Heat house with dehumidifier

[jeff5may]

Why not just exhaust the cold air? Then the unit will run at high efficiency no matter how cold it is outside. If you have enough airfllow, the evap coil might not even freeze up. I tried this already and it works fine as long as you don't feed the unit cold air.
I found a few pics, here is the little one.

On this unit, the coils were only an inch apart, so i made some wedges and spread the coils on top. I put a wall in to separate cold from hot, and sucked cold air out with a double squirrel cage fan from a dead spacesaver microwave. For suction lines, i used dryer hoses. Boy it was ugly, but it worked!

Later, i tried hanging the cold side out the sunroom window, and it froze up like crazy.
This one has the five dollar defrost. I believe I'm going to borrow from this design to put a defrost control in my current project because it works like magic.

I used this one upstairs for a whole winter, spouting its cold air into the attic. I Put it on a waterbed heater thermostat. It warmed better than a space toaster and helped me water the plants upstairs. Alas, my wife said it was ugly, so the following spring it was banished to the barn. The End.

[ecomodded]

Your last heat pump had that post apocalypse look that not many housewives would be fond of ,how about a cardboard box over it with Lennox painted on the side


The reason i want to vent the evaporator with outside air is because that way i will scavenge my heat from outside, as heat pumps do, since i am converting it to a heat pump.

Ice build up is a problem with heat pumps and air-conditioners or my modified dehumidifier.
The solution is air flow. the more airflow the longer you can go without requiring a defrost, they all will eventually need a defrost cycle.

I will have my inline high flow fan pulling air threw the plywood evaporator box, at a much increased flow rate then it has now.

Air flow is the key to outdoor venting.

[ecomodded]

Update:

I bought a 100w, 7 watt per ft, 15 ft heater wire(heat tape) and zip tied it tightly inside the evaporator.
It looks hilarious right now.
The evaporator is pulled away from the unit, with 75 zip tie's long ends sticking out from everywhere, like a plastic porcupine that makes me doubt my sanity..
I will cut the ends off before i mount it in a drain equipped vent box.
My inline fan pulls 270 cfm , i will have it on a 3-way switch.
I am going to keep the units current condenser fan (120w) only on a added 3-way switch, i expect to use it on low speed as it will no longer need to pull air threw both the evaporator and condenser.

A delay is expected:

I can get parts for the vent work for next to nothing , but i have to drive a 70 mile round trip to do it so i will wait till next week when i plan on going there for my dog's food, a Costco brand lamb and veggie dry dog food (which i recommend)

[AC_Hacker]

I really like what you're doing here. You might want to consider keeping an eye out for a HVAC vacuum pump and learn how to braze and recharge systems. You have some good gumption going on here!

Originally Posted by ecomodded

...i will wait till next week when i plan on going there for my dog's food, a Costco brand lamb and veggie dry dog food (which i recommend)

Long as you're going into town, might drop by a Goodwill (if they have those in Canada) and look for a better camera. I got a really good one for $7 (US).

Seems that people are tossing perfectly good cameras away to get newer, better... so maybe 'trickle-down' has a few benefits.

Keep up the good work!

-AC

[ecomodded]

My little digi takes 16:9 format pic's,which i like because it fits my screen perfect, a pocket 7mp Olympus that works better then one would suspect.
i think you mistook Jeff5may's digitally converted photos of his Converted Air Beast as my photography examples? or are my uploaded photo's in two small of a format ? I downsize my photo's so they are less obtrusive.

If i was to make a conversion of a large air-conditioner I would indeed want to disassemble it, put a reverse valve in, reorient the parts as they should be with the condenser outside and the evaporator inside.
My little dehumidifier is going to retain its portability and still be reversible by placing the unit outside and the vents inside.
If i can make this 600w peak(300w average) dehumidifier to perform better then a 1000 watt heater i will be impressed, and content with its gains.

Before mods the dehumidifier seems to throw close to 1000w of heat, with the chiller outdoors it can only get hotter inside, I hope to heat a 12 x 12 upstairs guest bedroom with its door open to the rest of the house. To supplement the current heating of that end of the house.
It will not be useable in the coldest part of the winter but will be used more often then not, if it even works well once i get it finished..

[AC_Hacker]

Originally Posted by ecomodded

i think you mistook Jeff5may's digitally converted photos of his Converted Air Beast as my photography examples?

I think you are right.

Originally Posted by ecomodded

If i was to make a conversion of a large air-conditioner I would indeed want to disassemble it, put a reverse valve in, reorient the parts as they should be with the condenser outside and the evaporator inside.

My point is that a lot of people are spooked and halted by the idea of hacking into the refrigerant circuit. But with a small assortment of tools that can be inexpensively had, if you shop smart, and some brazing skills which are fairly easily mastered, you can greatly expand your range of possibilities.

In fact, I am convinced that it is more difficult to cook a good omelet than it is to hack a vapor compression machine.

Originally Posted by ecomodded

If i can make this 600w peak(300w average) dehumidifier to perform better then a 1000 watt heater i will be impressed, and content with its gains.

Usually for ASHP, COP of 2.5 is readily attainable... and more is possible.

If your compressor is drawing 300 watts average, that would point to a realistic yield of 750 watts... and more is possible. So setting the bar at 1000 watts when the unit is consuming 300 watts is a fairly high standard to attain contentment... that would mean a COP of 3.33. So yeah, you could hit that too, if the outside air temp is not too low.

But if you started extracting heat from the ground or from water (even rainwater) the COP can go up pretty darn fast.

That's where serious reconfiguration can help.

Don't know if you read randon's thread, but he went the full distance, burying thousands of feet of HDPE pipe and radically reconfiguring a 2 Ton air conditioner... then he wrote me because he was getting a COP of 4.5. He was sure he had made a mistake in his calcs... the numbers were too high. But there was no mistake.

Best,

-AC

[ecomodded]

Thanks for the encouragement, I hope to install my own unit at some point.
If i happen upon a cheap large AC unit i will buy it for a heat pump conversion, good to know the info and support is there!

I am mechanically inclined,with around a 1000 lbs in tools, not counting my 300 lbs drill press

I just tested my dehumidifier with the kill-a-watt, it uses 303 w to 305 w constant for as long as i ran it, about 10 minutes as i have the evaporator pulled away from the unit.
It has a label that says 600 watts what am i missing, does it use more wattage latter on in its cycle?

[ecomodded]

My watt meter reads 305 watts and 550va at the same time on the dehumidifier.
Is it using 540-600 watts or 305 ?

All information technology equipment including computers uses an electronic switching power
supply. There are two basic types of computer switching power supplies, which are called 1)
Power Factor Corrected (PFC) supplies or 2) capacitor input supplies. It is not possible to tell
which kind of power supply is used by inspection of the equipment, and this information is not
commonly provided in equipment specifications. PFC supplies were introduced in the mid
1990’s and have the characteristic that the watt and VA ratings are equal (power factor of
0.99 to 1.0). Capacitor input supplies have the characteristic that the watt rating is in the
range of .55 to .75 times the VA rating (power factor of 0.55 to 0.75).
All large computing equipment such as routers, switches, drive arrays, and servers made
after about 1996 uses the PFC supply and consequently for this type of equipment the power
factor is 1.
Personal computers, small hubs, and personal computer accessories typically have capacitor
input supplies and consequently for this type of equipment the power factor is less than one,
and is ordinarily in the range of 0.65. Larger computer equipment made prior to 1996 also
typically used this type of power supply and exhibited a power factor less than one.

I found this as well.

Power factor is a quantity which has important implications when sizing a UPS system and
power distribution equipment. Power is a measure of the delivery rate of energy and in DC
(direct current) electrical circuits is expressed as the mathematical product of Volts and Amps
(Power = Volts x Amps). However, in AC (alternating current) power system, a complication
is introduced; namely that some AC current (Amps) may flow into and back out of the load
without delivering energy. This current, called reactive or harmonic current, gives rise to an
“apparent” power (Volt x Amps) which is larger than the actual power consumed. This
difference between the apparent power and the actual power gives rise to the power factor.
The power factor is equal to the ratio of the actual power to the apparent power. The
apparent power is expressed as the Volt-Amp or VA rating. Therefore, the actual power in
any AC system is the VA rating multiplied by the power factor.
For many types of electrical equipment the difference between apparent power (VA) and
actual power (Watts) is very slight and can be ignored, but for some computers the difference
is very large and important. Many desktop personal computers present a nonlinear load to
the AC supply. This is because they have a power supply design known as a "capacitor input
switch mode power supply". In a study done by PC Magazine, it was found that typical
personal computer systems exhibit a power factor of .65 which means that the apparent
power (VA) was 50% larger than the actual power (Watts)!
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These two articles do not seem to jive.

My vote is for va being the true reading ?

[MN Renovator]

The rating on an appliance is usually the maximum draw to expect from it. If you were using the dehumidifier in a 90 degree space it would draw much more power than if it were 50 degrees in a basement. Same with my refrigerator when it is in the 70's in the house it is drawing 150 watts after it's been running a few minutes. When it is 58 degrees in the house I measured it at 135 watts. At the colder temperature it also dropped the refrigerator internal temperature quicker and shuts off sooner, not to mention running less often with the lower ambient too.

Dial meters measure watts, not VA. If you are running a solar/wind, or other generation system VA is a larger concern. We basically get the difference between watts and VA for free from the utility and PFC alone doesn't benefit your bills, although the rest of the technology in PFC designed devices generally do make them more efficient.

[ecomodded]

I get it now, the lower power factor gives a false volt amp reading. The watt reading is the accurate one.