Ground source heat pumps

Always_looking_to_save

Hello all, new to the forum:j so hope i'm posting this in the right place?! I've been looking into heat pumps as a replacment to my oil heating, i've read up quite a bit about it and all seems very interesting, also some excelent posts on hear about it! I have been thinking about it today and as i have limited access to my back garden i have been swayed more towards the air source pumps as i dont really want the trenchs for the ground source pipes by hand :mad:!! However i was wondering if anyone on hear knows if it was posible to use a ground source unit but instead of laying the pies in the ground runing them through the floors under the floor boards?
Any info or other ideas people have would be very much appriciated!

Thanks!

fwor

So... lets see if I understand this right... You're planning to extract heat from underneath the house you intend to heat. Won't you just make the floor colder? Or am I missing something obvious...

Always_looking_to_save

fwor wrote: »

So... lets see if I understand this right... You're planning to extract heat from underneath the house you intend to heat. Won't you just make the floor colder? Or am I missing something obvious...

No i was thinking of runing the pipes in the floor space between the ground and 1st floor. I may not be thinking about this the right way but here i go. From what i have read the pipes contain a refrigerant that 'boils' at -10c and turns it into a vapor which then goes through a compressor, heats to roughly 100c then goes through a heat exchanger which heats the water for heating, the vapor then turns back to a liquid then the process starts again, or somthing like that, Lol!
As the heating process is more down the the refrigerant vapor being compressed to heat it, it shouldn't really draw any heat from the house. Am i just veing compleatly stupid here and not understanding the process or is there something in it?

Cheers!

Andy_WSM

Always_looking_to_save wrote: »

Am i just veing compleatly stupid here and not understanding the process or is there something in it?

Cheers!

You're not understanding the process. A heat pump doesn't MAKE heat, it moves it from one place to another - suggest you go and have a Google about heat pumps. If you extracted heat from between the floors (which is what your system would do) you would have very cold floors and no net gain in your house = no effective heat rise.

lovesgshp

You do not say how many sq mtrs the house is.
A 9kw output pump requires approx 150 mtrs of input source and the same for output. You would start to cool the house down as not enough time for the recharge.
If you can get a bobcat in the garden, go for the compact heat exchangers, only need about 40 sq mtrs, but you will need a recharge source (heat recovery unit)

Always_looking_to_save

Yes i understand the process now thanks, think i just had a bit of a mental block! My thinking was that the system took minimal heat from the ground and it was the process of the refrigerant being compressed that generated most of the heat.
As i cant get a bobcat into the garden i think that air source would be the way to go!
Thanks for all your help!