Quote:
Originally Posted by osolemio
For almost five years now, I'm still working on my massive renovation project, which for monetary and personal reasons and for lack of the parts I need, have been dormant for a while.
It must have been done before - any advise here?
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osolemio,
I have followed your efforts for a long time, ever since your first post to this forum.
Everything that Jeff said is true and it will work and is quite suitable if you are a college student living in a dorm. It could possibly even be a good idea if your use is fairly limited, living as you do.
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You live in a house and you have gone to considerable expense and effort to improve your house. I am amazed at the work and accomplishments you have achieved.
I would ask you to reconsider your project a bit. Breaking into an air conditioner or a dehumidifier is not the Dark Art that many people believe. In fact, there are several people on this blog, Jeff is a good example, who have broken into more than one (he'll have to tell you how many).
You would need some tools or perhaps some friendly help but it could be a lot of fun for you, and would certainly be an improvement on the college student's styrofoam cooler unit.
I think that the weak part of that unit is the heat exchanger, the styrofoam cooler, and the open water bath and the aluminum & copper refrigerant-to-air heat exchanger used as a water to air heat exchanger.
I would start with trying to find out how much dehumidifying power you will need for a house like yours. Surely you have friends who live in houses similar to yours who also use dehumidifiers. Find out what size they use. There should be a label on the dehumidifier somewhere that will tell you how may watts a similar system actually uses. This would give you a good starting point, so even if you wanted to make a rig like Jeff suggested, it would be the right size.
But I would go farther and get or make a good refrigerant-to-water heat exchanger.
If the circuit you are going to store the heat into is closed (not a steady suppply of new water) then I'd suggest a brazed plate heat exchanger. (not so easy to make)
If the circuit is open (new water is constantly coming in from some outside source) I would suggest at tube-in-tube heat exchanger (HX) which you could buy or make. (not so difficult to make)
If you wanted to proceed down this road, there are other threads with useful photos that you can follow.
I don't know when the season will arrive in your area, for which you will need dehumidification... If it is soon you might want to try Jeff's idea. But I still think you should do a bit of research, to find out how many watts are required to get the dehumidification you need.
Then later, after the season is passed, you might want to do some serious improvements... and you would be starting with a compressor and evaporative (cold) heat exchanger of the proper size.
Best,
-AC