Help needed for heat insulating rooftop exposed water tanks and supply pipes in almost 114°f heat

Posted by xdagget@reddit | preppers | View on Reddit | 8 comments

I live at a place where summers are 114 during day and 98+ during night I have rooftop water storage tanks 500lx2 and supply pipes to and fro from them to rest of the house in upcoming months temp will be too hot and water inthe tanks and pipes does not cools down over the night as ambient temp is too hot need suggestions on insulating the tanks and supply pipes. Note- Water from utilities comes cold as they have underground storage hence mornings become bearable.

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furlongperfortnight@reddit

Do you have easy access to insulation or are we talking improvised material only?

I've done some back of the envelope calculations, and assuming you use half of each tank daily, and want to keep the water 10c below ambient you'd need about 80mm PIR board or 130-150mm mineral wool. But the most important is a shade canopy.

If we can only use improvised materials, then the straw bales you've mentioned would work nicely - and you'd need a layer about 200mm thick. Straw tends to settle, so I'd double it just in case. Plus you have to protect it from rain, sunlight, wind and vermin, so maybe a wooden structure would work for you? If not possible then maybe netting or foil wrap?

If you give more details, like your daily usage, your tanks connection type (series, parallel, are they switched), incoming water temps and materials available, we could narrow the design down.

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xdagget@reddit (OP)

Thanks a lot, yes only improvised items are available. Utilities supply comes at 66f as they have underground storage tanks but the supply water comes 2 times every day once in morning 6:30 for 2hr and once in eveing 6:30 for2hr . Usage will be around half the tanks till 5pm both tanks are connected at bottom supply in from 1 tanks out from other one to house. one of the tank is white other one red faded now. planning to put some shade using pvc pipes as stand and garden netting and tied straws from sides then wrapped with old rugs. AI suggested to add bubble wrap for introduce some airgap on the body.

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juancarlospaco@reddit

Make a roof for the tanks and paint everything matte white, works on 55 Celsius.

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xdagget@reddit (OP)

Thanks yes thats the plan to put some pvc shade on top of them.

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quietprepper@reddit

Insulation isn't magic, it just buys you time as the heat passes through it more slowly.

If your ambient temp is high (youre claiming 98f+ at times) that tank is always going to be moving toward that number. Cool water coming from the supply line will dilute that heat, so the faster the water cycles through the tank the cooler it will be, but thats just cycling through water, not keeping water cool.

You cant really do too much about about the ambient air temp, but you can do things like have the roof be a lighter color to reduce how much of a heat island you are creating and putting a shade structure over the tanks to keep them out of direct sunlight.

On the fancier end, if youre somewhere that hot its very likely its also dry. You could play around with evaporative cooling (same principle as a swamp cooler but there are various other implementations of it) but that costs water lost to evaporation. or if youre somewhere with clear skies at night you could play around with radiative cooling (physics is involved, but the basics are that you are intentionally losing heat to space) at night to lower the tank temp, but the second it gets light out that tank will start creeping closer to ambient temp.

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xdagget@reddit (OP)

Thanks yes you are correct wrapped couple of old rugs earlier and toooed them with ovc mat it kep temos low for some time but evebtually ware gets warm. I will try to adding some white pvc shade and have swamp air coolers it works here well never thought of that physics can be used for tanks gr8 suggestion but not sure how to apply it tanks are on 3rd floor maintaining a manual routine is not possible will have to design some automated timers to drip water around. Thanks again for pointing key things.

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Seth0351USMC@reddit

This pretty much sums it up. You could paint it white to reflect the suns heat but it will still warm to the ambient temp eventually. Maybe run a drip hose around it so water is washing across it. The evaporating water will have a cooling effect and will bring the tempature down.

When I was in the Marines, we would put hot water bottles in an unused sock, wet the sock and hang it from a humvee bumper. Add more water to the sock after 20-30 min and after 45 min to an hour your unopened bottle will feel like it was refrigerated.

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xdagget@reddit (OP)

thanks one of the tank is white another one is red plan to paint that will try to shade them as well water the tanks sounds great idea but not seems possible to maintain that routine manually. people cool things off with watering the straw balesb or use swamp cooler here so the physics on your bottle sounds correct.