Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryland
I would like to do a heat pump with the fluid running through hot water panels instead of the ground, unless it was night time then you have a small ground loop.
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Ryland,
I like your thinking.
I'm considering a very similar idea myself.
I've been haunting Craigs List and have found 10 solar hot water units,from various sellers, for very cheap. In fact, buying the solar collectors also bought me three rather expensive circulation pumps and a differential controller unit. All of which I will need in my master plan.
This is the graphic from my first heat pump performance experiment. It tells me that heat pumps can operate very happily with feed temperatures from above freezing to 80 degrees, and that the COP goes up as feed temperature goes up. But I have heard, and it does sound reasonable, that there is an upper limit where overly-hot feed temps will boil the refrigerant, and unexpected results can follow.
So, I have found out that a
very well designed radiant floor can operate on feed temperatures as low as 90 degrees. This would help with the overly-hot feed temps, just switch the heat pump out of the loop and feed solar water directly to the slab. The concept sounds easy, the implimentation would be more difficult.
Another approach would be to use a large (very large) well-insulated heat storage tank. All solar heat would go there, and house heat would be removed, as needed by the heat pump.
But the earth could also be used as a heat storage reservoir. In this scenario, all solar heat would be pumped through a loop-field and into the ground (a very large heat reservoir) and removed by the heat pump as needed.
underground heat storage
Food for thought:
Regards,
-AC_Hacker
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