Steve no offense taken. I've been a member here for a while but I haven't contributed a whole lot.. So little is known about me.. I've just been trying to take it all in. This is by far the best site for phase change information. Anyway.
I'm one of the jack of all trades type. But I'm a master at none. My day job I work at an R&D shop for a very very large company. I'm a machinist welder fabricator designer engineer and so on. They pretty much come to me with a stack of drawings and say make this.. Although I only have a HS diploma so I'm actually not an engineer or anything of the sorts even tho I do the job from time to time lol
Mechanical things are my favorite. Been working on things with motors my entire life. My dad taught me how to weld when I was 9 or 10 and I've been doing it ever since. I'm also pretty good with electrical and plumbing.
Although I won't lie the refrigeration cycle will be a learning curve and I'm sure it will be a big one. I have two 12k btu units I picked up a long time ago. I also have a 2.5 or 3 ton r22 unit from my dads house. It's old but it functioned when pulled. So I'll have lots of units to mess with whenever I get the time.
But I guess to further this project I need to do some real heat load calculations. I think my locat utility does one of those energy audit programs and I'll look into that after I move in. One of the things I'll probably need the most help with is sizing heat exchangers and tuning sizes. I really like the idea of not having the heat pump in the house. I'd rather have it in the barn. But it's easily 150 feet from the house. The pool is right in the middle of that.
I added a photo to my random album. It's an over view of the new property. The blue line is where the fence will go for the dogs. The blue circle is about where the pond will go. I cannot add the picture to my post because I'm on my phone and it crashes when I try to do it
