Piwoslaw,
I really like the way you are thinking about this.
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Here are some books that are very informative on this subject:
heat-pump-book.jpg - Loads of info on GSHP design & installation. The approach is for forced air, whole house heating.
radiant-floor-book.jpg - In the US, this is considered to be the bible of radiant heating. I'm sure that better books are available in Europe. Has computer aided design software included.
Piwoslaw, if your friend's book addresses using GSHP + radiant floor, it needs to be translated into English.
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First off, I think that many, if not all of the people on this blog realize that energy is getting more scarce and also if the energy we use has a fossil fuel or nuclear origin, we are directly contributing to global warming and/or degradation of our environment. Whatever we can do to reduce our burden on the planet is the right thing to do. It's a serious pursuit we have here, but it can also be great fun for us and inspiring for others.
> [using water to remove heat from the condenser] ...What if you did
> that with your fridge?
Any technology we invoke to solve a problem will start a chain of events that will lead ultimately to extractive processes, and there will be depletion, pollution and inefficiency all along the way. So first, let's see if there are 'low-hanging fruit' that are lower on the technology chain that will solve our problem...
* Do we need a refrigerator at all? Until a hundred years ago, people got along quite well without any refrigeration. People used the natural coolness of the earth to delay spoilage. Can we use a cool space in our house to keep fruits & vegetables in? Around here, many houses built 100 or more years ago used what was known as 'California Coolers' to keep fruits & vegetables in. This was a small cabinet-sized pantry built on the shady side of the house, with a vent to the outside at the top and bottom. For most of the year, it worked very well. No power required, no moving parts.
Here's a link to an idea for a cooler that won international recognition:
Pot-in-pot refrigerator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
...notice that here, the heat absorbing property of water evaporation was used.
* Do we need a refrigerator all the time? This depends on local weather, but in my part of the world, winter time is six months long and rarely freezes. A metal box on the back porch works perfectly as a refrigerator. No power required, no moving parts. I'm the only person I know that uses this. When I tell people about this, they think I'm strange...I think they're strange. But without resorting to technology, I have reduced my refrigeration load by half.
* Is there existing technology that successfully addresses this problem? I have attached (
0.1-kW-per-day_chest_fridge_2.txt) and (
fig-1.gif) a detailed description here of a super-efficient freezer-to-refrigerator conversion. The link is on this site with a photo.
DIY, Super-Efficient Fridge Uses .1 kWH a Day | EcoRenovator.org
...this link is another approach to this...
Convert freezer to refrigerator | OliNo
* Are there existing building blocks I can use? Here's a link (
Welcome) to a company that makes a pre-charged refrigeration system that can be connected to an air or water heat dissipation system.
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...So getting back to your original ideas, my thinking about the earth as a heat source and a heat sink has shifted recently. Dry earth is a good storage medium of heat and cold however, water migrating through earth moves heat with it. This can be bad if we are trying to store heat because the water will carry our stored heat away. It can also be good if, for instance we are trying to extract heat from the earth, water migration will renew the heat in the earth.
If we assume that the earth is dry, then it can be imagined to be a giant storage battery, and any heat we put into the earth from a refrigerator, or a solar panel will be there for us when we need it.
> Say you dump your A/C heat into the ground during the summer.
> How much of it will still be there when you need it in the winter,
> and how much will dissipate?
earth-temp.jpg - this is a scan from the GSHP book. Note the reducing temperature swings as you go deeper. Also note the time lag (AKA: phase shift) of temp. swings as you go deeper.
Heat travels through dry earth pretty slowly. One study I read (
Passive Annual Heat Storage - Improving the Earth Shelter) specified the rate at 16 feet per 6 months. So in your case, you could use underground loops to store heat during the summer and use the same loops to retrieve heat during the winter. The temperature or the earth at a depth of about 25 feet is just about the average of year-round temperatures. Most of the heat of the earth comes from the sun. In most cases, the heat from below is so small that it is of no consequence.
> Would it be worth while to pump the sun's heat
> into the ground all summer?
I have managed to pick up 10 solar heat collectors for an embarrassingly small amount of money. My plan is to use a small solar PV panel to run a pump during the summer to store heat in the ground. Here, we have bright sunny summers, plenty of sun, plenty of heat, and cold overcast winters with little sun, and temperatures hovering around 37 degrees F. Water migration may work against me, I won't know until I try.
I'm really interested in hearing more about your friend's book...
Best Regards,
-AC_Hacker