Heat Pump A/C

[launboy]

I hope this is in the right place...
Just wondering about this idea or if anyone is doing/ has even heard of it?

Since a Heat pump is basically Air Conditioning the outdoors when it runs, why not make a surround for it and duct it into your house or garage(it would have to be near it, like a central A/C). Then have another duct going out the top into your house blowing the cool air. I suppose you could even locate the unit in your basement/garage so the ducting would be simpler.

It just seems like such a waste to run a heat pump to heat the pool and then run an air condioner to cool the inside when you could do both in one unit. I think this would be very effective as a workshop/garage cooler, or even with ducting, could be rigged to blow on you under a cabana/covered patio and keep you cool when you're serving drinks, or enjoying them. 8)

Adam

 

[JasonLion]

Peak home AC usage is during the hottest part of the summer. Peak pool heating season is during the spring and fall. The two don't really match up all that well.

Yes, it is quite possible to connect a pool heat pump to a home AC, but doing so properly is quite expensive. Given the small overlap in usage periods, you would never pay back the initial cost.

 

[MarkC]

I would be concerned about discharging the cool air from the pool heat pump into the house as it may contain mold/mildew spores. Think about Legionaires diesease which was caused by something along those lines. On the other hand if your pool heat pump and home AC are quite close together you could probably make some type of Rube Goldberg setup to allow the cool discharge from the pool heat pump to be routed to the Home AC. It might look pretty funny.

 

[klight]

This actually isn't too far fetched and you can buy units specially made for use with swimming pools. It's pretty close to a geo-thermal heat-pump system. The water handling tubing is "upgraded" to deal with the pool water.

The place where I work actually has one. The pool is in the shade and before they re-worked the A/C system the pool would hit 100* when the A/C demand was high. The system was recently upgraded and I believe the new system was manufactured in Florida.

A quick google came up with this:
http://www.toad.net/~jsmeenen/pool.html