Container cooling

I've seen old metal roofed mobil homes with a couple soaker hoses on the roof to cool them down. The downside was the constant water flow down the sides washed away the paint, leaving bare aluminum.

No, but I've wanted to.

See below. The last link to a PDF is pretty informative. Watch the wrap.

Check the condition of the container roofs, I've seen them rust out due to water pooling in low spots.

H.

"Steve Walker" wrote

Thank you, Steve. That is a wealth of information, and confirms my idea. It also showed me that I was intending to use too much water, and the fine spraying is what I need. I believe I can put a fine enough filter on my ag water to make it work, and perhaps use the regular mister systems, and use an additional filter or two on those lines.

Monday is a holiday here in Utah, and Tuesday, my hired man is coming, and we're going to set trusses. It won't be long after that we'll be sheeting. Now I just have to put a good sealant on the joints, and I have that. I think it will make a huge difference on the inside, and give me about 9500 cubic feet of cooled enclosed shop area.

Thanks again. Glad to see there's still a little intelligent life in this group.

Steve

Roger that. I have 5 gallons of liquid goop that they use on RV roofs that I am going to pour on any concavities, or damage. Both roofs are very slightly convex. If this works the way I think it will, the water should not ever reach the containers, only the roof above them.

Steve

You guys might take a look at the spray-on bedliner stuff for a tough weatherproof sealer.

Many large structures use chilled water for cooling or hot water heating. if you could score a condenser from one of these, just pump your water through and put a fan behind it. Way more efficient cooling. I'd give you one, if you want to go for a 1500 mile road trip.

Karl

You want a light color, to reflect most of the heat.

BTDT. Woodpeckers love the foam roofing stuff. It sounds hollow when they peck on it so they proceed and peck shitloads of holes all over the roof. The best stuff I've used is Snow Seal.

So, spray the black goo and paint it white.

What's roofing foam? If that's white (and lasts awhile) then it should be fine.

Have Fun! Rich

"Karl Townsend" wrote

Thanks anyway. I'm saving for a plasma cutter and a Nikon.

Steve

That was in Tucson, the Sonoran desert has plenty of Gila woodpeckers.

That's where I bought it (HD) many moons ago.

No experience with that one.

It used to be. Donno about today. It's really excellent stuff and worth the $ IMO. Art

I saw some aluminized roofing compound at Orchard Supply when I was living in CA many years back, looked like it was basically tar with enough aluminum powder to help with the heat problem. Fairly cheap at the time. Not sure how well it'd seal leaks, you could always go the blackjack and beercan route to seal those, though.

Stan

That used to be common around here, till Snow Seal became readily available. It lasts a lot longer than aluminized roofing compound, in that it doesn't shrink and crack as fast.

Snow Seal is made for that job. It is white, and reflect a lot of heat. It holds up well here in Florida, where other roof compounds die in a year or two. The 'Snow' part refers to the bright white color, not for where it was made to be used. :)

Here are the specifictions form the OEM:

I remember that stuff being all over the place down there - 30 years ago.

At my last house I ran one of the perforated sprinkler hoses over the roof of the shed. It cooled down to 30 C from an interior temperature of 48 C in about 20 minutes. I did the planned job, then went indoors to the real airconditioning. Whenever I needed to do anything in the shed in summer I used this system, probably only used about 100 litres of water an hour, shed was 15 metres x 5 metres.

Alan

It has a long useful life, so it may have saturated the market.

Snowhite Roof covering. Much preferred where insolation is high (meaning that there is a lot of sunshine).

As for cooling the sides and top - "double wall". I think it was Buckminster Fuller who designed a double walled, all metal portable hut back inthe forties. (I think for the War Department.) While the outside wall got very hot, the air gap allowed for a flow "up" and out the top, which kept the inside cooler. Neat idea, but the Army went with the Quonset hut, instead.

One other idea for cooling, keeping air flow going, is to paint the roof white, then add a stove pipe painted black. That way a) the roof stays "cool" but the stove pipe will cause a draft as hot air flows up and out, drawing fresh(er) air in. Steward Brand, Editor of The Whole Earth News, did that with his container turned office - no need for A/C or power consumption.