Hi all & help me if you can???

[Ecocooler]

Thanks for having this forum, I need all the help I can get!!

First up about me so you know what I am about.

Live in south eastern Australia, have about as much idea about refrigeration as what to say to my wife when she asks "what are you thinking?" I do know that air tools get very cold so moving air at speed can do more than cool soup and I am a qualified sheetmetal guy with plenty of experiance with plumbing, welding, soldering etc. I am about to start building what I hope is my dream house and I want it to be more than just a bricks and morter, I want it to be as energy efficient as it can be while still being a comfortable home.

As for why I have come to this forum????

In the midst of my research on heating and cooling I recalled our trusty kero fridge of 40 years ago and the mystery of how heat from a flame froze our food!! This combined with a new solar hotwater unit I put in got me to thinking. If the solar hotwater unit is boiling why can't I use this energy to cool and warm the new house???

It seems there is no commercially available (ad or ab) sorbtion units designed for domestic use. The best I can find has the capacity to cool 200-600 cubic metres but has a cost of the bare unit alone of AUS $40k which seems a bit pricey when all the rest of the ducting and management of the system is yet to be added.

This leaves me with the thought of either making or commissioning a cooling/heating unit myself, but where do I get the specs?????? I recognise the technical pitfalls of this idea (no cooling once the sun goes down etc) but I really think there is scope for this idea. By the way, evacuated tube solar hot water systems really work well. I can set up a 40 tube collector that produces a claimed 26kw so solar energy supply is a practical option.

If you are still reading by the time you get to this line, thanks for your interest and hopefully, thanks for your help!!

BJ in Australia

[Tesla]

Hi BJ and a warm welcome to our forum.
You may have just come up with one of those great ideas! I once thought of a glass window cellular system using ammonia to cool the inside but your idea is much better. I take it you read ReNew magazine too. I believe this is viable and some members here can help with the details. So you would provide a high energy heat source to run an absorption system to help cool the house. We will need to know how much load your house will need like m2 and intended materials so please give us some more data - the more the better.

[Ecocooler]

Hi BJ and a warm welcome to our forum.
You may have just come up with one of those great ideas! I once thought of a glass window cellular system using ammonia to cool the inside but your idea is much better. I take it you read ReNew magazine too. I believe this is viable and some members here can help with the details. So you would provide a high energy heat source to run an absorption system to help cool the house. We will need to know how much load your house will need like m2 and intended materials so please give us some more data - the more the better.

Thanks Tesla,
The house will have a hexagonal centre hub with three wings going off at various facets of the hub with a total floor are of about 300sm. Most of the ceiling in the centre hub is vaulted leaving about 1/3 with a ceiling that would house the central heat exchanger, fans and controls all hooked up to ceiling ducts throughout the house. One of the wings is double story and I plan to use the stairway and double story part of the house to my advantage. It will become a sort of convective tower to aid the temperature control in addition to its use as living space and will be vented through the upper roof to the open air in hot weather or ducted back through the heat exchanger in cold weather.
I also plan to include earth tubes to help stabilise the temperature of incoming air to the system, this should provide an inlet or fresh air supply between 12 and 24 degrees C depending of the outside temp. It is likely in hot weather the air supply will be in the 20C range even if ambient is 35C. This should reduce the load on the heating/cooling system considerably without having to recycle stale air in the house as much as a normal climate control system. I would like to think I could achieve suitable temperature management using less than 10kw if the house is well insulated and double glazed. Generally temperatures where we live don’t get below 4C and are usually 8-15C in winter and summer between 18 and 40C but most commonly in the mid to high 20’s so nothing too extreme.
The solar water heater I am looking at is 40 x 1800mm evacuated tubes and has the capacity to heat around 600lt to 100C. This could be bumped up if the tubes heated glycol but as the system needs to be vented because the tubes cannot take more than .4bar so keeping with water is much easier. The cost of the 40 tube unit is only about AUS $1500 so installing two arrays to meet the needs of the climate control system and also domestic water use is not a financial constraint and I will have the roof area to house them with good alignment to the sun. I also plan on using solar electric panels to produce the power for any pumps and fans so the whole system should be able to run at little to no cost all year round.
I don’t know how much sense this all makes to you but it has kept me awake a few nights figuring out how to make it work.
Cheers,

BJ

[Tesla]

Hi BJ
On just a quick search I found this http://www.scusolar.org/technology.thermal site which has 2 - 5 ton lithium bromide units. Is this any good or are they charging $40,000?
This is a very fast growing technology for commercial use especially Tri generation, but the domestic market has possible greater potential. I'm not too good on sizing up houses for A/C systems but some members would know off the top of their head for a 300m2 floor area.

[Ecocooler]

Hi BJ
On just a quick search I found this site which has 2 - 5 ton lithium bromide units. Is this any good or are they charging $40,000?
This is a very fast growing technology for commercial use especially Tri generation, but the domestic market has possible greater potential. I'm not too good on sizing up houses for A/C systems but some members would know off the top of their head for a 300m2 floor area.

Hi Tesla,

I had come across that one too. Since your post I have sent an email to Solarsa in the hope that they can shed some light on where and how much these units are. I have already tried to make contact through Yazaki Aust. but here they only make automotive components like wiring looms. The $40000 units are made by Broad and can be converted to use hotwater but as yet I haven't been able to find out what temp and volume would be required to run it. The whole problem is that there hasn't really been any work done on domestic units in the 5-20kw range. That's why I'm thinking about making one (if only I knew how)!!!!!!!