John’s Gone Bonkers!

That’s nothing new. He gets excited about things, especially solar. At the top of some pages you’ll see a link to John Kimball’s Blog. Take it. I don’t know why, but you have to scroll down and wait a few seconds for the blog to appear.

I like to check his blog.  Sometimes, like me, he will go a while without posting, but then it is a furious storm.  I like it when he posts fish pictures from the jetty.  Where’re the fish pics, John?

His latest joy is in discovering that Gree is, or is about to be, releasing solar powered AC.  I got interested in that a few years ago.  John and I and Courtney and I were brainstorming on the subject.  There were all sorts of ways of dealing with it.   I eventually went the cheapest, shortest route, using the 30+ year old systems I already had running and “paid for.”  Actually, some big makers were playing with it several years ago.  The most likely prospects were from overseas and the import game can be fraught with numerous perils.

Gree is pretty good kit and maybe John will give us some details, soon.  It may be your A/C guy can just drop one in, soon.

On a related note, one gent with whom I correspond has a house with pool in Miami and he wants to use solar to heat it.  My first thought is direct solar thermal.  Heck,  I was with some folks out in Hayward, California, a couple of decades ago and saw their neighbors had big coils of black plastic pipe clamped to their roofs.  Water from the pool pump ran through the pipe and came out warm.  Cheap.  Simple.

Last time I saw a pool heater (we tend to swim in the creek, here in NW Florida) was  in the last century, in Miami  It was gas-fired.  Gas seems to have fallen from favor, these days.  Jeff, the guy with the pool that needs heating, has investigated and discovered that heat pumps are all the rage for heating the pool.  BIG heat pumps.  Heat pumps with the capacity to heat every house on the block.  Well, pools have a lot of thermal mass and are not too well insulated, so I guess it can take a lot.  It will be interesting to see how that turns out.

In the meantime, watch John’s Blog for details on the Gree hardware.  And if you are a DIY kind of person, you might want to scroll through MY blog, back in time for various ways I have eased into solar A/C and heat.  The photo at the top of the page has to do with at least one iteration.  You’ll find at least 3 different plans.  Maybe as spring gets closer I will revisit the subject and summarize.  Meanwhile, just know that solar A/C is real, at least at my house.–Neal