Safe Speed Forums

After many years in the classic car industry in the UK, I escaped to NZ in 2000.........

Fast forward seven years.........I'm now involved with an energy saving device which is, well, brilliant.

If someone came up to you and said, I can sell you a device you can bolt onto your car that would triple the mpg, what would be your response?

My hot water heat pump doesn't triple your mpg, but it does reduce your hot water costs by a third (compared to standard electricity). Over in the UK you are in the fortunate position of (hopefully) being able to give me some unbiased advice, as you can't buy such a device in the UK.

A tankful of hot water (in NZ) costs something like 60p, with a heat pump it is more like 16p, and considering the heat pump is not much over £1000 installed, I reckon it's a real winner.

All thoughtful comments welcome
http://climatezone.co.nz/hot_water_heat_pumps.html

PS. Due to old age I'm fifty on Valentines day, everyone wlecome to a party on the 10th Feb, plenty of home made booze!
Seriously, all members of safespeed are welcome to look me up if you should ever find yourself down under, the weather is better, the driving is shocking.
Anyone for a heat pump?

Bugger, duplicated thread. Paul, if you are moderating get rid of one of these.......I have slight problem with (NZ) Telecom and broadband

First question - where exactly does it pump heat from?

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

mine too

althoguh from my skinmning it extracts heat from the compression of air ('like a bike pump getting warm')... where does that air come from ?

Isn't this essentially the same as discussed here:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewt ... 6&start=40

I would guess that the additional heat comes from the air, constantly refreshed to provide more 'relatively' warmer air.

If it comes from centrally heated air then, Houston, we have a problem.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I have often thought that dumping the heat from an air con system was wasteful, why not use it to heat your hot water supply instead.

What if you run the pump with photo-voltaic cells? Hot water and a cool building (in Summer) for 'free'. I am not sure if the math adds up though, the cost of sufficient photo-voltaic panels may be prohibitive.

Hmmm.....

Obviously things are a little different down there, electricity here is far more expensive than gas, something like 3 to 4 times the price depending on whereabouts in the country you live.

Most people have gas hot water and a lot have instant hot water so don't suffer from storage losses.

I'm still puzzled as to how this gets more hot water from less energy. Unless all the savings are from (lack of) storage losses, in which case you are on a hiding to nothing at this end of the world because most of us don't have to rely on expensive bottled gas. And even where we do it is AFAIK still cheaper than electricity. And during the winter (October to July ), hot water is pretty much a byproduct of central heating.

I think he's just mentioning a product type that has been about for a few years now. It extracts heat from virtually anything, even the [cold] ground.
My boss has one installed in his garden...it's buried about 5 metres under the garden and extracts latent heat from the ground. Even in winter it keeps the house warm.

from another post....

New Zealand is an area of HIGH geothermal activity, so heat exchanging is a very effective way of using your power.

There is a chapel at Hawkshead near us which uses a heat pump.
It's effective because they only use the building once or twice a week, so the unit stores up the heat then releases it when required.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Right the easiest way to understand this.

A fridge takes heat out of the inside and transfers it outside the fridge, despite the unfavourable temperature difference, by compressing the "liquid" and letting it give out heat at the back, then letting it evaporate and pumping the cold "gas" inside the fridge.

These sort of heat pumps do the reverse, pumping a cold liquid round, letting it evaporate and heat the house, then condense it again.

Of course if you pump it round the garden you have a larger area than a solar pannel. This one seems to just use the air outside which of course still contains heat energy.