but you guys are nowhere to be seen in the solar area. I don't get it..... not even a heading in the forum for solar. I'll find others who take solar seriously.
OK I have to ask, you AZ folks have water temp over a 100..Why would you need a heater? Does it cool off in off summer months?There is a lot of places that it just won't work. Trust me-- I am interested in doing that next year here in Tucson, so interest does exist. The guys in the Midwest, however probably wouldn't be that interested in it. I would like to see a bit more discussion on systems that are not "run a lot of headloss off of your main pipe and run the pump at full speed, and put the pipes on your roof" systems because how I am situated isn't going to work that well for me.
I was actually going to suggest you look at the Hotspot FPH, it seems just the thing for you out in the desert. It's exactly what you said, okay, well not exactly. You seem to imply using a seperate heat pump, but your AC is already a heat pump. The Hotspot FPH just uses the pool water to cool your refrigerant instead of the air and a fan, so the waste heat from your house heats the pool while reducing the workload on the AC by cooling the coils faster. There's a controller that comes with it and switches the system between using the pool when the pool needs heat and switches back to using the fan cooled coils when the pool is hot enough. Someone hear posted an install recently and then was talking about having a 96 degree pool a couple weeks later. I think they were in Georgia?but why they don't at least supplement A/C here with a heat pump from the pool as a common item just blows my mind. That could be just enough extra heat to extend out the season and it would be pulled from the house.... But it's not at all common to see something like that....
Commercial HVAC units will often do just this. As part of a college course I did some basic heat modeling and a typical office building would require COOLING in the MIDDLE OF WINTER in the midwest during the peak of the day due to heat loading from people and computers! So, it's either run the AC in the middle of winter or get smart and pull in outside air to do the same thing.Even more blow your mind: For about 1/2 of the year, it's cool at night and hot during the day. And it's dry then.. so you'd think there would be a system to vent the hot (and somewhat moist) air from the house outside at nights during these times and take air from outside at night to cool automatically. But there is no such beast. The A/C just runs....Is's probably more efficient then, but it can't be as good as taking in the cool fresh air would be... or could it? I'm sure someone would chime in.....
ven more blow your mind: For about 1/2 of the year, it's cool at night and hot during the day. And it's dry then.. so you'd think there would be a system to vent the hot (and somewhat moist) air from the house outside at nights during these times and take air from outside at night to cool automatically. But there is no such beast. The A/C just runs....Is's probably more efficient then, but it can't be as good as taking in the cool fresh air would be... or could it? I'm sure someone would chime in.....
Ever heard or seen a whole house fan? Lived in a place with one before. Open the windows at night and turn on. Worked great. So good that if you had a fireplace and left ash in it, no door, ash would get sucked out and fill the room. Cooled the house down quick. Shot the hot air out the roof and the suction pulled air in through the windows. Kinda wish I had one.
Maybe I was thinking the hot tub my water is 70 nowSo when I researched this earlier this year, even in balmy Tucson, it can extend out the swimming season up to three (two is more typical) months. I have never had over 100F water temp (except in the hot tub with the insulating cover kept on). I think the hottest the pool has ever been was 95F and that was right after we filled it. This year (which supposedly is the 2nd hottest on record) the 93.5F was the hottest we ever got, and that was during a week solid of 108-112F weather for highs. Though at 93F water temperature my wife insisted we take the cover off for a couple of days and because of that alone it never broke 90F again.
Take a peek at my little snarky thread on the VIP forum. No one wants to swim now that the water temperature is "only" 80F. You get acclimated really fast to the warmer weather. One bad part of the desert is that it's so dry here when you get out, even if it's warmish out, you get the swamp cooler effect and it's cold! So it's a hard thing to explain to others, but your 72F there is about 76F-77F here due to the dryness.
What is nice about the fall and early winter here is that it's dry and room temperature for highs (we do get below freezing in January for short periods of time at night, we have had snow at my elevation since I have been there)... so it's nice to do outdoor "stuff" in.. not so much to swim in.
As for the radiator.... I had a ground source (geothermal) heating/cooling system in Iowa. They don't do that here because of the soil being like concrete for horizontal loops and it being 500' to water for vertical loops... but why they don't at least supplement A/C here with a heat pump from the pool as a common item just blows my mind. That could be just enough extra heat to extend out the season and it would be pulled from the house.... But it's not at all common to see something like that....
Even more blow your mind: For about 1/2 of the year, it's cool at night and hot during the day. And it's dry then.. so you'd think there would be a system to vent the hot (and somewhat moist) air from the house outside at nights during these times and take air from outside at night to cool automatically. But there is no such beast. The A/C just runs....Is's probably more efficient then, but it can't be as good as taking in the cool fresh air would be... or could it? I'm sure someone would chime in.....
Living in the desert takes getting used to, and honestly a lot of people leave at about year five because they can't do it or don't like it.
AC wrap? The FPH Hotspot is not a wrap. It is a refridgerant to water heat exchanger, a refridgerant valve, and a controller. To install an AC tech cuts the refridgerant lines, connects the valve and heat exchanger. Pool water pumps though the heat exchanger. When the controller senses the pool needs heat, the valve shifts, which pulls refridgerant out of the AC coils and directs it into the pool heat exchanger coils, where the water from the pool directly cools the refridgerant (and therefore heats the water). It also shuts off the AC condenser fan to save additional energy. If the pool reaches your desired temp, the valves shifts refridgerant back to the fan cooled AC coils, the fan is turned back on, and the AC is back to normal operation.I've seen the wrap for the AC's. It's kind of a kludge compared to adding a separate small heat pump. If we didn't get the cheapest Crud homebuilder carrier units I probably would consider it. I might anyway at some point if I stay here.
A compressor only pumping 100 psi will use WAY less energy than a compressor pumping 300 psi! Again, way better than a second unit, it saves you money on AC while heating pool. That's like getting PAID to heat your pool!In fact, my HVAC guy had his equipment set up reading the pressure gauges of the refrigerant lines between air cooled and water cooled modes. When air cooled, the pressure was 300psi. When water cooled, the pressure was 100psi. The translation of this that I got from my HVAC guy was that the compressor was working much less hard when the refrigerant is water cooled than when it is fan cooled, meaning it uses less energy and will extend the life of the compressor. Obviously, the fan isn't going either which saves somewhere around 300-500 watts of power as well from what I can tell.
Atlanta you have my attemtionAC wrap? The FPH Hotspot is not a wrap. It is a refridgerant to water heat exchanger, a refridgerant valve, and a controller. To install an AC tech cuts the refridgerant lines, connects the valve and heat exchanger. Pool water pumps though the heat exchanger. When the controller senses the pool needs heat, the valve shifts, which pulls refridgerant out of the AC coils and directs it into the pool heat exchanger coils, where the water from the pool directly cools the refridgerant (and therefore heats the water). It also shuts off the AC condenser fan to save additional energy. If the pool reaches your desired temp, the valves shifts refridgerant back to the fan cooled AC coils, the fan is turned back on, and the AC is back to normal operation.
If done properly this is not a kludge and would have maximum efficiency for transferring house heat to the pool water.
Not only that, but it should make the AC more efficient than it being air cooled. So not only are you not paying for pool heat, but you're saving money on regular AC costs!
Here is the guy I was talking about who installed it. He's in Atlanta, says he can crank his 12,000 gallon pool up to 94. Out in the desert I expect it would work even better. Hot tub pool night, for free? FPH - Hotspot Energy Install Begins!
Or this, from here: Hotspot FPH AC heat reclamation pool heater - a review!
A compressor only pumping 100 psi will use WAY less energy than a compressor pumping 300 psi! Again, way better than a second unit, it saves you money on AC while heating pool. That's like getting PAID to heat your pool!
Exactly - this just makes SO much sense as all summer many of us are trying to get heat out of our house and add heat to our pool water. Exchanging the heat between the two is such an obvious thing to do and is very envrionmentally friendly as you are reducing the need to burn gas to heat your pool and burn coal, gas, etc to create the electricity to run your AC.you would think with the amount of pools and air conditioners a company like carrier would come up with an air conditioner with this built in and it has 2 inch pipe connections already there... Take an 18 seer AC to 25/30 seer...