Swimming pool and domestic heating and heat pumps

Crazy people pump up the heat of fear in Devil’s Swimming Pool 1

I don’t know about you but I certainly normally only associate extreme sport thrill seekers as young, twenty something, fit, athletic build, macho types, normally dressed in Quiksilver clobber with a very highly developed devil may care attitude to all things.  As part of my research for the Calyenty blog I came across these pictures which I thought I would share with you.  You must admit they are at pretty interesting.

Crazy people pump up the heat of fear in Devil’s Swimming Pool 2

Now I used to be quite extreme in some of my activities, sadly my twenty something devil may care days are long gone, well in regard to jumping off things anyway, but I was once persuaded to jump of a high rock ledge into a Pennsylvanian lake, the height I think was about 30 feet.  When I hit the water it was like taking an uppercut punch on the jaw from Joe Calzaghe, in fact it nearly knocked me out.  Needless to say I haven’t tried anything like that since, and I keep most of my own lunacy these days for skiing.

Crazy people pump up the heat of fear in Devil’s Swimming Pool 3

So when I came across these pics my first reaction was that queasy feeling in the gut, whoa that’s high, bloody hell what happens if there’s a sudden increase in water flow or a wave or big splash, and so on.

Crazy people pump up the heat of fear in Devil’s Swimming Pool 4

Crazy people pump up the heat of fear in Devil’s Swimming Pool 5

But its when you look at the participants in this madness that you get the biggest surprise, they’re not the usual Oakley loving, grungy adrenalin junkies, its Mum, Dad and the girl next door.  And to cap it all they look so relaxed about it.  Remember the Victoria falls are over 100m high.    I know something, you would need to take me kicking and screaming to this swimming pool and I would be absolutely cacking myself if somehow I was to be there.

Crazy people pump up the heat of fear in Devil’s Swimming Pool 6

Crazy people pump up the heat of fear in Devil’s Swimming Pool 7

Would you go swimming here???

In Zimbabwe, Africa, you will find the magnificent Victoria Falls at a height
of 128m. The location is known as ‘The Devil’s Swimming Pool’.

During the months of September and December, people can swim as close
as possible to the edge of the falls without falling over!

These falls are becoming well known amongst the ‘radical tourist’ industry as more and more people search for the ultimate experience.   Would you dare?

For more information about swimming pool heating systems please click here

Today I thought I would write a light hearted blog based, at least loosely, around my industry sector, (so I don’t get fired).
The first part is based on a piece I found in the Sydney Herald: Putting grandma six feet under could be the answer to Sydney’s housing shortage. One wonders if the creator of this idea, was thinking this is a good way of getting Grandma or Grandpa used to being under the ground, kind of breaking them in gradually before the big day arrives.

An architectural firm believes backyard swimming pools should be emptied and transformed into subterranean granny flats, complete with a small bedroom, living room, kitchen and bathroom. By 2036 more than 630,000 new homes will be needed to accommodate Sydney’s population, which is expected to grow to 6 million. But instead of turning traditionally low-rise suburbs into vast stretches of apartment blocks, part of the growth could be housed within some of NSW’s 360,000 swimming pools.

On first appraisal this seems a great idea. But on further inspection, could be flawed.  Firstly, the views would be a bit restricted, unless you installed a complex system of periscopes. 

The lack of light might become a bit depressing too after a while, though we could jazz things up a bit by installing some Calyenty Starburst LED colour changing pool lights with three disco modes.  Hmmm, Gran might like that.

Most pools have a deep end and a shallow end joined by a slope, designed to never be walked upon due to the fact that most humans float on the flat surface of the pool water.  Imagine the carnage as Gramps and Nana tumble down the slope into the deep end while carrying their TV dinners from the kitchen towards Countdown playing on TV in the living room. 

Personally I like either wall paper or paint on my walls except the bathroom and maybe the kitchen - Imagine having the whole house tiled like one massive blue dungeon?

Apart from the horrendous living environment for Gran, where are the rest of us going to swim? I suppose we could fill up some purpose built apartment blocks and swim in them, great fun.

Some experts have also stated that this will not work as empty swimming pools get pushed upwards when the water table rises after sustained and heavy rainfall.  So imagine you’ve just settled down for a relaxing night in front of Strictly and the X Factor when with a great crash the wrinklies suddenly burst out of their azur blue, mini tiled, back yard tomb like some kind of huge Psychedelic zit.
 
Tomorrow
Extreme Pools Not for the feint hearted.

For more information about premium swimming pool heating solutions please click here

HSBC claim they are the world’s first Carbon Neutral bank and they are wanting to increase awareness of their new website http://www.globalwarmingsolutions.co.in This photo is part of their strategy, the intention to show in the most dramatic way the consequences to our cities of continued global warming and icecap melting.  The effect was created by gluing the images of the skyscrapers to the bottom of this swimming pool before re filling.  The effect is fantastic and the advertising agency, Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai, should be congratulated for the inspiration and the stunning effect and impact of their creation.

Calyenty is a manufacturer ans supplier of premium quality swimming pool heat pumps.

Today’s blog is a comment on the following article about the tapping of underground heat for the  General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in Manhattan, published on the New York Time’s website earlier today.  The article raises some interesting issues in my opinion. Firstly this project again demonstrates the willingness for organisations to embrace the need to extract free energy from environment, in this instance the ground.  This seems to be a growing and encouraging trend.  For them it makes good economic sense even though the final budget more than doubled, and therefore the payback time also, finally at 19 years. As the Seminal has already been around for 200 years this cost and payback period  still seems reasonable.  Layered onto the fact that after this there costs will effectively be zero for fuel for them this all bares well.

However the article does raise some interesting counter questions.  The problem I see with this project is the depth that the shafts need to be drilled, 1500 to 1800 feet through clearly very hard rock.  This is probably one of the main reasons that the project costs escalated so much.  There are only a handful of organisations that can stand projects going so far over budget, and these usually only government departments, or religious groups .

The big worry for me if I had commissioned the project would be the ongoing maintenance costs of the shafts.  The drillers experienced drift of up to 35 feet by the end of the shaft during sinking, and many of the additional costs to the project allude to certain government departments having similar fears over the stability of such deep shafts, insisting on expensive monitoring equipment.  Any shift could block or damage the shaft so it is ineffective, and the cost of rectifying such faults would be significant.

This is clearly a special building with its own challenges and I have great respect for all involved for pulling it off.  It would be interesting to do a cost comparison now comparing the costs of the project with providing the same output requirements from super efficient air source heat pumps, our technology is already demonstrating remarkable results at operating temperatures down to minus 35 centigrade.

Calyenty is a manufacturer of air source heat pumps for swimming pools and domestic hot water and central heating

New York Times Nov18th 2008

Contemplating Heaven, but Drilling Deep Down

Dining in the newly heated/cooled Seminary.

For millions of years, invisible streams of water have run deep in the earth below Manhattan at a constant temperature of 65 degrees, a source of energy that seems beyond exhaustion — and beyond reach. But eight months ago, a seminary in Chelsea began to pump water from those streams to heat its buildings in the winter and cool them in the summer.

“It’s forever noiseless, forever pollution-less, forever carbon-free,” said Maureen Burnley, the executive vice president of the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church.

For the seminary, and now about 60 other places in Manhattan, the unseen bounty of the earth is being harvested by geothermal pumps. Manhattan is geologically suited for these deep wells. From a depth of 1,500 to 1,800 feet, the pumps deliver the consistently moderate temperatures of underground water to the surface, where it works like a refrigerant. It carries energy.

“In the summer, you take the heat from the buildings and put it in the ground,” Ms. Burnley said. “In the winter, you take the relative warmth of the ground and put it in the buildings.”

The challenge has been the hardness or density of the substrat and the depth required to drill.

So far, General Theological has drilled seven wells — or 150 to 180 stories deep, at least. The seminary has plans for 15 more. When the project is complete, it will be the largest system of geothermal pumps in the Northeast, said Carl Orio, the chairman of Water Energy Distributors, a consultant and contractor that worked on the project.

About five years ago, hthe Seminary commissioned a study on its physical plant, which was expensive to heat and impossible to cool.

“We wanted to come into the 21st century,” Ms. Burnley said. “We skipped the 20th century altogether. Thomas Edison himself wired this campus. We’ve got Edison Electric plaques all over the place.”

The initial plans did not call for geothermal pumps, but the seminary’s consultants recommended that they be considered. Conventional heating and cooling systems have a much lower installation cost, but require fuel. A study projected that the pumps would take about 9 years to pay for themselves after the entire system was installed. Now, the projection is 19 years.

“Because we’ve been here 200 years, this investment makes sense,” Ms. Burnley said. “It won’t be the five-year return on investment that businesses want, but that’s fine. We’re going to be around.”

To reach the 65-degree water, the seminary drilled far below the city’s Third Water Tunnel, which is about 500 feet down, and far below Cameron’s Line, the point where an oceanic plate smashed into the prehistoric North American continent.

The first phase of the project was estimated to cost $6 million, but ended up costing $9 million for heating and cooling capacity in 80,000 of the buildings’ 260,000 square feet, according to Dennis Frawley, who managed the project for the seminary.

The increase was almost entirely the result of monitoring demanded by various arms of 10 government agencies that were involved in oversight, he said. Some neighbors worried that the drilling would cause earthquakes. The city was particularly concerned about damage to its water tunnel.

“When we were first getting started, we had drilling companies that said, ‘You can start a well on 20th Street and by the time you get down 1,500 feet, you’ve drifted to 21st Street,’ ” Mr. Frawley said. “We were allowed 3 degrees of tolerance — we couldn’t drift more than 75 feet on 1,500. Some of our wells drifted 10 feet, some were 20 feet. The worst was a well that drifted 35 feet.”

Underground water in Manhattan flows generally to the south, said Frederick Stumm, a scientist with the United States Geological Survey who has done extensive mapping of the island to help the city plan the Third Water Tunnel.

“The rock has been sort of brutalized by continental collisions,” Mr. Stumm said. “The rock has been under stress over the years, and it creates patterns of fractures in the rock.” Ground water finds its way down into these fractures, which form a network.

And it’s not just water down there. “We encountered rubies at about 1,000 feet,” Ms. Burnley said.

The rubies, said Mr. Frawley, were formed into the rock. “Nothing in the way of a large scale,” he said. “We weren’t turning the seminary into the ‘Deadwood’ movie set.”

For precious gems, “it’s easier to go to Macy’s,” Ms. Burnley said.

E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com

Calyenty is developing heat pump technology that extracts energy from the air and the ground from a depth of just 5m.

Calyenty is a manufacturer of air source heat pumps for swimming pools and domestic hot water and central heating

Hi everybody,

We need your help.

We have just launched our interactive forum “Spanish Steps”.

Spanish Steps Interactive Forum

The forum is ostensibly for expats in Spain but we would love to get your post wherever you are, even if you are not an expat! so please register today and give us some feedback, even if its just to say Hi!

Its a beta release so please log in and leave a post to help us with any teething problems.  If you find any bugs or have any suggestions or recommendations please let us know by leaving a message there, a moderator will pick it up.  We offer advice on jobs, pool hygiene, salt water, pH balance, filtration, algae etc, legal advice, residency, property, plus news and events on fiestas, dancing groups, and pretty much anything and everything else.

nb.  We are unlike most forums in that we encourage commercial posts (if you have a genuine estate agency website for example, leave us a description and link in the property forum).  People love shopping, so quality merchandisers come on in!

Spanish Steps Interactive Forum

Calyenty is a manufacturer of air source heat pumps for swimming pools and domestic hot water and central heating

Global SMS switching module

Calyenty have recently launched their Global SMS switching module. We are a manufacturer of heat pumps that can be controlled by sending a sms message from your GSM mobile phone. The controller has the capability to switch the unit on and off and can also change the temperature target for the pool water.

Imagine it is Monday morning and you are about to start a hard days work in your city office and the rapidly deteriorating financial crisis means a tough week ahead.

“I know, lets visit our holiday villa for the weekend so we can have a relaxing break and get away from all the hassle and winging clients that will be on the phones as soon as we reach 0900 hours,” you promise yourself. You get on the phone to the wife to organize the kids and she says “but it’s November and it’s too cold to swim in the pool!”

“Oh yes we can, we got our heat pump from Calyenty and I can send it an SMS to switch it on this morning so its nice and warm for when we arrive.” The only question is “what temperature would you like the water to be?”

Technical consultant Karl Berlin started to look at the project for Calyenty last September and tenders for the technology were sent out soon afterwards with European development companies quoting us into the hundreds of thousands of euros to bring the concept to market, so we brought the development project in house. The product took less than six months from concept to market and we have more functionality than we originally expected, with significant budget savings: well done to Sheppard, Quie and the team, outstanding work again as usual.

Calyenty is a manufacturer of air source heat pumps for swimming pools and domestic hot water and central heating

Leading on from my dig at some individuals’ concerns over urban areas sinking into the ground due to the adoption of too many heat pump exchanger cores being sunk, Calyenty are in the process of developing ground source heat pumps where the core only needs to be sunk 5m down with a core diameter of just 300mm. 

A vertical core  has massive benefits if as an industry we wish to see this technology become a mass market product, where the demand property is in close proximity to each other, i.e. a suburban street, in any town or city, in any country.

Early ground source heat pumps (GSHPs) have usually been designed on a thermal core being laid horizontally.  This made sense as the cost is much cheaper, all you needed was a JCB back hoe to dig a trench, drop in your exchanger core, attach is to the main unit and away you go.  The disadvantage is that the core needs to be larger as it is at a lower depth.

For Early adopters, however, this rarely presented any problem as they would have the available land adjacent to the demand site.  However if this is to become a mass market product available to the average domestic householder we must provide either air source, which offers the most economical installation option, or vertical core ground source, for regions with unsuitable climates for air source.  Calyenty are currently investing heavily in both technology options.

The objective of our research and development is to have product available that is more affordable and more efficient.

There are some fantastic innovative features that we are building into our systems that are truly “groundbreaking” – pardon the pun! 

By passing just normal air into our chamber we are already increasing the Coefficient of performance  COPs up to levels between 8 and 15. Also, by passing just air into the core, there can be no issue regarding the seepage of hazardous material either.

Now we can install our core with a simple auger attached to the back of a tractor our approach has the clear advantage as installation is very inexpensive.

The following diagrams illustrate the energy stored in the ground to a depth of just 5m 

For more information, please contact us info@calyenty.com
Calyenty is a manufacturer of air source heat pumps for swimming pools and domestic hot water and central heating

So lets all skip happily into the future now safe in the fact that all the world’s energy problems have a credible solution and all we need to do is sit back and relax while the movers and shakers put it all together for us.

Err, no.

Below is a report from the Lassen County news California, where the Council denies a church’s heat pump permit.

Now I suppose there are always several ways of drawing conclusions from decisions like these, and I am sure that Mr. Platt’s decision is based on a genuine concern that the county’s water supply could be contaminated by some biodegradable food source somehow leaking from a proven impervious sleeve mechanism (already used for transporting actual hazardous matter across the county) also embedded in Bentonite clay, and that thousands of holes will weaken the substrata of Lassen county to such a fantastic extent that it could all suddenly all disappear into the ground killing all its inhabitants leaving no trace of man, beast or property. A very powerful argument indeed when compared to the minor benefits, such as the church saving tens of thousands of dollars in fuel bills and moving towards a cleaner planet.

Some people on the other hand may allege or simply believe that some people that hold such positions of office could be tempted into promoting decisions based on personal benefits that could be attained from powerful organizations with lots of money, like say for instance oil companies.

Hmm this is sort of similar to that loveable old duffer JWB steering well clear of Kyoto because his now historical stay at the WH was significantly down to funding from our friends in the oil companies.Now what happened to him?

Posted on Tuesday, November 11 @ 13:18:20 PST

Lassen County News Headline Nov. 11, 2008 — The council at the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church are now involved in a disagreement that could affect anyone in the city limits trying to install a ground source heat pump of a cost-effective heating and cooling system.

The city council denied a permit for the church to install the heating system at its Nov. 5 meeting, following the recommendation of Public Works Director Craig Platt. Councilmember Lino Callegari said he was not convinced that the argument for the system brought forth by the church at the meeting was enough to convince him it was safe to integrate it into the city’s infrastructure.

A ground source heat pump is an electrically powered system that uses stored energy in the earth to provide heating, cooling and hot water at a very efficient rate.

The pipes that gather the energy are fit into bore holes, and use a food-based, biodegradable substance to move the energy to and from the ground and into whatever building needs the heating or cooling.

According to Steve Bejcek, owner of Steve’s Pumps and Well Drilling in Janesville, the same pipes used to transport the city’s natural gas supply would be used for the GHSP. They would also be encased in a clay-like substance called Bentonite.

According to energy services specialist for the Lassen Municipal Utility District Theresa Phillips, there are currently more than 1 million GSHPs in the United States right now. The Plumas Sierra Rural Electric Cooperative is currently using roughly 400 such systems, Phillips said.

President of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church board Phil Parry said in researching a more efficient heating and cooling system for the church, he learned of several organizations around the country that not only utilized the system, but sang its praises as well, including several schools in California and the entire Tahoe Truckee Unified School District.

Based on the information Phillips and Parry presented, the system LMUD was looking to install at the church would have been so efficient enough to have paid for itself in roughly six years.

Platt explained at the meeting that he was concerned with the effects the system might have on the county’s water supply, as well as the number of bore holes and the depth of holes required for the installation. He was worried that a large number of boreholes could lead to a widespread contamination of the city’s water supply, from all the other materials that could seep into the holes, as well as the materials used in the construction of the system

He also raised his concerns about the growing popularity of these systems. He said he was concerned about the potential of there being thousands of boreholes around the city.

Parry said the church is in need of a new heat source. He said the current boiler at the church is 75 years old, and it was purchased used. He said that last month, it cost about $2,000 to fill the boiler with oil. He explained the church had received a loan from Lutheran Church improvement organization allowing it to upgrade the efficiency of its electrical and heating systems. LMUD conducted an energy audit, and as a result, the church found that it could save roughly $20,000 in rebates from the utility, leaving roughly $110,000 left in the loan to make payments on.

Parry said the church board will have to move forward and start looking at alternatives because the city denied the permit. He expressed his disappointment with the city in not being able to see the benefits of this system.

The city has no guidelines dealing with GSHP systems, while Lassen County and the state do. The church board asked Platt to start looking into guidelines for this type of heating system in April of 2007. Parry said this was right around the time LMUD had completed work on the GSHP for the Historic Susanville Railroad Depot building.

Parry also said the board called Platt roughly five months ago saying it had planned to move forward with a GSHP, and it needed Platt to step up on this one. At the meeting, Platt said the church had only contacted him a few weeks ago.

Susanville Mayor Kurt Bonham asked Bejcek at the meeting if he had obtained an environmental health permit from the county, to which Bejcek said while he was in contact with the county, he wanted to work with the city first.

As part of the directions Bonham gave staff, he asked Bejcek to get together with Platt and start educating and helping each other to come up with a set of guidelines dealing with the installation of GSHP’s in the city.

In the meantime, councilmembers Lino Callegari and Vern Templeton said until they were absolutely convinced that there was no chance of any contamination to the city’s water table, they would continue to support Platt’s judgment.

Calyenty is a manufacturer of air source heat pumps for swimming pools and domestic hot water and central heating

I came across the following article this week on what I am now rapidly coming to believe is the sensible way forward regarding how we not just maintain our thirst and need for energy but also to keep up with the increase in demand for energy if we are not going to fry the planet in the process.

It seems the problem is we are going from one extreme to the other. There has been a rampant disregard for energy in the past particularly in the US. One of the most staggering statistics that I read in the aftermath of 9/11 was the fact that light switches were only fitted to the world trade centre in the late eighties. The reason for this was that energy was so cheap when the WTC was constructed that it was decided that the savings to be made by not installing all those switches was such that it is more economical to just leave the lights on!

We are now in the age of knee jerk reaction. So lets go from madness to complete madness I.e the world where we leave the lights on and create billions of tones of carbon emissions in the process, or thousands of years of nervousness with the bye-products of the nuclear power generators to: only using wind and solar. This cannot work.

As Glen Hiemstra appreciates there is a credible half way house available here - by using all the thermal energy being stored in the air and the land to power heat pumps.

In a nutshell we could use the reduced power available from totally renewable energy sources i.e. Sun and wind and use that to power heat pumps that effectively amplify the power up to the levels we need.

Enough energy with no emissions. That should keep us going a bit longer.

Geothermal Heat Pumps

By Glen Hiemstra | November 11th, 2008

When alternative energy is discussed, a potential energy source that receives less attention is geothermal. However, if I walk a few blocks from my home to Lake Washington High School I can see a geothermal heat pump system being installed in preparation for a complete re-build of this school.

Ground-based geothermal differs from the kind of geothermal we usually think of, which is hot-water based. About 10% of the earth has sites where volcanic activity is sufficient to heat water that could be tapped to produce energy. At the same time, everywhere the earth maintains a fairly constant temperature of 50F about 6 feet down.

Using this constant earth temperature is a simple engineering proposition of drilling holes, running pipe down and back, sending a liquid through the pipes, and using the temperature differential in a heat pump. In the summer the earth assists in cooling, in the winter it assists in heating.

Such systems are appropriate to homes and commercial buildings both. The Lake Washington School District has been using such a system in another of its schools, Redmond High School, since 2003, saving an estimated $66,000 per year in energy costs. The new system next door will generate comparable savings.

For a home owner, the cost of installing such a system will be in the range of 50% more expensive than a typical furnace and air-based heat pump system, but payback is typically estimated in five years. In addition, there are various subsidies available to assist in the initial cost.

Installation is a messy job, as you can see in these photos I snapped the other day, but the result is a major contribution to a sustainable future.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet TV show host and founder of Futurist.com

Original article http://www.futurist.com/2008/11/11/geothermal-heat-pumps/

See my next blog for the other side of the coin in the US.

Calyenty is a manufacturer of air source heat pumps for swimming pools and domestic hot water and central heating

Bubbly personality, Penny Berlin,  resident of Bel lloc near Santa Cristina on the Costa Brava, Catalonia, Spain has been appointed as Sales Manager for the rapidly expanding pool heating company, Calyenty SC, based near Girona.

“Penny was selected predominantly for her no-nonsense, direct approach to business which is refreshing in the current commercial climate” said Oliver Reavey, the Commercial Director of the company.  “Her work rate and ability to engage with our clients has been phenomenal, and Penny is already living up to her high billing with a string of new agencies now stocking Calyenty products across the region.”

Here is a short Biog on Penny, her life and career to date:

Penny Berlin

When Penny left Art College, she went into hairdressing, initially to gain knowledge for stage make up, but the excitement of London’s West End and the fashionable Molton Brown salon in South Molton Street, lured her into a career in hairdressing. As a London hairdresser, she did the hair of  Wimbledon champion Chris Evett, Julie Edge, Shirley Anne Field and many more. After that period she worked on Holland America Cruise ships, enjoying the wonders of the Caribbean, South America, North America, and New York, also The Panama Canal, Acapulco and San Francisco, Alaska and Canada. On returning, she went into business and bought a hairdressing salon by the gate of Windsor Castle. Subsequently she decided to change direction and went to work for a building developer in her first sales job.

Again the West End beckoned her back, bumping into a an old friend in South Molton Street she found herself a few doors away from the salon, this time selling contract cleaning. At last she was really in her element; she enjoyed the chase and the challenging boardroom tenders, against the major players in that industry, tenders like London City Airport, Docklands Light Railway and gaining the company business with the whole of the HMV organisation in London, Aquascutum, Tower Records and many more. It gave her a chance to get involved with publicity, exhibitions including Olympia and business forums.

Later Penny worked for Heathrow Park Hotel, Heathrow Airport as Sales Manager; still dealing with multinational companies and later for an MOD based company who wanted commercial sales as an addition. After Penny had children, she continued to work part time, involving herself in Network Marketing for a number of companies and later doing London Stage presentations for Excel Communications. Prior to moving to Spain Penny project managed The Oxfordshire Business awards, while working for Oxford Innovation, a southern enterprise organisation.

Since living in The Costa Brava Penny has written a book, to encourage mothers to embrace the magic of childhood, and tried a few different projects, until she was offered the opportunity to work with Calyenty. She hasn’t looked back and hopes to enjoy a long and happy association with the company.

Calyenty is a manufacturer of air source heat pumps for swimming pools and domestic hot water and central heating