Hi

I am designing campsite chalets - each 65m2 will be heavily insulated although main use will be in Summer months in Italy so reasonably warm - I will be building these myself.

I would like to offer clients a very basic "green" airconditioning although this is really a grand title for the very cheap and basic arrangement I have in mind which would really be nothing more than a fairly weak air chiller to lower room temperature to bearable limits on really hot days. I am looking to fabricate pretty much the entire set up myself - I have good engineering facilities ( machine shop tools ) - nothing complex no electronics just a fan, ducting, heat exchanger and a pump.

Early ideas revolved on nothing more complex than buried air ducting powered by a fan to utilise ambient soil temperatures at a depth of say one metre. I have to dig to build anyway so may as well bury pipes. Since then I have looked at closed loop water based systems but I dont want to stray too far into areas of complexity since I am really looking at a self fabrication here - its so easy to start with a simple idea and snowball into something much more complex than necessary.

I would re-empathsise I am not seeking to give clients super chilled hotel type aircon I am merely looking to take the worst out of uncomfortably hot days - if its 30C outside and I can chill a super insulated chalet down to 25C then thats fine - its a campsite not the Ritz :-).

I do have the option of using a swimming pool as a heat dump but this is over 300m from the chalets and I feel that trying to get really smart and tying different heat processes together may look good on paper but the practical aspects of a constantly evolving campsite may actually favour discrete indepedent components.

Can anyone recommend books on the matter that are more "Dick Strawbridge" than high end domestic technologies? I am looking here for a book that could layout scenario calculations, give rough guides
to flow rates and energy consumption.

Thanks in advance

Jon