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Old 09-13-13, 09:24 AM   #1
Daox
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Default Heat Pumps for dummies (beginners guide)

This site has accumulated a pretty huge wealth of heat pump information. However, there are many who are completely baffled by how these magical machines work at over 100% efficiency. Now throw in all the technical terms used to explain the different bits of the system and you can really get confused. This thread will attempt to go over the basics of how a heat pump works, and demystify things for beginners.

Table of Contents
- What is a heat pump?
- How do heat pumps work?


=================================================

What is a heat pump?

OK... to start off, a Heat Pump is really a pump. But it pumps heat instead of, for example, water.

Like a water pump, a heat pump moves stuff from one place to another place... only, since it is a heat pump, it moves heat from one place to another place.

A common kind of heat pump, that is used often, gathers heat that is in air, and moves that heat inside a house to keep us warm.

Here is a photo of a very common type of heat pump:


It will have a large fan in the top that will draw a very large amount of air through the unit, and extract heat from the air which will heat a liquid.

It then sends the heated liquid into the house through a small pipe (that is barely visible on the lower left side of the heat pump).


Here's another photo of a heat pump... this one is extracting heat from cold winter air, and sending it into the house to keep everyone inside warm and cozy...


So as you can see, heat pumps can even extract heat form cold air to help us warm our house.

Look at this diagram, it shows how a heat pump can work:



Here is another picture of a house that is heated with a heat pump...


You may be asking yourself, "Where is the heat pump?"

You can't really see the heat pump because it is in the basement, an another important part is under the ground...


Before this house was built, deep trenches were dug and long coils of strong plastic pipe were placed in the trenches and then they were buried. Water is pumped through the many feet of plastic pipe, and this time, the heat pump is able to extract heat from the many, many tons of earth... and then the heat is sent into the house to keep everybody comfortable and happy during the cold winter season. So, the pipes are in the ground, and the heat pump is in the basement, working reliably and quietly doing its job.

If you had X-ray vision, you would be able to see something like this:



The simplest, most common heat pump is a refrigerator or deep freezer. It moves heat from inside the box to outside the box. A thermostat inside the box maintains a set temperature, so when the box gets warm, it starts pumping heat out of the box. When the box is cooled enough, the pumping stops until it warms again.

Many people would think that this is all terribly complex. Why would anyone go to all this bother with compressors, and refrigerants, and loops and other complex things?


In the winter, when we want to stay warm, many people burn natural gas or oil or wood to stay warm, it seems to work OK?

The problem is that all of these fuels are becoming more expensive and harder to obtain just about every year.

* * *


The physicists tell us that even when it is winter, and the cold winds are blowing, and lakes and rivers are covered with thick sheets of ice, and the earth is frozen and the ground become very hard under our feet, that there is still some heat there. It is low 'grade heat' and we can't use it directly to heat our houses. In fact if we tried, our homes would just get colder.

But a wonderful thing about heat pumps and their complex parts, is that they are able to gather up this 'low grade heat' and make it usable for us to heat our homes. The wonderful thing about low grade heat is that there is a huge amount of it, and heat pumps can gather it up for less money than if we were to heat with, for instance, oil.

So the question you may be thinking is, "How can a heat pump gather any heat from air that is colder than ice, or from the ground in winter, or from the water in a frozen lake? I mean, if you fell through the ice and into the cold water, you might die!


So, exactly how can a heat pump gather heat from air, or earth, or water that is so cold?!?!?

Well, you are now going to read just how this is done...


=================================================



Things we should cover:
- basics of operation
- diagram of a heat pump and its parts
- different refrigerant types, and their pros & cons
- tools for working on heat pumps
- abbreviations (what the heck is a txv?)
- ???


I personally do not know all that much so I am relying on you guys to compile some good links, images, and descriptions of parts to help out other beginners. As information is compiled I'll keep updating the first post to make a nice beginners guide to heat pumps. I'm going to sticky this so that we can get more people understanding, contributing, and using these wonderful pieces of equipment.

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Last edited by Daox; 09-20-13 at 12:57 PM..
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