The Use of Municipality Water System for Building Cooling as an Alternative to Conventional Ground Source Heat Pump

Abstract

This paper investigates the usage of municipality water supply system for cooling a residential building. The study in this paper proposes that by using municipality water supply system, it is possible to reduce the cost of space cooling for residential units. Additionally, this system would have a lower initial investment cost in comparison with the conventional ground source heat pumps where specially designed piping system placed a few meters beneath the ground allows the usage of earth’s stored heat. For a regular municipality water delivery system, the carried water circulates through kilometers of piping already located underground which allows the water to exchange heat with the earth. Thus, it is possible to replace conventional heat pump systems and use regular tap water as a coolant for a residential unit. In order to achieve cooling, pipes can be installed on the walls and the ceiling of a house. The tap water could be circulated within these pipes. The study represented here shows that 5.48 kW of building cooling load could be handled with only 50 W of pump power for water circulation through the pipes located inside the walls and the ceiling of a proposed typical house.