Willard Mc Fayden Heats (And Cools) His Home With 60° Well Water

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The idea of using cool water to heat a house may seem somewhat strange to most of us. But that's exactly what Willard McFayden of Ellerbe, North Carolina has been doing-and doing quite successfully—for the past eight years.

HEAT FROM 60° WATER?

Yes, and plenty of it! There's usable and extractable heat, in fact, in any water . . . right down to the point (32° F) that it becomes ice.

(For that matter, you can use both ice and water to maintain a comfortable living temperature in a struc ture. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, for instance, has experimented for the past few years with an "Annual Cycle Energy System" which warms a building during the winter by freezing water into ice ... and then cools the structure in the summer by melting the same ice back into water. See MOTHER NO. 35 for a complete report on that project.)

In McFayden's case, the 60° well water that he taps is far more than adequate for his purposes for two reasons: [1] Willard has at least a 10° temperature margin working in his favor, since his system was designed to operate quite effectively day in and day out with an input of 50° water, and [2] McFayden's well is capable of delivering a constant flow of 50 gallons of water a minute ... while his heating setup needs only eight gallons a minute and needs those eight gallons only sporadically as his home's regulating thermostat turns the system on and off.

THE SECRET OF THE SYSTEM IS A HEAT PUMP

Just like Bob Sheppard (see the article below), Willard McFayden accomplishes the seemingly impossible trick of warming his house with cool water through the use of a water-to-air heat pump. (See the accompanying sidebar for an explanation of how this worthy piece of machinery operates.)

The heat pump that Willard uses looks a great deal like an ordinary electric furnace and requires about as much attention. The big difference between the two units only becomes apparent at the end of the month when the power bill comes in.