BTU FROM THE BARN
An enterprising engineer is helping diary farmers conquer the wintertime fuel bill blues, including from computers to cows, how it works, some hard facts, cowpower heating system.
by Leifa Riis-Carstensen
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Farmers have known for years that, early on a biting-cold January morning (before the woodstove has been stoked up to househeating pitch), about the warmest place to be on a homestead is down in the old cow barn. Of course, it's one thing to work in a barn, but it would be quite another to live there . . . so few people ever consider using Bossy's excess BTU to heat their homes!
FROM COMPUTERS TO COWS
Recently, however, Bryan Ramlow (a former IBM engineer from Poynette, Wisconsin) has developed a new heating layout that's able to successfully harness bovine heat and use it—sans humidity, mess, or odor—to warm a whole house! Bryan, who had always been interested in new energy-efficient ways to transfer heat, first got the inspiration for what he eventually titled "Cowpower" about five years ago ... when, on a bitterly cold day, he tromped out to fix a farmer's brokendown milk cooler. While laboring in the cowfilled building, Ramlow couldn't help noticing that—even with some of the windows open—the barn was one heck of a lot warmer than the wintry outdoors.
Bryan was aghast to think that valuable heat was being lost out windows and simply wasted, so he went home that night and started puzzling over just how to "corral" all those cow calories.
It wasn't long before the inventive engineer realized that, since a single cow gives off 3,500-4,000 BTU an hour, a mere 15 milkers could provide sufficient excess warmth to heat a standard 2,000-square-foot home. Ramlow then devised a prototype Cowpower system . . . but he tested the unit for a year before he was satisfied enough to put it on the market.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Bryan's invention can be described as operating like a refrigerator in reverse (see the diagram below). A fan blows the 40° to 50°F air from a milk barn across a set of heat absorbers installed in that building. (Since the moisture in this air is condensed by these absorbers—and then drained off into a gutter outside the barn—the system dehumidifies the cows' environment.)
Next, the captured thermal energy is transferred into a pipe carrying Freon gas. While still at the barn, this gas is pumped through a twin set of compressors and put under enough pressure to raise its temperature to over 200°F. The superheated Freon is then pumped underground through sealed copper tubing to a heat exchanger in the house. Finally, circulated home air—blown over the hot coils in the exchanger—absorbs the warmth and is then routed throughout the building.
A BUYER!
Carol Dieterich—a dairywoman and owner of 30 Holsteins—had been having a great deal of trouble trying to figure out an alternative way to heat her old oil-guzzling farmhouse. She read about Cowpower in an ad in the Farmer's Exchange . . . and, excited about the prospect of actually employing her own animals to inexpensively and efficiently heat her house, Carol immediately contacted the Cowpower representative in her area.
