My New house and low utility bills

[JackMentink]

That's great!

Have you considered how it will affect your well over time? I have considered one too, but using the well has me concerned...

I have considered the well. I have studied thre ground water in this area. I live over a very good aquifer and when drilled my well produced about 50-70 gallons per minute. My pump can only produce about 25 GPM tops.

I also set the pump at 250 foot below the surface and the static water level is at about 100' down so I have a large comfort margin.

I don't see the well being a problem at all. My engineering firm design wells that produce 10 times the water mine does and dont have problems long term.

A good knopwledge of the area really helps.

 

[JackMentink]

That is good Jack!! Of course I have heard that the geothermal systems are also pretty expensive and have a long payback. It sure would be the way to go for a house you intend to stay in though.

I am interested in your system discharging into holding tanks. Can't say I have ever heard of anyone doing that before. How much water does it generate during, say a week in the heating season? Do you just drain it off during the winter when you are not watering?

Around here the systems working off a well normally discharge into another well. I have heard that the EPA is questioning that type of system and may stop the practice in fear of ground water contamination.

MarkV

Well that is how my system is totally different. When I built my house I priced out a high efficiency gas/ high seer A/C system with different units for lower and upper floors. The price for the comperable conventional system was the same as my single 6 ton geothermal unit!

In other words the payback was zero years for my unit ! Nada! It cost me about $2000 more to up size my well and pump and install the variable speed drive, but My electric cooperative gave me back $1700 rebate for installing the system.

I saved the $300 in the first month of use. It is not a long term pay back system and it works great. The key is the open loop which gets the cost down.

The kind of system you are speaking of is a closed loop system where you have to drill multiple wells and circulate antifreeze through loops. This gets expensive as you have to drill a well per ton of capacity.

In the winter I have a by pass overflow in the tanks that lets the water discharge through a pipe to a ditch where it soaks into the ground before it leaves my 4 acres.

 

[JackMentink]

Interesting.
Have you figured the payback time for your heat pump system?

My payback was one month for my system. See earlier post. Now I save every month.

 

[JackMentink]

We took a similar route in our home construction: Anderson low-E windows, 2x6 walls, Tyvel house wrap, and a high efficency gas forced air furnace. We also installed an EPA rated wood burning furplace (Quadra Fire). We have been pleasantly surprised but so far we haven't had to run the furnace because the wood burner has worked out so well. So from October to warm weather in the Spring we haven't had any heat bill the last 2 years. YIPPEEEE!

Wood is nice and we had it earlier in our lives when we were a little younger, but it is so messy dragging it through the house and its somewhat of a pain draging in wood and loading the thing all the time, lighting fires then it warms up and it goes out , and cleaning out the ashes! Been there, done that. Don't want to go back.

But some people really enjoy it so have a good time.

 

[JackMentink]

Tell us more about your sytem, who installed, brand.....got any pics?

We are about 3-5 years out from building our home and I've done a lot of research on geo..........of course I want to do most of it myself so I'm trying to learn as much as I can.

Sounds great, good for you!

The system is actually a Water Furnace brand 6 ton unit that is a two speed compressor that comes on at 3 tons and has a variable speed blower that ramps up and down slowly and just speeds up to the amount of Air needed for the zones called for.

My house has Four seperate zones that are controlled by dampers and separate thermostats. each are can be different temperature and not the normal variance in temperatures between floors.

I had a local Contractor (Victor furnace in Salem, Missouri) install the system, but I specified the unit and all the duct work sizing and wiring so everything is very quiet and no draftiness or cycling temperature problems. It is absolutely wonderful.

 

[JackMentink]

Around here our wells get gummed up with iron deposits and you have to redrill deeper every 10 years or so.

I was thinking about a water loop getting heat from the ground, maybe from the ground water. Anyone have thoughts on those?

Some places don't have as good of aquifers as we do in central Missouri. You may have to do the closed loop system with drilling multiple wells and circulating antii freeze through the loops. These work great to but the first cost goes up substantially.

My system cost about 18,500 total for all the equipment, ductwork and upsizing my well with a variable frequency drive. If i would have had to do a closed loop system with multiple wells, my system would have been about $34,000. Big difference. Probably would be a ten year payback instead of a one month payback.

 

[JackMentink]

As someone mentioned, whats the cost to put in all that high tech stuff. IE changing out windows can be expensive and have a long payback.

Also what are you paying for each KWH?

You would think power would be cheap in Texas...but we have some of the highest rates in the country.

See earlier posts, my system was virtually the same price as a conventional system.

Our electric here has a cost of about 6.9 cents a KW. But when there is $300 extra costs for Ground source it really doesn't make any difference its a instant payback.

 

[JackMentink]

We just finished up with our house build. We looked into a ground source heat pump but the payback was over 10 years. This was for a system that required its own wells (or horizontal trenches).

We ended up going with an air source heat pump (ultra high efficiency, two stage) that is powered from off-peak electricity. The payback on this system is around 4-5 years.

The air source heat pumps are not as efficient as the ground source but they are a heck of a lot better than a typical HVAC system with gas forced air heat and a central AC unit.

This is a good option instead of the the ground source and they work well, even better in a little more temperete climate like ours as they get a little inefficient when the temperature gets below 15 degrees.

The technology of the air to Air heat pumps is much better and helps them remain efficient to much colder temperatures than they did just 10 years ago

 

[JackMentink]

My first post on a tractor forum and it not even about tractors.

I am also going with a geo system. But not open loop. Ours will be a horizontal closed loop glycal mix. The price on the Water Furnace system is $24,900 which includes everything except the excavation. The excavation is going to be about 2000 to 3000 for 3 trenches 150' x 10', 6' deep.

I also priced out an air to air system, which was around $16000. But decided to go with the geo.
In our calculations we have the system paying for itself in 7 to 10 years.
Those prices are Canadian also

Sounds like you have yourself a good system. We have very hasrd clay and solid rock at 3-6 feet which makes the horizontal loop system not very cost effective in this area. I hope it works great for you.

 

[JackMentink]

Check out the "Heat Pump Miracle" thread... I've had a recirculating water-source heat pump operating in my house for 23 years now.... other than a few repairs it's done well, and heating costs have been very reasonable: when built in 1986, estimated heating-season (house is all electric) cost was $350 per year. Electricity, even with off-peak billing, is now costing me about 15 cents per KWH (up from 8 cents or so when house was built); I estimate current heating season costs to be around $650. Still not bad at all. House is about 1800 sq ft, heat pump is a 3-1/2 ton unit.

In the summer I can flip a switch and get A/C, and the thing will even take house heat and put it into DHW... In the immortal words of a former colleague, "It takes a lot less energy to move heat than it does to create it..."

My water loop's incoming line is entirely below the frost line, so I only use water, no glycol. Sealed loop goes down the well hole, right along with the water pump lines & electrical feeds. Sits submerged in about 150' of water.

Its great to hear from a true geothermal veteran who has lived with the technology for an extended amount of time. Glad to hear it has worked out so well!

I've heard that the new geothermal units are quite a bit more efficient than some of the older ones were. My new unit has coefficient of performance (COP) values of up to 5. To put it in plain terms the unit produces up to 5 KW of heat for every KW of electric that is consumed by the furnace. Hows that for 500% efficiency!