A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Cooling a Greenhouse - Aquaponics

I would like to start an active discussion on Cooling the Aquaponic Greenhouse. NO LIMITS

This discussion will have no limits to the creative ideas and crazy ideas that may bear fruit or inspire those creative juices in our minds.

With this much Passive solar mass - WATER - we could open up the cooling of this mass to the night sky. So we would insulate the water in the day to avoid gain and expose or use active solar night cooling. Maybe even an heating - cooling exchanger.

Solar Chimney - I can think of 2 ways to use the solar chimney design. Simplified - Imagine a metal Flat Black 3ft+ Diameter vertical Tube (could be flat) 10+ ft high. It would have a cone shape at the bottom and vented at the top and bottom. This would create a heat convection flow to pull air from the bottom (connected to the greenhouse) out the top. A passive exhaust fan. Version 2 - Put a horizontal wind generator in the tube and get some power from it.

Geothermal - Tubes in the ground to capture the ground temp to lower the Air temp in the Greenhouse.

Ok more even more exotic ideas later.

OM OM OM in other words - Happy Trails

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mark Hall on April 6, 2014 at 9:01pm

I've been building mine with lots of thermal mass. Not dug into the ground, but thick walls and outsulation.

I'm in the Hill Country near Bandera and Utopia.

Permalink Reply by Jim Fisk on May 10, 2014 at 3:11pm

I don't seem to see any references to Penn & Cord on this thread so here it is: Penn & Cord

They design some of the best passive GHs around and are easily home built. Here is one of their beauties:

They heat and cool passively and could easily be changed a bit to accommodate an AP system. Personally I would just add the fish room on the back as in our design. A must see site if you are contemplating a GH and want to keep heating and cooling under control.

Permalink Reply by Sheri Schmeckpeper on April 3, 2015 at 4:02pm

We're in Arizona, and this year I'm trying to grow loofa as a shade screen instead, or in addition, to the regular ones we put up every summer.

Has anyone played around with icyballs? They were used in the early iceboxes and used hot water to cool the fridge. In the hot areas, solar heat could heat one ball, and the other could be placed in front of a fan, thus using the sun outside to cool the air inside without adding moisture.