2 Booster Pumps, Same Mainline

[Pat]

Dave, In case I sort of obscured the information, here let me totally louse it up...

NO really, This will help... There are three hot water heaters; one propane at 40 gal and two electric with one being 30 gal and the other is 50 gal. Neither electric is connected to electric power.

The 30 gal tank's thermostat is used to ask the GSHP for hot water and as the system is a heating priority system it will briefly and temporarily interrupt air conditioning (cooling) to satisfy the 30 gal tank. This is about 115 to 120 degree water in the 30 gal tank. This is what is used for hydronic heat.

The 50 gal electric DHW tank has its contents circulated through a flat plate heat exchanger. The "OTHER" side of the heat exchanger is in the loop between the GSHP and the 30 gal tank.

Their are two pumps pumping water through the 30 gal tank. One circuit is fron the GSHP through the heat exchanger, through the 30 gal tank and back to the GSHP. The other circuit is the 30 gal tank, an external pump, and the manifolds for the hydronics, then back to the 30 gal tank.

This is like the traditional joint checking account where one party has the task of putting $ into thte account and the other takes it out with no need for communications between the two parties as long as the capacity to put it in is not exceeded on average by the taking out.

Yet another pump circulates water through the heat exchanger and the 50 gal tank. The thermostat on the 50 gal tank controls this pump. When the 50 gal tank wants heat it starts the pump and "steals" heat from the hydronic storage tank (30 gal tank.) The input to the 50 gal DHW tank is cold water. The output of the 50 gal tank goes to the input of the 40 gal propane fired tank. The 50 gal tank "preheats" the water for the propane fired tank. The 40 gal propane tank should be able to keep up wilth demand since it only has to raise the water from about 115F up top about 140F (at most.)

Deep earth temp here is about 62.5F so water in shallower pipes is sometimes warmer and sometimes colder but probably averages about 62.5. So on average the 50 gal tank provides about 52.5F increase and the propane unit provides about 25F rise. (this assumes 115F in the 30 and 40 gal tanks. If I get 120 then the preheat is 57.5F and the propane unit only has to make 20F rise. I should get pretty fast recovery times.

Some of this is speculative as I have received but not installed the pump for the 50 gal tank... yet.

Cold weather will not make a change in the job of the propane fired unit as it will still get 115-120F feed water and it is located inside a conditioned space.. The equipment room is in the basement along the most burried wall. The basement wall is cast concrete 12 inches thick with R-11 rigid foam on the outside. The floor has R-11 rigid foam under it as well and 16 inches of washed gravel under the foam before hitting dirt (French drains preclude water contact wilth the slab.) There shouldn't be much seasonal difference in operation.

Heat pumps can run about 300 to 400% efficiency as compared to an electric DHW tank which is about 100% efficient. How do you get over 100% efficiency??? Electric water heaters "burn" electricity at efficiency of 100% directly converting electric energy into heat. Heat pumps don't "burn" electricity to make heat. They consume electricity to pump pre-existing heat from one location to another.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[CJDave]

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] It ALL comes clear to me now. [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img] If there is anything that I understand from years and years behind the view finder of an Infrared Imaging Camera, it is heat transfer. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] I love dinking around with stuff like this. In CA the big thing was "thermal storage" where you used the cool air on those summer nights and cheaper "off peak" electricity to cool the refrigeration condensers and drop the temp on a zillion gallons of Eutectic fluid down to nega-nega land, and then run all day with only circulating pumps and coil fans. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] We called those setups "ice packs". [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img]

[SLOBuds]

Here ya go, just for funs.

I don't know about the check valve. Don't notice one on the current booster pump (fed by the 2500 gallon tank). I'll check.

Just for funs.

Martin

[CJDave]

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] Sometimes it's hard to see them in the midst of all the fittings and pump castings. I'll be there somewhere. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Dave, We had a "load shifting" (day to night) system out in the desert on Mt. Tiefort between Death Valley and Barstow at Ft. Irwin the Army's National Training Center where desert warfare tank combat was practiced (put to use in Iraq.)

Up on top of the mountain we installed a computer center and had lots of heat load. The AC equip ran full bore all through the cool desert night freezing a huge block of ice that provided the capacity to make it through the hot desert day. Pipes with antifreeze solution in them carried chilled water from the ice bank into the points of use. This allowed for the use of much smaller cooling units to "bank" cold for the next day than would have been required to hold the load with no "ice bank."

Incidently, there were lots of thermal imagers in use on and around the "playing field" at the fort too but they were in gun sights and surveillance systems.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[egon]

Ah heck Pat , that's old tecknology. Up in the frozen north we let winter nature covert liquid water into a [ forget the proper name ] solid. This in turn gets stored in sawdust insulated sheds to keep the summer milk cool.

One of our Railroads even gave me the priveledge of going into these sheds and recording the available amount of ice! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Out on the way to the farm there is an old barn? that has one edge sitting over the water of a small lake. One day looking through books at the library discovered this used to be a building for storing ice cut at the lake.

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Egon, When my father-in-law was a lad in Iowa living next to the Mississippi river he helped saw large chunks of ice to store in the ice house for summer use.

Ice harvesting isn't the sole property of denizens of the frozen northlands above the border, it happens in parts of the lower 48 too.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[SLOBuds]

Here is the Ice House in the town where my father grew up.

This is along the Cedar River, Pat, a tributary of the Mississippi. At the town of Cedar falls.

Martin

[Bird]

Egon, do they still cut the blocks of ice from lakes and rivers in the winter to store for the summer? Naturally, in my part of the country, I only read about such things until 1972 when we drove to Alaska. An aunt and uncle made the trip with us and their pickup camper had an ice box instead of a refrigerator. And once on the trip back, we stopped for gas pretty much in the wilderness on the Alaska highway in Canada and my uncle asked about ice and the guy there told him to watch for a little dirt trail off the left side of the road about a mile farther on. We found it and took that trail just out of sight of the road back in the woods and found a little wooden building 10 or 12 feet square with ice and sawdust inside. There was no one around, but there were ice picks outside, along with what we used to call "cotton scales" (balance scales), and a sign on the building to find a block of the size you wanted, or cut one, weigh it, and charge yourself 7 cents a pound and put the money in the little box by the door. So we did just that. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img] I have no idea who it belonged to since there were no other buildings or people anywhere in the vicinity that we could see.

[GaryQWA]

Is that really a mile! of 1.5" sch 40 PVC from the well to the 2500 gal tank? Anyone calculate the pressure loss in that line; or any of these lines?

The 500' from the 5000 gal tank to the pump... is it down hill to the pump or at least flat?

What type pumps are used; jet or centrifical? What hp? What pressure are they going to have to be run at with all the pressure loss in 1.5" and 2" sch 40 jointed every 20'?

Gary Slusser