Hey Mike, just found your video when searching for DIY heat pump setups. I've been designing a "battery shed" and was looking for an energy-efficient way to keep the batteries warm. This setup looks incredibly simple! For the outside, I like how you did sheet metal rather than fins... every scenario I designed had ice troubles, so I never ended up building them. I'm in Kansas, so it gets cold but not brutally cold. Our heat pumps usually have heater element backups for the 20°F or colder days anyways, and that would not be difficult to set up with a second thermally controlled relay. Seeing your video has encouraged me to post some of my setups, maybe someone else will find them useful. Thanks!
I love this idea. Using a heat pump is more energy efficient than using any other powered method. I'm a refrigeration engineer & I may well be using this idea to heat my garage here in the UK :-)
Hey thanks. I'm sure with your knowledge of refrigeration, you could crunch the numbers to figure out the rough size of system you would need. I would love to see someone take on a bigger plate evaporator. It might not be as efficient as an air coil, but then again without a noisy fan motor, it could come close. Your climate is probably similar to mine here in Oregon, and the monolithic evaporator seems to do well with the rain. Do let me know if you put something together!
phil955i Hi Phil, me too, and I’ve been on the installation course at Energie in Portugal, their water tanks are huge so not great for Il market, I’d love to design a separate condensor unit to a pressurised tank..
@@kreynolds1123 I've just Googled that & it's a very interesting concept, considerably more efficient than using a vapour compression refrigeration cycle.
@@phil955i certainly far simpler. demonstration of an alpha stirling. ruclips.net/video/hnXLNO7DkdY/видео.html alpha inline: ruclips.net/video/KC5EGQEsTKI/видео.html I'm wondering about two old shock absorbers from a car for an alpha stirling heat pump.
That's really great to know! I only knew of my example. Makes sense. In a warmer climate with high humidity, a 100 watt compressor could move a lot of heat, I'm sure. Cheap to build and lower operating costs than resistive heat.
@@whatawaytogo515 i want you to see this video on how an old fridge compressor is turned into an AC......is in Spanish, but just take a look at what the man is doing ruclips.net/video/muakO9Ig7dE/видео.htmlsi=Xs3-SAZbTKVO0mpC
Thats pretty cool, mate. The flare fittings on the low side will need to be well dried and sealed to keep the moisture off, especially if you intend to cycle it extensively.
Mike, save elec power by wiring A/C run-caps(metal or plastic) parallel to the compressor motor. Example;My kitchen refridgerator needed 25 microfarads. You must add microfarads until you see lowest amp draw from the line. This works because of inductive power factor and utility meters measuring flaws. We are charged VA's not for actual watts of power. Make a capacitor test bank of one each of 1,2,4,8,16,32 mfd run-caps. with parallel switchs to each one. use a amp clamp meter and find the correct combination of caps for minimum amp draw from your compressor. Then hardwire the correctly measured ufd parallel to your compressor. It resonates to lower power usage.
I appreciate this, Dave. Electrical is not my strong suit, and this sounds like an easy enough practice to perform. I'd imagine of we all corrected for power factor in our inductive devices wherever possible, we could drastically reduce our energy use. I am going to take this to heart and try it in the near future. I will be shifting to an ice refrigerator, with vapor compression backup, as well as a custom deep freezer. I'll be sure to try it then. Thanks again!
@@whatawaytogo515 I would sugest to everyone not knowing, to do some research on power factor correction from multiple sources to get a good handle on this, but I'll point out and expand on a few things. As manaquri above points out, residential consumers are billed by the kilowatt hour, while sonetimes buisness are billed by the volt amp hour to encourage the buisness to improve their power factor. When it comes to power factor, watts is what you actually consume residential meters measure only the balance of watts in and watts out, while volt amp hours is the apparent power, a combination of actual power consumed and (with inductive loads) the energy pulled temporarily stored in coils and sent back to the power company 50 or 60 times a second. With power factor less than 1, the extra current drawn from and sent back to the power company is not consumed, excepting that with the extra amperage there is a tiny bit extra heat loss to resistance in the wires, but not so much to justify spending money on capacitors. In the end, for a RESIDENTIAL power consumer, the main benifit of power factor correcting is simply reducing the amps flowing on a circuit allowing one to have more things on on the same circuit without tripping the circuit, but it wont effect your power bill in any meaningful way. There's a beer analogy. If beer were watts, then its bear that you want to drink and the foamy head is reactive power limiting how much beer can fit in your glass. So to maximize the beer in your glass, you must minimize the foamy head. As the original commenter Dave points out, one can add caps on the circuit. I strongly near or closest to the motor to minimise the wires over which reactive currents bounce back and forth. A cheap kilowatt wall meter from Ebay can tell you many things including power factor. just add caps nect to you motor untill your power factor is as close to 1 as you can get it. note: capacitors need to be rated to above the peek voltage, not the rms voltage. for instance, in the US mains voltage is rated at about 120vac while the peeks are as low as -170 and as high as +170. Personally I'd use double that to 340v rating on capacitors that I use while some people might be satisfied with 240v raiting. turning off a motor can create inductive spike that might end up damaging capacitors with too low of a raiting.
Nice! The evaporator assembly outside would work more efficiently if painted black and absorbing sun rather than reflecting it. However usually you need heat when there is no sun and air outside is cold, so most efficient way is to bury evaporator with a good size crushed rock bed as heatsink and make this geothermal heat pump.
@@thedavesofourlives1 When I looked closer I was wondering if you could use heating ceiling panels, they are aluminum epoxy coated. With copper tubing but unless you could find some left over from a job, I have taken them to scrap after separating copper from aluminum. I just looked at 10 fossil fuel free energy sources including zero point by Creative Society. I have also done some geothermal. Retired plumber/steamfitter.
I want to build one of these. Using a mini fridge compressor to make a RV heat pump. I also notice some very tiny fridge compressors online. Being they are more efficient I can keep solar enclosures warm without drawing too much power.
Another reason for burying the evaporator is to conceal it from neighbors. After all ur exporting ur heat to the neigjbors in the sumer and stealing their heat in the winter.
For the small heat load, it wouldn't be too difficult. Personally, I like the aesthetics of a frozen evaporator for all to see. It provides some intuitive feedback. Besides, the ground around here is all rock and concrete, and i doubt the trailer park would appreciate me digging holes!
Your evap will freeze up in the winter making it less efficient and the compressor will have really high superheat and will burn out. Better off burying the evap so you wont get and frost on the coil
nice, like it! you should get even more heat inside when it starts to rain. if you put that fan directly in front of that compressor it will live longer. Like the vid.
The rain just began a few minutes ago, should be interesting. The compressor should be suction cooled, but yeah, a little airflow would be a good thing on it. I think I might rebuild the shroud to pull some air past the condenser.
Propane is a great refrigerant. The stuff is as good as R12 but man is it flammable. Also that's quite a lot to ask for from that poor little fridge compressor. It's like leaving the fridge wide open.
Yes, these fridge compressors are not meant to be run nonstop like this. Normally they work for few minutes, and then cool down. In continues operation they will probably overheat a bit. Sure, the thermal protection will kick in if needed, but I am sure heat in continues operation will kill it quicker.
That lenth and demeter off your capillary tube. I just finish building my but my compresor over heating. Compresor 95w but to consume 180-190w if i fill less gas no vaporization starting.
Sweet. I'd think you want the compressor outside and let its heat keep the evap from freezing as a simple method. Other ones I've seen don't work once the evap freezes.
why waste the compressor heat outside? he's already beating it up running such low suction pressures. all heat pumps frost when they hit dew point. It's normal. What's not good is running so hard that it doesn't get enough off time to melt and completely ices up.
Well done sir! I am designing a similar HP system using several scrap window units that have a 5k btu scroll compressor which I will run in parallel for more capacity. I have a 28' deep well under the house that may end up being the low side coil. A poor man has poor ways.
I was wondering if you could enclose the plate outside, face it south, and put glass on the south facing side to gain a boost from the sun during daylight?
There are a lot of free deep freezers on Facebook marketplace. I'm now thinking about getting one and installing it in the garage as a heat pump to make it a bit more comfortable to work in. I live in Canada and we see a lot of days that get down to -20c, but there still plenty of days in the winter that are between 0 and -10. I figure if a deep freezer is designed to maintain an internal temp around -18, it should work as a heat pump down to those temperatures. I'm wondering if you sprayed the plate outside with black enamel to absorb heat from the sun and then wiped some kind of oil onto it if that would help with the icing. Or placing a few mirrors to reflect extra sunlight onto the plate. Might make it easy to just knock the ice off manually instead of having to dethaw it.
good idea with the oil to prevent ice bonding. A "low temp" deep freeze is way too small of a compressor to make any kind of heat for a garage. maybe 1000 btu? and the efficiency drops quickly the farther away the temperatures are.
It's the evaporator, and yeah it was going to be black, but I wanted to see how it works first before I do anything like that. Maybe on a warm day I will paint it. I'm not sure about the condenser. If it does fail, it will be the first one for me; I've beat the hell out of many and never had a failure. The conditions it is running under aren't all that different from the apllication it was intended for. The condenser pressure is a bit high, and the amp draw is high as well. Maybe snipping a little more cap tube out will bring the head pressure down, but it might load up the compressor even more. I'm curious to see, but will leave it be for a few days until I get a hold of the COP.
judging by the low temps on suction, looks like you're borderline flooding the evaporator already, wouldn't you want a longer cap tube to get some superheat (warmer compressor inlet temp)@@whatawaytogo515
Hiya Mike. I know its been a few years since you ran this system. I think I am going to make a very similar evaporator. Did you have any issues with frost in cold WX? New to the hobby...I'm a fan of your excellent videos.
Nice work. I like the evaporator. I am working on something similar only with aluminium plate painted black to absorb UV. Sort of an air source heat pump. Would it help to add heat sinks? Great idea to use propane.
So speaking of compressor warmth - how warm would one expect to see a compressor get for, say, a 134a cooled fridge in proper working order & if overly warm, what might be the cause(s)?
Needs to be after the evaporator and before the compressor. Keeps liquid from getting back to the compressor. But I don't think his accumulator is installed properly needs to be installed in upright position (If it is an accumulator).
SLA, ahh. After a few months of research, coming back to watch this. Those low suction temps are likely to flood the compressor. Looks overcharged for the size of the evap. I read that ideal temp on suction is 59.
I have a question, is it in your opinion possible to get the heat from an airco in the heatmode by adding a heat exchanger that feeds my floor heating, to the hot pipe that goes into my indoor unit?
Probably 134A. It's not likely to be of much importance unless you're trying to be super efficient. More important is sizing everything, especially the metering device.
this is amazing! I really want to do this. We have a large old well (very old UK home), I like the idea of submerging the condenser in underground water. do you have any idea how much heat per Watt/hr you get?
M.C. Pletcher that is interesting because I always thought with enough heat it could explode but then again if you pulled a vacuum on their won’t be any air to cause it to light up because you need the fire triangle present heat fuel and air and air is not present interesting I never thought to use propane
involved gamer, you got it. Propane was used in a few domestic refrigerators in the 20s and 30s. Butane and isobutane were used as well. I would bet money that the majority of domestic refrigerators manufactured today use a hydrocarbon refrigerant. Isobutane in refrigerators, and propane in commercial freezers.
David Ramsey I am guessing here, and I'm referring to units worldwide. If you look at domestic upright refrigerators, isobutane is exceedingly common. I'll have to check some stats. Propane is becoming more common in upright freezers. To what degree, not sure. Walk -in units, sure, standard refrigerants.
Michael B a fair guess based on the compressor HP, and a similar refrigerant to r290 using the chart provided with the JB Industries cap tubing. Might be 507c? Not sure. There's a document online from Tecumseh or Bitzer which describes the equivalent refrigerant for r290.
Also, kinda wanna share these nifty devices with you if you haven't seen them already: ruclips.net/video/rtm1dnUR0wo/видео.html I bet you could do some fun and exciting hvac experiments with them, quite impressive little things.
Watching setups like these almost piss me off. (No offense) but while I understand you might be living somewhere up north where its cooler and need a heater more times than cooler, for us it's almost the opposite, running the A/C almost 18 hrs everyday to put up with the heat. Even when it's not summer, A/C is still needed to keep my servers cool, etc. Since electricity is very expensive in many parts of the country, it pains me to see setups like these where you produce x amount of cold (byproduct of you harvesting the heat) and you're just wasting it outside instead of taking advantage of that cold to reap more savings and efficiency. Please, if you're going to use this design, take advantage of that cold for an ice maker, cooling down servers, supplement cooling down a freezer chest, etc... /Triggered Rant Over
Woah! Came on a little strong, but it's okay, I don't take any offense; you make some interesting points. It would be possible to have rigged this up to my refrigerator in the lab, but load matching is the problem there. If the the temp is low outside, and the heat pump has to run a lot to satisfy the thermostat, then I run the risk of overcooling the refrigerator. If I wanted to supplement a freezer, the problem is that there's just not a lot of heat to be had in there, and the evaporator temperature would be extremely low; much lower than just pulling heat from the moist outside environment. If this were a larger, more permanent installation (and not just farting around), than I would consider pulling heat from a phase change material coupled to a refrigerator, or some other cooling mechanism. Heat pumps are a common fixture in northern climates, and with the exception of large commercial installations, little effort is put into matching the heating load of a structure with a necessary cooling load, if one exists in the first place. Heat pumps just come down to an effort of making better use of a high quality energy carrier like electricity. What does electricity cost per kwhr in your area? If you don't already do so, I would suggest installing a heat pump water heater to do just what you described for me. Find passive ways to cool your home and servers more effectively, to reduce AC costs, and insulate/shade your home however possible. Thanks for the comment.
@@whatawaytogo515 well said , the co-efficient number is crazy to match , I had this idea way back. I planned to use recovered rf compressor's (from old domestic units) to cool my cyrypto mining gear . The maths were good (even if not living in Quebec) (i live in Ontario) , but with the heavy off peak price this was feasible. 3 units mining rigs @ 1500 watt making 57 penny an hour / over the heat pump system / was good enough setup , but Bitcoin math works no more
Reading comments like this piss me off no end. If you want to do your setup when YOU build it different, go right ahead. Don't get pissy at someone who has done something and taken the time to share their clever and interesting setup with other people because it's not the way YOU would do it. This suits the guy that built it for his purposes, he's under no obligation to build it to your satisfaction. The idea here is to show the fundamental principals and then others, like you, can adapt it to their own varying need. I personally got a lot out of this vid and if you didn't, Move on to the next one and quit your bitching or better still, put some content in your channel instead of complaining about others that have got off their arse and been kind enough to show their ideas to others. Always the same, whinge about what others have done without ever doing anything themselves.
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Hey Mike, just found your video when searching for DIY heat pump setups.
I've been designing a "battery shed" and was looking for an energy-efficient way to keep the batteries warm. This setup looks incredibly simple!
For the outside, I like how you did sheet metal rather than fins... every scenario I designed had ice troubles, so I never ended up building them.
I'm in Kansas, so it gets cold but not brutally cold. Our heat pumps usually have heater element backups for the 20°F or colder days anyways, and that would not be difficult to set up with a second thermally controlled relay.
Seeing your video has encouraged me to post some of my setups, maybe someone else will find them useful. Thanks!
Yes please!
I love this idea. Using a heat pump is more energy efficient than using any other powered method. I'm a refrigeration engineer & I may well be using this idea to heat my garage here in the UK :-)
Hey thanks. I'm sure with your knowledge of refrigeration, you could
crunch the numbers to figure out the rough size of system you would
need. I would love to see someone take on a bigger plate evaporator.
It might not be as efficient as an air coil, but then again without a
noisy fan motor, it could come close. Your climate is probably similar
to mine here in Oregon, and the monolithic evaporator seems to do well
with the rain. Do let me know if you put something together!
phil955i Hi Phil, me too, and I’ve been on the installation course at Energie in Portugal, their water tanks are huge so not great for Il market, I’d love to design a separate condensor unit to a pressurised tank..
any thoughts on stirling heat pumps?
@@kreynolds1123 I've just Googled that & it's a very interesting concept, considerably more efficient than using a vapour compression refrigeration cycle.
@@phil955i certainly far simpler.
demonstration of an alpha stirling. ruclips.net/video/hnXLNO7DkdY/видео.html
alpha inline:
ruclips.net/video/KC5EGQEsTKI/видео.html
I'm wondering about two old shock absorbers from a car for an alpha stirling heat pump.
I saw this a lot being used when i visited latin america..they will
collect old fridge compressors and turn into heat pumps..the cooling was great!!
That's really great to know! I only knew of my example. Makes sense. In a warmer climate with high humidity, a 100 watt compressor could move a lot of heat, I'm sure. Cheap to build and lower operating costs than resistive heat.
@@whatawaytogo515 i want you to see this video on how an old fridge compressor is turned into an AC......is in Spanish, but just take a look at what the man is doing ruclips.net/video/muakO9Ig7dE/видео.htmlsi=Xs3-SAZbTKVO0mpC
This was great! Use your anemometer to get the mass flow and calculate cooling power. I am guessing about 1200 BTUH.
or just take running watts and X3 for a rough calc, then convert watts to btu
Thats pretty cool, mate. The flare fittings on the low side will need to be well dried and sealed to keep the moisture off, especially if you intend to cycle it extensively.
Mike, save elec power by wiring A/C run-caps(metal or plastic) parallel to the compressor motor. Example;My kitchen refridgerator needed 25 microfarads. You must add microfarads until you see lowest amp draw from the line. This works because of inductive power factor and utility meters measuring flaws. We are charged VA's not for actual watts of power. Make a capacitor test bank of one each of 1,2,4,8,16,32 mfd run-caps. with parallel switchs to each one. use a amp clamp meter and find the correct combination of caps for minimum amp draw from your compressor. Then hardwire the correctly measured ufd parallel to your compressor. It resonates to lower power usage.
I appreciate this, Dave. Electrical is not my strong suit, and this sounds like an easy enough practice to perform. I'd imagine of we all corrected for power factor in our inductive devices wherever possible, we could drastically reduce our energy use. I am going to take this to heart and try it in the near future. I will be shifting to an ice refrigerator, with vapor compression backup, as well as a custom deep freezer. I'll be sure to try it then.
Thanks again!
Dave George d
In the field this is called power factor correction. "slap a cap on it"
depends where you live, here it's only if you have a business that you pay VA, if you are an individual, you pay for Watts
@@whatawaytogo515 I would sugest to everyone not knowing, to do some research on power factor correction from multiple sources to get a good handle on this, but I'll point out and expand on a few things.
As manaquri above points out, residential consumers are billed by the kilowatt hour, while sonetimes buisness are billed by the volt amp hour to encourage the buisness to improve their power factor. When it comes to power factor, watts is what you actually consume residential meters measure only the balance of watts in and watts out, while volt amp hours is the apparent power, a combination of actual power consumed and (with inductive loads) the energy pulled temporarily stored in coils and sent back to the power company 50 or 60 times a second.
With power factor less than 1, the extra current drawn from and sent back to the power company is not consumed, excepting that with the extra amperage there is a tiny bit extra heat loss to resistance in the wires, but not so much to justify spending money on capacitors.
In the end, for a RESIDENTIAL power consumer, the main benifit of power factor correcting is simply reducing the amps flowing on a circuit allowing one to have more things on on the same circuit without tripping the circuit, but it wont effect your power bill in any meaningful way.
There's a beer analogy. If beer were watts, then its bear that you want to drink and the foamy head is reactive power limiting how much beer can fit in your glass. So to maximize the beer in your glass, you must minimize the foamy head.
As the original commenter Dave points out, one can add caps on the circuit. I strongly near or closest to the motor to minimise the wires over which reactive currents bounce back and forth. A cheap kilowatt wall meter from Ebay can tell you many things including power factor. just add caps nect to you motor untill your power factor is as close to 1 as you can get it.
note: capacitors need to be rated to above the peek voltage, not the rms voltage. for instance, in the US mains voltage is rated at about 120vac while the peeks are as low as -170 and as high as +170. Personally I'd use double that to 340v rating on capacitors that I use while some people might be satisfied with 240v raiting. turning off a motor can create inductive spike that might end up damaging capacitors with too low of a raiting.
Nice! The evaporator assembly outside would work more efficiently if painted black and absorbing sun rather than reflecting it. However usually you need heat when there is no sun and air outside is cold, so most efficient way is to bury evaporator with a good size crushed rock bed as heatsink and make this geothermal heat pump.
that would ground the piping and with the dissimilar metals the slight ground current would likely lead to quick corrosion.
Good work. It'd be even sweeter to see your system design and tested performance.
Looks great, the only thing I see is possibly electrolysis between the copper and steel on your condenser in the long term.
i was wondering the same. The moisture from the cycling could also be problematic.
@@thedavesofourlives1 When I looked closer I was wondering if you could use heating ceiling panels, they are aluminum epoxy coated. With copper tubing but unless you could find some left over from a job, I have taken them to scrap after separating copper from aluminum. I just looked at 10 fossil fuel free energy sources including zero point by Creative Society. I have also done some geothermal. Retired plumber/steamfitter.
Some very interesting ideas here and a very informative and though provoking Vid. Thanks for sharing your clever work!
I want to build one of these. Using a mini fridge compressor to make a RV heat pump. I also notice some very tiny fridge compressors online. Being they are more efficient I can keep solar enclosures warm without drawing too much power.
you'd need 15 fridge compressors. Best to buy a cheap Mr. Cool/Senville 9k heat pump for about $500
Well I did a similar thing, but buried the evaporator underground. Now I have a cheap ground-source heatpump :-D
still runs well and satisfying?
U need to bury it below the frost line... In pa that is 4ft down...digging up burst pvc in mid winter suks.
Another reason for burying the evaporator is to conceal it from neighbors. After all ur exporting ur heat to the neigjbors in the sumer and stealing their heat in the winter.
@@guzziventure1750 5 years later still running strong, I did have to replace a sacrificial anode every two years
You have enough space there to make an underground evaporator, that would be a fun thing to try.
For the small heat load, it wouldn't be too difficult. Personally, I like the aesthetics of a frozen evaporator for all to see. It provides some intuitive feedback. Besides, the ground around here is all rock and concrete, and i doubt the trailer park would appreciate me digging holes!
Your evap will freeze up in the winter making it less efficient and the compressor will have really high superheat and will burn out. Better off burying the evap so you wont get and frost on the coil
Nice work, i like the evaporator.
nice, like it! you should get even more heat inside when it starts to rain. if you put that fan directly in front of that compressor
it will live longer. Like the vid.
The rain just began a few minutes ago, should be interesting. The
compressor should be suction cooled, but yeah, a little airflow would be
a good thing on it. I think I might rebuild the shroud to pull some
air past the condenser.
The compressor is cooled via Its refrigerant charge. Head fans are only used in extreme ambient conditions or for plants that are heavily loaded.
compressor is already running too cold for it's own good. Should be around 59 suction temp.
Right up my alley thanks. Super cool
Propane is a great refrigerant. The stuff is as good as R12 but man is it flammable. Also that's quite a lot to ask for from that poor little fridge compressor. It's like leaving the fridge wide open.
Yes, these fridge compressors are not meant to be run nonstop like this. Normally they work for few minutes, and then cool down. In continues operation they will probably overheat a bit. Sure, the thermal protection will kick in if needed, but I am sure heat in continues operation will kill it quicker.
I just turn my oven on in the winter works really good.
maybe this guy could use a coffee cup warmer? lol
That lenth and demeter off your capillary tube. I just finish building my but my compresor over heating. Compresor 95w but to consume 180-190w if i fill less gas no vaporization starting.
What temperature was outside?
Really interesting to see a frost on the evaporator, I wasn't exactly expecting that.
Sweet. I'd think you want the compressor outside and let its heat keep the evap from freezing as a simple method. Other ones I've seen don't work once the evap freezes.
why waste the compressor heat outside? he's already beating it up running such low suction pressures. all heat pumps frost when they hit dew point. It's normal. What's not good is running so hard that it doesn't get enough off time to melt and completely ices up.
"monolithic evaporator" copper and zinc = galvanic corrosion?
Well done sir! I am designing a similar HP system using several scrap window units that have a 5k btu scroll compressor which I will run in parallel for more capacity. I have a 28' deep well under the house that may end up being the low side coil. A poor man has poor ways.
Did you ever get it going? How well did it work? Have you made a video?
I was wondering if you could enclose the plate outside, face it south, and put glass on the south facing side to gain a boost from the sun during daylight?
the glass would block the far infrared rays which do the best heating, maybe if it was quartz glass but that's not cheap.
Solar panels that heat water are covered in glass. Greenhouses use glass.@@thedavesofourlives1
There are a lot of free deep freezers on Facebook marketplace. I'm now thinking about getting one and installing it in the garage as a heat pump to make it a bit more comfortable to work in.
I live in Canada and we see a lot of days that get down to -20c, but there still plenty of days in the winter that are between 0 and -10. I figure if a deep freezer is designed to maintain an internal temp around -18, it should work as a heat pump down to those temperatures.
I'm wondering if you sprayed the plate outside with black enamel to absorb heat from the sun and then wiped some kind of oil onto it if that would help with the icing. Or placing a few mirrors to reflect extra sunlight onto the plate.
Might make it easy to just knock the ice off manually instead of having to dethaw it.
good idea with the oil to prevent ice bonding. A "low temp" deep freeze is way too small of a compressor to make any kind of heat for a garage. maybe 1000 btu? and the efficiency drops quickly the farther away the temperatures are.
Would it make sense to turn it 90 degrees to get the funnel effect dragging air through the holes between the plates, getting better heat exchange 🤔
Paint that roofing condenser black!
That'll run that poor little compressor into the ground lol.
It's the evaporator, and yeah it was going to be black, but I wanted to see how it works first before I do anything like that. Maybe on a warm day I will paint it.
I'm not sure about the condenser. If it does fail, it will be the first one for me; I've beat the hell out of many and never had a failure. The conditions it is running under aren't all that different from the apllication it was intended for. The condenser pressure is a bit high, and the amp draw is high as well. Maybe snipping a little more cap tube out will bring the head pressure down, but it might load up the compressor even more. I'm curious to see, but will leave it be for a few days until I get a hold of the COP.
M.C. Pletcher did you end up painting it black?
judging by the low temps on suction, looks like you're borderline flooding the evaporator already, wouldn't you want a longer cap tube to get some superheat (warmer compressor inlet temp)@@whatawaytogo515
Hiya Mike. I know its been a few years since you ran this system. I think I am going to make a very similar evaporator. Did you have any issues with frost in cold WX? New to the hobby...I'm a fan of your excellent videos.
Of course he had defrosting issues below 40F! As you know, heat pumps need a reversing valve, defrost board, defrost switch to operate properly.
or short enough duty cycle and high ambient temps to allow time to melt between cycles@@USA-GreedyMenOfNoIntegrity
Nice work. I like the evaporator. I am working on something similar only with aluminium plate painted black to absorb UV. Sort of an air source heat pump. Would it help to add heat sinks? Great idea to use propane.
how did that work for you? I was thinking the same thing when I saw the silver.... black facing sun would help for sure...
It did work, but took it apart and made an air source system. Then took that apart and installed a new commercial heat pump. @@andyrossthomson
So why not paint it black.. and even use refelctors to put more sun into action. also is propane legal???
So speaking of compressor warmth - how warm would one expect to see a compressor get for, say, a 134a cooled fridge in proper working order & if overly warm, what might be the cause(s)?
Well done
Do you want to continue with refrigeration in the 2021.
wouldn't you want the "accumulator" before the evap?
Needs to be after the evaporator and before the compressor. Keeps liquid from getting back to the compressor. But I don't think his accumulator is installed properly needs to be installed in upright position (If it is an accumulator).
SLA, ahh. After a few months of research, coming back to watch this. Those low suction temps are likely to flood the compressor. Looks overcharged for the size of the evap. I read that ideal temp on suction is 59.
Wouldn't it be easier to just reverse a window unit?
I have a question, is it in your opinion possible to get the heat from an airco in the heatmode by adding a heat exchanger that feeds my floor heating, to the hot pipe that goes into my indoor unit?
very interesting stuff
Nice video. You have any clue of the cop?
It's been a while. I can safely it was at least 2.0. May have been as high as 3.0. Probably not more. Better than resistive heat!
How do work out how much propane to use in the system ?
Paint your evaporator black and point it at the sun
So uses no electricity
do yhave a propane detector to shut down the system if you get a like. sounds dangerous.
Question, why use propane instead of refrigerant? Because of cost?
It's a cheap and effective refrigerant, once used in the 1920s. It's not uncommon today in commerical freezers.
@@whatawaytogo515 is the compressor you’re using designed for 134? Or does it not really matter?
Probably 134A. It's not likely to be of much importance unless you're trying to be super efficient. More important is sizing everything, especially the metering device.
A fridge IS a heat pump...
this is amazing! I really want to do this. We have a large old well (very old UK home), I like the idea of submerging the condenser in underground water. do you have any idea how much heat per Watt/hr you get?
It would be geothermal, very interesting
Make sure that you keep the water outside of the range for bacterial growth. That can get really risky.
the ballpark i believe is 1sqft per linear foot of copper in a well/underground
Woah propane instead of the refrigerant isn’t that dangerous?
involved gamer, not really. No more than driving around with a tank of gasoline. In fact, propane refrigerant is probably much safer.
M.C. Pletcher that is interesting because I always thought with enough heat it could explode but then again if you pulled a vacuum on their won’t be any air to cause it to light up because you need the fire triangle present heat fuel and air and air is not present interesting I never thought to use propane
involved gamer, you got it. Propane was used in a few domestic refrigerators in the 20s and 30s. Butane and isobutane were used as well. I would bet money that the majority of domestic refrigerators manufactured today use a hydrocarbon refrigerant. Isobutane in refrigerators, and propane in commercial freezers.
M.C. Pletcher most of all commercial freezers run off of standard refrigerant
David Ramsey I am guessing here, and I'm referring to units worldwide. If you look at domestic upright refrigerators, isobutane is exceedingly common. I'll have to check some stats. Propane is becoming more common in upright freezers. To what degree, not sure. Walk -in units, sure, standard refrigerants.
Cool!
Hi, how did you calculate capillary length?
Michael B a fair guess based on the compressor HP, and a similar refrigerant to r290 using the chart provided with the JB Industries cap tubing. Might be 507c? Not sure. There's a document online from Tecumseh or Bitzer which describes the equivalent refrigerant for r290.
Hello . how many watts? how many cubic meters can lead to 25 ° C when it is 0 ° C outside? . with wall of tiles. more or less
compressor running watts x 3 (COP estimated) = heat watts, then convert to btu (x2)
Could it be possible to put the condenser in a basement and it work good or what I'm not a pro just listening.
maybe 1000btu only
Isn't it better to bury it underground?
Interesting
Did you solder or braze the tubing?
He talks about it in the video
how did you fill the installation with propane?
He probably used r700 it's a propane refrigerant sold at HVAC supply.
Or R290
Dude, show the consumption, show us the stats, show the heat Centigrade/Fahrenheit levels.
Not cool!!!
Why not paint it black?
Damn good idea! Because I never got around to it.
Also, kinda wanna share these nifty devices with you if you haven't seen them already: ruclips.net/video/rtm1dnUR0wo/видео.html I bet you could do some fun and exciting hvac experiments with them, quite impressive little things.
Listen Listen Listen to what I wrote below folks.
Watching setups like these almost piss me off. (No offense) but while I understand you might be living somewhere up north where its cooler and need a heater more times than cooler, for us it's almost the opposite, running the A/C almost 18 hrs everyday to put up with the heat. Even when it's not summer, A/C is still needed to keep my servers cool, etc. Since electricity is very expensive in many parts of the country, it pains me to see setups like these where you produce x amount of cold (byproduct of you harvesting the heat) and you're just wasting it outside instead of taking advantage of that cold to reap more savings and efficiency. Please, if you're going to use this design, take advantage of that cold for an ice maker, cooling down servers, supplement cooling down a freezer chest, etc... /Triggered Rant Over
Woah! Came on a little strong, but it's okay, I don't take any offense; you make some interesting points.
It would be possible to have rigged this up to my refrigerator in the lab, but load matching is the problem there. If the the temp is low outside, and the heat pump has to run a lot to satisfy the thermostat, then I run the risk of overcooling the refrigerator. If I wanted to supplement a freezer, the problem is that there's just not a lot of heat to be had in there, and the evaporator temperature would be extremely low; much lower than just pulling heat from the moist outside environment. If this were a larger, more permanent installation (and not just farting around), than I would consider pulling heat from a phase change material coupled to a refrigerator, or some other cooling mechanism.
Heat pumps are a common fixture in northern climates, and with the exception of large commercial installations, little effort is put into matching the heating load of a structure with a necessary cooling load, if one exists in the first place. Heat pumps just come down to an effort of making better use of a high quality energy carrier like electricity.
What does electricity cost per kwhr in your area?
If you don't already do so, I would suggest installing a heat pump water heater to do just what you described for me. Find passive ways to cool your home and servers more effectively, to reduce AC costs, and insulate/shade your home however possible.
Thanks for the comment.
Might as well ask you to use the excess heat your AC units put out the the outside to cook hotdogs. Don't let it waste ;)
@@whatawaytogo515 well said , the co-efficient number is crazy to match , I had this idea way back. I planned to use recovered rf compressor's (from old domestic units) to cool my cyrypto mining gear . The maths were good (even if not living in Quebec) (i live in Ontario) , but with the heavy off peak price this was feasible.
3 units mining rigs @ 1500 watt making 57 penny an hour / over the heat pump system / was good enough setup ,
but Bitcoin math works no more
Reading comments like this piss me off no end. If you want to do your setup when YOU build it different, go right ahead. Don't get pissy at someone who has done something and taken the time to share their clever and interesting setup with other people because it's not the way YOU would do it. This suits the guy that built it for his purposes, he's under no obligation to build it to your satisfaction. The idea here is to show the fundamental principals and then others, like you, can adapt it to their own varying need. I personally got a lot out of this vid and if you didn't, Move on to the next one and quit your bitching or better still, put some content in your channel instead of complaining about others that have got off their arse and been kind enough to show their ideas to others. Always the same, whinge about what others have done without ever doing anything themselves.
Er, that's how heat pumps work? Why not harness the heat your AC pumps to the outside to heat your hot water?