I am getting ready to take the plunge of a geothermal Heat pump. It seems now, I will have to get it in at least before next June to handle the air conditioning load on the house due to company for the Mountaineer.
I have a guy set up to dig my 6' deep trench. I will be doing the residential slinky to the right. I am going to run about 1,000 feet of High Density polyethylene plastic pipe (black iron size opposed to copper size). This is 1" pipe. It works as the radiator. You can see how easy this will be by the very technical drawing.
The heat pump is going to be, I think, a 3.0 ton FHP (company name) water source heat pump with a desuperheater (this heats your hot water). I can order it as a unit, hook up the electricity, slinky ground loop, and the duct work and BAM! I am saving money. Of course not counting the thousands spent for the unit. I am treating this like the school district treats a new building when telling me how much it costs to send a kid to school, they ignore it (I digress).
I have concerns my 49 year old furnace may only have a few good years. The CO monitor has not gone off yet nor do I see flame in the duct work, so I feel safe. The only safety device on this furnace is a thermocouple, which can be by-passed in an emergency (previous owner was thinking!).
I bring this up because my work outs have suffered due to planning for this, in addition to some responsibilities at work that have become larger. So, I may not be posting too many workouts, but I want to maintain some training, because I want to do a Half marathon in January.
Another cool thing. I am trying to talk Tamara into a Yurt as a guest house/playhouse (mostly for us adults, not the kids).
I was looking at the 16' package. I think it is cool. I wouldn't mind living in it. She talks about space, it doesn't go with the style of the current house, and something mumbled under her breath about how weird I am and how she may have done things differently if she hadn't been blinded by love and the only thing keeping her here is the kids, something else about how to make a murder look like a suicide, Blah, blah blah. She usually wonders away from me at this point. I pretty much turn her off when she doesn't enthusiastically tell me how great my ideas are. I do this because I create a voice (female, very sultry) in my head that is telling me how wonderful I am for discovering such magnificent items. Once again I digress.
11 comments:
The geothermal system is outstanding. My cousin is talking about putting a system in at his house, only using the nearby creek as his heatsink/source. You'll have to let me know how much it saves you in the long run. Congrats on reducing your carbon footprint. As far as the yurt goes ... your on your own on that one.
Some friends at work just did a bunch of research on Solar vs Geothermal.
After many discussions I believe they ruled out geothermal because it's great for A/C but not so much for heat.
Also there are no tax breaks for Geothermal (at least in NY). Whereas there are significant deals for solar.
Of course they are building new. So they can easily install a heating system which will use electric.
They will also be building with Passive solar in mind.
I think this subject should have a blog. As Shawn is also looking into this.
I suppose I should be. I didn't mention it on here but the safety on my heater didn't work a week ago Sunday and my boiler burned up. So I'm going to be sinking about $7000 or so into a new boiler. The old one was installed in 1980. The one being installed looks to be exactly like the 1980 model. I guess they've already perfected the technology...
If I want to save some money long term at my place. I need to have the siding removed and insulation installed. Then new windows as well. I figure in another year contractors will be begging for work. Maybe the housing slow down will drop the price of this type of work a bit.
The fact the house is sided in asbestos shingles makes for a whole other set of problems.
It will save me $300 in Federal tax savings right off the bat. I can't totally count the tax break because other heating systems are eligible for it.
Actually Matt you should look into the IRS code about your boiler.
Then I will turn the natural gas off, which I determined the fixed cost of having this utility is about $200/year. Assuming I get the efficiency increase off the heat pump compared to a new high efficiency furnace, I should save about $300 more per year. Assuming this system costs me $2000 over a new furnace and a new whole house air conditioner it should be paid off in 4 years.
Matt the discussion about your friends does not make a ton of sense about it working better for A/C and not so much for heat. It sounds like they may have been misguided. This sounds more like a regular Heat Pump (outside air as the medium). Normal Heat Pumps become ineffective when the outside temp drops below 26 degrees. The concept is, it is hard to remove something from nothing.
Geothermal takes 55 degree water and removes heat from it to heat your house temp to 70 degrees (15 degree differential, Normal heat pump on cold days would be a 40 degree diff).
And in reverse for A/C takes heat out of 72 degree air and places it into 55 degree water. Where as a normal Heat pump is trying to take heat out of 72 degree air and put it into 90 degree air. No place for the heat to go.
I understand I seem a little up on a soap box, but I keep hearing the same arguement from people who had normal Heat Pumps not Geothermal.
Scott, My goal was not to reduce my carbon footprint, but it makes sense I will, so if I save money and do this, it is as Stephen Covey would say Win-Win. Just so you know I have been looking at CO2 (carbon dioxide for those away from chemistry class for a few years) regulations for power plants. If you don't reduce your carbon footprint, you will pay. We actually have started to consider by 2015 if it would be cheaper to stop running altoghether and just sell the CO2 credits they give us. The systems to reduce CO2 (essentially sequestering it) is way to expensive for a small generator like us.
Not a business decision I like to hear when you look at 70 good jobs. Very interesting stuff. We probaly should start another blog on stuff like this, but then I wouldn't get much else done.
I appreciate the soap box. I mentioned it because I was somewhat surprised by the final decision as well. (but had no reason to do the homework). I'll make sure I pass this along to them so they can decide if they are being "snowed" by a vendor.
Yes, I just had two different guys come out to bid me a geothermal system, and one of them is going to compare the geo to the air-to-air. I haven't received either bid yet. Both of them use the same company to dig the wells. I had not considered doing that part myself. But if we get to play with a backhoe, then why wouldn't we?
I believe Liz (at Matt's work) must also be thinking of an air-to-air heat pump. The geo can heat to about 120 degrees year round, but the air-to-air has a lot further to go in the winter. My guy had a few options to solve that, and prevent the electric element from coming on, including throwing in a pellet-burning fireplace insert, which would throw out heat in the living room that could then be sucked up by a purposefully placed intake and distributed around the house. This would probably work for me but I would be afraid of trying to sell this value to the next owner if we have to move someday.
Craig, maybe we should chat on the phone so I can get more details because I am going to do something soon, if not this year, then next, and I would like to make the best decision and pay the right amount.
Now, if I could get solar panels on my roof to run the circulators, and get a tax break, we might have something.
Link to buy Heat pump:
http://acforsale.com/online/default.php?cPath=147_268
I have to add the heat element & extended package. I am looking at the 3 ton unit. But my calculations show I could use the 2.6 ton. I may have to call an expert to make sure.
http://www.charterplastics.com/geothermal.html
This sight is a place that makes the tubing (out of Titusville, PA). The administrative assistant's husband at work sells commercial piping and matched the specs for the PE 3408/3608 piping. I am waiting for his price. I should be rolling in two weeks. The final thing I need is a circulating pump for the fluid in the yard. Checking on this still.
http://www.acdirect.com/popups/sizingtools.php
A link to the sizing info for your house. Option 1 requires work, option 2 gives you a real general chart for this type of info.
http://www.acdirect.com/popups/sizingtools.php
A link to the sizing info for your house. Option 1 requires work, option 2 gives you a real general chart for this type of info.
Given that you've had the system installed in your house for close to five years now, I was wondering if you could give a post-mortem on what you like, don't like, and/or would do differently with the system you had installed?
he system runs great.
Likes:
Eliminated the nat gas utility, saved $200 a year in fixed expenses. Have saved about an additional $350 to $400 annually depending on the winter.
Have run as an air conditioner all the time in the summer (rarely ran old air conditioner). Realized all the ceiling fans and box fans that use to keep house cool cost something. Have not realized a great increase in summer bill (savings include this usage) and much more serenity in the house. I occasionally come home to the heat pump running and back door open. House is 72 degrees and outside 85.
It is fun to talk about. Everyone asks questions when they hear you have it.
Dislikes:
Power goes out no backup to heat. We had an event two winters ago. Power was out for four days. No Nat. Gas stove to at least keep things from freezing. Also gas furnace takes little generator to run, heat pump would take a generator to large to want to buy to run.
Should have started with Methanol mixture rather than propylene glycol antifreeze in closed loop. Methanol is cheaper and the has better thermal properties. It stays closer to water. Propylene gets heavier as it gets colder (specific gravity is higher and goes up)and is costly. I now have methanol. Of course methanol is toxic and flammable (not in mixture, but how you buy it), which is why I started with Propylene.
Done Differently:
Would have gone up a half ton on the pump. I have a small house so, I installed a 2 ton unit. 2.5 would have helped with really cold winters.
Would have oversized the loop, not that I would have done any better on the heat transfer with the Heat pump I have, but we are looking at adding an addition, so I may need to add a unit and this may starve the heat loop in the winter.
I would like to have had vertical wells rather than horizontal loop. But talking to others the cost of drilling for the size of my house just doesn't seem economical, but if I had lots of money ????? to dream. . . . .
Finally, I would now entertain the option for a two stage pump. It seems to not need as much size for cooling as it does for heating. So, for my 1400 square foot house, I could have the first stage be 1.5 ton unit, and the second stage add a ton for a total of 2.5 tons.
With an addition I may search ebay for a small used unit and have a staged cooling & heating system. or I may zone the downstairs and the upstairs with different units depending on how easy the duct work is to move. Which may also help the loop, with two small units drawing from loop potentially at different times it may not starve as much as I think.
A note when discussing benefits to wife, be careful how wonderful you make it sound. You use to have two separate units that ran in their assigned season. Now you have a unit that runs all the time. Hence, more maintenance sooner. I had a circulating pump fail. It was under warranty but failed in very hot week in summer. I also had a Freon leak last summer. It appeared to be a crimped copper line from original manufacture, but again it failed in hot week and it took a while to get repair guy there. Theses things happen with all mechanical devices, but I did get a little constructive feedback from my wife about our wonderful heating/cooling system breaking when we needed it most. We did a little cost benefit analysis at this point which calmed things down.
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