Heat pumps are the way of the future. One day natural gas furnaces will be illegal. And this is what's going to heat everyone's home. So it's very important that we develop components that will accept these and move towards this in our container modifications, because this is the sustainable way of the future.
In this video, I'm going to go over everything we've done here and how we make installing heat pumps simple for shipping containers Stay tuned. We love the heat pump and split AC units. And in this instance, these containers, we had to cut them in half and send them underground. And so the condensers, the exterior condenser, could not sit outside of the container because it doesn't fit down the shaft And so we made this recessed box to allow it to be take up some of the interior envelope and then give ourselves a nice workbench on top. So I want to bring you over here and give you a little tour of what we've done here. We've got two of them, and they're at different stages. So if we look inside here, we actually developed a frame very similar to our window frame that mounts on the outside of the container, and then it has a box. And so now this pan right here is sloped inwards to deflect the air, to go into the back of the condenser.
But this is basically our exterior of the shipping container. And then we're able to insulate all inside and spray foam on top of this. And basically, yeah, it's a recession plate. One thing, and this is we didn't remove the wood floor underneath on the outside, but if this was going to be heating instead of cooling, then the condensation is going to happen on the exterior condenser. And in that instance, we hypothesize that if we remove the wood flooring and put a inch underneath bar grating there and in place, then all the condensate would drip down and through and underneath the container. If you're doing that, I think you'd probably want to block up your can have a lot of room under there, especially as the icicle builds up so you can ship that away.
It has a bit of a maintenance item, kind of maybe similar to like changing your furnace filter. When you're running these heat pumps, they will collect condensate. Will, can you tell me how these things went together and what did you have to do? It was a bit of a work at the start, but how was our first go at it? It was a learning process for sure. First had to put the frame in around the outside of the container just to get the location for the entire box, part of the depth anyway. Then once you put the inner box in, kind of make sure it fits in between the frame and then you put the outside around it squared off put it against the here, and then you take the third fast and the box to the sidewalls and then I would be right here with that cell tower. And you didn't have this top plate on.
The long glass is lasting. You And you also stuffed insulation and there's two inches here and four inches there. So we were able to put a rigid in there because that'd be very difficult to spray foam and then we'll we'll be able to just spray on the top half. I guess the heat is going to rise so that having that spray foam will be nice and that will actually come straight inside the header and then all the way up the walls, you are going to have a strut going across and everything. I guess you can look right here, see how you kind of have it finished. But I'm and we'll push that push that on to and show. But yeah, this is how the reline is going to come up and be able to finish nicely and all the spray foam comes around. All of this and makes a perfect envelope. So that's really nice how you did that.
Not quite bolted up yet, but let's throw. Can we even just throw this one where we're standing? So here we have we have a bit of a hidden fastener profile. So we've developed this and then it's upside down here, but this just slides right in, so it's pretty cool. We don't have to really do anything. You just let me try this. Yeah, yeah. You're supposed to say no, it's our first time trying to work up here, but. Yes, but this is our first time doing this ever. And so now we set ourselves a nice little workbench here. Typically, if you had something like this, you'd have doors that open. And so we fought for go those. But yeah, we have a recessed condenser box for air conditioning containers. So this really conceals your air conditioner and keeps it out of the way of harm. And so it's a it's an interesting design and something we'll continue to work on and keep you guys in touch as it progresses. But yeah, I'm super excited to show you guys the preliminary version of this. And thank you Will for showing them how it was built.
Came out lovely on the first crack. I just want to talk about how we how we ran everything. So the head units, the lines go in on the other side of the exterior condenser, but we came out this side and then went all the way down and through this condenser box right here. And that allows when that condenser slides out, there's it's not a lot of stress on those copper lines and it allows them to flex. And it could go in and out, in and out, in and out many, many times and not be any worse for wear. So another thing that's really cool about these interior units, they are smart. We do get the Arctic heat pump. So they're rated for a lot colder temperature, especially up here in Canada. They come with a remote and this remote and it has a smart USB inside of there.
But you can buy it. It's a MYSA thermostat. Mysa makes the thermostat a smart thermostat. They're really cool. And you just pair your remote with that smart thermostat. And now if you have a Wi-Fi connection, you can control from your phone set all these smart parameters for your heat pumps. And so that's that's key. Then you're telling Google or Alexa to run your heat pumps if you're looking to use one of these in your home. It's totally the way to go is to connect it to a smart thermostat. And they're not that expensive. 150 bucks or something. So, yeah, check that out. This is how it looks on the inside. We're and this is that that that workbench that we're talking about once it's all finished up. So this is awesome. Obviously, you sacrifice drawers or doors, but you have yourself a work plan here.
And then potentially just right above this Crosswise Strut channel we could mount a window and people can work on the other side, such as this case. There's still plenty of room to wheel your chair around. You could put a mini fridge in between you could do whatever place for your printer or something in your office. So it's a really cool setup. We did notice now if we can pull that condenser box out from the outside while it's being utilized, then we can actually shrink this up. So this is sticking in 24 inches into your, your container. But we could go down to 20 at least and just match our shelving or, or whatever. So really cool stuff. We learned a lot here.
We had to do it for the first time. We didn't know how we were going to run the line set. We didn't we've never mounted the head unit to a strut lined, relaying finished container before. So we've done a lot of new things here and I'm really excited about that. Now we can take what we've learned to take it back to the drawing board, to our 3D models, optimize everything and really just prove this concept and hopefully commercialize it so it's available for you guys to purchase. But a little bit of ways to go here. Yeah, let's jump back outside and see the condenser unit. So to start, it takes a couple trades to install heat pumps. We have our electricians and the plumbers and the reason you need the plumbers because you have to hook up your line set from the exterior condenser unit to the interior condenser unit.
So what these things do, these heat pumps is instead of producing a heat, so just burning wattage and making heat, they actually just take the heat that's outside and move it to the inside and they'll do the same thing with cold. They'll grab cold in the outside air and move it to the inside. So they work just like your fridge you know, heat pumps have been around for a long time, but we're really working towards a technology nowadays for heating homes and things. And it's becoming really popular. It's very popular in Europe and in and in Asia. And, you know, everyone's pushing people there's a cat the government is really pushing people to go to heat pumps in their homes. And you might think, oh, it can't be that efficient. Why is there two of them on this container? And this is a special container.
These these units here, the a container that we're shipping underground to a potash mine so it's going a kilometer underground. The temperature is a consistent 30 degrees above. And we do not need two of these to air condition, a 20 foot container. The reason why they one with two is just for redundancy. So if one does break down, they can just utilize the other one until they're underground.
Plumber can can fix the other ones and just they're going for no downtime. It's not that. Yeah. Two of these are required. So you don't think that you need to purchase two of these. But yes, you do need your electrician and your plumber. You have to vacuum out all of the air out of the line set and then release the refrigerant. They do come preloaded with the refrigerant. It takes about a day with your trades and it's all said and done. So probably double the cost of the, of the actual unit to purchase in labor and she's, she's installed, but there's a lot even on Amazon. If you look on Amazon in Canada, there's lots of these Cenveo units. They're great units.
They're all ETL intertech approved and and they're relatively low cost. You know, I hate talking about pricing but anywhere from 1200 bucks to to three grand on huge ones you can get these and they can also go one condenser unit outside and then multiple units inside. And so what we've done that's really cool by accident is we've made a track system so that the plumber if they need to work on this thing or a clean it, they can actually just undo a couple bolts and slide this out and then get at it because this is air conditioning only and not heating the exterior condenser will never condensate.
It's always the interior head unit that's producing the condensate. And so all of the water will be draining out of here. If this was in our northern climate, it's probably going to be heating more than air conditioning and then this thing we'll condensate and to battle that by accident coming up with this track system, potentially, if we do this on rental units, we can set this up so that the driver, once he delivers a 20 foot rental container, he can unbolt this slide it out, potentially pin it and then have it sticking out for the duration of the rental.
Then before we load it up for transportation width to tuck it back in, he's also going to be installed on the end walls of containers and then utilize this container modification world frame. Another way to battle the condensation on the exterior condenser is we could remove the wood floor of the shipping container and install bar grating in its place.
That's going to allow more airflow through here and the condensate to drip and drain any ever out of here. But one thing that really, really surprised me is I have these installed at my cabin and I have them installed at our new building and they ran all winter heating our new building, which has surprised everybody. But there was an icicle like 20 feet high so they're mounted really high, I guess wouldn't be 20 feet, but 12 feet and an icicle all the way down might have some photos.
I've fallen of it, try to share them with the film crew and show you guys, but it is insane how much condensate these things make. Another interesting note, and I don't know if anybody watching this understands why is the condensate seems porous, like there's an ice hill there, but when you take a pickax or something and you try to chip away at it, it's like aerated ice and it's not as dense and heavy as you'd expect it to be, like a normal cube of ice. Not sure why that happens, whether it's like pure water coming out of their water, but it's easier to clear out. And so there's a maintenance item in the northern climates of clearing away the ice that this thing doesn't just turn into a huge icicle and then no longer work to producing heat, but in northern climates, you know, they only work till about, they say some of them -28 or something Celsius, which is is insane.
But you do kind of want some sort of auxiliary heat like for your house if you have a wood fireplace that's awesome or just keeping your furnace. But using this where these things really shine is that ten degrees Celsius to -18 degrees Celsius instead of using traditional air conditioning or burning natural gas to produce heat. In those instances, heat pumps are the clear winner there for efficiency, even if natural gas is way more way cheaper than than electricity.
And that's going to change right away with carbon tax in Canada anyway. Natural gas is it's going to get expensive it's going to go up every year more than electricity. And it's just every year. These are going to become cheaper and cheaper and cheaper to operate because of what you're benchmarking against, which is, I guess, fossil fuels. So we love them. We developed this kit for them. What's cool about this kit is it insets inside the container? It's kind of like a a window frame kit. Pretty cool stuff. Really excited to show this off and see how well they turned out. If any of you have any insight on draw slides or something that's real heavy duty that can handle the weight of the condenser and slide outwards and then lock in a outward position and an inward position.
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