Geothermal heat pumps anyone?

[tow653]

We needed a water well anyway,and got talked into an open loop,takes water from well,uses in geothermal,then into lake,very happy with it so far,plus got tax credit for water well.

 

[techman]

Vertical isn't as much higher as you think.

Wow. I would like to live in your area. In PA it is 3-4 times higher to go vertical. I am talking about vertical wells (closed loop). Drilling, casing, grouting and trenching to the house adds up fast. The systems I have installed with vertical loops were done by drillers who are certified and specialize in geo wells.

As for the horizontal, lawn destruction is an issue and cost, which makes it always better to do on a new construction, if possible. As for waiting to settle to improve efficiency, if done well with heat transfer/spreading materials, I have seen little change over time on the systems we installed. More myth than fact on a proper install.

Paul

 

[techman]

We needed a water well anyway,and got talked into an open loop,takes water from well,uses in geothermal,then into lake,very happy with it so far,plus got tax credit for water well.

Open loop = more care. Make sure that you have cupro-nickel coils to resist corrosion. Check water quality and filter the water if needed. I have worked on quite a few open loops where bad water quality, silt, dirt and other contaminants have clogged or otherwise diminished the operation and performance of the system. Open loop is great (higher efficiency) when it is working, but more care is needed to maintain it.

paul

 

[mfreund]

Vertical isn't as much higher as you think. I asked before putting ours in our new house. We have 48 acres with plenty open, so the spaces isn't an issue. The cost, to do it right, was only around $1k more to go vertical. That doesn't count re-seeding all the ground they tear up, waiting for it to settle, etc. Also, the vertical is more efficient (in our case) as it contacts water, and that is a much better heat transfer medium than just dirt.

X2 It was actually more expensive to go horizontal by about $700 for us. Ours are 125 ft x 4 wells for us. We hit water at about 30 ft! No bedrock just gravel. Might be the price difference.

 

[s219]

Ours was cheap enough to go with 4 vertical bores (150' deep each, grouted with bentonite) that horizontal loop was never even on the table. The 4 bores are about 15' apart, along the edge of our driveway.

 

[fordmantpw]

Wow. I would like to live in your area. In PA it is 3-4 times higher to go vertical. I am talking about vertical wells (closed loop). Drilling, casing, grouting and trenching to the house adds up fast. The systems I have installed with vertical loops were done by drillers who are certified and specialize in geo wells.

As for the horizontal, lawn destruction is an issue and cost, which makes it always better to do on a new construction, if possible. As for waiting to settle to improve efficiency, if done well with heat transfer/spreading materials, I have seen little change over time on the systems we installed. More myth than fact on a proper install.

Paul

They don't have to case the geo wells here. My vertical loops were done by certified geo specialists as well, and they've been doing it for a long time. I asked the HVAC folks what they recommend taking cost and everything else into account, and vertical was their recommendation. They were the ones that gave me the price differences as well.

As far as settling, I meant the yard and fixing it up to look decent, not so much for efficiency.

Open loop = more care. Make sure that you have cupro-nickel coils to resist corrosion. Check water quality and filter the water if needed. I have worked on quite a few open loops where bad water quality, silt, dirt and other contaminants have clogged or otherwise diminished the operation and performance of the system. Open loop is great (higher efficiency) when it is working, but more care is needed to maintain it.

paul

That's the reason I went with closed loop over open loop. We had to drill a well and could have saved quite a bit of money, but I didn't want the hassle nor the problems that come with the hard water around here.

 

[LAFarm]

Since I started this thread and it's now popped up I'll update that I've decided to do the Geothermal system. I'll be putting in a 5 ton Climatemaster Tranquility with a trenched ground loop (I have plenty of land for it .

One additional benefit that I hadn't figured on is that this unit is a single package, so it will all be under the house with no outdoor unit. I appreciate that especially now, sitting on my deck on a beautiful day typing this while my soon-to-be-replaced outdoor unit grinds noisily away.

Be sure to get the communicating thermostat. It will enable you to check you loop water in & out temps, cfm's, pump % and a lot of other data. It also let's you program several different temperatures for each day of the week if you want. Will record fault data to help diagnose problems if need service. My earlier mention of vertical loops normally being more expensive than horizontal was based on a project we did at Little Rock AFB. Besides the space issue, there was rock, lots of big rock that was very close to the surface and made the trenching from well locations to the home very slow. Couldn't just drop ditch-witch bar down and run a trench. Had to dig up rocks and boulders, haul them off and bring in fill dirt. All of that greatly increased the costs. Even if there would have been enough land area to go horizontal, it would have been way more expensive than drilling through the rock. Just my $.02!!

 

[Rock knocker]

I did quite a bit of research on converting our house to geothermal and what it came down to was that if the ductwork is not designed for it, it will severely limit the life of the pump. so in my case it would have required redoing all the ductwork in the house... which was obviously not going to happen.

I don't understand that. The duct work should be sized correctly for the load of the house, which is independent of the source.

 

[fordmantpw]

I don't understand that. The duct work should be sized correctly for the load of the house, which is independent of the source.

If the house is an older house, the ductwork may not be sized correctly for the house. It may have been wrong all along, and needs to be updated, regardless of the type of system gets put in.

 

[Rock knocker]

If the house is an older house, the ductwork may not be sized correctly for the house. It may have been wrong all along, and needs to be updated, regardless of the type of system gets put in.

Right. So it's all independent on the type