Friday, February 13, 2009

Geothermal Heat Pump on a Friday Afternoon

Given the very recent rise in temperatures around here, I thought it would be a good idea to go outside and inspect my geothermal heating system. At the heart of the system is the geothermal heat pump, and a critical component of that heat pump is the core element:



Well, yes, it does look like a patch of old snow, doesn't it? That might very well be the case, but today, it's been re-purposed as a geothermal heat pump, the nature of which is to provide a sustainable source of thermal energy for heating and cooling (in this case, cooling). You can see the delicate core element right in the very center in the photo above.

Next, I firmly, but gently, grasped the core element with my hand, and slowly extracted it from the geothermal pump. It seems like, overall, it's in pretty good condition:



I then brought it inside the house and sat it down at my desk while I continued to blog (about this very same topic, no less). Then removed the end cap and inspected the core's contents. I am happy to report that this experiment in sustainable energy use has gone remarkably well: My goals for adequate refrigeration have been achieved, with negligible (near-zero) impact on the earth's resources.



And now, it's time for a poem:

A Patch of Old Snow

There's a patch of old snow in a corner
That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
Had brought to rest.

It is speckled with grime as if
Small print overspread it,
The news of a day I've forgotten --
If I ever read it.

-- Robert Frost

Have a great weekend, and Happy Valentines Day to all my sweethearts out there! :-)

5 comments:

John Poole said...

You had me going... especially when I first viewed the photo of the hand pulling out a core.

Well done!

You West Coast Pundit

Anonymous said...

I was so inspired by your engineering expertise that I also decided to use a geothermal heat pump to cool my bottle of Raspberry Absolute for my cosmos later today!!
Have a great day...
- luv C

John Poole said...

John -- Yes, this posting does start off reading like a serious note, until you scroll down to the second picture. Glad you enjoyed it!

Colleen -- How did your cosmos come out? From an engineering perspective, it would valuable to compare the relative efficiencies of a rye-based thermal exchanger versus a malt-based one! ;-)

Cassie said...

John, Love the R.Frost poem.I believe he had a twinkle in his eye when he wrote that. I was to this blog site b4,but somehow lost track of it & ended up on your rowing blog...Ah, but I'm back! I too have used such a cooling method. Started when I was in college---but that's another story!

John Poole said...

Hey Cassie!

Glad to you see return. But you never lost your way, rather, just just took the path less traveled by(i.e., the rowing club), and that has made all the difference! (as Frost would've said).

Yes, my natural beer chilling technique would appear to be one of those ancillary skills one learns in college. I vaguely recall us doing something like this, way back when, as well. A bunch of silly students we were, drinking beer on the porch in sub-freezing weather! But it's all a blur now, of course! LOL!

I'll drop by in a few and see what's going on at your end of the blogosphere...

- John