a cure for a damp basement? SOLAR.KnowledgePublications.com

a cure for a damp basement?
31 aug 1996
bill shurcliff wrote (in december, 1980, in "solar flashes," the newsletter
of colorado's alternative and solar energy associations)...

it seems to me a crying shame not to make use of the thermal capacity of a
concrete basement. the house proper weighs, say 15 tons, and the concrete
basement (concrete floor, concrete walls) weighs about 60 tons. tremendous!

[60x2000x0.16 = 19k btu/f, like 40 55 gallon drums full of water?...]

one idea is to heat all this up to about 100 f; thus it stores much heat, and
this heat can be used at night, or next cloudy day, to warm the rooms. an idea
that appeals to me is to use a low-cost, informal, air-type solar collector
to heat the basement to 60 of 70 f, then use a cop-3 ge 10,000 btu/hr air
conditioner (new type costing about $500 or $600) to transfer heat from the
basement air to the room air; the rooms are kept warm, and the basement air
gets colder and colder--until the next sunny day, when solar energy heats the
basement up again to about 70 f. the air conditioner is mounted in the floor
between the central hall and the basement below; it steadily "tries to cool"
the basement, while using the main story (central hall) as a heat sink.

note that the basement, being no hotter than about 70 f, does not lose much
heat to the outdoors (the basement is insulated on the exterior, of course.)
also note that, inasmuch as the solar air-type collector is called upon to
deliver air that is only at about 70 or 80 f, the collector can be merely
single-glazed and of very flimsy, cheap type--say a long plastic contraption
draped along the entire south wall of the house, below window level; ie a
"drape" 4 ft. high and 36 ft. long, say, with a small blower and flexible
duct, circulating basement air into the collector and back into the basement.

note also that the basement, being usually at about 60 or 70 f, is eminently
habitable (for workroom, playroom, bedroom, or whatever.) note, finally, that
the air conditioner can be relocated and reassigned in summer to act as a
normal cooler, to keep all of the rooms cool. (i assume that the house is
superinsulated, so that even a modest amount of cooling will suffice to keep
the entire house cool.)

...

my house has a dirt basement floor, with stone walls, with insulation outside
of the stone, and it's often quite damp. i've been thinking of adding a vapor
barrier, but norman saunders says the main mechanism for upward heatflow in
the ground is evaporation of water, with condensation above... this seems
like a nice inexpensive high-performance heat pump, using equipment that many
people already own, with a good 55 f heat source even in the dead of winter. 

nick