Innovating in the Desert: AC With No Electricity

I have just subscribed to your channel and have already watched five episodes tonight. A common theme I keep seeing happen is breakdowns of your equipment. As someone who has ran heavy equipment for many years I would recommend a pre-trip inspection. In other words walk around your machine and look for any problems before you just jump in it. It will save you a lot of time later. I have noticed bolts that were loose on a pre-trip that took me 2 minutes to tighten. If I would have let those bolts continue to walk their way out where things start falling off it would have taken hours to fix. A pre-trip inspection doesn't take very long and can save you a lot of time.

According to your sponsorship: When I google Shaun Overton, I see a young man, proudly wearing his Starfleet uniform (and to be clear: I can't wait until it's finally 10/11/2161), but the blueprint for this project totally reminds me of Tatooine. I'm really impressed by your creativity and pioneering work - keep it up! Great respect from germany to everyone involved! You better watch out for the Tusken Raiders...

The sandbag bucket filler was ingenious. That is such a game-changer. Thank you for the ideas

I have actually done the geothermal cooling/heating. I built an off-grid house in AZ. I have been watching your vids since the 2nd one with great interest and think what you are doing is great. I am not sure that you are going to get the results expected. I went down 8 feet, 100 foot long trench, with only a 45 degree at each end. I also used thin walled PVC. Drilled holes on the bottom side of the tubes for the condensation to escape (with rock underneath). I also spaced my tubes further apart. I hope that it works well for you.

Amazing progress. This channel sure has gotten exciting lately. So much has been accomplished in a short time. Keep up the good work.

the production value of this is f ing insane. If this project doesn't come off you'll do just fine in TV! LOVING the content and the dream.

It looks like a termite mound, that cooling structure. Termites start their structure underground where its cooler and humid, and have a hole or holes or air vents above the ground through which heat leaves the underground resident chambers. The chambers are thus kept cool in the summer and warm in winter, with very little temperature variation when the seasons change. Another way to keep the building cool in summer and warm in winter is to use thatch for roofing. Works insanely well.

Hi Shaun, The performance of Earth Pipe Cooling is affected by four main parameters : 1. Pipe length; 2. Pipe radius or diameter (balance should be found radius decreases, air flow increases) 3. Depth of the pipe inserted into the ground; 4. Air flow rate inside the pipe. Resulting temperature decreases when : • Pipe length increases • Pipe diameter decreases • Air flow decreases • Depth increases to 4m (beyond no effect because temperature stable I have read many scientific publications (I can share with you if you want), the best configuration is: Depth: 3 to 5meters Length: 30m

Filling that trench sure lived up to the ranch name! Love the passive heating and cooling approach. You'll appreciate it for many years to come.

When running wire below grade, you should use type uf-b cable, which is gray instead of type nm-b which is white or yellow. Yellow romex isn't made for outdoor scenarios and it will corrode even when in conduit. Green copper does not conduct electricity at all

Hello, Shaun, just want to congratulate you for your update project There always some comments that tell you how to do it better,, I just want to remind to to not take it negatively coz they come from care for your success. And there's no such as perfect project, even with months planning, so enjoy what you built, and keep a good work

Frank Lloyd Wright knew this in the 30's. Studying how he utilized it (building into a hillside, pipe between floors, etc) is fascinating. Nice work, Shaun.

Have you heard of that guy in Nebraska who uses this constant air flow system to heat his green house? He is able to grow oranges year round, it keeps a constant 54 degrees through freezing winters.🎉

Did I miss the point where you explained why you didn't do the standard method geothermal with water pumped thru piping? Same trench could have had 20x more length of 1" PE pipe. More heat transfer, easier to use in the buildings. The same system could be tied into a solar water heater system to give you even more heat in the winter. Video could be titled "$5500 landfill" because it looked like someone digging a hole and burying some useless plastic. If you could keep a house cool in the summer, in the desert even, with 100ft of cheap drain pipe buried just a few feet underground, then I think it would be quite popular. The fact that Nick's original idea used aluminum pipe indicates that he either thought you had a crazy high budget or he has no real experience relating to this sort of project. When he switched to corrugated plastic, I assumed he meant plastic that was actually designed to be buried 6ft underground. Nope. Just grabbed the cheapest, flimsy, expandable, corrugated pipe and dumped 4-5ft of rocky dirt on top of it as if its are not going to be immediately crushed. So silly. At 28:24 you just slightly put your knee on the pipe and it immediately deforms under that slight load. And you think 5ft of dirt didn't crush it? Laughed out loud when I heard "The engineer said I could just tape it". CFD of HVAC systems just means plugging the specs of a building HVAC into a program to check if all the components are sized properly. Its presumably commercial HVAC and working with a team of engineers where others are doing the design and selection of components and he does the analysis. He likely has minimal experience actually selecting components and likely zero experience with geothermal. All that aside even, I'm quite certain he has no experience with proper connections of underground corrugated drain pipe. He can likely do the analysis to show the required piping size and heat transfer rates, but its obvious that he should have admitted that his expertise ended there and sought advice from someone with geothermal experience. The separate building for a "mechanical room" is normally a good idea, but in this case its working against your air based geothermal. You're not circulating the same air thru the system. You're simply pumping in your conditioned air and venting the same CFM out of the building. That could work if you had a very powerful system capable of bringing the outdoor air to the desired temperature at a CFM high enough. Generally forced air HVAC systems circulate the same air throughout the house with a small fresh air inlet. This way your ~95% of the air going thru the system is already close to the desired temperature. The issue described above could be fixed by pairing the pipes such that 2 feed the blower in the mechanical room and 2 return the air to the main building. You could add a small fresh inlet at the blower if needed. Basically a standard forced air HVAC system at that point with the ground acting as furnace/AC. That is assuming the pipe isn't all or mostly crushed. Braving the cartels to make a cool off grid oasis is a fun idea, but this is shaping up to be a few years of wasting time and money before hopefully getting it right.

Your Geothermal tubes remind me of the berms used for the EarthShip style homes founded in Taos, NM. I was enthralled by the idea, and suddenly I realized the connection... Great Idea for cooling and for warmth in the winter (I'm sure you won't really have to worry about that) You probably have already looked over the earthship designs, but its a great idea to look into.

I just started watching this weekend. I am full of admiration for what you are doing and would love to do it myself. I'm a bit disturbed by the engineer telling you that you can tape the up pipes for your cooling system to the flexible pipes underground. I am over 50 and have done some projects - that look's like a failure point in 5 to 10 years.... or less.

Wonderful episode👏👀 The aerial shot of the construction site was one of the highlights of the entire series so far!!!! I can’t wait to see this cabin 🌞🤝🌞

One thing I worry about is radon gas and the fact those perforated pvc pipes would bring in a constant source of radon, go borrow a digi radon tester so you know what you are dealing with, better know now than dealing this later. The constant moving air flow might also make radon a non issue. But it's worth thinking about

Back in the late 70s worked with early solar/thermal mass underground large scale piping, mold/mildew eventually killed the test project…

I've overcome the heat problem by building mostly underground. My house stays a comfortable 24 degrees all year.