Quote:
Originally Posted by Xringer
I think being in the shade helps in the summer time.
But, being in the sun during the winter would help a lot more..
The cost of summer cooling around here, is nothing compared to winter heating cost.
I've considered piping air in from under my den & deck. It would contain less snow..
And in the summer, it's cooler under there.
The earth tube idea is good, but the cost would be outtasight..
One other way would be to hang an HX with a lot of passthru at the intake,
and run coolant thru it via a big ground loop.. My ground water table is very close to the surface..
Make it into a hybrid AS/GS heat pump..  |
The sun/shade thing has been researched, and shade doesn't matter in summer. The unit is not extracting heat from the sun, but from the air, and the air doesn't really change shade or sun (obviously extremes don't apply). Google for the research. Makes sense when you think about it a bit.
Earthtubes if say you are doing new construction, just cover the whole lot.
Piping air from under deck or similar I think would suffer from similar to the earth tubes. At first startup, you would be drawing different air possibly, as it has sat there, but the constant movement means the air temp would change little on it's path through. (reasonable) Earthtubes help with that, but I think the ground would saturate/stabilize fairly quick unless there was some design and a large amount of land to it.
Lack of snow input could be helpful during those times which are rare overall. I haven't noticed it be an issue if the unit is under a house over hang.