When I place mine in heat mode they make the pool water warmer and when I place them in chill mode they make my water cooler.
I've found that they work best on heat running in the daytime and running in the nighttime on chill mode.

Perhaps, it has something to do with the air, LMAO!!!!

I'm sorry, I couldn't resist either!!!LOL

See ya,
Kelly

BTW, your hot rodded sled sounds AWESOME!!!

Still LMAO

Oh yea Kelly, I even considered hooking up the radiator under my seat to the pool to generate "free" heat from the big triple but the pipes were a bit loud for the neighbors.

quote" to generate "free" heat "quote

I'm curious, how much heat do you think you can capture from a single copper tube inside a PVC pool plumbing pipe?
I'd contemplated trying to affect some sort of heat exchanger prior to my condensing coils too. My idea was like yours but I was simply going to put a 3-way valve w/JVA on the pool return and a check valve after the exchanger. Looking at the wind swept area of the typical condensing coils I figured that I'd have to place my water heating condensing coils inside of a Fiberglass filter tank. I didn't think a single copper tube would make much transfer to the water because there's minimal swept area.
I figured with my setup I could turn off the return valve, drain the tank and run the Freon through the exchanger year round on it's way to the regular coils at the unit.
Once I figured out the PIA (pain in ass) factor I blew it off and purchased some solar panels which I never installed and returned.
My pool is large and the amount of water is well over 100,000 gallons. After making the purchase I didn't think the solar panels would be very effective when compared to the purchase price.
This brought me back to the free heat from the condensing unit idea again.
Judging by the preheat exchanger you described for the restaurant industry I'd think that it may be possible to purchase something that just has to be soldered and plumbed into existing AC tubing and pool piping.
I don't care about the warranty violation, the money I'd save on heating would well offset the price of a replacement condensing unit if necessary.
Any advice would be appreciated.

See ya,
Kelly

LOL,

I am not the one who missed high school physics and thinks he can get more than 3.413 BTU's out of a watt of electricity by making it in a compressor.

From http://www.refrigerationbasics.com/1024x768/heat_pumps1.htm:
"A heat pump is an Air Conditioning system which can also provide very efficient heating. It takes less energy to relocate heat than it does to create it. Just as a refrigeration system removes and relocates heat from a cooler or freezer, so too does a heat pump remove heat from cold outdoor air and relocate it to within a building."

From: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/heatpump.html

"But 1 kWh of energy used in an electric heat pump could "pump" 3 kWh of energy from the cooler outside environment into your house for heating. "

These help you out any?

quote" These help you out any? quote

Absolutely not.

To avoid the risk of being placed on your or ZL's side of the fence in y'alls debate I took the fifth on my knowledge of how heat pumps gather and (key word here) generate heat. I guess that you refuse to accept that some of the heat is generated by the high pressure side of the compressor and equally ZL700 seems to say the same thing about how the air temp is transferred rather than gathered. It's really quite a shame because your both equally correct in key aspects of how and why they work, but to stubborn I suppose to recognize the others input.

What I could really utilize is the combined expertise from the both of you to enlighten me as to what your opinions on condensing coil construction to place inside of solid water to transfer the heat from my AC's compressor discharge to my swimming pool water.
I REALIZE this won't be free heat because I'm already paying to energize the HVAC systems on my home. I have 2 systems on my home and 2 complete sets of pool equipment on my pool. I could tap into this wasted heat energy for my pool water in the spring and fall.
My pool is not salt, I use bleach, borax, and baking soda for my basic water chemistry.
I'm also a fair fabricator so I'm reasonably certain that I could fashion a heat exchanger.
The more I think about it the more I think I should pursue it, especially after reading that this theory has been placed into a real world application in the restaurant industry for preheating water.
I gave this same idea a fair amount of thought back in 04 when I built the pool at our new home and then blew it off.

Any input from any member would be appreciated.

Later,
Kelly

Well it took some surfing but look what I came up with.
I promise you guys this, I looked for something like this almost 4 years ago and couldn't find anything. This was before I discovered forums. I stumbled across an HVAC forum and found the name of what I was looking for in their search.
I'm really quite shocked as to why these Mfg's haven't approached the pool industry, except perhaps because what will you do with it once you don't want the warm water you generated, or should I say transferred, the heat to. I'm thinking maybe a large reservoir tank in the attic tapped into the cold inlet on my hot water heaters and a couple of 3-way valves.

See ya,
Kelly

Here is a link that might be useful: desuperheaters

Kelly,

You found something in the superheaters which may work for you. They are in pool heat pumps, so you can see they do work. These gas to fluid heat exchanger coils are commonly used to exchange refrigerant gas to fluid on a closed or open loop heat pump system. These are commonly called water source heat pump(WSHP). These coils being an intregal part of these systems if you look, can be bought as a part and with many options which would include Cupri-nickel plating. However for me with salt water Cupri-nickel is not proven to last under those conditions. In addition Stainless Steel also quickly gives up the ghost when subjected to higher levels of chlorides (not to be confused with chlorine).
If you persue this manner, you may need or want a small circulator/pump to circulate the pool water through these coils and it can be controlled via the compressor contactors to activate and be cut out or disabled when you are at desired pool water temp via a set point controller (stat). In addition care must be taken to protect the balance of the refrigeration system and is done by adding a head pressure control that cycles the outdoor condenser fan. The side benefit is the 1/4-1/2 HP motor and fan doesn't need to run at times saving you energy$$.
Also when designing, the rule of thumb is 1 GPM of fluid is required per ton (12,000 Btu's). (5 ton AC requires 5 GPM)

In my case, as in marine salt water heat exchangers, Titanium is my only choice. And it wouldn't be just a tube in the PVC pipe. I would bend numerous feet (yet to be determined) to form a bundle of pipe to meet the surface area of exchange surface I desire. I can always make my PVC longer to fit the amount of bundled tubing of two AC circuits to fit. From there the hot gas disharges to the exchanger along with the shell itself can be covered with closed cell rubber insulation.

Kelly,

Here is a head pressure contol example
(can be purchased on eBay)

Here is a link that might be useful: Head Pressure Control

Kelly-

Packless provides a nice design for water cooled heat exchangers. A lot of HVAC OEM's today use Packless heat exchangers or similar in their watersource heating and cooling designs. Pool Heat pump OEM's also use a design similar to Packless with special coatings/materials to survive pool water chemistry.

The use of these heat exchangers to pre-heat potable water works well in low and medium temp refrigeration systems such as those used in walk-in coolers and display cases found in grocery stores. These refrigeration systems already have sophisticated refrigerant metering devices that properly control the metering of liquid refrigerant into the evaporator and provide adequate superheat returning to the compressor to prevent liquid slugging which will cause compressor failure.

In high temp applications such as residential HVAC, the use of watersource heat exchangers prior to the condensing coil will work but will require a lot of sophisticated controls to be added to provide the right amount of subcooling and superheat to the system for reliable refrigerant metering extending the life of the system.

After considering the cost of adding the needed refrigerant metering control devices and head pressure control plus being only able to heat the pool water only when the AC system is in use appeals to only a small number of clients. Not a large market at all for a product such as this.

There is actually a DOE funded project going on right now called "net zero engergy" homes. The concept is the home should be able to produce enough power to meet the homes energy requirements hence net zero energy. The HVAC systems in these prototype homes use water cooled heat exchangers for hot water heating. Even with the small load of hot water heating in these homes, the HVAC technology limits are being pushed. Heating a pool would require much larger amounts of heat to be practical in every day use when combining HVAC systems and pool heating.

Of course, those who like to tinker and have available assets and hardware to play with will benefit from the additional heat provided by these AC system heat exchangers but the risk of a compressor failure go up considerably when these head pressure controls and refrigerant metering devices fail down the road.

There are high efficient HVAC systems available today that use water to cool the condenser. These systems are called closed-water-loop geothermal HVAC systems and are very efficient because the cooler water is used to reduce the condensing temps which considerably reduced compressor head pressure and operating power. These watersource closed loop HVAC systems have been around for a long time and could possibly be adapted to heating a pool easier than the proposed method of using an existing air to air HVAC system and retrofitting a water cooled heat exchanger to it. This would also save a lot of coin on your heating and cooling costs as the heating and cooling efficiency will be a lot better than your existing air to air system. Not sure what pool water chemistry would do to these water cooled heat exchangers but listening to those in the watersource HVAC industry, water chemistry is the biggest contributor to heat exchanger failures on these watersource HVAC systems.

Hope this helps!

edit last post:

"in a heat pump with a COP of 4 this account for 1/4 of the total heat coming out, the other 3/4's is coming from the outside air."

Ouch the board just dropped my first message completely so disregard teh starnge edit message.

What I did say was:

"Absolutely not."

I was directing this to zl700 who's still seems to believe heat pumps don't actually take any heat from the outdoor air for heating.

"I guess that you refuse to accept that some of the heat is generated by the high pressure side of the compressor."

Actually I admitted my mistake and said so in the epic thread. I know that the work from the compressor gets truned into useable heat in the condensor. In a heat pump with a COP of for this accounts for 1/4 of the total heat coming out, the other 3/4 comes from the outdoor air. This fact is explained rather nicely here: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/heatpump.html

"What I could really utilize is the combined expertise from the both of you to enlighten me as to what your opinions on condensing coil construction to place inside of solid water to transfer the heat from my AC's compressor discharge to my swimming pool water."

This could be done first let me say why it is not something normally made for pools specifically. That is usually when you wnat to heat your pool you do not want to cool your house, that is in the cooler months.

The easiest way to do this would be to simply take the say the AquaCals H155 and put it inside your house, it would supply 60,000 plus BTU's of cooling, but who would wnat that sitting in thier house.

Your best bet might be taking the condensor out of a stanard pool heat pump and adapting it to your a/c system, since it was designed for the corrisove enviroment of pool water.

The best option might be finding the hybrid heat pump I have seen designed to help heat your hot water, the put heat into you hot water tank until it is to temp and then switch over to dumping heat back to air after that.

Main thing is you would need to switch back to an air heat sink after your pool is up to temp since your a/c may still need to run and you don't want the pool up to 100 degrees on a hot day ;)