Posted on 06/22/2024 6:49:34 PM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
All great in your situation or where someone has unlimited running water. But these idiot climate hoaxers are demanding Therese for the entire state (nation soon to follow). What will a 50 unit apartment in Yonkers use for the heat sink? Where will the electricity come from. Where will the plumbing occurs? AND, how soon after they are mandated and somehow installed until the same clowns ban the chemicals and refrigerants, in the combo units?
But of course we are talking about saving the entire planet so nothing is too extreme...or stupid... for a politician.
Disclosure. I did work for a company that design seawater heat pumps for tropical applications. I didn’t do work on the heat tranfer side. Not smart enough for that. I did the mechanical designs and CFD analysis. I never saw a project to completion but it looked great on paper.
Wow! You have an excellent ground source with that well!
Well, my situation of ‘unlimited running water’ certainly sweetens the pot but I think the evidence is that they will make good sense in many other situations. The reason I went to some length to write up post 90 was simply because so many posters seemed to be of the view that ‘heat pumps simply don’t work at lower temperatures’.... I think that certainly was the case with ones built in the 70s and 80s and maybe for quite a long time after that. But let’s not turn this into a serious case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in that generalization. I think the data showing that the COP for modern heat pump units being quite good at low temperatures looks to be very compelling. As for how long they last? That’s another question and based on what has happened with refrigerators in recent years, the track record isn’t good.
Should the nutcases be allowed to mandate them just becauase they might be a good idea? That’s ridiculous... Will doing ‘fuel switching’ from gas to electricity put more load on the grid? Obviously and that needs to be dealt with... and don’t get me started on how atrocious wind and solar are as electrical sources. Are they applicable to every situation? Obviously not... the heating requirements for a residence are not the same as the apartment in Yonkers.
By the way, CFD analysis is a big part of what my company does....
Yup.... kinda lucked into that one, didn’t I?
It’s a funny thing... I obviously knew I had an artesian well when we bought the place but it actually took me a year or so before I had the brainwave on how to take advantage of this. I check the head pressure on occasion and back in May I put a garden hose on a pipe fitting at the well and lifted the hose up to see how high it could go before the head was high enough to stop the water flow..... it was at about 20 feet!
Wow!
Thanks for all the interesting info...
I just remember visiting family in northern MN in the 1960s and re-learning what “cold” weather was...
I say “re-learning” because of my time in Korea in 1951-1952...
Your explanation may have some merit but I think that much of the unreliability relates to the design complexity that has been forced on the manufacturers and the fact that more and more is being crammed into less and less space. Case in point... how many examples does one need in the automotive industry of new regulations being forced on to the manufacturers that a) quite often don’t meet any of the original objectives and b) ultimate cause nothing but grief to the owner? For the pickup truck that I bought that had 4 to 8 cylinder AFM switching capabilities, did that do anything to increase the life of my vehicle? Of course it didn’t... caused all kinds of injector and other problems. Well, just look at that principle as applied to stuff with refrigeration cycles...
Thank you for that.
“Not only do heat pumps work fine in cold weather, they’re still more efficient than gas furnaces in such conditions.”
This isn’t backed up in the article and I doubt they’re counting the inefficiencies of power generation and transmission. It’s similar to claiming electric cars on ‘non-polluting’.
Your method of using an underground water source is great. I had the same thought on a lake house I looked at. The water temperature was about 55 to 65 degrees year round since the water came off the bottom of a damn. Just using that water to keep the house air in that temperature range to start before additional heating or cooling is a major energy saving.
Doesn’t mean they don’t work in cold weather, which is what I was addressing.
Well as I said in another post, the water source was more luck than good planning but I’ll take it.
If had a lake house, I’d be looking at something like that as well. One thing to keep in mind is that if the water has to travel some distance, there are obviously pumping costs but in addition to that, if the distance is significant to the house, there will be thermal losses as well... it might start off at 55 to 65 degrees but will be where it is used? That’s the important question.
Speaking of aerodynamics, maybe you can weigh in on this.
I ride a motorcycle. Hot & cold weather. Usually I like to stay at 45 or above in the cooler months.
No one in any of my riding groups agrees with me, but I think riding at 45 feels like the aerodynamics are minutely different than at 80. Everyone else says it’s my imagination.
Thanks, hectic skeptic.
I read the Rah-Rah heat pump site from an earlier poster (Brian Griffin), and it had both useful information, and some caveats.
The useful information is that compared to earlier-generation heat pumps, a log of modifications have been performed to the tubing which performs the heat exchange; IIRC (I was up too late last night) these involved scoring and/or changes to surface area;; and improvements to the fans and motors.
The compressors have been changed to be variable speed (this follows similar innovations in furnaces and air condtioners, the latter of which are also heat pumps).
Thd caveats were that they recommended you both seal and insulate your home...which sounds suspiciously like the heat-pump company writing themselves a large check while allowing themselves plausibile deniabililty.
I’ll tty to get time to read through your sources (maybe next three weeks) but for the moment I remain skeptical.
I have had experience with “older” heat pumps maybe 30 years ago, where during single-digit weather, maybe up to the mid-teens, the heat pump pushed out “luke-cool” air...
“Doesn’t mean they don’t work in cold weather, which is what I was addressing.”
They do work, down to a point, so they’re better than nothing, and their efficiency is someone higher than a resistance heater down there, so that’s good. But what of the cost, as they DEFINITELY more complex? Once can buy a lot of electricity for the cost of these units.
I don’t have a big problem with heat pumps, though. But if we start replacing fossil fuel heating system with them (soon to be mandated in NY State), we better have a hell of a lot more power generation or we’ll have some SERIOUS Texas-style freeze-outs, and like Texas, at the WORST TIMES.
Thd caveats were that they recommended you both seal and insulate your home...which sounds suspiciously like the heat-pump company writing themselves a large check while allowing themselves plausibile deniabililty.
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Well, it’s always a good idea to ‘seal and insulate’ a home as this drops the demands on the equipment and reduces your energy bills. Being able to do air change is important but it obviously more efficient to do that in a controlled way with an air-to-air heat exchanger than to have gaping holes in the house. However, that really has nothing to do with whether the heat pump company provides equipment that actually works... maybe they are just give you some tips that will drop your energy bill while at the same time, offloading their equipment if they are concerned it isn’t up for the task if it has to run continuously.
Not sure I’m following your logic there. Yeah, it may well have been a massive waste of yet more taxpayer dollars to subsidize heat pumps that weren’t justified on their own: I don’t know. But they generally pull less from the grid than fully electric heating and cooling, so are useful there.
Fossil fuels (not that they are really “fossil” fuels) are still my favorites, btw.
“But they generally pull less from the grid than fully electric heating and cooling, so are useful there.”
I agree, and if people weren’t MANDATING heat pumps (or other electric heating systems) in lieu of fossil fuels, then I wouldn’t have a problem either.
Everyone else says it’s my imagination.
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I don’t think it’s your imagination. I’ll just comment on one aspect that at least can be easily understand... and frankly beyond this, I’m not sure what else to comment on without thinking more about this.
Let’s examine the difference between 45 and 80 degrees F. First of all, one needs to think in terms of absolute temperature values so let’s do a conversion... 0 degrees F is 460 R. You mentioned 45 degrees F and this is 460 + 45 which is 505 R. On the other side, 80 degrees F is 540 R.
Ok... Air density varies as the inverse of the absolute temperature ratio. Now there are other things besides temperature that affect density (humidity, elevation, barometric pressure etc.) but let’s assume that all those other things are equal. Bottom line is that when the temperature goes up from 45 to 80 degrees F, the air density drops by the ratio of 505/540 i.e. 0.935. Similarly when going from 80 back down to 45 degrees F, the density goes up by the ratio of 540/505 which is 1.07. Although it is a bit more complicated than this, the drag you feel as you ride your bike will vary by this amount that the air density has changed by.
Hopefully no on calls you ‘overly sensitive’.... but is what I’ve described the sort of thing that you were thinking of?
I’m with you there!
The issue I have with heat pumps is it always feels like your AC is on because its never blowing hot air like a gas furnace.
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