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Mini Split Heat Pumps: Not Significantly More Than You Reasonably Need To Know


							
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I was about to comment on ground source heat pumps, but you beat me to it.

You can do some DUMB shit with those; including just dropping a couple hundred feet of tubing down a well shaft.

I find the main advantage of them is they are decently efficient DIYable single room COOLING AND HEATING, which is sick.

I have a blind spot on vertical ones because they're definitely not an option here; my well wouldn't qualify as "marginally acceptable" as a water source in most places, and you'd have to be impossibly lucky to get a shaft with enough water layer and flow to work as a ground source. In a place like florida they'd be amazing, but in florida you could just warm your pool instead.

Geothermal in general has that "as much art as science" problem. There's research asking "wait, how much heat could pump from the ground below a city without causing problems?", and there's not much in the way of hard numbers yet, especially in the cold climates where a ground source is important.

That's one reason I think co-gen will be a big deal. Having a huge volume of power plant condensate to work with takes out the guesswork, and there's no technological advances needed over current high-temp cogen systems.

In yet another victory for thermodynamics; it turns out that a large thermal mass is just fucking better for the shit we want to do if you can max out capacity.

It's like that old tmblr post; that no matter what you are doing the most efficient form will always be whatever the train equivalent for the field is.

that no matter what you are doing the most efficient form will always be whatever the train equivalent for the field is

is it entire interesting part? Or have they got interesting examples?

A conceptual train.

Imagine you are, for example, lifting mass into orbit, or moving people between floors in a building, or cooking food, or digging a big hole.

What is the most efficient way to do all those things? Orbital elevator theoretically/BIG ROCKET currently, Escalator, BIG pressure cooker, BIG bucket wheel excavator.

The more the spirt of the thing is akin to a train, the more efficient the thing is, and also the more RIGHTOUS the thing is because trains are fucking sick