The Homemade Heat Pump Manifesto

[AC_Hacker]

Originally Posted by BeerGrylls

Thanks AC ! I would love to hear the details of the HX...

BeerGrylls,

I think that this conversation would be better continued on THIS THREAD that is in the "For Sale" area.

Best,

-AC

[AC_Hacker]

Originally Posted by waterdigger2

Ten four. I can telll you the basic components of it. Though. Seems like your place dont have that high of a water table so it prob would be a bit harder for you than me being mine is more less sandy and looks like youve got more of a clay. Any one down in the southern areas closer to the coast can jet one down fairly easily.

waterdigger2,

Your method might not work for me in my back yard, but this forum is being read world wide, and techniques that work for you, will work for some other people in areas of the country or areas of the world that neither of us has ever heard of.

Besides, people living in other difficult to drill areas, may see in your method, ideas that they could adapt to their own drilling projects.

From this forum, I've already gotten loads of great ideas from Aussies and Kiwis and Greeks and Spaniards and Englishmen and Irishmen and Canadians and Norwegians, and Danes and Argentinians, and South Africans, and also Mississippians, too (to name a few).

It's really going on!

Best,

-AC

[nokiasixteth]

Hi Ac Hacker . I am interested in doing a hack on my ac. I do not have experience in saudering though. I seen you drilled your own 17 ft holes. Would it be possible to use the drip irrigation pipe for the geothermal loops ?
Also i see some guys have turned the window units around and made them into a heat pump. Would it be possible to modify a 8kbtu unit to heat my place and turn it back around during summer to cool and would it be more efficient than a space heater and regular ac if i hacked it to use the geothermal

[AC_Hacker]

Originally Posted by nokiasixteth

Hi Ac Hacker . I am interested in doing a hack on my ac. I do not have experience in saudering though. I seen you drilled your own 17 ft holes. Would it be possible to use the drip irrigation pipe for the geothermal loops ?

There's going to be pressure from the ground and your loops will need to be able to withstand that pressure. I used the kind of black pipe that is used for putting in yard sprinklers. It comes in 3/4" diameter and also 1" diameter. The wall thickness was a bit less than 1/8". I think there might also be a slightly thinner wall, but I thought that the pipe I got would be easier to weld. I know I saw some stuff that was so thin that I could mash it with my thumb, so I didn't even want to try to use it.

Originally Posted by nokiasixteth

Also i see some guys have turned the window units around and made them into a heat pump.

Yes, jeff5may did something like that RIGHT HERE and he's had pretty good luck with it, in fact he's probably using it right now to heat his home in Kentucky.

Originally Posted by nokiasixteth

Would it be possible to modify a 8kbtu unit to heat my place and turn it back around during summer to cool

Yes you can do that too. But the thermostat on the A/C will be outside if you turn it around, and also the thermostat only knows to turn off the unit when the air gets cool enough. So you'll need to do a little inventing there. jeff5may might have some ideas for you.

Originally Posted by nokiasixteth

...and would it be more efficient than a space heater and regular ac if i hacked it to use the geothermal

It would be more efficient than a space heater if you just turned it around backwards and used only cold air as your heat source...

It would be even more efficient than that if you used it as a ground source heat pump and ground source A/C. That's assuming that your loop field is sufficiently large.

There's another Mississippian named waterdigger2 who is working on a similar project. He seems to have some good technique worked out for drilling the holes. Sounds like at least some of the Mississippi soil is ideal for building your own GSHP.

You guys should get in touch. You could become the Mighty Mississippi Hole Drilling Duo!

But I tell you nokiasixteth, soldering, or more correctly brazing is really not very tough to do. In terms of difficulty, I'd say it's about as difficult as frying bacon and scrambling eggs.

The part that might be a challenge is working with gas... vacuuming down, introducing the gas, that kind of thing. But it's a matter of finding tools and learning to use them. That's what make us different from chimpanzees... we are tool users... also chimpanzees eat a lot more bananas than we do.

If you have more question, fire away... this stuff is really a lot of fun.

Best,

-AC

[nokiasixteth]

Im sure i can figure it out. Looked at some of jeff5may page . Looks interestin. Here in Ms almost everyone knows a little bit about drillin. You either doodle bug - aka siesmic or siesmigraph. Or work in a factory. I to know how to drill a hole . Last year i modified a old pool pump and 6 sticks of 1 1/4 pvc with nails at the bottom and drilled a hole at 37ft. Only reason i stopped is at the time i didnt realize that viscosity plays a major roll in sand and i stuck my pipe. 2nd attempt i made a hole 30ft and stayed open for me by useing bentonite. I dont have a way of doing mine 250ft like waterdigger2 did but i think that i could get several at 30ft fairly easily .

I didnt think about the pressure from the ground squeezin that stuff. Yea . Guess drip irrigation wouldnt be that good of a idea.

About how many kw hours do you run on a avg day. Reason be. I am also planning to do a solar grid tie with a battery backup and would like to know about how many pannels i will need to build.

Im not really in a major hurry to build anything yet . I am just on the research phase though for now. But may start buyin up a few supplies soon

[AC_Hacker]

Originally Posted by nokiasixteth

...About how many kw hours do you run on a avg day. Reason be. I am also planning to do a solar grid tie with a battery backup and would like to know about how many pannels i will need to build.

I can tell you what my power consumption is per day here in Portland, Oregon, but I'm not so sure I'd recommend building a solar installation in Mississippi based on that. There are just so many things at play.

But in the wintertime, I'm using about 16 to 18 kWh/day and in the summer it drops to about 9 to 10 kWh/day.

I should be using less, and I'm working to reduce it.

EcoRenovator has a major cluster of solar-related threads RIGHT HERE that should be helpful for you. Where I live, it rains or is overcast almost all of the winter, so solar wouldn't help me there. In the summer, the sun is working really hard for us, and I'd like to capture some of that.

When I get my most pressing projects under control, I'd like to add solar, too. After all, it is where all our heat & energy ultimately come from.

Best,

-AC

[nokiasixteth]

There is a whole lot of useful information on here . I didnt even know that there was any about solar on here . I clicked another link and it come up solar heating. I see waterdigger2 also says he is building a heater for his place . Maybe if he isnt to far from me i may have to look him up . Kinda didnt put any details though on to what he is doin.
I may have to buy some of those materials and build a small panel for heat pretty soon because that takes up a whole lot of my power consumption

Right now i am usin space heaters for my house. I seen a picture of someones air conditioner turned backwards . Well i tried it and the compressor didnt even turn on . Didnt take into account that the temp wasnt high enough for it to switch on . Would there be a way to by pass the Acs temp sensor and fix a sensor that would switch the compressor on and off using an external temp sensor just hooking into the electronics and not having to cut and (braze) for the time being ?

Im guessing that is the power consumption for your whole house i was sorta asking about just the Unit that you had built using the geothermal.
I have one of the KilAwatt meters on a radiator heater. Says 128 hours and 125 kw hrs. Heating 234 sq ft Thats prob higher than it normally is . Being the past 2 or 3 nights we have had the lowest temps in for ever temps for last night was 17 degrees and night b4 was 13. Supposed to warm back up.

Not sure if that is useful data or not. 24 tonight 38 then 56 then back down to 38 and 41 But we rarely ever see temps that low

[MN Renovator]

"Would there be a way to by pass the Acs temp sensor and fix a sensor that would switch the compressor on and off using an external temp sensor just hooking into the electronics and not having to cut and (braze) for the time being ?"

Crude option 1: You would need to see if you can move the thermocouple. I have a small 5k BTUhr AC unit and it has a thermocouple mounted in front of the evaporator coil with wiring that appears long enough to route towards the back of the unit. I'd then set the unit to 60 degrees with the thermocouple inside the house or in the hot exhaust.

Crude option 2: If you can handle basic electrical wiring would be to bypass the controls and have it power up whenever its plugged in. If you go this route and everything works you could then use a line voltage heating thermostat to switch the unit on and off.

One problem: This is an AC unit with a cap tube system(usually heat pumps use a TXV to maximize heat output and increase efficiency) and isn't designed to heat, you'll need to do some experimentation on how well this unit can heat at 17 degrees. You also don't have any sort of defrost control so you'll need to figure that out too, as soon as the coil freezes you'll need to turn it off because you won't be pumping heat in the house anymore. If this was used slightly above freezing temp you could have a switch that shuts the unit off when the coil hits freezing temperature and kick back on when it is warm enough.

Others will provide more information than me but that should be a start in order to test.

[pinballlooking]

Originally Posted by AC_Hacker

Glenn,

But if you're actually thinking about doing this yourself, you need to give yourself the benefit of all the information you can lay your ambitious hands on. So if you're expecting to save the better part of $10,000 you'd be well advised to spend $100 and go straight to the source of information: Publications | Manuals. In fact, they offer a ground source installer course at a pretty reasonable cost. My advise is to go for it!

Did you get this book was it good? I just bought copy of it on Ebay for $26.50 shipped.
She said. “My husband needed this for a geothermal class. Cover is slightly damaged but book is in overall great condition.”


She shipped it today so I hope it is a good book and I have lots of reading ahead of me.

[AC_Hacker]

Originally Posted by pinballlooking

Did you get this book was it good? I just bought copy of it on Ebay for $26.50 shipped. She said. “My husband needed this for a geothermal class. Cover is slightly damaged but book is in overall great condition.” She shipped it today so I hope it is a good book and I have lots of reading ahead of me.

Awesome find! I considered the $100 I spent to be a great deal.

Don't expect it to read like a novel. It has specific distilled information gathered over 50+ years.

There are some pages you might need to spend an evening going over, to let it really sink in.

They also sell a computer program that has quite a bit of the lore all loaded and co-related. But everything you need to know will be in the book. Now if you were going to go into the business of designing and installing GSHP systems, the program would be a no-brainer. Or if you could pick it up on ebay for $25, then go for it.

I think that you will be amazed at how many important variables there are in a GSHP system, and the book does such a great job of covering it.

Only thing you won't find is how to build your own heat pump, and that is what I have attempted to do here.

My price = free

-AC