"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:11:42 +0100, dennis@home wrote:

If this is from a river, how fast does it flow, is there a fall across
the land?

It might be better to put a turbine in, generate electricity and use
that.

An idea, but to get a few 10's of kW of electricity you need a good
head and a hefty flow. IIRC 3kW of lecky needs a 20m head and 20l/sec
flow, if that is available it could drive the heatpump of course...

There is absolutely no doubt that in terms of energy input versus useful
house heating out, a heatpump is the no. 1 technology.

But in economic terms gas is still the best.

The only problems are cost of installation and the heat exchanger.

And of course where the energy comes from, BUT with a heat pump in a
typical situation providing about 3:1 uplift in terms of heat output to
electrical input,

Typical? That is best case. The average is far lower

it means that even a 30% efficient power station matches a 90% efficient
boiler.

Which means sweet FA to the punter and his bills.

snip drivel

"Doctor Drivel" wrote in message
...

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:11:42 +0100, dennis@home wrote:

If this is from a river, how fast does it flow, is there a fall across
the land?

It might be better to put a turbine in, generate electricity and use
that.

An idea, but to get a few 10's of kW of electricity you need a good
head and a hefty flow. IIRC 3kW of lecky needs a 20m head and 20l/sec
flow, if that is available it could drive the heatpump of course...

There is absolutely no doubt that in terms of energy input versus useful
house heating out, a heatpump is the no. 1 technology.

But in economic terms gas is still the best.

What is needed is abstract thinking.

If the water flows and its for heating it might be better to mechanically
convert the flow energy to heat.. water wheel driving a braked shaft with
the friction heat being carried to the building by pumped water.

The same is probably true for windmills if he wants to put a few on the
roof.
About 60% of the energy is turned to heat in the generator/gearbox AFAIK so
putting the generator in the building will save all that energy to heat the
building.

On Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:34:31 +0100, Tim Lamb wrote:

I suspect it probably is the north sea surface temperature in mid
winter doesn't get down to 5C, 8C is sort of average. It's about
15C
ATM... With the river being fed "warm" effluent as well...

Maybe.

The SST of the North Sea currently ranges from 13C around Shetland to
17C of the SE corner.

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/fsfaxbra.html

Follow the "Wassert" link in the large center box.

That's where the design is critical have a big enough area over
which
to extract the heat such that it doesn't freeze or the delta T get
too
small.

Quite. I expect the EA will come up with some unaffordable
abstract/discharge fees and the project reverts to the multiple slinky
model.

But with a flow of relatively warm water just above your buried
slinky I suspect the slinky can be somewhat smaller than one buried
in normal ground. Heat can be transported in quicker by the flowing
water compared to (more or less) just conduction in a ground buried
slinky.

Bet the EA would ob ject to the laying of slinky in river bed though.
Or English Nature if they got to hear of it, probably a rare Crayfish
or their might be a rare Crayfish and they'll want a full wildlife
and impact survey carried out... FFS, there will be a bit of
disturbance during the installation but after that bugger all, water
temps down stream might a tad lower but I bet they'd soon recover.

--
Cheers
Dave.

"dennis@home" wrote in message
...


"Doctor Drivel" wrote in message
...

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:11:42 +0100, dennis@home wrote:

If this is from a river, how fast does it flow, is there a fall across
the land?

It might be better to put a turbine in, generate electricity and use
that.

An idea, but to get a few 10's of kW of electricity you need a good
head and a hefty flow. IIRC 3kW of lecky needs a 20m head and 20l/sec
flow, if that is available it could drive the heatpump of course...

There is absolutely no doubt that in terms of energy input versus useful
house heating out, a heatpump is the no. 1 technology.

But in economic terms gas is still the best.

What is needed is abstract thinking.

It needs realistic thinking.

Gas boilers are cheap. Gas is cheap to run.
Heat pumps are expensive to install. At best they cost the same as gas to
run.

If the water flows and its for heating it might be better to mechanically
convert the flow energy to heat.. water wheel driving a braked shaft with
the friction heat being carried to the building by pumped water.

I doubt he has the flow to turn a genny powerful enough to heat the place -
he would need a thermal store as well.

The same is probably true for windmills if he wants to put a few on the
roof.
About 60% of the energy is turned to heat in the generator/gearbox AFAIK
so putting the generator in the building will save all that energy to heat
the building.

It needs a water cooled windmill to extract the heat.

Tim Lamb wrote:
In message , The Natural Philosopher
writes
Man at B&Q wrote:
On Jul 15, 12:49 pm, Tim Lamb wrote:
Yes. I do know there are umpteen thousand hits on the web!

How many kW would be needed to space heat 200m2 of single storey
offices
Which 200m2 are you heating, at the floor or at the ceiling or
somewhere in between?


If the building is square, its about 14 meters square.

If its say 3 metres high, the total area external to the world is
200 sq meters of roof and 4x16x3 meters of wall

say 400 square meters in all.

I've ignored the floor here. If you feel its important add another 200
and make it to 600 sq meters worst case. That will just about cover
the 'long thin' building. Presumably UFH is in the frame with a heat
pump, so teh floor will be well insulated..

No with a U value of about 1 for reasonable insulation, that's about
600W per degree centigrade differential, and with say 25 degrees
absolute worst case in winter, that's a total of 15KW.

Target U value figures are 0.35 for walls, 0.25 for floor, 0.2 for roof
and 2.2 for windows.

That's good. Experience suggest with windows and adequate ventilation
that WILL average out to about 1.,.


However by my reckoning the average person in an office is around 200W
of human heat, PCs etc and lighting and about 20 people minimum will
be in that office, so its likely to only need around 9KW. Worst case.
With about 3:1 upscale on the heat pump, about 3Kw electricity with a
good ground source pump.

I thought the allowance is 60W per person? I would expect occupancy to
be less than 10. Toilets, stairwell, kitchenette, reception etc.

60W for the person, and a further 140W of lighting, and general
equipment is my reckoning. Making cups of coffee, strip lighting, PC,
shared printer, router PABX etc etc etc.

In winter, lights tend to be on most of the day.

I am trying to quickly calculate what square meterage I have here..18x7
+ 10x6.. thats 186 sq meters, twice for two storeys. I need according
to the heating engineers report, 10KW worst case. Similar U values. My
12KW boiler JUST copes in worst winter conditions. has to be on 24x7,
but it does the job.

I did some ground source heatpump calcs, and they reckoned a hard wired
unit with soft start on a single phase could just do the job, with a
ground loop of around 400 meters length in wet clay.




I've got an acre or so to play with, so that's not a problem. The
problem was the heating tank (which could be just immersion using the
heat pump as a preheater) and the upstairs, which is small bore rads and
fan convectors that need at least 65C to even start fanning - thermostat
switches.

Essentially all that would need replacing. BIG job. Then oil came down
in price and I shelved the idea.

How much land have you got to work with?

Tim Lamb wrote:


Payback and CO2 reduction isn't huge if it is only displacing natural gas.

Oh, but it is.

A typical power station carbon efficiency is around 45%. More if its
nuclear, or wind.

At least 50% of your heatpump usage will be at 4:1 uplift providing a
'carbon fuel efficiency' of 180%.

The rest around 135%.

100% efficient gas boilers simply ae not available :-)

In essence a heatpump uses summer solar energy to provide the rest..

This is the key point. In terms of *fuel burnt* to useful heat produced,
a heatpump is capable - using low grade solar energy - of providing up
to 200% thermal efficiency.

If you arrange the heating to work -on - say - 40C water at most, you
can keep the heat pump in its most efficient zone.

That's not a very high temp, but if the whole floor is one massive
radiator absolutely crammed with pipes, its enough.

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:34:31 +0100, Tim Lamb wrote:

I suspect it probably is the north sea surface temperature in mid
winter doesn't get down to 5C, 8C is sort of average. It's about
15C
ATM... With the river being fed "warm" effluent as well...
Maybe.

The SST of the North Sea currently ranges from 13C around Shetland to
17C of the SE corner.

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/fsfaxbra.html

Follow the "Wassert" link in the large center box.

That's where the design is critical have a big enough area over
which
to extract the heat such that it doesn't freeze or the delta T get
too
small.
Quite. I expect the EA will come up with some unaffordable
abstract/discharge fees and the project reverts to the multiple slinky
model.

But with a flow of relatively warm water just above your buried
slinky I suspect the slinky can be somewhat smaller than one buried
in normal ground. Heat can be transported in quicker by the flowing
water compared to (more or less) just conduction in a ground buried
slinky.

Oh, its *way* better. Slinkies are relative crap by the way, long pipes
laid in flat loops are way better. Add moving water to the mix and there
is no local cooling of the heat exchanger. You wont be freezing the
subsoil, just subjecting the pipes nearest the pump to a layer of ice,
maybe, but even that's unlikely.

Id hazard a guess that 100-200m of pipe on the river bed would be adequate.



Bet the EA would ob ject to the laying of slinky in river bed though.
Or English Nature if they got to hear of it, probably a rare Crayfish
or their might be a rare Crayfish and they'll want a full wildlife
and impact survey carried out... FFS, there will be a bit of
disturbance during the installation but after that bugger all, water
temps down stream might a tad lower but I bet they'd soon recover.


What might work is to dig a pond fed from and exiting to, the river, and
put the pipes in that.

But any trenches dug below local water table would likely be very
effective as well.. The river would serve to keep the soil wet and
conductive.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

Oh, its *way* better. Slinkies are relative crap by the way, long pipes
laid in flat loops are way better.

That is what a slinkie is.

But any trenches dug below local water table would likely be very
effective as well.. The river would serve to keep the soil wet and
conductive.

Until it freezes then you may have to reverse the heat pump to thaw it.

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:11:42 +0100, dennis@home wrote:

If this is from a river, how fast does it flow, is there a fall across
the land?

It might be better to put a turbine in, generate electricity and use
that.

An idea, but to get a few 10's of kW of electricity you need a good
head and a hefty flow. IIRC 3kW of lecky needs a 20m head and 20l/sec
flow, if that is available it could drive the heatpump of course...


20l falling is giving (almost) 200N force, through 20m is 4Kj, that's
4Kw as you're doing it once a second. Seems possible.

But he's far more likely to have a lot more water and a lot less head if
the land is flat enough for agriculture.

Those of you factoring in the waste heat from lights, computers, etc.
might like to consider where that electricity comes from.

Andy

Andy Champ wrote:
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:11:42 +0100, dennis@home wrote:

If this is from a river, how fast does it flow, is there a fall
across the land?

It might be better to put a turbine in, generate electricity and use
that.

An idea, but to get a few 10's of kW of electricity you need a good
head and a hefty flow. IIRC 3kW of lecky needs a 20m head and 20l/sec
flow, if that is available it could drive the heatpump of course...


20l falling is giving (almost) 200N force, through 20m is 4Kj, that's
4Kw as you're doing it once a second. Seems possible.

But he's far more likely to have a lot more water and a lot less head if
the land is flat enough for agriculture.

Those of you factoring in the waste heat from lights, computers, etc.
might like to consider where that electricity comes from.


A nice little Nuclear power station not 50 miles from here..

Andy

In message , The Natural Philosopher
writes

I did some ground source heatpump calcs, and they reckoned a hard wired
unit with soft start on a single phase could just do the job, with a
ground loop of around 400 meters length in wet clay.







I've got an acre or so to play with, so that's not a problem. The
problem was the heating tank (which could be just immersion using the
heat pump as a preheater) and the upstairs, which is small bore rads
and fan convectors that need at least 65C to even start fanning -
thermostat switches.

Essentially all that would need replacing. BIG job. Then oil came down
in price and I shelved the idea.

How much land have you got to work with?

About 90 acres:-)

Realistically one would only lock up land which had no prospect of other
development or sale.

The bit I am considering is a 1/4 acre strip bordering the river. Mean
water table is around 18" (higher in the winter) so wet!

If I can't get anywhere with the EA I can clean out an existing cress
ditch which is parallel to the river, about 7m wide and 75 long.

Space heating can be underfloor throughout and I can use a gas combi for
washing etc.

I imagine there might be some *economy of scale* using one industrial
size plant rather than several domestic units.

regards

--
Tim Lamb

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "Doctor Drivel"
saying something like:

Pump water from river into heat exchanger.

With that single sentence you've shown you've never had anything to do
with river water pumping, don't have a clue about it and blow everything
you ever spout about out of the water (pun intended).
So, what else do you profess expertise in?
Let's see... lots.

ALL OF IT BULL****.

On Jul 15, 1:51*pm, "Doctor Drivel" wrote:
"BruceB" wrote in message

.. .







wrote in message
...
On Jul 15, 1:56 pm, "BruceB" wrote:
"NT" wrote in message
...

Normally with GSH one doesn't abstract any water, one just takes the
heat from the water.

But sadly, the environment agency consider it 'abstraction' even if you
put
it back again. So is you put more than 20m3 a day of say river water
through your heat pump then you would need an abstraction licence.
Regards
Bruce

I thought with a GSH pump you don't even move the water - the heat
pump pipes are a sealed system pumping coolant round the pipes. The
coolant is warmed up as it passes through the pipes which are immersed
in the groundwater, and that heat is then extracted in the building.
That can't possibly count as abstraction of water. I may be wrong
about the mechanism though.
***********

You are right, but the term GSHP is often used loosely. *Taking water from
a river I would normally call a water source heat pump. *More accurately
perhaps, we are talking about the difference between an open circuit and
closed circuit collector.

I was really making the point that even if you put water back it is still
abstraction.

The most efficient are water sourced heat pumps. Pumping ground water
through a heat exchanger and back to ground can do the same thing.
Extracting heat from a running stream is by far the best. *Water contains 4
time more heat per volume than earth.

You can have a plastic pipe run under the earth circled as in Heat Pump
slinkies. *But to improve matters run this pipe through a collection of
large water cylinders or plastic barrels above ground. Extract heat via the
heap pump at the hottest part of this system the storage cylinders . A
normal water pump would pump heat from the ground via the slinkies 24/7 and
dumps it into the cylinders, then the heat pump extracts the heat when
needed from the cylinders. *The heat from the surrounding air, heating the
water in the barrels has some gain too. *The mass of water in the
cylinder/barrels hold 4 times more heat than earth, so acts as a
concentrator upping the heat efficiency.

This is a slinky for a ground sourced heat pump, made from a concrete block.http://www.ebuild.co.uk/forums/messa...ml?1208929618- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Here, eastern Canada the possibility of pumping water out of a lake
extracting heat from it and dumping it back was raised. But it was
pointed out that in winter, which is when heat needed the water can
freeze and go well below zero C!
The ground temperature however is generally around 8 to 10 deg C.
The temp. of the municipal cold water supply to our house, for
example, via a pipe some eight feet down is, even mid winter, always
in the range of 45 to 55 deg F. So ground loop heat pump systems
apparently work well. Seemingly; for in ground systems plastic conduit
is buried in ground somewhat below the frost line depth of around 40
inches, and a closed water loop is run through it.
Air heat pump systems apparently run out of steam, as it were, at
temperatures below say minus 6 to 10 C and just cannot extract enough
useful heat out of the outside air at those temperatures! So auxiliary
electric heating coils cut in in effect one has electric heating.
Electric heating is common here with most of the generation,
especially in this province by hydro.
The incremental 'extra' investment for even a simple heat pump system,
for a basic 1200 to 1600 sq. foot well insulated (as required by
building codes nowadays anyway) home here is rumoured to be in region
of $20,000+ Can. Roughly say 13,000+ UK pounds? That extra cost, in
order to be profitable or at least break-even, has to be recovered by
any savings in energy costs over a reasonable period of years.
For someon who installed basic electric heating some 40 years ago the
retrofitting cost, including some means of introducing the heat-pumped
heat, using an air exchanger of warm water radiators, into the house
would considerable!

On Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:06:39 -0700, stan wrote:

On Jul 15, 1:51Â*pm, "Doctor Drivel" wrote:
"BruceB" wrote in message

.. .







wrote in message
...
On Jul 15, 1:56 pm, "BruceB" wrote:
"NT" wrote in message
...

Normally with GSH one doesn't abstract any water, one just takes the
heat from the water.

But sadly, the environment agency consider it 'abstraction' even if you
put
it back again. So is you put more than 20m3 a day of say river water
through your heat pump then you would need an abstraction licence.
Regards
Bruce

I thought with a GSH pump you don't even move the water - the heat
pump pipes are a sealed system pumping coolant round the pipes. The
coolant is warmed up as it passes through the pipes which are immersed
in the groundwater, and that heat is then extracted in the building.
That can't possibly count as abstraction of water. I may be wrong
about the mechanism though.
***********

You are right, but the term GSHP is often used loosely. Â*Taking water from
a river I would normally call a water source heat pump. Â*More accurately
perhaps, we are talking about the difference between an open circuit and
closed circuit collector.

I was really making the point that even if you put water back it is still
abstraction.

The most efficient are water sourced heat pumps. Pumping ground water
through a heat exchanger and back to ground can do the same thing.
Extracting heat from a running stream is by far the best. Â*Water contains 4
time more heat per volume than earth.

You can have a plastic pipe run under the earth circled as in Heat Pump
slinkies. Â*But to improve matters run this pipe through a collection of
large water cylinders or plastic barrels above ground. Extract heat via the
heap pump at the hottest part of this system the storage cylinders . A
normal water pump would pump heat from the ground via the slinkies 24/7 and
dumps it into the cylinders, then the heat pump extracts the heat when
needed from the cylinders. Â*The heat from the surrounding air, heating the
water in the barrels has some gain too. Â*The mass of water in the
cylinder/barrels hold 4 times more heat than earth, so acts as a
concentrator upping the heat efficiency.

This is a slinky for a ground sourced heat pump, made from a concrete block.http://www.ebuild.co.uk/forums/messa...ml?1208929618- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Here, eastern Canada the possibility of pumping water out of a lake
extracting heat from it and dumping it back was raised. But it was
pointed out that in winter, which is when heat needed the water can
freeze and go well below zero C!
The ground temperature however is generally around 8 to 10 deg C.
The temp. of the municipal cold water supply to our house, for
example, via a pipe some eight feet down is, even mid winter, always
in the range of 45 to 55 deg F.

I just check ours here in the northern US, and it's sitting at 55
degrees F, but I'm not sure how much it falls by in Winter. That comes
via an 80ft well out back, and the line coming into the house is about 8ft
below ground level.

So ground loop heat pump systems
apparently work well. Seemingly; for in ground systems plastic conduit
is buried in ground somewhat below the frost line depth of around 40
inches, and a closed water loop is run through it.

I thought they generally used something else for the closed loop, other
than water, just to prevent freezing if there are any cold spots
(particularly where loops meet).

Air heat pump systems
apparently run out of steam, as it were, at temperatures below say minus
6 to 10 C and just cannot extract enough useful heat out of the outside
air at those temperatures!

Yep, I've heard that too - I think they're just about viable in the UK,
but utterly useless here.

So auxiliary electric heating coils cut in in
effect one has electric heating. Electric heating is common here with
most of the generation, especially in this province by hydro.

Same here - and with the rebates that the electric co. give for having
electric heating, the overall cost is fairly competitive against propane.

The
incremental 'extra' investment for even a simple heat pump system, for a
basic 1200 to 1600 sq. foot well insulated (as required by building
codes nowadays anyway) home here is rumoured to be in region of
$20,000+ Can.

It's expensive - but I think around half of that expense is in the digging
and installation of the ground loop, so a DIY solution could
provide significant cost savings, assuming a company exists that'll sell
the bits of the system and let the user do the installation.

Unfortunately the 'leccy company do significant cost breaks for having a
GSHP system - but of course it has to be a system on their 'approved'
list, which is a disincentive for DIY...

cheers

Jules

Jules wrote:
On Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:06:39 -0700, stan wrote:

On Jul 15, 1:51 pm, "Doctor Drivel" wrote:
"BruceB" wrote in message

.. .







wrote in message
...
On Jul 15, 1:56 pm, "BruceB" wrote:
"NT" wrote in message
...
Normally with GSH one doesn't abstract any water, one just takes the
heat from the water.
But sadly, the environment agency consider it 'abstraction' even if you
put
it back again. So is you put more than 20m3 a day of say river water
through your heat pump then you would need an abstraction licence.
Regards
Bruce
I thought with a GSH pump you don't even move the water - the heat
pump pipes are a sealed system pumping coolant round the pipes. The
coolant is warmed up as it passes through the pipes which are immersed
in the groundwater, and that heat is then extracted in the building.
That can't possibly count as abstraction of water. I may be wrong
about the mechanism though.
***********
You are right, but the term GSHP is often used loosely. Taking water from
a river I would normally call a water source heat pump. More accurately
perhaps, we are talking about the difference between an open circuit and
closed circuit collector.
I was really making the point that even if you put water back it is still
abstraction.
The most efficient are water sourced heat pumps. Pumping ground water
through a heat exchanger and back to ground can do the same thing.
Extracting heat from a running stream is by far the best. Water contains 4
time more heat per volume than earth.

You can have a plastic pipe run under the earth circled as in Heat Pump
slinkies. But to improve matters run this pipe through a collection of
large water cylinders or plastic barrels above ground. Extract heat via the
heap pump at the hottest part of this system the storage cylinders . A
normal water pump would pump heat from the ground via the slinkies 24/7 and
dumps it into the cylinders, then the heat pump extracts the heat when
needed from the cylinders. The heat from the surrounding air, heating the
water in the barrels has some gain too. The mass of water in the
cylinder/barrels hold 4 times more heat than earth, so acts as a
concentrator upping the heat efficiency.

This is a slinky for a ground sourced heat pump, made from a concrete block.http://www.ebuild.co.uk/forums/messa...ml?1208929618- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
Here, eastern Canada the possibility of pumping water out of a lake
extracting heat from it and dumping it back was raised. But it was
pointed out that in winter, which is when heat needed the water can
freeze and go well below zero C!
The ground temperature however is generally around 8 to 10 deg C.
The temp. of the municipal cold water supply to our house, for
example, via a pipe some eight feet down is, even mid winter, always
in the range of 45 to 55 deg F.

I just check ours here in the northern US, and it's sitting at 55
degrees F, but I'm not sure how much it falls by in Winter. That comes
via an 80ft well out back, and the line coming into the house is about 8ft
below ground level.

It only North of the permafrost line that the subsoil is frozen.. and if
you go deep enough of course, you are into geothermal heat :-)


So ground loop heat pump systems
apparently work well. Seemingly; for in ground systems plastic conduit
is buried in ground somewhat below the frost line depth of around 40
inches, and a closed water loop is run through it.

I thought they generally used something else for the closed loop, other
than water, just to prevent freezing if there are any cold spots
(particularly where loops meet).

Its either dosed with antifreeze, or brine. Apparently the outflow from
the pump can and does end up covered in a sheet of ice, if not
insulated. They are after all just big refrigerators.. Its about -5C to
-7C apparently.



Air heat pump systems
apparently run out of steam, as it were, at temperatures below say minus
6 to 10 C and just cannot extract enough useful heat out of the outside
air at those temperatures!

Yep, I've heard that too - I think they're just about viable in the UK,
but utterly useless here.


More or less the case.


The
incremental 'extra' investment for even a simple heat pump system, for a
basic 1200 to 1600 sq. foot well insulated (as required by building
codes nowadays anyway) home here is rumoured to be in region of
$20,000+ Can.

It's expensive - but I think around half of that expense is in the digging
and installation of the ground loop, so a DIY solution could
provide significant cost savings, assuming a company exists that'll sell
the bits of the system and let the user do the installation.


My research came up with around £6k for a system to be installed after
the groundwork was done. I'd get my own digger in for that.

Unfortunately the 'leccy company do significant cost breaks for having a
GSHP system - but of course it has to be a system on their 'approved'
list, which is a disincentive for DIY...

Ah.
*******s.

cheers

Jules

"Grimly Curmudgeon" wrote in message
...
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "Doctor Drivel"
saying something like:

Pump water from river into heat exchanger.

With that single sentence you've shown you've never had anything to do
with river water pumping,

Do you mean you can't pump river water? Is it too thick?

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "Doctor Drivel"
saying something like:

Do you mean you can't pump river water? Is it too thick?

It's full of thick ****s.

On Thu, 23 Jul 2009 06:39:27 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
I just check ours here in the northern US, and it's sitting at 55
degrees F, but I'm not sure how much it falls by in Winter. That comes
via an 80ft well out back, and the line coming into the house is about 8ft
below ground level.

It only North of the permafrost line that the subsoil is frozen.. and if
you go deep enough of course, you are into geothermal heat :-)

:-) Dunno how deep that'd be around here - as I say, the water from 80ft
down is pretty chilly, even in Summer.

I thought they generally used something else for the closed loop, other
than water, just to prevent freezing if there are any cold spots
(particularly where loops meet).

Its either dosed with antifreeze, or brine.

Brine sounds somewhat preferable, in the event of a leak...

It's expensive - but I think around half of that expense is in the
digging and installation of the ground loop, so a DIY solution could
provide significant cost savings, assuming a company exists that'll
sell the bits of the system and let the user do the installation.


My research came up with around £6k for a system to be installed after
the groundwork was done. I'd get my own digger in for that.

Yeah, not sure how deep the loops would have to be around here yet (as
per my other thread about monitoring ground temps), but I suspect I could
find someone to borrow a digger from (actually I know someone with a
Bobcat, and that might just about do the job given a shallow enough
approach angle, and depending on what the soil composition's like)

Unfortunately the 'leccy company do significant cost breaks for having
a GSHP system - but of course it has to be a system on their 'approved'
list, which is a disincentive for DIY...

Ah.
*******s.

The cynic in me wants to say there are all sorts of backhanders going on
- but it's more likely that GSHP tech is just too 'new' (in general
public terms) and so there's no provision for homebrewing a system and
having it inspected by a professional who can tell the 'leccy company
that it does indeed do what it's supposed to. (ditto with solar, wind
turbines etc.) - hopefully that'll change a few years down the line...

We've probably got about 15Kw of electric heating at our place, but we
only turned on half of the heaters last Winter, with the LPG taking up the
slack - I need to run the numbers sometime and figure out how long a GSHP
would take to pay for itself, assuming no subsidisation from the electric
co for running costs...

cheers

J.

"Grimly Curmudgeon" wrote in message
...
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "Doctor Drivel"
saying something like:

Do you mean you can't pump river water? Is it too thick?

It's full of thick ****s.

How do you get them out of the water?

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "Doctor Drivel"
saying something like:

Do you mean you can't pump river water? Is it too thick?

It's full of thick ****s.

How do you get them out of the water?

They clog up the pipes, meaning someone has to come and free them, wiv a
hacksaw.

"Grimly Curmudgeon" wrote in message
...
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "Doctor Drivel"
saying something like:

Do you mean you can't pump river water? Is it too thick?

It's full of thick ****s.

How do you get them out of the water?

They clog up the pipes, meaning someone has to come and free them, wiv a
hacksaw.

Fantastic! Sounds like a right **** of river to me.