Bobby, have you done any research on Earth Tubes? Not just looking up testimonials and anecdotes, but looked for actual studies?
I was really yped about earth tubes for a while until I looked into them and found a few studies. I found a lot of people claiming that all they did was dig 2 foot deep trenchs and burried 30 feet of tube and 'Wow, what a difference' But the actual studies with measurements, etc. tell a different story. First of all you need to go a LOT deeper than 2 feeet, 6-8 foot minimum. One study I found was done in India as I recall, they were studying using Earth Tubes to cool a green house. They used 4 tubes 100 feet long, 8 foot deep spaced 6 feet apart. The fan used to drive the air through them consumed 400-450 watts and ran 24 hours a day. It was effective at the begining of summer, but by the middle of summer the output air temps had climbed to around 80 degrees, the green house temps were closer to 90 degrees. I also read lots of feedback from individuals that were having problems with mold due to condensation in the earth tubes. That is solvable, by making sure the tubes angle down, away from the house and you have some way to drain the moisture from them. My mini-split heat pump on the other hand uses about 1/2 the energy per day to cool my house and output air temp is around 50-60 degrees an the temp in the house stays below 76. I could get it cooler, but it would use more energy and I'm comfortable at that temp. So the mini-split is more effective, for less energy and a LOT less work to install. If you have to hire someone to dig the trenches, the mini-split is probably cheaper. Sometimes the best solution is NOT the simplest solution. My PGP public key: https://vanderwal.us/evdl_pgp.key March 19, 2021 6:05 PM, "Bobby Keeland via EV" <ev@lists.evdl.org> wrote: > In a previous posting I said: > <Unfortunately I’m still working on my solar > <water heater, my battery backup for the solar > <panels, earth tubes and many other > <projects. > _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub ARCHIVE: http://www.evdl.org/archive/ LIST INFO: http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org
