I wish I had the resources some of the people on this board/thread do. It seems everyone knows someone in the HVAC/R trade, but scouring my brain I don't believe I do, unfortunately. So I just hope I don't break the seal, at least not for my vacation experiment.
I fully agree with you that for heating I'd be better off with a larger Evaporator and the condenser being the smaller one. If I ever do end up modifying this, I would use the condenser(bigger) coil as my evap, but I am wondering if it'd be of any advantage to me to use two of them either run in series or parallel? I think series would be better if I did this, and the coil is free, from a window unit with a leak, but would there be any advantage to it in my application? This would effectively double my evap size.
I also agree that a copper coil without the aluminum fins would be perfect for the hot tub side due to the corrosion issue. Could I just cut the fins off the tubing? It would be an annoying process I'd imagine, but since I already have the coils, it's copper I wouldn't have to buy.
Just thought about the controls aspect, I have a dehumidifier control that senses when ice forms on the coil and shuts the unit off so it can melt, maybe this could act as a sort of defrost board so I could let it run when I'm not out there to check on it. If that doesn't work I can always fall back on the old put it on a timer that shuts it off for 5-10 minutes every half hour or however long it seems to take on average. As far as temp controls go, having the Spa Pack makes that easy. It has a temp sensor, thermostat, and contacts for the heating element already installed. I'm just going to disconnect the terminals from the heating element and reconnect them to an outlet. It's designed to handle the element so it should have no problem with an A/c drawing half that. I'm so impatient to get back home and try this out!
I saw that Aquario did and went to his website to see further details. His results seemed very promising and are even more inspiration to do my own experiments. This summer I fully intend on becoming a full fledged hacker and learning to braze and charge my home made heat pumps.
Adam
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