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Solar boosted ventilation(baked)

Turn the problem into solution.
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This is an idea by my uncle actually. I am posting it for him, as he isn't net savvy (yet).

The idea is to use the movement of hot air to keep the air circulating. To achieve this he proposes the following steps

Make a circular hole in the wall near the top of the room. The hole should be in the wall where the other side of it is the outside of your house. (Quite obvious, but then a mistake in that part could be a costly one). The size of the hole depends on the size of the room, so cant say exactly how big. You figure it out. The hole should be at a slight angle, say 10 degrees, so that it is higher outside than inside.

Take a metallic pipe of the same diameter (or just small, we need to insert the pipe through the hole). Make it of say 3 to 6 feet in length (again, just guessing, you be the judge). The metal pipe should be one that conducts heat very well. preferably the ones that are used for cooking/ to make pipes in the solar heater, etc. Paint it all black.

Now, we make a solar heat focuser. Google for "solar death ray" and you will get the idea. You can make the heat focuser out of anything. Mirror, shiny metal foils, etc. The only difference here, is that this heat focuser should be tubular. So that the metal pipe should be heated from below, through all its length.

Now, we have a metallic pipe from the wall to the outside of the house, at a slight angle, which is heated from the below using solar heat. The air inside gets hot, and as a result, will start rising. Pulling the air in the room outside.

As an addition, a similar hole _could_ be kept at almost the bottom of the wall, with a tank of water right next to it. In theory, this will pull water vapor in and cool it. I am somewhat skeptical about this one. But the main concept above should work.

If you want the room to be kept warm, instead of cooling it, you could probably reverse the angle of the pipe, thus pushing the air in, instead of out.

kamathln, Nov 03 2008

Passive Solar Building Design http://en.wikipedia...lar_building_design
I've heard of similar schemes too - and find the whole idea of designing a space to respond in a certain way to natural, predictable patterns is a very exciting concept. So Kudos to your Uncle - I've seen variations of the idea before, one using a great solar-sink (essentially a huge block of solid rock/concrete) to replace the hot pipe. To heat, instead of cool the room, just shut off the airflow from the cool air source - there's nothing stopping you from collecting warmer air from a different location (i.e. from under a greenhouse of some-kind) where it's liable to be a bit warmer. [zen_tom, Nov 03 2008]

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       These are all fairly old concepts. Bill Mollison in his permaculture books outlines methods of drawing cooled air from a fernery or through a tunnel past porous water containers to cool a house. The heated pipe (solar chimney) is usually vertical though, for greatest effect.   

       You probably won't get heated air to move into the house well unless the pipe is lower then most of the interior air; just slanting it down will at best create a pool of warm air near the ceiling. Creating a loop where air is drawn out near the floor and heated to pass back in near the ceiling will work better.   

       Look up thermosyphon and solar chimney for more.
spidermother, Nov 03 2008
  
      
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