De-superheating for dhw
user-6623302
| Posted in Mechanicals on
I see a product from Olive Tree Energy called a ZeroEnergy Water Heating System. Any experience with these or similar products. Is it a good concept? Maybe one of these added to an indirect tank and electric backup so you can turn the boiler off for the summer.
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Jonathan, I don't have experience with that technology but it looks interesting, especially if you run your air conditioning for long periods.
If it's removing heat from the refrigerant I'd be worried it might cause it to condense, even partially, into a liquid which would really shorten the life of the compressor. Refrigerant is superheated before it heads back to the compressor to prevent this. I'd want to know a lot more about it before I used one.
I'm curious to know if you have learned anymore about this product? It seems like an excellent idea to me and if you check out the reviews about it on Home Depot, all the reviews are positive! Their website has a lot of really good info, but I'm not finding many reviews "in the wild" or any video reviews. On youtube I did watch a video by "This Old House" where they heat pool water with a similar product. Currently have an air source heat pump with an all electric house so I'm debating installing one of these alongside my existing electric WH. According to ZeroEnergy installing it would hurt my heating with the heat pump by about 8% but would give me "free" hot water when the HP is cooling. Or, should I instead install a HP water heater, which would also affect house heating costs in the winter, but would be introducing a complete new mechanical device that could fail!