[HN Gopher] Why Heat Pumps Are Immensely Important
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Why Heat Pumps Are Immensely Important
Author : herbstein
Score : 22 points
Date : 2022-03-26 19:20 UTC (3 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Good video. I've been thinking about heat pumps a lot lately,
| namely, is it possible to make geothermal ground loops cheap and
| not disruptive? I wrote a bit about it here:
| https://www.greennewdealio.com/heating/robot-mole/
|
| Air source heat pumps really are great and it seems everyone in
| mild climates should be moving towards them. In fact, what I'm
| working on right now is trying to figure out the maximum ground
| loop "budget", beyond which it would be cheaper to run
| inefficient heat sources (COP of 1) for the small periods of time
| where air sourced pumps no longer work.
| deckiedan wrote:
| Would it be possible to do multiple vertical shaft tubes,
| straight down rather than a huge flat thing?
|
| I feel like in 100 years time we'll have all these loopy pipe
| arrays all over the place being a pain to clean up...
| c22 wrote:
| Yes, this is usually how it's done when a large field doesn't
| happen to be available. Vertical boreholes are much more
| expensive to make than shallow trenches, though.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I looked into air-to-water heat pumps (hard) as I'm planning to
| replace my boiler this summer.
|
| Even with large cast iron rads, I need 130degF water temp when
| it's below about 25degF outside and the air-to-water heat pumps
| struggle to hit 125degF output water temp there and fall even
| lower when it gets colder.
| chrislund wrote:
| They aren't in all markets but there are heat pumps that use
| CO2 as the refrigerant that can make quite-high output water
| temps. They're often used for domestic hot water. I haven't
| looked too deeply in to them but IIRC they have COPs around
| 3-4. Sanden is one manufacturer, Mitsubishi and their Ecodan
| line is another.
| nimbix wrote:
| If you pair a heat pump with good insulation, the effect can be
| quite staggering. My parents moved into a new house 6 years ago
| and their annual heating bill (for space and water) dropped from
| ~2500EUR down to around 300EUR.
|
| This is in an area where night-time winter temperatures hover in
| the -5degC range, occasionally dropping to -10.
|
| The old house was around 30 years old, with fairly thin
| insulation (5 or 7cm was pretty standard back when it was built),
| and had an oil burning furnace for heating.
| Blackstone4 wrote:
| I've looked at ground heat pumps before (not air pumps). However
| they are a huge capital outlay of PS10k-PS19k ($13k-$26k).
|
| Both air and ground heat pumps work best for buildings with
| underfloor heating. Floors cover a much bigger area than
| radiators so they don't need to get as hot to provide the same
| amount of heat.
|
| We're in a 70 year old building so that doesn't help.
|
| The savings are minimal maybe PS30-PS60 a year before the recent
| gas price increases. You can get grants of PS2k per annum for 7
| years so you will get money back. However they don't really save
| any money unless you think gas prices will remain high. Outside
| of that you do it to be green.
|
| https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/ground-and-air-source-heat-p...
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