Air to Water Heat Pump from the Air Conditioner. Conclusions. Observations.

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• A fairy flies around.
• Suddenly, she sees a group of soldiers,
• They’re changing the caterpillar on the tank.
• What are you guys doing here? she asks.
• We’re having sex, don’t you see? fly away!
• Fairy: Boys, want to do it for realzz?
• Soldier’s eyes lit up.
• Two years in a military will make anyone horny as hell.
• Sure thing! Let’s do it!
• You’re a woman after all, even if you’re a fairy…
• The fairy waved her wand - and the tank turret came off …
• Greetings, ladies and gents!
• Welcome to my next video.
• Today I’m going to talk about
• air to water DIY heat pump.
• So, I bought this heat pump, not a heat pump, but outdoor unit from an air conditioner,
• It’s quite powerful, as you can see. It has two big fans.
• I’ll make a pause and then show you the label from this conditioner.
• So, I turned the whole system around.
• It has been working as…
• As a conditioner. Without heating function.
• There was no 4-way valve, and it still isn’t there.
• That’s why I decided not to install it yet, because, firstly, I don’t have it,
• second, I couldn’t find anything for the required power.
• I wanted to finish it faster and did it without defrost.
• So, this whole system works without defrosting.
• Now I’ll turn the camera and we’ll continue.
• Here it is …
• What is written on the outdoor unit of the compressor.
• It’s intended for the 410th freon, but I fueled it with the 404th.
• Just for fun.
• What I don’t like about 410th is that the pressure is too high.
• I see no reason to work at such high pressures.
• Here’s how
• this whole system looks.
• This is the sensor that measures the
• air temperature at the output.
• I’ve set up everything, installed additional filter.
• ECV - electronically controlled valve.
• I’m not going to …
• dive too deep in what comes after what. It’s too comlex for noobs anyway,
• and the specialists will understand everything from the pictures.
• Here you can see new solderings.
• Ok, cameraman, turn your thing around.
• Here we have a bunch of sensors. Here’s one…
• YIKEEESSS…! 😱
• 😱 Almost peed my pants when this thing turned on by itself.
• And here’s the second sensor.
• It’s right at the compressor out, it shows the discharge temperature.
• The temperature sensor is right here.
• The temperature at the out of the evaporator.
• Here as you can see we have a whole swamp appeared overnight.
• Here’s how it all looks from inside.
• This is an old experimental heat exchanger.
• Pipe in the pipe. It is now turned off, all the pipes are taken off.
• And, his majesty,
• our new heat exchanger!
• PTO
• Those who’ll be interested, will find ways to read this.
• A viewing window.
• Clean as a tear, as you can see.
• Filled up with a freon.
• A circulation pump. It works on the return.
• These are the remains of the water meter.
• I tried to fit the Hall sensor here.
• But I had no luck, such a shame.
• So, the moral of the story is: I need to buy a normal electronic water flow meter.
• I was making my experiments, couldn’t understand what’s the problem.
• Why do I have 4 degrees temperature difference.
• And why at the same time I still have the same power.
• We have 1 cube flow there.
• Turns out, those goddamn sensors lie!
• Digital sensors.
• Here’s the control board.
• This is how everything put together so far.
• I don’t want to buy a box yet, because I don’t understand what size the box should be.
• Because there will be an electronic 3-phase counter.
• And it’s going to take some place.
• I’ll probably put some other geeky stuff in there.
• Now it’s turned off, it’s interesting to see how …
• …the freon leaves the system.
• Here’s the local area connection.
• This is the protection sensor
• From the wrong polarity
• phase sequence, from low and high voltage.
• It’s also connected to the control board.
• Three phase heat pump.
• Repeating once again.
• Here is the outside temperature.
• Now it’s somewhere around 2.5, but considering that there is a defrost going on.
• And the cold air is being blown through the evaporator.
• This whole thing is connected to the heating system.
• With one inch pipe.
• We’re now in the process of the defrosting by fans.
• Somewhere at the 8th to 10th minute.
• As you can see, water is running pretty fast now.
• I’ll make a quick pause and then I’ll show you the start and the end of the cycle.
• I also want to show you this …
• the whole radiator is clean
• But here …
• right near this place
• It’s completely frozen.
• The temperature outside is 1 degree, and high humidity.
• The compressor has turned on. Just a second ago.
• As you can see I also have some pressure gauges here.
• I want you to pay attention to this.
• 15 minutes has passed.
• Water is still dripping a little.
• that is, 15 minutes, is almost enough.
• If these two pipes were not frozen, then the radiator would be absolutely clean.
• It’s clean right now.
• Except for these two pipes.
• Well,
• Other tubes may freeze too.
• I didn’t catch the pattern here.
• Why these pipes are frozen and the others are not?
• Here it’s slowly entering the operational mode.
• The lower drops, higher rises.
• Now I’ll try to show you
• how the radiator will look at the end of the working cycle.
• It’s going to happen exactly in 15 minutes.
• Also, due to the fact that two tubes remained frozen,
• 2 parallels, let’s call them that, out of 12.
• They have much lower heat takeout.
• And that’s why during suction,
• the temperature is going to be much lower.
• That is, if they were not frozen under the current conditions, when the outside temperature is +1.
• The temperature would have been around -1, -2 degrees at the out of the evaporator.
• compared to the outside temperature, it is 2-3 degrees lower.
• And in this case, not completely evaporated freon will get here, and it will be somewhere around -5, -6.
• So, that’s a disadvantage right here.
• here we have a splitter.
• The flow of the working fluid is parallelized into several pipes.
• Alright, see you at the end of the working cycle, maybe at the middle.
• 2-3 minutes passed.
• You see, the frost slowly begins to appear.
• The radiator starts to turn white, the evaporator …
• The viewing window
• For the oil, MUST HAVE!
• First of all, if something happens to the system, the oil will change color.
• At the same time, I’m able to control the oil level.
• Therefore, if someone will repeat this project, you need to get the compressor with …
• …the viewing window.
• It was interesting how much the air temperature drops after passing through the evaporator.
• So, I’ve installed the sensor here. Well, it drops somewhere around 1.5 - 2 degrees.
• 8th, 10th minute of operation.
• The evaporator is almost …
• …white.
• You can see it here.
• The compressor has shut down. Here at the time of shutdown what the radiator looks like.
• It’s not completely frozen.
• It could still work for about ten minutes.
• But because of this thing,
• Now I’m gonna thaw it with my trusty teapot, and we’ll see how much more it will work.
• Almost immediately it starts…
• This white frost starts to disappear.
• And the water will flow.
• Here’s how it looks…
• when I thawed it with a teapot.
• It still has a slight insulation layer.
• It can be blown, but it’s worse.
• 20 minutes…
• 22 - 23 minutes from the beginning of the cycle.
• It can be seen that this thing…
• is has growth but not fully
• it can be blown.
• If you look here, where it is partially unfrozen,
• and here, the air flow is much worse.
• Naturally, the defrost moment works here.
• the air is overcooled…
• …low temperature at the input of the compressor.
• As you can see, it starts to freeze here.
• The pipes.
• The temperature drops.
• And it’s no longer possible to get the right amount of heat from the heat exchanger
• because it is partially cover with this moss.
• and gets clogged.
• a very small distance between the lamellas,
• and naturally it grows very quickly.
• If you increase, - this interval will be longer.
• Longer.
• But all the same, the fact that when the frost covers the plates themselves…
• the heat takeout is getting worse.
• When there is no freezing at all, and, a temperature difference …
• outside air and here, at the compressor input, at the output of the evaporator,
• becomes around 2 - 3 degrees.
• But when that white frost begins to appear, it can be 5 - 6 and 7 degrees.
• And then this temperature drops very quickly when it becomes completely clogged …
• … the heat exchanger of the evaporator.
• After a while, I think around 2-3 minutes, it will turn off.
• It’s going to be clogged much more.
• That’s why, they make the distance between the plates slightly larger in air heat pumps.
• 2 time more.
• Here’s how the control dashboard for this thing looks.
• The control board itself is located at this IP address.
• In my particular case.
• In the local network.
• And when you open this site in any browser,
• you see this pretty picture.
• What do we have here?
• Well, first of all, we can see the current status plus additional parameters.
• I don’t know how informative this page is, I practically don’t use it.
• This picture is probably the most interesting thing here.
• all the main operational parameters are shown here.
• Of course, outside
• you can install as many sensors as you wish.
• There are a lot of them here, as may seem at first glance.
• But when you look at the picture, you understand that they are not enough.
• The flow sensor does not work.
• There’s still no sensor that measures incoming electrical power.
• Sensors that are installed…
• in the whole system are DS18B20
• These are Chinese-made sensors that accurately measure somewhere in the range
• from -5 to +20.
• And as soon as the temperature rises above 25 degrees, they begin to lie up to 5 degrees.
• So, here we see a temperature difference
• in about 5 degrees.
• But actually there’s 8 - 9 degrees.
• These Chinese sensors are all over the market.
• 🙃..🤷..🙃
• We’ve already ordered the sensors from another brand to try them out.
• But they haven’t arrived yet. That’s why, the numbers here are quite random.
• This system also has a ton of different settings.
• I’m just clicking around here for you to see the possibilities.
• Of course, when you set up a particular heat pump with this system, you need to fill in everything here.
• What I also like here - the statistics.
• I use it pretty regularly.
• When you open it, you can see the history of operation of a particular heat pump.
• Here you can see the moment when it has started.
• The temperature on the street is 2.1 degrees
• If you’re interested, pause the video and see how things work.
• And here you can see
• the temperature at the output of the evaporator at the beginning and at the end.
• I set it up so when the delta between the outside temperature and the output of the evaporator
• reaches about 7 degrees,
• the heat pump switches to the attack mode.
• Fans turn on
• The compressor turns off.
• Here it’s turned off at 9:34
• And the next start happened at 9:49.
• 15 minutes for defrosting.
• Less time and it doesn’t have enough time to drain, and these lenses that I showed you form as a result.
• Today has been working all night.
• Everything looks fine!
• You may also notice this from the temperature at the output of the condenser.
• And from the compressor discharge temperature.
• The fact that there is such a difference is most likely due to Chinese sensors.
• If the thing was flooded, then the compressor discharge temperature would not be 52, it would be 45 - 44.
• This is for sure, when there was a lens then that I showed you earlier.
• The temperature there was about 45 degrees.
• Let’s look at the configuration really quick.
• Sensor connections, settings, temprature settings.
• Everything.
• How to connect them.
• Alright, I think that’s enough for a quick rundown.
• There’s no sense to go deep into every of these parameters.
• ECV settings
• I guess that’s all options that we have here.
• I’ve been talking to you about this exact time for 15 minutes.
• About this 7 degrees delta.
• Also, here…
• What can be interesting - debug. You can see what is turned on right now.
• By these checkboxes.
• You can control all these devices in the manual mode.
• I can control everything right from here.
• But you better know what you’re doing in this mode.
• and…
• About the controller - to whom you should bring your money for it?
• To make a custom heat pump installation.
• Or to get only the control board. You can call the phone in the description.
• Or you can contact them via Viber or Telegram.
• They definitely have Viber.
• That’s it!
• Now it’s time for some conclusions.
• When operating the heat pump at above +5 degrees.
• You really don’t need defrosting.
• Up to +1 degrees you can do it with fans.
• It definitely works when the air is damp, if it’s dry, it’s somewhere up to +2.
• So, we can make a conclusion that we can use
• the outer unit of the conditioner without any restrictions at a temperatures higher than +2.
• Now.
• If we want to use all this machinery at a lower temperatures.
• Then we need, a power margin. Somewhere around 1.5 times more power.
• Maybe even 2 times more.
• Secondly, we need a reversal scheme.
• For the forced defrosting.
• so, we need to have 4-way valve.
• Why 1.5 - 2 times more power?
• The thing is that with very high humidity.
• Fog, rain and temperatures around 0.
• it can be +5 degrees, or +1 degrees.
• Even if you have a forced attack scheme, using reverse.
• Anyway, the conditioner is going to freeze.
• If it’s the conditioner, then it’s going to be frozen in 15 -20 minutes max.
• If it’s an external unit of the heat pump, this process is going to take more time.
• Next, because of a big distance between the heat exchanger plates.
• Naturally, this gap will be a little lower.
• But anyway, if you spot even a small frost,
• the heat exchange is getting worse.
• and, as a consequense, we have lower efficiency (COP).
• Or maybe SOP, everyone call it differently.
• That’s why, strictly saying, your heat pump will work:
• 15 minutes of work,
• 10 - 15 minutes rest, defrosting.
• And there’s nothing you can do with this.
• If you won’t have 2x power margin at 0 degrees.
• You know the heat loss of your home.
• And so you need to have extra power. 2 times more.
• At low temperatures, as a rule, humidity is lower.
• Naturally, your heat exchanger will freeze much more slowly.
• Most likely it will work for 1.5 and 2 hours.
• Therefore, it will no longer be so critical.
• But although the overall COP will be lower. At -5, -10 degrees, the COP will be 2.
• Given that you will still have to spend energy on defrosting.
• That’s why you need 2x power margin at least.
• Except for that, this is a working prototype.
• I decided for myself that I will not further develop this heat pump.
• It’ll be working as it is right now.
• Plus my other geothermal.
• On the one hand, this is capacity reservation,
• at the other hand…
• I’ll probably make an automatic switching mechanism.
• At temperatures above +5, or +3 this one will be working,
• at lower temperatures, the other, geothermal heat pump will work.
• On the one hand, the soil won’t be frozen so quickly.
• On the other hand, there’s no reason to freeze the air when it’s warm.
• So, my awesome viewers, ask your questions in the comments below.
• I hope we’ll have a useful conversation on this topic.
• See you later!