Interesting. At our family lake house, we've been putting beverages in a net with a rope and dropping it to the bottom off the dock. They always come up cold :)
Haha I imagine this works really well in most places. If I tried this in Florida I think I'd pull up a pile of green sludge with my beer.
An earth-cooled beer dispenser
51–60 of 77 posts
Re: An earth-cooled beer dispenser
#52Given that I don't choose a bigger fridge specifically to store beer in, and I tend to have, say, 4-8 bottles of beer in the fridge at any one time, and I wouldn't store anything else in the fridge to replace it, and a fridge becomes less efficient the emptier it gets ... is this really a good idea?
Re: An earth-cooled beer dispenser
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Haha I imagine this works really well in most places. If I tried this in Florida I think I'd pull up a pile of green sludge with my beer.
As long as it doesn't eat through the can, I don't see a problem ;).
Re: An earth-cooled beer dispenser
#54Given that I don't choose a bigger fridge specifically to store beer in, and I tend to have, say, 4-8 bottles of beer in the fridge at any one time, and I wouldn't store anything else in the fridge to replace it, and a fridge becomes less efficient the emptier it gets ... is this really a good idea?
P.S. I'm not saying it's not cool, just that I don't particularly see an eco-benefit.
Re: An earth-cooled beer dispenser
#55Re: An earth-cooled beer dispenser
#56I guess this is awesome if you really like drinking 55-60F beer. Otherwise, this is luddite technology designed to appeal to ecotards.
Exactly. The ground is usually 58F. I remember reading about this in a thermal home book. (If you effectively bury 3/4 of your house, you only ever have to warm it to 70F from 58F.) It's actually somewhat funny. Did they think there were ice cubes under the grass when the designed this?
Where I live, in Houston, TX the readily-accessible ground temperature is in the high 60s or low 70s.
Re: An earth-cooled beer dispenser
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Use your pool instead of the canals?
Mmmm. 80 degree beer :) Florida pools get very warm.
Re: An earth-cooled beer dispenser
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. The ground is usually 58F. I remember reading about this in a thermal home book. (If you effectively bury 3/4 of your house, you only ever have to warm it to 70F from 58F.) It's actually somewhat funny. Did they think there were ice cubes under the grass when the designed this?
AFAIK, the ground temperature will be the average air temperature over the year. It's certainly not 58F everywhere, because in Siberia there's permafrost, and in Denmark might likely be less than 58F, too.
I'm just giving this as more nordic perspective, seeing that most HNers probably are from US/warmer climate.
[1] http://www.dmi.dk/en/klima/klimaet-frem-til-i-dag/danmark/te...
[2] http://i.imgur.com/LrUEPP7.png ground temperature at various depths
Re: An earth-cooled beer dispenser
#59This link created an interesting bug in my FF: https://i.imgur.com/1PZ01Ua.png
For what it's worth.
Re: An earth-cooled beer dispenser
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
15 feet sounds pretty deep to dig to install something like this. Any idea what the temperature is like 2-4 feet?
That's going to vary a lot more by location, and 2-4 feet puts you at much higher risk for your beers freezing (although if you fully load this with beer, you'll have some beers at 2-4 feet anyway). Where I live, for instance, beers will probably freeze 2 feet below ground in winter. But my well is down below 15 feet and is always liquid.