heat pumps used together

steam247

can you use a water-to-water heat pump as a heat source for multiple water-to-air heat pumps in a building instead of using a boiler to add heat to the water loop?

steam247

Is this picture showing two different heat pumps working together or is that just a water-to-water heat exchanger

Hot_water_fan

yes if you can’t use the water to airs directly with the ground loop

GGross

You will gain capacity but I do not think you will be able to increase the max supply temperature this way. So if your goal is higher supply temp you will still most likely need something else to increase the temp.

Jamie Hall

You should also gain some efficiency, as you would control the two heat pumps so that neither was near the extremes of their performance curves.

To get the gains, though, you are going to need both heat pumps to be variable capacity — and you are going to need a computer control interface to optimise things.

pecmsg

Are these heat pumps designed for the heat loss of the building?

If there too small during the coldest nights, then yes you can run the boilers to supplement the heat output as long as the hot water coils are down stream of the heat pump coil.

steam247

This pic i understand that the boiler is keeping the water loop at 65 degrees in winter and the cooling tower is used to reject heat in the summer, i just never heard of a heat pump used in place of the boiler to heat the water loop in the building that the water-to-air heat pumps are using.

I wasn't sure if the picture was just mislabeled because is says water-to-water heat exchanger heat pump. because you would need a water-to-water heat exchanger when using open-loop geothermal

pecmsg

ok

The water to water is used during mild weather. Are the tower gets near freezing the boilers are used to maintain a minimum 65* water for the water to water.
done quite often in high rises b