Alright writing this from the top of my head but heat pumps are neat and something I’m hoping to work on one day with the rest of the HVAC systems out there. First an overview on some stuff before I get to the why heat pumps are neat.
Refrigerants people know them as freon sometimes but that’s a brand refrigerants are the stuff in fridges that make it all work. They are categorized by toxicity and flammability and the reason they’re heavily regulated is because of the damage they do to the environment. The main part is the free chlorine that can go on to destroy the ozone layer but after a while that got phased out and now the main concern is their global warming potential. Still despite it all it’s their ability to remove heat from a system.
It starts in the compressor which can vary by type but the refrigerant enters it from the suction line as a cooled vapor (idealy only as vapor since liquid refrigerant can damage the compressor though through the use of crankcase heaters and accumulators this can be prevented). The compressor does it’s part and compress the low pressure vapor into a high pressure high temperature vapor and leaves out through the discharge line. Out it goes through the discharge line at an ideal higher tempature (not exceeding 225 F) towards the condenser. The condenser is usually known as the heat rejecting part of the refrigerant cycle. Subcooling occurs and turns the hot vapor into a hot liquid an important part for the next part. It leaves through the liquid line towards a metering device (these can vary from fixed to ones that regulate based on tempurature or other means. These regulate and help transfer the refrigerant towards the evaporator where it enters it in a state of vapor mixed with liquid. Here air from the supply side blows over it to cool it down transferring the heat from the air to the refrigerant. The refrigerant is then superheated and converted back into a low pressure low temperature vapor and goes through the suction line back towards the compressor to do it all over again.
Short of is fridge is cool inside because the hot air that leaves it at the bottom but what if we could use that hot air or make frige hot instead? Heat pumps can reverse the refrigerant making the heat rejecting part and heat absorbing parts reversed through the means of a reversing valve. This valve has one line in from the discharge line and three valves on the other side with the middle one always used for the suction line plus the other two outs depending on if it’s in heating or cooling mode. The condenser and evaporators no long have to be just outside and inside (another metering device maybe needed based on which unit is now acting as the heat absorbing part).
Heat pumps are ideal for saving energy heating a home since it takes heat outside and brings it in, even in colder climates since their is so much more outside than in it just keeps taking until it can’t. Heat pumps start to not work around 0 F so they are paired with other heat sources such as gas or electric in order to meet a homes needs. The balance point is the spot where the heat pump can’t meet the needs and switches over to a different source of heating.
The other thing that makes a heat pump different from AC is that the outside door unit is equipped with a defrost mode. Since these units can go below freezing point they do build up frost on the coils so a defrost is needed. These can be sensed from either a thermometer on the coils, be time set, or both. The out door fan will shut down, the compressor will go off and the temperature will go up until the frost is cleared.
On troubleshooting them there are a number of things that can go wrong from leaks to dirty indoor or outdoor units (condensers/evaporators for heating, evaporators/condesors for cooling), air supply issues (dirty filters or something blocking the returning air from going back) low charge to too much charge (refrigerant), electrical issues (contactors, tranformers, relays, capacitors, faulty thermostats) and compressor issues. It’s best to figure out what went wrong instead of just assuming you need a new unit or just more charge.
Yeah there’s more and this is what I want to make a career of, with a little hope and a lot of luck I’ll make it into the hvac system. Everything in hvac is just the refrigeration cycle over and over again so by studying this I hope I can make it and if not at least amused some of you.
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As a reminder, please do not discuss current struggle sessions in the mega. We want this to be a little oasis for all of us and the best way to do that is not to feed into existing conflict on the site.
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if you have a preferred week please tell me
i don’t want to sign up to do the mega but since you asked, my favorite week of the year is the last one (the 52nd week)
since everyone is asking me, my worst weeks are the first two weeks of december where i have to be at work bored out of my mind looking busy, best weeks are whatever ones i have off
Based and same, always slow at work if I even show up. Often just hang out playing games and watching movies.
yk I haven’t asked if anyone here wants to mod in a while, anyone want to?
bottom surgery in an hour aaaaaa
HVAC installed by a doggirl, call that heat pups
rrrraufff :3
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Congrats!
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Double the congrats
Congrats!
this girl passed the training for her job today
the background check is taking a million and a half years to clear though so I’m still not allowed to work yet
it’s amazing the power 2 bear site mojis have on how cute I feel when I hit send
ikr!
I’m going to have to add that one to my repertoire
Mfw heat pumps
oppa shit my pants
Eyyy sexy lady
i wish i could get as dominated and destroyed IRL as I am when I’m playing against Hard AI AOE2 bots
Wish granted, you city will now be invaded by Lithuanian and Frank cavalry until you agree to give them tribute in agricultural labor
cries in Goth mid game
4·5 months agoSo real. I play AOE3 with family and Moderate is not really a problem, 2? 3? AIs even. But switch to hard and even just one can curbstomp us.
When I was in Highschool at a LAN party, two of my friends and I thought we were good at AOE2, we played versus 5 hard AI bots on Mongolia. They swept us into the bottom corner and about 1/9th of the map, where only the geography of cliffs in our favor and 2 chokepoints we managed to stall them. We were building on top of each other. We had barely any natural resources, so we had to rely only on a few deep in our territory farms and a market from each of us, just far enough to generate a single gold each trip.
I was Teutons, so I built a lot of 10 person watch towers that my melee troops would count as archers and then could swarm out to destroy any rams they sent. Another player was Mongols so they’d move their horse archers forward for short periods, withdrawing before any died. I can’t remember the third faction because their special units were basically useless and instead they just used a lot of cheap units like Skirmishers.
The game went for so many hours and we all saved it agreeing to play it again, having only really managed to push once into enemy territory in a raid that nearly spent us.
Good times.
y’all have difficulty settings?? wait is that a DE thing?
I guess so? I never looked at the AI before DE but I know they have it in DE
I didn’t think that difficulty level 4/6 would be such a hard thing for me though. Even this morning “moderate” AI gave me decently challenging time before I was able to assemble the critical mass of Huskarls
Get this mega to 2 comments and I’ll talk about 5G towers in my next mega
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I like being trans today. No particular reason. Just do
“havent you heard the allegations against this random trans woma-”
explodes you with my mind
When I was in highschool I read this piece. It might have been standalone. It might have been an excerpt from a book. It was written ostensibly by a cis woman. She said how when she was in highschool she felt something was imperceptibly wrong with her life. She started fantasizing that she had some dark traumatic event in her past. That when friends, teachers etc found out they’d go “She is so strong”, “how does she persevere” etc She once told her friend who had had something bad happen to them and they were like “what the fuck are you talking about? Why would you want that?”. So she never brought it up again. Now that piece stuck with me for a really long time. Because I had that exact feeling.
Because I was trans (and neurodivergent) for fucks sake.
I often forgot that I am very much an outlier in the mental health department. The average person is not nearly as mentally ill as me. Why not.
It sounds trite but honestly being well adjusted in this society of climate change, imperialism, genocide, etc is kinda not the right way to be
I really worry about this. I’ve shared this opinion and I think it was harmful if anything. Normalizing and de-stigmatizing mental illness in a society which cultivates mental illness is good. But being able to exist in that society and experience joy and optimism is also good, and I think something that we need to try to understand the causes of and spread to each other.
we can all contribute to make the average cis person as bad off as us
but yes i understand what you mean, it really does feel like cis people are living on a different planet
The only thing worse than being unemployed is being employed
