Thinking about domestic air conditioners – If you replaced the large outdoor condenser and fan with a small heat exchanger that used water from your swimming pool, you could have a smaller system with fewer points of failure that would also heat your swimming pool.

My question is, would an existing system show greater efficiency if converted, or would this merely just replace a fan with a water pump.

I was reading something ages ago

There IS a way to make air-conditioning more efficient

You HEAT the gas using the sun

Crazy right?

The idea of heating the gas in the compression part of the cycle is to increase the gas pressure just before the compression stage , as in you use the sun’s energy to pump up the gas pressure so the pump doesn’t need to work as hard

That’s how I understood it

You could apply this to car air cons by using waste heat from the exhaust I guess

Dark Orange said:

swimming pool

ah the Australian dream, those communists at Your ABC must be having tourettics over the challenges of home ownership for the underprivileged 0.02% that they keep writing about

wookiemeister said:

I was reading something ages ago

There IS a way to make air-conditioning more efficient

You HEAT the gas using the sun

Crazy right?

The idea of heating the gas in the compression part of the cycle is to increase the gas pressure just before the compression stage , as in you use the sun’s energy to pump up the gas pressure so the pump doesn’t need to work as hard

That’s how I understood it

You could apply this to car air cons by using waste heat from the exhaust I guess

Our original heat pump hot water system (over 30 years ago, I think we put it in at our previous house) had pipes of refrigerant gas going over a black panel on the roof to heat the gas before it came down to the base of the storage tank to relay its heat to the water in the tank. This was expensive to install, but very efficient as the gas is easy to pump. The one we have here is over 20 years old and now dying slowly with lichen buildup on the black panel. They don’t do the 2 part systems now.

buffy said:

wookiemeister said:

I was reading something ages ago

There IS a way to make air-conditioning more efficient

You HEAT the gas using the sun

Crazy right?

The idea of heating the gas in the compression part of the cycle is to increase the gas pressure just before the compression stage , as in you use the sun’s energy to pump up the gas pressure so the pump doesn’t need to work as hard

That’s how I understood it

You could apply this to car air cons by using waste heat from the exhaust I guess

Our original heat pump hot water system (over 30 years ago, I think we put it in at our previous house) had pipes of refrigerant gas going over a black panel on the roof to heat the gas before it came down to the base of the storage tank to relay its heat to the water in the tank. This was expensive to install, but very efficient as the gas is easy to pump. The one we have here is over 20 years old and now dying slowly with lichen buildup on the black panel. They don’t do the 2 part systems now.

You’d think heating the gas up more means more efficiency ? Maybe they ate concerned about gas leaks? The more chance a leak will happen?

wookiemeister said:

buffy said:

wookiemeister said:

I was reading something ages ago

There IS a way to make air-conditioning more efficient

You HEAT the gas using the sun

Crazy right?

The idea of heating the gas in the compression part of the cycle is to increase the gas pressure just before the compression stage , as in you use the sun’s energy to pump up the gas pressure so the pump doesn’t need to work as hard

That’s how I understood it

You could apply this to car air cons by using waste heat from the exhaust I guess

Our original heat pump hot water system (over 30 years ago, I think we put it in at our previous house) had pipes of refrigerant gas going over a black panel on the roof to heat the gas before it came down to the base of the storage tank to relay its heat to the water in the tank. This was expensive to install, but very efficient as the gas is easy to pump. The one we have here is over 20 years old and now dying slowly with lichen buildup on the black panel. They don’t do the 2 part systems now.

You’d think heating the gas up more means more efficiency ? Maybe they ate concerned about gas leaks? The more chance a leak will happen?

We did once have to regas the original one. I don’t remember what happened, maybe a superhot day broke a pipe? It was a 350l water tank and on a hot Summer day you could use all the hot water and reheat it in less than an hour. We thought it was very efficient.

Dark Orange said:

Thinking about domestic air conditioners – If you replaced the large outdoor condenser and fan with a small heat exchanger that used water from your swimming pool, you could have a smaller system with fewer points of failure that would also heat your swimming pool.

My question is, would an existing system show greater efficiency if converted, or would this merely just replace a fan with a water pump.

Find someone who’s tried it.

I can’t answer it without looking at the detailed layout.

One thing I can tell you though is that unless you use a siphon system (which I do not recommend), the amount of energy required to raise water from the pool to the air conditioner is going to be orders of magnitude larger than the amount of energy required to operate a fan.