Cooling BTU's

[tnyurt]

I put a 36000 btu mini split in our 30 footer with full

insulation

package. We live near Nashville TN so plenty hot & humid.

Heating

with it was marginal. New Year's Eve was in the teens and the yurt was 59 degrees in the morning. Cooling has been good so far, but we haven't hit a 100 yet.

My only issue is noise as a 3 ton unit (36000 btu) moves a lot of cfm and that makes noise which bounces off the

dome

and gets louder. If I had to do it again I would get a mutiple zone unit either 18000 x 2 or 24000 x 2. I was trying to be cheap, paid $2400 for the 3 ton Gree unit installed. Get what you pay for!

Hope this helps. Happy yurting!

[tnyurt]

I noticed my picture shows my groovy yurt but I have the mini split in my 30 foot

Yurts of America

yurt on a concrete foundation with 6 windows. I wish I had opted for the bronze tinted

dome

to reduce the heat from sun.

[hierony]

Not really the time of year for cooling anymore, but there is a way to have solar-powered cooling. It's called Adsorption Chillers--works on basic refrigeration principles but the cooling power comes from adsorbing water onto/into an adsorbent (usually zeolite), with the required energy/heat coming from solar (heat). There should be a commercial product somewhere; there have been several well-documented large-scale industrial applications--a school or such in Germany or Zurich I think.

If you're more DIY, this place has some good links as a starting place.

[addicted56]

Originally Posted by hierony

Not really the time of year for cooling anymore, but there is a way to have solar-powered cooling. It's called Adsorption Chillers--works on basic refrigeration principles but the cooling power comes from adsorbing water onto/into an adsorbent (usually zeolite), with the required energy/heat coming from solar (heat). There should be a commercial product somewhere; there have been several well-documented large-scale industrial applications--a school or such in Germany or Zurich I think.

If you're more DIY, this place has some good links as a starting place.

I will have to check it out. I think the fridge in most of your campers runs the same way. Uses the propane heat in the same cycle. Trust me there is plenty of it. We just generally undersized in the small yurt. The 2 ton in the 30' yurt seems plenty even in regards to

heating

when it is really cold but we have a fireplace as well. The 1 ton in the 24' yurt just can't cut the mustard though. Works its ass off all night and if it is to hot or to cold it just can't keep up.

Insulation

on the floors and walls and even roof are just no match for that those temps.

[hierony]

Yup, very similar to the propane fridges.

I reread some old notes--It was a school & neighboring dance club in Munich, Germany that had ZAE Bayern make an industrial zeolite heating & cooling system driven by communal steam heat. I have a copy of the summary paper if anyone wants.

D. Tchernev did a lot of work on heating/cooling with zeolites. The above-posted webpage has a link to an excellent summary of his zeolite cooler. Unfortunately, he puts 1 ton of cooling power as requiring 1 ton of mordenite in a panel 200 sq ft (~14'x14'). Not something I'd consider a small, cheap DIY project... Might make a good small supplement to your 1 ton unit though.

Out of curiosity, how air-tight are your yurts? Did you ever do the shade-cloth/parachute thing? This company has two cool sunshades and interesting suggestions. Are the evening/nighttime lows cool enough to just do a massive forced air-swap?