more or less free cooling for your house if you water your plants

I have been playing around with a sprinkler on my roof. I AM currently on city water which is very cheap. BUT i started to see the function stacking beauty of this.

Take the soaker at the ridge, dripping as slow as i can get the flow,

running into the gutters about 14ft above ground in my case,

into a vertically mounted 4" sewer line, a 90degree elbow at the bottom,

and the cap half of a 2 ltr bottle. a little tape to seal it all up, but it threads fairly well onto a garden hose.

run out to your plants, depending on your heights, it might work with a soaker hose.

figure 1ft rise is .43PSI I have roughly 6PSI. IF that isnt enough, I may just take a junk hose and drill larger holes till I get it right!

I figure I have to water my new plants anyway, why not cool my house before I do!

My next step is to devise an automated system to do all this for me.

the beauty of it is when your house needs cooling, your plants would love it too!

Yes I do have a asphalt shingle roof right now, I figure the rain I collect off it has to be worse as it can be days between rains sometimes. Metal is better, Living roof would be ideal!

had to post some photo.

some pics of the hose and evil soda bottles.

you can see the hose going out to the pathetic lawn in the center of the picture. its composed of recycled sod that sat out to long in the sun. anyway, I used an old hose, drilled some holes all over it. I tried the soaker hose first, but it needed to much pressure and the 4" sewer pipe hooked up to the gutter just over flowed. add more holes as needed. diy soaker hose. I am amazed how many of my hoses I own were tossed out by someone else. has to be one of the easiest things to fix. if nothing else, they make great soakers.

That looks like a pretty cool setup.  Have you noticed a difference in you power bill?

I heard about doing this on The Survival Podcast and the guest said a guy in florida cut something like $200 off his electricity bill. He had setup a hydroponic timer to cycle the water 5 seconds of run time every 90 seconds. I dont have any timers that fancy. I just turn it on for a few minutes when I think about it while I am outside. It certainly does draw some heat off the roof. If it weren't an asphalt roof, I would have it drain into a hot tub first!

Which makes me then ponder, with all the free or cheap glass avalible at habitat re-stores and the like, could a roof support a whole roof solar hot water heater?!? seems that would accomplish what I am doing now and shade the roof, PLUS give you drinkable hot water. Thoughts?

Casey Halone wrote:Which makes me then ponder, with all the free or cheap glass avalible at habitat re-stores and the like, could a roof support a whole roof solar hot water heater?!? seems that would accomplish what I am doing now and shade the roof, PLUS give you drinkable hot water. Thoughts?

If you wanted to spend the time and $ to build it, then I don't see why the roof wouldn't support it.
With a solar water heater of that size, the water would be close to boiling by the time it reached the other side of the roof.

One of the ideas I've had was to create a natural pond/swimming hole and heat it using a solar water heater(black hoses, lol). If you don't have the space, you could build a natural jacuzzi instead. There is a thread on this forum on how to build a simple and effective natural chemical-free pond filter as well.
Just an idea for all of that extra hot water you'll have.

If you are collecting water to heat on your roof, you will also be heating your roof!.  It would be counter-productive to your cooling system.

Your cooling system could be quite effective in a dry area, where evaporative rates would be high.  In a high humidity situation, the effects would not be so great...it could possibly have a negative effect, for example in the deep south, where humidity runs at 90+% in the hottest months.  If you are adding moisture to already humid air, you are raising the heat index.

I am in north Idaho. Usually pretty dry by my standards. looks like hovering around 50% or less this week. I do know before my roof was to hot to walk on quickly bare foot, and after i wet it down, i can stand on it no problem.

I understand if everyone did this, we would have weather patterns changing? Im no meteorologist  tho.