Night Sky Radiant Cooling - Misfits' Architecture

3/12/2019 It’s Not Rocket Science #5: Night Sky Radiant Cooling | misfits' architecture
mis ts' architecture
It’s Not Rocket Science #5: Night Sky Radiant Cooling

If ever you’ve noticed cloudless nights are colder than cloudy ones, then you’ve experienced Night Sky Radiant
Cooling.
The temperature of the surface of the earth is relatively constant so the amount of energy lost in the form of
heat from the surface of the earth at night must be more or less the same as the amount of energy gained by
the sun at the rate of approx. 1.5 x 10^19 kJ per day. Otherwise, the planet would overheat. Of course, one of
our problems right now is that Earth is overheating a bit but, for the time being, we can still say that most of the
Earth’s heat is radiated back into unheated space at night as thermal infrared radiation. Please allow me to
introduce you to Count von Rumford.
https://misfitsarchitecture.com/2013/03/01/its-not-rocket-science-5-night-sky-radiant-cooling/ 1/14
Two centuries ago he invented a more e cient and smokeless replace. For this, he received instant celebrity
and the eternal thanks of ladies in London salons. He was a bit of an expert on heat transfer and, on his travels,
noted that “the inhabitants of certain hot countries who sleep at night on the tops of their houses in order to
be more cool and comfortable, do wisely in choosing that situation to pass their hours of rest.” He concluded
that “frigori c rays” arrive continually on the surface of the earth from “the heavens” to cool the planet.
We know now that heating is the transfer of heat into an object and that cooling is the transfer of heat out of an
object. Whether it’s heating or cooling depends upon the direction of the radiation but the e ect of cooling is
the same as if there actually were incoming “frigori c rays”. It’s not a bad way of thinking about night sky
radiant cooling.
A previous post about yakhchal described how, around 400BC, the Persians used night sky radiant cooling to
make ice in winter. Yakhchal of the domed type were common in Yazd (smack in the middle of Iran now) where
the climate was especially suited.
Here’s a year’s worth of hourly temperature reports for Yazd.
FREEZING (blue) 0°C COLD (dark green) 10°C COOL (light green) 18°C COMFORTABLE (yellow) 24°C
WARM (light red) 30°C HOT (medium red) 38°C VERY HOT (dark red)
We know the Yazd ice-makers knew about night sky radiant cooling because
1. walls to the east, south and west sheltered the ice-freezing areas from the radiant heat of the sun
2. these walls also kept the air behind them still to further reduce the temperature of the air immediately
above the ice
3. the ice-freezing pools were covered with straw during the day to minimise heat radiation from the
daytime sky
4. this straw was removed at night to increase heat radiation to the night sky
5. yakhchal were built on the edges of towns
(In their paper, “Assessment of Ancient Fridges: A Sustainable Method to Store Ice in Hot-Arid
Climates”, Mahdavniejad and Javanrudi report that yakhchal were built in the countryside because of their
large land usage and the high cost of land in cities. Possibly, but if the ancient Persians understood about
night sky radiant cooling then they would of course site their ice-making facilities away from cities and
their heat islands.) This is a sketch of the ice house at the edge of the city of Kashan, from 1677.
It’s well known that the process could produce ice even when the ambient temperatures were above
freezing. Once produced, the ice was then moved to the yakhchal and stored through the summer. However, I
don’t think the use of night sky radiant cooling ended once the ice was stored. In “An Overview of Iranian Ice
Repositories, An Example of Traditional Indigenous Architecture”, Hosseini and Namazian state that
one of the advantages of these vaults was that they could be built step-like with stairs to help workers to cover the
external crust of the vault with thatch [straw] to protect it from rain, snow, sun and atmospheric variations. They
built smaller stairs between these stairs to make it possible for workers to ply. So people could maintain or repair
them easily.
http://www.andrewschneider.com/gallery/series-IranToYazd/index.html
If this stepped construction allowed the dome to be easily covered with straw during the day for whatever
reason, then that straw would also protect the dome from daytime heat buildup. Moreover, and with equal
ease, the stepped construction would allow that straw to be easily removed at night and so enable night sky
radiant cooling to cool the dome during summer nights. I suspect this is what Hosseini and Nazamian meant by
this.
In the heat of summers especially in central regions, the sun heats the Yakhchal dome. This method was also
employed in order to prevent the ice stored to melt during hot seasons.
A 250 mm mud-brick wall has a U-value of 0.36 and a 350 mm wall has a U-value of 0.26. [Ref.] Mud brick walls
have low thermal resistance and are good at storing thermal energy. Unfortunately, this is exactly not what was
wanted. Covering the domes with straw during the day and removing that straw at night is the sensible thing to
do. The same process that worked when making the ice also worked when storing it.
Interest in night sky radiant cooling waned with the development of refrigeration.
***
The following brief summary of late 20C developments in night sky radiant cooling applications is largely taken from
the research “Potentials of Night Sky Radiation to Save Water and Energy in the State of New Mexico” by the architect
Mark Chalom practising “the design and construction of environmentally appropriate buildings”.
In 1967, Harold Hay and John Yellott built a one-room, single-story building and on its roof was a series of
ponds with a total area of 170 square feet and covered by movable insulating panels. This is all there was to it.
During the day, the panels were closed so that the water would not heat up and at night the panels were
retracted to expose the water to the night sky and radiate the heat it had gained during the day. In winter, the
process was reversed and the water was exposed on sunny days and covered at night or cloudy days. Here’s
what happened. It’s good.
In 1973 they built a second house in Atascadero, halfway between Los Angeles and San Jose on the California
coast. This time, the house was about 1,100 sqft and the water was contained in plastic waterbed-like bags. The
system had no pumps, compressors, piping, or ducts, and could be easily operated by the occupants.
Indoor temperatures stayed between 68°F and 72°F degrees while outdoor ambient temperature uctuated
between 32°F and 68°F.
It’s been heating and cooling without electricity for the past 40 years now. Its only recognition was the 1976
Bicentennial awards for the categories of environmental and solar energy. [ Ref. ]
Whilst Hay and Yellott were exploring night sky radiation cooling for roofs with their Skytherm houses, Steve
Baer was exploring its use in Water Walls. His 1972 house in New Mexico used a stack of 55-gallon drums lled
with water to provide thermal mass. The south walls were glazed with single-pane glass but had insulated,
re ective covers that are lowered on sunny winter days and closed at night. [pic from here – thanks Batiactu!]
The inside.
Since then, Steve Baer and Zomeworks have developed the Double Play Solar Heating and Cooling System
which is both a passive solar heating system and a radiant cooling system for buildings. The Double Play
system uses one or more absorber panels attached to the south side of a structure. (Mark Chalom’s
research has shown there is only a 25% reduction in the cooling e ect if the night sky radiators are vertically
mounted.)
Double Play test building
There is water storage in the ceiling and radiator/absorber cooling coils on the roof.
The system works.
Zomeworks has also developed CoolCells which are highly insulated, passively cooled, outdoor enclosures that
protect and prolong the life of batteries and low-power electronic equipment. They work too. [Here’s some
performance graphs.]
***
In the climates that allow it, the use of unglazed radiators for cooling can provide large cost savings because
NSRC is cheaper than refrigeration in creating coolth, and because pumps are more e cient than fans in
moving it around. According to Steve Baer, the radiator plate becomes a “sensor” that reacts to the multiple
weather variables surrounding it, like wind and cloudiness, producing a coldness that is the coldest useful
temperature available at that moment.
Thinking about all the factors this way simpli es the calculation of the Night Sky Radiant Cooling Rate but, for
us, all we need to understand is that night-sky radiant cooling uses 90-95 % less energy than air conditioners
and 65-80 % energy than evaporative coolers to provide the same amount of cooling.
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It's Not Rocket Science #3: The Passivehaus Diet It's Not Rocket Science #1:
Yakhchal February 14, 2016 Thermal Mass
February 22, 2013 In “FOOD” December 19, 2012
In “PERFORMANCE” In “PERFORMANCE”
This entry was posted in SCIENCE and tagged getting back to basics on March 1, 2013
[https://mis tsarchitecture.com/2013/03/01/its-not-rocket-science-5-night-sky-radiant-cooling/] by Graham
McKay.
1 thought on “It’s Not Rocket Science #5: Night Sky Radiant Cooling”
jussi
June 23, 2013 at 6:13 PM
great! for those sunny no freeze places!
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3/12/2019 It’s Not Rocket Science #5: Night Sky Radiant Cooling | misfits' architecture

mis ts' architecture

It’s Not Rocket Science #5: Night Sky Radiant Cooling

Here’s a year’s worth of hourly temperature reports for Yazd.

Double Play test building

The system works.

1 thought on “It’s Not Rocket Science #5: Night Sky Radiant Cooling”

great! for those sunny no freeze places!

Comments are closed.

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