Jan 24, 2023 |
SpacePak goes on the Building Science Podcast
Jim Bashford, SpacePak's National Sales & Training Manager joins Kristoff Irwin, PE, M. Eng. host of the Building Science Podcast and the Principle and visionary behind Positive Energy, a residential MEP enfineering firm focused on better buildings, passive house, and sustainability.
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE: Air to Water Heat Pumps: Hydronic Hype or the Future?
Could it be that Air-to-Water Heat Pumps (AWHP) using hydronic distribution are poised to become the new normal for residential HVAC systems? Can simply switching the thermal distribution fluid from refrigerant to water/glycol have significant positive impacts? As you will learn in this interview with Jim Bashford from SpacePak, the short answer to these questions may well be, simply, Yes.
You don’t have to be a building nerd or an engineer for a question like this to be relevant and important to consider. There are many reasons why AWHP systems make an attractive alternative to our batch of current “normal” heat pumps that rely on refrigerant for thermal distribution. Some of the reasons AWHP are appealing include: (1) reduced refrigerant volumes, thus reduced refrigerant leakage into the atmosphere; (2) larger selection of indoor unit options relative to refrigerant based systems; (3) the ability to support comfort via thermally active surfaces (aka radiant heating/cooling); (4) your home is better future-proofed and more technology-agnostic, and (5) these systems affordably unlock thermal storage (for thermal loads), which can provide energy resilience for their owners as well as dispatchable grid-level energy storage This episode is why you listen to the Building Science Podcast, somehow this multifaceted emerging story has still not hit the mainstream.
