Ooh, I don't know, man. That sounds like a waste of a good heat exchanger to me. Once you do something like that, there's no going back. Not to mention any warranty you might have.

If you're considering something of that nature, consider enclosing one side of the outdoor HX with a shell, like an auto radiator. Water conducts lots more heat than air, so you don't need very much surface area to do the job. The bends and u-turns that contain the refrigerant would gain or lose heat (depending on operating mode) to the river water just fine. Since the river water would be under very low pressure, you might get away with sealing the end with silicone and clear plastic or pond liner material.

During cooling season, I know for a fact you can just feed cool water into the drain pan to submerge the bottom inch of HX. This alone will boost the capacity and efficiency of the outdoor HX A LOT. Those half a dozen passes or so of piping at the bottom are enough to lower condensing temperature 20-30 degF. The hotter it gets in the summer, the better that little bit of water will boost your efficiency.

Both of these suggestions make no major material mods to the outdoor unit. To resume original operation, you just quit pumping water and let it drain out. Your warranty stays intact and you can easily remove the mods for a unit swap or factory repairs.

Jeff, not sure if I was clear enough :-) The hack has to happen so warranty is no issue anymore. I'd love to have this thing kept intact, but there is no way I'll be sailing with that thing on my deck, so needs to go below decks, hence the hack. I did a rough estimation of the current outside HX line length. There are 3 circuits in parallel in the HX totaling about 51m of pipe, pipe seems to be around 7-8mm OD.
An idea would be to make my own HX based on that pipe length, 3 coils of 8mm Cu tube inside black PEX or HDPE pipe in parallel, each coil 17m of pipe length. Could stack them all in a bucket with the compressor and other guts inside the bucket and be done with it. Now, writing about it, seems very doable and easy. It would be damn nice to have a shiny of the shelf shell in tube HX though...

Here are some of the coax exchangers you speak of... Turbotec brand:
http://www.boreal-geothermal.ca/imag...elixspec21.gif
http://www.boreal-geothermal.ca/imag...ec_table11.png
smaller
http://www.boreal-geothermal.ca/imag...ralspecs21.gif
http://www.boreal-geothermal.ca/imag...ec_table21.png
larger

In the USA, these coax coils can be found on ebay or at surplus city liquidators. Your mileage may vary in Europe.

Surplus City Liquidators

Yeah, those would be nice. I contacted them about shipping one of those over here, they only want to ship with UPS which was ridiculous in price. USPS would be 4 times cheaper. Interestingly almost all HX from turbotec are rated 450psi, which is too little for R410a, however, I found that they have updated product codes for some of them and with the updated code they are rated for R410a, I suspect it is the same product, but who knows.

I also learned that a 1ton HX is not a 1 ton HX everywhere and in every application. They are rated for a certain evaporating/condensing temperature and most of them don't mention the temperature they are rated for. Basically if you need to suck heat from -20deg C outside air your HX, even if in 1 ton is huge and probably equivalent to a much higher tonnage for warmer temps. Given this, if I will have a change, I will go much higher than 1 ton.

More poking inside the outdoor unit. Found a little metal encased box at the bottom of the unit. After checking several other manuals from other units, I now presume it is a so called 'reactor'. What exactly is it and what is it doing ? Anyone knows ?

If they turn out to be what you need you can have it shipped to me in the states. When I get we can mail it out to you USPS you can just paypal me actual shipping. We ship six days a week we will just add it with the other we stuff we ship.

Any updates on this BeerGrylls?

That's the boost inductor for the active PFC.

spring is coming
 

Hi All,
Firstly, many thanks pinballooking for the offer. Unfortunately I haven't found a suitable HX yet. If I do find one in the states I would definitely appreciate some help with shipping. Secondly, there is no progress except doing lots of reading and searching for HXs. This is a high pressure unit and there aren't any HX I can afford around this corner of the world, or other places. I am also studying the design of this pump and others as well, to see why and how they are built they way they are.
Thirdly, what is a boost inductor for the active pfc in laymen terms ?
Last night I pulled the entire indoor unit apart due to noise and vibration, was trying to rip itself off the bulkhead. I found out: the centrifugal blower end support it is really bad design, and those little Chinese children assembling the unit forgot to add grease in this rubber end sleeve suporting the blower on one end. Now it is packed with grease and running smoothly, at least for some time...
Since there is no HX in sight, I have been thinking of stripping all the alu fins off the outdoor hx, unfold it flat ( it us L shaped now) and put it in a black box with a perspex or acrylic glass screen and mount it on the boat transom. When real warm weather comes I will first evacuate the unit and start chopping it up. I am really afraiud of how much a company will quote me for the gas recovery, been thinking better find a recovery machine on ebay, do my work with it and sell it again...
Anyway, this is as much info I have for the moment. Been really happy with the unit so far. About 7.8kw/day average. We had about 2 weeks of -10 degrees, ice around the boat, but not touching the hull. Boat was warming the water around it.
Another hx alternative I have been thinking about - buy a used cheap big indoor unit, strip the hx as it is compact and put it in some sort of casing.
Cheers from the warm boat.
F

Btw I have looked at the size of the current hx for referrence, if anyone interested.
Outdoor about 51 lenghts of 76cm pipes, 3 circuits, pipe is 7.6? mm weird diameter, probably not metric.
Indoor 36 lenghts of 70cm pipes , same od, 4 circuits.

So indoor hx is roughly 2/3 of outdoor hx.
Cheers
F