Heating a condominium with air conditioning

 Heating a condominium with air conditioning:

From the smallest, more elegant, brick-built condominiums to the largest, 9-10-story, two-hundred-apartment panel houses, the following split-climate basic idea applies:

In my opinion, the outdoor unit should not be installed on the outer wall of the house, but on the outside of the wall separating the apartment from the corridor, outside, in the corridor. Thus the outside unit draws in much warmer air and works much, much cheaper than if it were installed on the outside of the house wall, and thus the heating costs are reduced by half or even a quarter compared to the external wall solution!

Since the horizontal distance between the outdoor and indoor unit, or the "pipe line length" representing a value close to it (usually max. 10 - 25 meters, depending on the type) is maximized, so is the vertical height difference between the two devices (which is usually max. 3-5 meters); therefore, in addition to the following, it is also said that the solution outlined here realizes a maximum trail length of 3-4 meters and a maximum vertical height difference of 2-3 meters.

If the outdoor unit turns out to be a bit loud due to the noise of its fan, then a furniture board box lined with thick fabric can be built around it, on which we would cut out a circular shape for the fan only, for suction, and some distance should be left at the bottom of the wooden box so that the exhaust air can escape into the air space of the corridor. Or: the outdoor units must be placed in the corridor widenings, which occur in several places, such as at the elevator, at the stairwell, and even a separate chamber can be created outside. to hide units, and from here everything would certainly not emit disturbing machine noise.

At the same time, it is necessary to ensure the entry of basement air from the basement into the continuous internal air space of the house, which includes the staircase and the corridors on each floor. This can be solved with a fan, which pushes the air through the opening cut in the iron door separating the basement from the staircase into the bottom of the staircase and from there into the common space of the house, into the corridors. An inexpensive temperature comparator could be used to control this fan so that it always turns on the fan blowing the basement air into the interior corridor areas of the house if the corridor temperature goes below the basement temperature.

The advantage of this (essentially heat storage) solution is that the mass of all the walls bordering the corridors of the apartment building and the entire basement will also act as a heat storage mass!!!

And the corridor glass surfaces that form a thermal bridge to the outside world (at the elevators and stairwells) should be thermally insulated with 5-10 cm thick polystyrene foam once the rest of the work is done.

So no one can say that air conditioners cool down the corridors...

When enough people use this (that is, they put the outdoor unit out in the corridor), it will be worthwhile to install solar collectors on the roof. The costs of this would be covered by the affected air conditioners (that is, those who install their outdoor unit on the wall of their apartment, in the corridor).

A solution that requires less investment and trouble than this (the roof collectors) is to replace the heat losses in the basement with an air/air heat pump, no matter how surprising it sounds! We can initially expose the outdoor unit to the outside air, but if the house's budget allows, we should choose the following mode of operation as soon as possible: We make a shaft at the base of the wall of the apartment building, e.g. 2x3 meters in size, where the house's collection channel leaves the house's basement. There, we cut the one-two-meter vertical channel section running vertically next to the wall of the house above the turning elbow, insert three pieces of "Y" branch or 135-degree branch, insert a pipe section the thickness of the channel, preferably made of metal, and lead it back at the bottom their air into the further channel also with 3 branch fittings. By ventilating the additionally inserted metal pipe pieces, a significant amount of heat can be extracted from the contents of the ducts leaving the house and from the air of the remote duct network and absorbed by the heat pump outdoor unit placed in the shaft. Outside air can also be forced into this shaft with a fan, if the temperature comparator detects that it is colder in the shaft than outside in the open air.

The hot air coming from the solar collectors (if solar heat replacement is chosen) should be pushed down through a thick vertical pipe in the stairwell into the basement, where even the energy of the summer sun can be stored until the heating season. Through this pipe, the amount of heat generated during all the hours of sunshine throughout the year can be pushed down into the basement. The required amount of solar collectors is easy to calculate, but if this is a problem, you can contact me by phone or email at any time, and I will send the result immediately or by "postal order".

In the event of the incorporation of new co-owners, the ext. those who place their unit in the corridor would also need another dose of solar collectors or it would be worthwhile for them to put it on the roof, the costs of which would be covered by the new members.

If, in principle, all the owners of the house have installed one (or more!) air conditioners, the solar collector solution is probably not able to replace the heat losses in the basement, in which case the heat pump solution must also be used. The two replacements are definitely capable of replacing the heat to a sufficient extent, for an unlimited period of time.

And if possible, a bill should be submitted to the government with the participation of several parties, which would make it mandatory for the other owners of the apartment building not affected by air conditioning to tolerate the placement of outdoor units in the corridor, and for those with air conditioning to make a suitable noise-absorbing protective cover or noise-insulating chamber.

The glass surfaces of the corridors and staircases must be thermally insulated, and the costs of this would naturally be covered by the air conditioners concerned.

László Harcz