.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_house_(building)

Old Timey Ice Houses

Gearhead_Shem_Tov - 28-7-2019 at 18:21

Early 19th century Americans routinely cut ice from lakes and rivers. The ice had to be both thick enough to walk on while doing the cutting and to be economical to do it in the first place. Generally this thickness was about a foot or 30cm.

Farmers harvested ice for their own use and for sale, but most ice harvesting was fairly big business for the time. Snow on top of floating ice hinders more ice formation, so the insulating snow had to be shovelled away into windrows. Horse-drawn ice cutting saws resembling sleds with saws for runners criss-crossed the ice (thus giving a uniform size of block) while gangs of workers made the finishing cuts, levered the blocks apart, and floated them down the ice free channels to waiting ice wagons (for smaller operators) or conveyor belts leading to the top of an adjacent ice house for larger operations.

Sawdust was the insulation of choice, and in the beginning both the ice and the sawdust came from the US state of Maine.

Initially large scale ice harvesting was targeted toward the wealthy, particularly shipments of ice to Havana, Cuba, but as the years went on more ice went to the domestic market for cities of the Eastern seaboard states and eventually westward. During the US Civil War the Federal armies had the advantage that they had access to ice shipments while the Confederate armies did not.

Chicago became the meat processing capital of America because dressed meat could be delivered by ice refrigerated rail cars.

RogueRose - 28-7-2019 at 19:02

Yup we used to do this around here, they were called ice houses. The horses would plow the river & lakes then they would cut blocks and haul them to the ice house. Pack it in saw dust and it insulates VERY well.

If you are interested in this, I suggest you dig a hole like a swimming pool, line it with straw bales on the bottom, sides, maybe use a vinyl/poly liner and then fill it with ice, then layer the top with staw bales or some layers of foam insulation.

I think that would be the cheapest way to go. Maybe run some copper pipe in the pit and use it as a heat exchanger. Maybe just put 1-4?? car radiators in parallel, sink them in the ice and run the water through them,

You could even add water at like 2" per day and allow it to freeze. Pump it from a lake or stream or whatever.

Lots of options.

Pyro_cat - 28-7-2019 at 22:06

Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose  
Yup we used to do this around here, they were called ice houses. The horses would plow the river & lakes then they would cut blocks and haul them to the ice house. Pack it in saw dust and it insulates VERY well.

If you are interested in this, I suggest you dig a hole like a swimming pool, line it with straw bales on the bottom, sides, maybe use a vinyl/poly liner and then fill it with ice, then layer the top with staw bales or some layers of foam insulation.

I think that would be the cheapest way to go. Maybe run some copper pipe in the pit and use it as a heat exchanger. Maybe just put 1-4?? car radiators in parallel, sink them in the ice and run the water through them,

You could even add water at like 2" per day and allow it to freeze. Pump it from a lake or stream or whatever.

Lots of options.



One option. Styrofoam.

I think underground would be best too. I think the biggest challenge is insulation. Yes they pulled this off with the ice 100s of years ago but we have to beat the modern air conditioner.

The world produces more than 14 million US tons of polystyrene (plastic foam) each year. Americans alone throw away around 25 billion Styrofoam cups every year. There is so much styrofoam they don't know what to do with it.

We know it works well for coolers. I just found this. People are insulating their homes with waste Styrofoam https://greenpassivesolar.com/2012/11/how-styrofoam-can-be-r...

I should put this idea for winter ice AC on that website too and see what people come up with.







RogueRose - 28-7-2019 at 22:21

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro_cat  
Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose  
Yup we used to do this around here, they were called ice houses. The horses would plow the river & lakes then they would cut blocks and haul them to the ice house. Pack it in saw dust and it insulates VERY well.

If you are interested in this, I suggest you dig a hole like a swimming pool, line it with straw bales on the bottom, sides, maybe use a vinyl/poly liner and then fill it with ice, then layer the top with staw bales or some layers of foam insulation.

I think that would be the cheapest way to go. Maybe run some copper pipe in the pit and use it as a heat exchanger. Maybe just put 1-4?? car radiators in parallel, sink them in the ice and run the water through them,

You could even add water at like 2" per day and allow it to freeze. Pump it from a lake or stream or whatever.

Lots of options.



One option. Styrofoam.

I think underground would be best too. I think the biggest challenge is insulation. Yes they pulled this off with the ice 100s of years ago but we have to beat the modern air conditioner.

The world produces more than 14 million US tons of polystyrene (plastic foam) each year. Americans alone throw away around 25 billion Styrofoam cups every year. There is so much styrofoam they don't know what to do with it.

We know it works well for coolers. I just found this. People are insulating their homes with waste Styrofoam https://greenpassivesolar.com/2012/11/how-styrofoam-can-be-r...

I should put this idea for winter ice AC on that website too and see what people come up with.




Well the reason I said straw is b/c it's super cheap, probably less than styrafoam, biodegradable and it has an amazing insulation value of 40-80+R depending what size bales you use.

IDK what you are talking about, as far as beating air conditiong, if you can freeze the water for free, it's going to be cheaper.

In some areas, especially high population, hot areas like phoenix, LA, San Diego, etc, electricity prices can be 2x or higher during the day, peak hours and that is when AC is on MAX. At night, in the summer, there is a drop in demand thus drop in price, so if you use electricity to make ice during the night, you can use it the next day to cool. There are some places that do this already, the larger the building the more economical the installation.

What is even more economical from my calculations, in hot climates, is absorption refrigeration instead of using solar to power the AC compressors. Heat collectors are used to collect heat during the day and it can also be used to produce hot water (also very electricity intensive). Finding the right refrigerant is the key, ammonia works, butane as well, and also lithium chloride IIRC (may need something else mixed in) but is less efficient than ammonia but less dangerous.




Pyro_cat - 30-7-2019 at 19:05

Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose  
Well the reason I said straw is b/c it's super cheap, probably less than styrafoam, biodegradable and it has an amazing insulation value of 40-80+R depending what size bales you use.

IDK what you are talking about, as far as beating air conditiong, if you can freeze the water for free, it's going to be cheaper.

In some areas, especially high population, hot areas like phoenix, LA, San Diego, etc, electricity prices can be 2x or higher during the day, peak hours and that is when AC is on MAX. At night, in the summer, there is a drop in demand thus drop in price, so if you use electricity to make ice during the night, you can use it the next day to cool. There are some places that do this already, the larger the building the more economical the installation.

What is even more economical from my calculations, in hot climates, is absorption refrigeration instead of using solar to power the AC compressors. Heat collectors are used to collect heat during the day and it can also be used to produce hot water (also very electricity intensive). Finding the right refrigerant is the key, ammonia works, butane as well, and also lithium chloride IIRC (may need something else mixed in) but is less efficient than ammonia but less dangerous.


I would imagine you would have to keep that straw dry in order to get that R value. That shrink wrap system they use on boats I think could be useful in a project like this one.



Image origin https://greenpassivesolar.com/sustainable-renewable-energy/g...


I just thought of something. What if there was a way to use winter cold to make a huge chunk of underground "permafrost" ? Then just tap that.




What if we just build a nuclear plant in a tsunami zone ? Oops.

Anyway in the winter you have unlimited "refrigerant" the limit I guess is the capacity of your heat exchanger.

Solid ice vs frozen earth ?



RogueRose - 30-7-2019 at 21:32

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro_cat  
Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose  
Well the reason I said straw is b/c it's super cheap, probably less than styrafoam, biodegradable and it has an amazing insulation value of 40-80+R depending what size bales you use.

IDK what you are talking about, as far as beating air conditiong, if you can freeze the water for free, it's going to be cheaper.

In some areas, especially high population, hot areas like phoenix, LA, San Diego, etc, electricity prices can be 2x or higher during the day, peak hours and that is when AC is on MAX. At night, in the summer, there is a drop in demand thus drop in price, so if you use electricity to make ice during the night, you can use it the next day to cool. There are some places that do this already, the larger the building the more economical the installation.

What is even more economical from my calculations, in hot climates, is absorption refrigeration instead of using solar to power the AC compressors. Heat collectors are used to collect heat during the day and it can also be used to produce hot water (also very electricity intensive). Finding the right refrigerant is the key, ammonia works, butane as well, and also lithium chloride IIRC (may need something else mixed in) but is less efficient than ammonia but less dangerous.


I would imagine you would have to keep that straw dry in order to get that R value. That shrink wrap system they use on boats I think could be useful in a project like this one.



Image origin https://greenpassivesolar.com/sustainable-renewable-energy/g...


I just thought of something. What if there was a way to use winter cold to make a huge chunk of underground "permafrost" ? Then just tap that.




What if we just build a nuclear plant in a tsunami zone ? Oops.

Anyway in the winter you have unlimited "refrigerant" the limit I guess is the capacity of your heat exchanger.

Solid ice vs frozen earth ?


IDK buddy. I covered everything you mentioned already so reread it or whatever.

SWIM - 31-7-2019 at 19:24

If you live in an area with a high water table how about just putting wells at either end of the yard and pumping the relatively cool groundwater up and through a heat exchanger?

Groundwater at 5 to 10 degrees C might not keep your place cool, but it could make it a lot less hot with minimal expense.
You wouldn't need a very high flow rate unless you had very big heat exchangers.

If your groundwater is within 10 Meters of the surface it could pay off.
A well that deep is easy and cheap as long as you don't have too many large rocks.

As a pre-cooler for air being fed through stored ice it would save on ice perhaps.

Just don't use any old radiators.
You need something free from lead or other toxic metals.

Otherwise you'd end up polluting your groundwater.

Pyro_cat - 20-8-2019 at 23:36

I am still stuck on the idea of making ice due to the seemingly limitless cooling capacity of winter. I was thinking for a heat exchanger to create the ice the best thing would be to have the liquid in direct contact with the cold air no need for it to be inside any kind of conventional radiator like device. Something more like a waterfall maybe.

What else can we come up with cause I would like to post it all in some other forums like those about green energy and off grid living and see if anyone takes the idea and makes something of it.





Ubya - 21-8-2019 at 02:44

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro_cat  
I was thinking for a heat exchanger to create the ice the best thing would be to have the liquid in direct contact with the cold air no need for it to be inside any kind of conventional radiator like device. Something more like a waterfall maybe.

waterfall freezes, no more recirculating water, waterfall doesn't freeze, you have no ice






MrHomeScientist - 21-8-2019 at 06:53

You'll also lose water to evaporation in an open system. Even when cold!

RogueRose - 21-8-2019 at 09:32

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro_cat  
I am still stuck on the idea of making ice due to the seemingly limitless cooling capacity of winter. I was thinking for a heat exchanger to create the ice the best thing would be to have the liquid in direct contact with the cold air no need for it to be inside any kind of conventional radiator like device. Something more like a waterfall maybe.

What else can we come up with cause I would like to post it all in some other forums like those about green energy and off grid living and see if anyone takes the idea and makes something of it



What you need is the water as close to freezing as possible when it is to be frozen, so if the ground water is 55F, then chill it before adding it to the ice.

What I think the easiest way to do it would be to dig an insulated "pool" and add the cold water. Let's say the pool is 40ft x 40ft - the greater the surface area the more freezing/cooling you'll get in a passive system. Once you have the "pool" dug and lined, start adding water slowly like 1/4" an hour or something.


I would set up some kind of large copper or aluminum coil that the water flows through to get it to 32F before it exits. From what I remember flowing water has a very difficult time freezing but once it stops it freezes pretty quickly. So you pump the water through the coil and when it gets to the bottom of the pool it freezes very quickly.

If you do 1/4" an hour that's 6" a day and if you have 90 days below freezing that's 45 ft of ice! Now if you might have less than 90 days depending on where you live.




Another option is to do something similar as above but make ice molds with sheet's of plywood 4' x 8' and put a 2x4 or up to a 2x12 around the edges. You need to use some kind of "mold release" maybe just oiled wood would work. Then when the molds are frozen, unscrew a side and slide it off into your pool/pit. You could lower it so it doesn't break as well and stack them like blocks. Always cover the pit when it isn't freezing. You could also add water to the pit with the broken blocks so it freezes as well.

I think if you want to limit the space this takes up, you want to dig deep and make it a square - then use the ice molds as an auxillery/secondary place to make ice that is added to the pit. You could even just use a sledge hammer on the ice slabs every couple days and dump the ice in the pit. You then still add water to the pit slowly so that it constantly freezes basically from the bottom up, so you end up with one solid block of ice.

If you use 10 sheets of 4' x 8' plywood, that's 320 sq ft or the same as an 18' x 18' pit. I'm sure you can get 4' x 12' = 480 or 20' x 24' pool.

The height of the molds doesn't matter if you can break up the ice or slide it off into the pit. You could even use scrap wood to build the sides.

You could also build a rack, it woudl have to be heavy duty, to hold these molds. Best use of space. Build the racks with a 4" high wall and leave 4-6" in between each level. The use something like window box fans and blow air across the stacked molds, that should REALLY speed up the freezing, IF you add the water slowly - if you fill up a mold and the top freezes, then the ice acts as a barrier to freeze the water below, the temp needs to really drop to do this, so if you use a fan and it freezes as it's added, you get a solid block!

If you place the racks right next to the pit, you can remove the mold walls closest to the pit and slide the ice out into the pit. I'm guessing you could get 5-8 molds per rack and if you build 2-3 racks you could get:
-1152 sq ft (3 racks of 4' x 12', 8 molds per rack) - same as 34' x 34' pool/pit - that's pretty big


When you want to cool in the summer, you just use a coil of copper/steel/aluminum tubing placed in the pit. You could even use a couple old radiators, run them in parallel or series, lay them on top of the ice and as it melts, they sink down and the water is constantly cooled from the ice around it. If you need A LOT of cooling, add more radiators or a pump or propeller/(like a fan blade) of some kind to move water across the radiator fins. The water in the radiator is a closed loop system.

Now IDK if you could use a non-closed loop system, where the ice water is extracted, run to a radiator where it cools the air until the water is at room temp, then new water is pumped in and the process starts over. This method is interesting and IDK which way is better. With this way you can't get constant low temp cooling, you get peaks and troughs of cooling and cycles.

There maybe a balance that can be found where both types are used.

Also, let's say you have different area's of the house you want to cool. Kitchen, living room & bedrooms you want coldest. It gets the water first. Then if you have an attic or garage you can pump the "used" water from the first zones into the second zone. So if you want to keep the garage & at ~80-85 and the living areas at 70 (zone 1) then pump to zone 1 first where the water will be 32 and will cool until the water gets to 60F, then it goes to zone 2 where it pulls heat until it is the same as room temp, then it is used to flush toilets, water gardens, wash cars, do laundry, etc. I think this would be the best system, where the water doesn't return at times.

Your going to find that times you run out of melted water if you don't return any water, so maybe at times you return some from zone 1, as it has absorbed the least energy.


This idea WILL work, it's just whether people have time or want to do it. If you got more time than $ and the skill to do it, then by all means give it a try. I'd love to build a system like this and se how well it works. I think you could cool a large building if you wanted to.

Oh, also putting some kind of blower/fan blowing cold air into the pit/pool ESPECIALLY when it's the coldest out would give the best return on $$ (energy on electricity). Luckily fans are inexpensive to run for the most part, compared to air conditioners at least.



I'd really like to build an absorption refrigeration system TBH, which can be run with any heat source you want and can even make use of lower grade heat (like even from compost).

That's another thing too, if you have a farm or something and you can use compost (what farmer can't) and especially if you can get truck loads (dump truck or so) of wood chips or other cellulitic material (leaves, grass, straw, saw dust,etc) you can heat your house with this, doing the same thing as the ice pit, but in reverse. The compost will work even better if you add manure to it (pee/poo) even human output from human composting toilets would work. You mix up all the material then add coils on layers (like a coil every 1ft of material).

The pile might need to be turned once a month, MAYBE 2x a month, but you'd have a tractor if yo uhave a farm, so that isn't tough. That compost can get 180F+ in the center, some say even higher. Adding some air into the pile can make the temps go up even more and it speeds up the decomposition. This can be done with another coil or hose with small holes in it.

I've heard stories of people heating a house, barn, shed and pool doing this. The compost was on the bottom floor of the barn and almost 10-12ft tall and IDK the width/length maybe 20' x 10-12'. By the end of the winter the compost size was about 20-30% the volume, maybe less and it still wasn't done composting.


Fantasma4500 - 2-9-2019 at 23:24

you can use evaporative cooling, water pump feeding water onto a porous material and a fan blowing air through this substrate
ive made one and if i close windows in the morning and come home temperature is roughly the same after 8 hours, so it does work, but efficiency isnt super-b yet, it obviously doesnt do much if humidity is high also, unsure if adding ice could improve it, wouldnt that just slow the evaporative cooling down? i wonder if maybe a water mister could be used, or how i could make such thing myself, that would of course give huge cooling due to using the air itself as substrate for evaporating water. an ultrasonic device could maybe do this, but how tricky are they to make? sorry for being offtopic but the end goal i believe is the same and a lot more diy

RogueRose - 3-9-2019 at 06:49

Quote: Originally posted by RedDwarf  
This used to be all the rage back in the 1800s, landed gentry used to have an ice house in the grounds of their mansion, and enough servants / workers to hack the ice out of the rivers in winter (or import it) and bring it to the house in the summer. This was all before the development of refrigeration and the primary objective was to keep food cold. The ice houses were usually built half underground to take advantage of both the insulation and the fact that underground temperatures are lower than ground/air temps in the summer (and vice versa in winter).
A better bet instead of looking to store ice (which as a solid isn't easily handled - you want it as close as possible to your cooling pipes) is to look at ground heat pumps for summer cooling and winter heating.

Edit: But you still need quite a lot of land for the ground heat pump networks.

[Edited on 28-7-2019 by RedDwarf]


You don't necessarily need much land space, it depends on if you are installing the heat exchange loop horizontally or vertically (like a well). I've seen vertical loops installed from 150-450ft deep in vertical shafts,and it only requires the same space as a water well.

Pyro_cat - 7-2-2021 at 20:27

Its really cold out I still think this idea could be the future.

Fyndium - 10-2-2021 at 23:39

Yep, storing ice over summer has a very long history, probably longer than what's written. The scale of economies have a strong effect here, the bigger the bulk the longer it'll last. Anyway, you'll want to have several tons of it, stored in a well insulated space.

I'm mostly mad because now that it's winter, there's plenty of ice and snow available, making process cooling very trivial, but when summer hits, things get complicated again as refrigeration is needed. Many reactions and distillations churn up ice in a pretty fast pace. Every liter of distillate can easily require kg of ice added to the coolant reservoir to keep the temp down.