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Ask Slashdot: Large-Scale DIY Outdoor Cooling of Cairo's Tahrir Square?

Posted by timothy on from the squares-must-be-different-over-there dept.

ClimateHacker writes "The struggle for freedom is still ongoing in Egypt and one of the many challenges that face the demonstrators in Tahrir Square is the sweltering heat. Skies are mostly clear and temperatures can reach up to 44 degrees Celsius (111 F) with hardly any shade. The risk of life-threatening heat stroke is quite real. I ask clever Slashdotters out there for novel DIY passive and active ambient cooling techniques. Perhaps some ideas could be a model for saving energy on cooling elsewhere."

3 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. It's not difficult by ribuck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Making shade is the obvious solution. Anything from portable gazebos to improvised Berber tents to poles and shade-cloth. Shade is going to be more efficient than anything else at keeping people cooler.

    If water can be spared, a fine mist of water in one part of the square would let people who have gotten too hot cool themselves down.

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  2. Evaporative cooling towers are standard .... by tinkerghost · · Score: 5, Informative

    Pheonix Az & several other cities use tall evaporative towers to cool plazas -- pump water to the top & let it cascade down over tera-cotta tiles. The evaporation drops the air temperature and the cooler air combined with the dropping water forces the cooler air out the bottom of the tower.

    1. Re:Evaporative cooling towers are standard .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      A tall tower open at the bottom to the square and at the top can be made to generate a significant up-draft of air, cooling the street-level. The top of the tower needs to heat up in sunlight to generate the up-draft. This system exists in a number of mosques and old, traditional buildings in Egypt to cool the street-level covered walkways. You need to have a tall building with a stair-well or similar open tower at the down-wind end of the square, and to cover the area leading up to the tower.

      All shade and covers should be removed at night to maximise the cooling of the earth, and re-covered when earth has stopped cooling - this can actually be quite late, when the sun is low, and does not mean getting up in the early dawn.

      Evaporative cooling, like the bush-air-conditioner, can be used if the local humidity is low. Wet the shading fabric and it will cool with evaporation. It becomes unpleasant as the local humidity rises, so use the minimum water to keep the fabric damp and no water if the fabric stays damp.