Cooling with 55 degree water?

[Horsepoor]

Have you seen the $4.99 fin straightener?

http://www.harborfreight.com/radiator-fin-straightener-37892.html

[BioHazard]

Grain of salt warning:

If you leave the coil as is and remove that fan you could just spill water over it and use a metal gutter to route the hot waste water anywhere, even down a zig zag of other gutters into a pool. Reuse the same water with a small pump. Big volume of reserve water and you're set.

The coil should work just fine for a long time in that sort of mode, made for air or not. The heat exchange is working now with water, why mess with that end of it?

R

I'm hoping in the end it will be sort of a "pressurized" system, water inlet, water oulet and a couple of garden hoses...that way I can lower the head pressure. I could do a recirculating system but the water temp seems to make a big difference on power consumption. The difference between 65 and 85 degree water is huge. It should be even better once I get the colder 55 degree creek water flowing. I haven't had a lot of time to work on it though....

Have you seen the $4.99 fin straightener?

http://www.harborfreight.com/radiator-fin-straightener-37892.html

LOL, yeah, I have one of those, and I need to use it.  

[carbon-rod]

Interesting thread, I always like thinking of ways to make air con units more efficient

I guess as one of the other guys mentioned before if the system becomes too efficient ie the condensor gets too cold the evaporator will also get too cold and if the fan isn't strong enough to blow enough heat then that is when it will freeze up... in summer if the shed is warm enough it probably won't happen though...

How big is the workshop you are trying to heat? 

I am in the process of building my own workshop soon, It will just be a colorbond rather than brick and I will put insulation on the inner walls and install a nice large split system air conditioner to keep things cool, we have a 7kW (I think that's 24,000 BTU?) one inside which chills our house nicely so I am thinking if I can run that sucker with my new lister engine on WVO then I get free air con!

I have seen a few water-water heat exchangers on ebay, you could connect one of those in-line with the aircon condensor so that you have your normal radiator and also water cooling when you want. You would need to have the system re-gassed and it might get a bit messy, it might just be easier to obtain a larger capacity air conditioner.. the inverter type split systems can provide 2.5kw cooling power for a similar wattage input around 600~, of course it depends on how often the system is running and insulation etc etc