Calling all smart people.. Lets talk PCM's

11 years ago

Please forgive my ignorance as i am a grandmother and a medicine woman trying to care for my little lake side community and only educated enough to take advantage of the expertise of those with the education, but I have had these subjects of thermal mass and PCM's swimming in my head for weeks in the planning of a (Passive)4 season greenhouse here in Oklahoma...
honestly heating is not my problem as it is dec 1st and 72 degrees outside today. we are in a record drought and the summers are reaching 114 for more days than i care to remember. I live out in the country where our power is never reliable as we are always the last to be reached in a crises( after every thunderstorm)..LOL and as of this date i haven't the money for a solar set up...I need to "COOL" my green house... Im thinking of digging down 4 feet (a walipini style. Ive read that the ground temp is a little over 50 degrees at 4 ft deep( not including any solar warmth.. I'm wondering if You might have any advice about my plan...Please make it simple...LOL

Oh and BTW has anyone considered a encapsulated soy wax?..isnt this the Phase change material that is being considered for so many new building materials now? wall board and bubble cloth?
Ive seen something like this put in pvc tubes, caped on the end and applied to the north wall for temp consistency in one application and now they are making this available for a pretty penny Im sure....is this worth trying to do myself? any help or advice would be so appreciated!..

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Comments (2)

nil13
11 years ago
BioPCM looks promising at $2/sqft. You are already going to have a lot of thermal mass by digging down though. The other issue is that thermal mass must release all of the heat gained during the day at night or it will just get loaded up and turn the space into an oven. How cold are the summer nights there? There needs to be a large differential between day and night. I would focus on designing a structure that, as much as possible, keeps the heat out.
cole_robbie
11 years ago
Shade cloth is the standard way to cool a greenhouse in the summer. You should start with that, and then build onto the design with your PCM.

PCMs are really neat, and they work 8 times better than water, but water is nearly free. I've always thought that a water-filled slab would make an even better floor if you could change out the warmed-up water with cool water at the flip of a switch. Maybe bury a tank completely underground, plumb that to the greenhouse tank, and just keep swapping the water back and forth. Then in the winter, you could use a simple solar heater to heat water, pump it into the greenhouse floor and that would provide your heat.
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