Soil temperature

[Peksi]

Hello everybody. This is my first post here and I am starting with quite an awkward one.

 

What is the soil temperature in Thailand? I mean in practice, in continental farmland, when you dig 1 meter into the ground how warm is the soil? I tried to google it but did not get any straight answer.

 

Hope someone here has been digging the dirt ????

 

Cheers to all,

Peksi

[cooked]

Do like I did when I wanted to see if I could brew beer in a hole: dig one and find out. 

Anyway: WHERE in Thailand? What time of year? What soil ?

No straight answers available.

[Peksi]

Lets say Khon Kaen area and june. But any estimate from any area / time of year is helpful. It should not vary many degrees in the continental Thailand, excluding mountain areas.

[Peksi]

It seems nobody has done this weird experiment, as one might guess.

 

Around my country they use ground temperature to extract heat in winters and cool in summertime. I am curious if the soil in Thailand would provide anything benefit for cooling purposes.

[kickstart]

I have heard of heat pumps being extracting heat from the ground, this was a good few years ago I think fuel costs outdid the benefits.

As for digging down here in Thailand ,for cooling purposes ,I have dug holes about 1 meter deep  ,in the rainy season ,found water, a high water table area, this time of year it is dry soil temp was the same as the surface ,maybe 1-2 degrees cooler  as Cooked said no straight answers.

I would say it would have been done in some Arabe countries, a job for Google, here in Thailand try the university web sights, kaset- Sart ,the agricultural university might have something.

[Damrongsak]

Here's a bit of an experiment:  A GEOTHERMAL HEAT PUMP SYSTEM IN BANGKOK, THAILAND

https://www.geothermal-energy.org/pdf/IGAstandard/Asian/2011/17_Isao_Takashima.pdf

 

First trial on Geo-heat pump application for tropical land was carried out at Kamphamgpet (Central Thailand) in 2006 and moved to Bangkok in 2010. Underground temperature of Thailand is 5-10oC lower than atmospheric one. Even though, we get 20-40% energy shortage than normal electric air condition. Bangkok system is designed for space cooling by using 1m depth horizontal piping line. Our experiment is less than one year but the system is working well. The COP (coefficient of performance) is 3-4 and underground temperature is recovered quickly. Shallow horizontal system is the best for tropical countries because temperature is the lowest and construction cost is low. We continue to operate more longer term and finding best system and operation method of GHP in tropical land.

 

Another:  https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/grsj/33/2/33_2_93/_pdf

 

Looks like you might see underground temp of 4-10C lower than atmospheric, depending on depth and location.  If I was at our house in Loei, I'd stick a thermometer down our well or to the bottom of the pond and check the temp.

[djayz]

Look for "geothermal energy". There are loads of documents on Google about it. 

IF, and that's a big if, my memory serves me correctly, at 4m depth, the temperature is in the low 20s C. It's also something I've thought about for here, but like so many other bright ideas, I simply never got around to it. 

It's really a cool way of cooling/heating your home, but the initial costs seem to be quite high, making it unaffordable for the average person. 

 

 

[Peksi]

That clarifies the subject quite a bit. So it might be doable if one can do the digging / piping with cheap costs.

 

Thanks a lot for your help!

[fruitman]

When i turn the shower on i get cool water for 10 seconds, that's the water which was under the house. After that it's warm.

 

I also thought about using earth cooling systems. Caves in thailand are nice cool...

[MikeN]

On 4/4/2019 at 5:39 PM, Peksi said:

It seems nobody has done this weird experiment, as one might guess.

 

Around my country they use ground temperature to extract heat in winters and cool in summertime. I am curious if the soil in Thailand would provide anything benefit for cooling purposes.

I did read something on the Coolthaihouse building forum of a guy who is trying that here, you might try looking for his story.

 Something like “ecohouse build in Surin” by Bandersnatch ?

[VocalNeal]

One can also use the heat generated by conventional AC to heat "hot" water.  Done in Indonesia but not so common here. 

 

As has been said either dig a hole or maybe start a TV, coolhousethailand or ...database of people's well water or borehole water temperatures from around the country.

 

However it is the humidity that is the nuisance not the temperature per se.