[pf] heat-pump, for a Montana winter - not much good.

· There's a problem with: "powering a heat-pump with your own wind-electric
energy; the heat probably coming from a liquid circulating in pipes a
couple of meters under the ground (away from the worst of the Montana
cold)." {One of the  things I said in my last post.}

· The problem was not with powering something using your own wind-electric
energy, but with: 
"the heat coming from a liquid circulating in pipes a couple of meters
under the ground."

· A heat-pump is the same as a rather large fridge-freezer; the heat from
whatever you put in the fridge is collected by the cooling panel in there,
then brought via pipes and a compressor to the outside of the fridge (there
used to be black pipes with fins) where it's released out into the room.

· The heat pump is the same but more powerful (to put more heat into the
room) and in this case the cooling panel is usually put /outside/ to
collect heat from the air and bring it into the house.

· The big attraction of a heat pump over a straight electric heater is
that, for the same electric energy used, you get about 3 times the heat
energy. (or you use 1/3 the electricity to get the same heat.)

· My suggestion of putting the heat-collecting panel or pipes some distance
underground would work well if you had a sufficient flow of ground water
around the pipes to keep bringing more heat. Otherwise, the cold liquid in
the pipes (which is supposed to attract the heat from the surroundings and
bring it back into the house), will simply freeze whatever it's in contact
with; ice is rather a good insulator (as the fish swimming under lake ice
can attest), and you'd stop collecting heat.

· So my heat-pump suggestion for heating a house wouldn't work when the
outside temperatures are really low, like in a Montana winter.

David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/index.html#top
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