3 ms·
You'd need one of three solutions to make this work: 1) Long refrigerant pipes. This is unacceptable because it increases the amount of refrigerant in the syst
by elil17 4y ago
You'd need one of three solutions to make this work:
1) Long refrigerant pipes. This is unacceptable because it increases the amount of refrigerant in the systems (refereed to as the charge of the refrigerant). Refrigerants are powerful greenhouse gases so it is important to design low charge systems.
2) Another process fluid (e.g. water or glycol). This adds expense (more pumps and heat exchangers). You'd increase the cost of all these systems by a lot.
Also, both 1 and 2 involve running a new set of single use pipes around your house.
3) Make a "single appliance" household. A design like this has been tried - single AC/heat pump hooked to fridge, freezer, oven, dishwasher, washer/dryer, and water heater. The problem is that you really have do design the house around this and it is quite limiting from an architectural perspective.
Combined AC/heat pump and water heater is a thing though.
- kortex 4y agoAdding to (2), I've worked with liquid-liquid heat exchangers (large heat/chiller units for chemical reactors) and they are super quiet and efficient, but boy howdy, are they messy and high maintenance. The glycol lines leak, the water supply leaks, the water needs to be screened and the screen needs to be changed. Air-sourced exchanger individual appliances are just so much simpler for the consumer. Not dissing ground-source heat pumps. Those are fine, since they are typically a plumb-once-and-done. You just generally don't want separate appliances which quick-connect.