The Homemade Heat Pump Manifesto

[AC_Hacker]

Originally Posted by BeerGrylls

I guess a potential problem is that the guys wanting to cool their pc gear are not necessarily concerned with power consumption. We are not just interested in the hot end, but a high COP hot end. Do cascading systems have low COP ? I would assume so.

It might be lower, but in severe climates, where single stage wouldn't work at all, a cascade configuration, even its COP was lower, and complexity was greater, may be very desirable.

What makes me think this is that there was a company that sold just such a severe climate system, but apparently they 'cheated' on the margin of safety and the failure rate of systems in service forced them out of business.

This says to me that cascade systems can work but they require careful design.

-AC