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Maybe Im just crazy, its been said before , but if I had tons of copper in my basement in the upper midwest why couldnt I bring in heat in the summer months to help with the heating bill in the winter and bring in fridgid temps in the winter to help cool my house in summer ?
I would need to insulate two sections of copper, one for heat , one for cold. A copper pipe filled with copper pennies could be used for the heat/cold conductor. During Dec, Jan and Feb, I could freeze half of the pennies and save that cold for the June,July, Aug period. In the summer months bring in the heat to be used in the winter. As my hoard of pennies grew, my heating and cooling bill would diminish.
Is there any merit to this idea ? Does anyone know a reason why that it wont work ?

Neat concept,

I don't know the parmeters for copper thermal mass, but cold air sinks and warm air rises.

How do you get your cold air up out of the basement in the summer and keep the hot air from pennies down during the summer?

In concept it is a good idea. Application of that concept is a whole different matter. Copper is a great conductor of energy. Be that energy of electricity or thermal heat. It will absorb heat quickly, then dissipate that heat quickly, too. The inverse would be true if you wanted to use it to cool things with. Right now I can't think of a way you could efficiently get the copper to hold any temp. long enough to use at a later date. Insulation costs would be high. Like storing river ice for use in the summer.

Maybe a better use of the copper pennies would be using the copper mass as a thermal reservoir for a heat pump. Now you are talking! The copper mass would quickly absorb heat, or dissipate heat, at whatever temperature the heat pump would send to it.

I don't want to discourage you, but maybe the latest in heat pump technology would be a better way to go. Installers sometimes drill down over 200 feet into the earth to establish a heat reservoir.

Who knows? Maybe you are on to something you could develop and then sell to others! Call it the Real Cent Heat Pump!

The more I think about it, the more "do-able" I see it.

Metal are the worst thing you can think of for thermal mass. They are the best conductor of heat, and therefore the worst insulation.

Better to go with concrete, rock or bricks to do a thermal mass and use cooper to move the heat from one side to the others. If you've got enough temperature difference between your cold and hot side you can even make water circulate in a pipe and build a turbine, it has been done before but isn't really cost effective.

You can dig a hole in the basement and fill it with concrete with a few cooper rod in it, lets the cooper rod go to the first floor or second floor if you have one with a heat sink. The copper rod will transfer heat from the concrete mass to the house, hot in winter, cold in summer, relatively speaking. They will always have the same temperature and will try to bring the house at the same temperature as it is underground. Assuming your underground is at zero degree Celsius, it will try to pump the heat in the house down to 0 in summer effectively cooling the house, and in winter it will heat the house from (example) -20 up to 0 leaving your central heating job only from 0 to +20 and not from -20 to +20 saving you cost in heating.

A better way to do this would be to build a whole house underground except 1 side facing the sun, like Earthship house :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship
Making the whole thing integrated into the house by design, way more effective. As far as i know there is nothing more cost-effective and efficients than Earthship house, the whole house is the thermal mass. It require almost no heating or cooling.

didou wrote:Metal are the worst thing you can think of for thermal mass. They are the best conductor of heat, and therefore the worst insulation.

Better to go with concrete, rock or bricks to do a thermal mass and use cooper to move the heat from one side to the others. If you've got enough temperature difference between your cold and hot side you can even make water circulate in a pipe and build a turbine, it has been done before but isn't really cost effective.

You can dig a hole in the basement and fill it with concrete with a few cooper rod in it, lets the cooper rod go to the first floor or second floor if you have one with a heat sink. The copper rod will transfer heat from the concrete mass to the house, hot in winter, cold in summer, relatively speaking. They will always have the same temperature and will try to bring the house at the same temperature as it is underground. Assuming your underground is at zero degree Celsius, it will try to pump the heat in the house down to 0 in summer effectively cooling the house, and in winter it will heat the house from (example) -20 up to 0 leaving your central heating job only from 0 to +20 and not from -20 to +20 saving you cost in heating.

A better way to do this would be to build a whole house underground except 1 side facing the sun, like Earthship house :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship
Making the whole thing integrated into the house by design, way more effective. As far as i know there is nothing more cost-effective and efficients than Earthship house, the whole house is the thermal mass. It require almost no heating or cooling.

There is at least one house built like this in the Central Florida area and it has been there for as long as I can remember. So, it wasn't something recently built in this new time of energy conservation, going green, etc. Never knew the people living there so couldn't ask them how well they liked it, etc. and how efficient it was for heating/cooling.

PreservingThePast wrote:There is at least one house built like this in the Central Florida area and it has been there for as long as I can remember. So, it wasn't something recently built in this new time of energy conservation, going green, etc. Never knew the people living there so couldn't ask them how well they liked it, etc. and how efficient it was for heating/cooling.

I don't know about Florida, heating may not be needed at all there, so the house can be build a little different from that.

But long before cheap energy lot of civilization build their house like that because wood cutting was time consuming to heat the house and no air conditioning existed.

The first house build in America (Canada) where like that too, build by the Wiking if i can remember correctly :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:L'Anse_aux_Meadows,_recreated_long_house.jpg

I don't really care about the environment personally, although it help, that would be a amazing house for a survivalist. Almost no heating or cooling make it way easier to go off the grid.

Well, I guess this was just one of my crazy ideas. Again. Oh well, like all the others, "it seemed like a good idea at the time". Thanks for the responses, you guys saved me from wasting more time thinking about it.