Ah, the gremlins that haunt the geniuses! My son bought a new house that
had a series of pumps and valves that circulate the hot water so that it is
always available at the sinks. He has spent a lot of time changing out
check valves to keep this system working.
Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Norcutt" <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Olympus Camera Discussion" <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 6:46 PM
Subject: Re: [OM] OT: Air-source Heat Pump?
> Make sure you understand the logic of the control system if you do this.
> I had a hot water preheat system when I lived in Florida from 1985-95.
> The water circulated from the hot water heater in the garage to the
> solar collector on the roof as long as the water in the collector was
> hotter than the water in the tank.
>
> It all worked fairly well for a while until one day my wife complained
> that our electric bill had gotten astronomically large. We couldn't
> figure out what was going on and it continued for 3 months until I
> finally solved it. One night I went out into the garage about 9pm and
> suddenly realized that the pump was running feeding from the hot water
> tank up to the collector on the roof. The sun had long been down and it
> was quite cool outside... no reason for the pump to be trying to collect
> non-existent heat from the roof.
>
> I still had no idea what was happening and why but made a trip up to the
> roof collector the next day. It took a lot of detective work but I
> eventually discovered that the temperature sensing wire that emerged
> from the collector and ran to the controller was short circuited against
> the aluminum of the collector frame. Apparently expansion and
> contraction of the frame had been rubbing the wire between a sharp edge
> of the frame and the copper pipe carrying the water. After some more
> detective work examining the operational specs I realized that no
> voltage signal coming from that wire was interpreted by the controller
> as "the temperature of the collector is at the boiling point of water".
> Therefore the controller was dutifully pumping my expensive
> electrically heated water up to the collector where it acted as a very
> fine radiator for distributing all my expensive heat right back to the
> atmosphere.
>
> Argghhh!!! As my good friend Bob Burns said:
> "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
> Gang aft a-gley..."
>
> Chuck Norcutt
>
>
> On 11/28/2012 2:44 PM, Ken Norton wrote:
>> The side benefit is that the same collection
>> system is used for hot-water preheat.
> --
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