Surveyor question (goes along with HVAC!)

[Richard]

Interesting dimensions... I called someone else for a quote and they said I would need a couple trenches (something like the shape of a ladder??) but that each trench would have to be 10' from each other to allow heat dissapation.

The guy's I've been talking to the most about this, said if I could dig a 2' trench they could put the lines on the far side of that single trench. (fortunately, I've got a 2' bucket).

It's interesting to me the different comments.

If I could get by with a single 2' trench (legimately) then that would be a wonderful situation and make it much much easier to deal with.

 

[Richard]

In the article they just dug one trench for the lines. The first thing that pops into my head is that they buried the half of the line going into the house at the bottom of the trench. The half of the line leaving the house was higher in the trench. Seems strange once I think about it from an installation point of view....

Yep, he told me about this vertical trenching verses horizontal. Only need to dig a bit deeper so you can layer it but with a 15 1/2' digging depth that won't be an issue. Heck...I offered to dig the entire trench 12' or so... they said it was overkill... but one reason I thought about that was the (very remote) possiblity that we might want to do something later on... if this is down 12' then if I wanted to put a water line to "nowhere" I could use this same path but only bury it 4'.

Putting in a water line will never happen but then again, I will never need to know where my legal driveway is... yet here I am looking for it 11 years later

 

[Egon]

Now that I see this translation, is there a tool that a home owner could buy/use to get this approximated?

compass set to the proper declination. Don't worry about the minutes or seconds.

 

[EddieWalker]

In my experience with finding corners of a property, there is almost always old flagging still on the length of rebar. When I'm in the area and know that I'm close, I start to look real close for a color that doesn't look natural. Faded orange or red, but sometimes blue or gree. The surveyors wrap their color around the rebar and do their thing. I've seen as many as a dozen different ribbons tied to it one time, but normal would be three or four.

Depending on how long it's beens since the last survey, you might still find some ribbon in the trees. I've seen this quite often to mark a pin so that you can see where it is from a distance, or find it again. If no trees are available, they use wooden stakes, but those never seem to last very long. I had a real tough time finding a corner on a piece of land that I was selling. The buyer said it wasn't there and the surveyor didn't do his job. I knew they had been there because I saw them after they had fallen into the creek marking that corner. Turned out that it was so thick and overgrown there that we didn't go far enough. Once we went into that mess a little ways, we saw the ribbons in a tree quite a bit further in. I told the buyer that he was free to go see first hand if there was a pin in the ground under those ribbons, but since they went to the trouble to tie off those ribbons, I was comfortable that the pin was there too. He agreed and we turned around and got out of that mess.

Start at the paved road, the road gets surveyed more then anything else by crews doing work on or around the road. They will find your corners and use them in their survey. When they do this, the mark it pretty good and those are always the easiest to find.

You also don't have to find your corners if you can find somebody elses. If you can find a county landmark, or a neighbors, it's almost as good. Just tell the surveyor what you have and where it is. They can go from there and find yours pretty quickly.

All you really need for them is a place to start. Most of the time they will do it so quickly on their own that everything you do to help it is never even needed. I just like to find them myself to know what I have and what I'm dealing with.

Eddie

 

[jrwalkerpa1]

One other thing to consider with the geothermal loop.....what kind of rock (if any) do you have down there? If the answer is a lot, you may find that the vertical loop is a better (or in some case such as solid rock, your only option) choice. I had a closed loop vertical system installed in December...had plenty of land for a horizontal loop but it would have involved large quantities of dynamite!! Two vertical "wells", each 300 foot deep solved the problem. Admitedly, boring wells, is more expensive than the horizontal loop, especially if you have the ability to dig your own. But, in my case, it was the only way, due to the rock.

 

[Knotbored]

There is a federal $1500 tax rebate for some geothermal furnace installations (and others.)
I know this only because my furnace went kaput last month and it was cheaper to buy an upgraded propane furnace that was qualified for the rebate then a less expensive one that wasn't qualified. This is a direct $1500 rebate not just a tax deduction. I don't know if this is just for this year as part of stimulous (ha ha) or will apply in futuure years.
Check it out and time your installation and purchases to get that money back.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Check out this site:
Federal Tax Credits for Energy Efficiency : ENERGY STAR

For geothermal, it is 30% tax credit, on all energy star geothermal heat pumps.
Goethermal does NOT have the $1500 limit that other systems do.