Quote:
Originally Posted by AC_Hacker
BillG,
Welcome aboard!
Tell us what you want to do.
Let her rip BillG!
Sincerely,
-AC_Hacker
|
Well, I'm only about ten pages into the thread, and maybe it will answer the questions after I get further. There are a couple of projects in mind. First, I am planning to build a cabin soon, to Passivhaus specs or close, just north of the big running nose of the Wisconsin Indianhead. One thought was to string out a bunch of PEX underground, and pump glycol through it to preheat/precool the ventilation air. Then, I wondered if I could do better by doing a custom air to air heat pump made from a dehumidifier, then thought about extending the field a little more and making a ground source heat pump. The load will be too small for a big commercial unit.
I've wondered if a tiny W2W heat pump would benefit solar thermal on a marginal day, making the collectors more efficient and getting a more usable water temp out. Again, tiny load, commercial units too big.
Another project is actually a friend's, who has a great solar/geothermal source for supplementary heating, which could make good use of a tiny W2W heat pump.
Haven't done the math on any yet, and need to decide if the overhead energy makes sense to invest or not on such small loads,. or whether it is better to go passive on the preheat-precool with an earth tube.