Zeer Pot Refrigeration

[ancona]

I just watched a video demonstrating a very old technology. Through evaporative cooling, one can use sand, water and two clay pots to keep produce, meat, beer, whatever......cold for extended periods in low humidity areas. A zeer pot was used many hundreds of years ago and they still work today. There is zero energy input except for the water that I guess could technically be called the energy source.

I found this very cool indeed.

 

[bushi]

this is very very cool concept indeed (if you are not in Ireland, that is, humidity here is like 200% all the time - so very little evaporation takes place )

Another variation on that, in hot climates, would be to use evaporative cooling effect to air condition your house:

You simply wet thoroughly your curtains (make sure the rails will take additional load first ), windows need to be open (and a must - overshadowed - it is a given with every "eco" solution, that you minimize the required inputs), and the air movement makes water evaporate from your curtains, thus making the air cooler (as we all know, or should have known, phase change from liquid to gas (i.e. from water to steam = evaporation), requires to absorb some energy - in the form of the heat being taken out of the "surroundings", i.e. the surrounding air).

My great-grandma was actually using this method during particularly hot summers - take off the curtains, soak them, and hang them back to dry. Surprisingly effective, in times when people were not throwing more horsepower on every obstacle/set back they faced!

 

[ancona]

The swamp cooler has been in use for a hundred years in teh desert southwest in the USA. These little units will freeze you out if run right.