Has anyone installed a do it yourself cheap geothermal system?

[sylvie]

A geo thermal system using wells do not use pipes for the heat transfer as the horizontal systems do. They actually pump ground water to the heat exchanger and then back in the 2nd well. The wells do not have to be any certain depth they just need to be able to produce a sufficient amount of water. The amount of water needed will be dependent on the size of the heating system installed in the house which of course is dependent on the square footage being heated\cooled.

A geo-thermal system works just like a traditional heat pump. The only real difference is instead of using outside air it uses water. When heating the heat pump draws heat out of the water using freon and a compresser. The water that is now colder is returned to the ground via the 2nd well. When cooling the principle is the same. Check out how a heat pump works for a better understanding.

They also make a unit called a super de-heater that will draw heat out of the warmer water during the cooling cycle that then goes through a liquid to liquid heat exchanger to preheat the water going to the water heater saving even more $$$

I have never installed one myself but a friend of mine had one installed. The whole idea intrigues me so I have been researching them and got as much info from them as i could. Hope this will give you a better understanding.

Thank you for taking the time to explain this, slaghunter!
The two wells was a surprise and makes this more complicated than I realized. I will read more on the heat pump as you suggest.

 

[Jolly_Rancher]

We had a geothermal installed about 4 years ago.. The salesman figured it would take us 7 years to pay for itself. We just completed our 4th year audit and we have officially recouped our investment!

We needed a new furnance at the time and looked at all of our options, this one seemed like a no-brainer for our 100 year old house.

I don't know how it works.. just that we were paying $100. a month for elec and $600. every 6 weeks for propane and since installation the elec runs $150-$200 and NO propane!
And the bonus is it heats our hot water all winter.

Would I do it again... if I had to starve for 6 months to pay for the installation.. you bet!!

 

[sylvie]

We had a geothermal installed about 4 years ago.. The salesman figured it would take us 7 years to pay for itself. We just completed our 4th year audit and we have officially recouped our investment!

We needed a new furnance at the time and looked at all of our options, this one seemed like a no-brainer for our 100 year old house.

I don't know how it works.. just that we were paying $100. a month for elec and $600. every 6 weeks for propane and since installation the elec runs $150-$200 and NO propane!
And the bonus is it heats our hot water all winter.

Would I do it again... if I had to starve for 6 months to pay for the installation.. you bet!!

Jolly_Rancher, From the looks of your propane costs you must be in a very cold area like ours. Congrats on recouping ahead of schedule!
Do you have the deep well system or the shallower spread out system?

 

[Jolly_Rancher]

We have plenty of land so we went cheaper with the shallow.. there is
4 - 250 foot long, 6 foot deep trenches, the ground loops around at the end and comes back, so its not 2 lines to a trench, just one line that tavels a full loop.

It was $3500 to dig & install the 4 trenches and over & $5000 to dig the 2 straight down. With no further savings.. made no sense to do it that way to me, for us.. but if you lived in town with not enough land, then well worth the invesment.

 

[adoptedbyachicken]

We went with Geothermal when we built here in 2005 and I love it. Bit hard to get my head around the concept at first, but think of it as similar to the parts of your fridge and your car's radiator. There is a liquid antifreeze that is pumped through a field, which is a series of coils at 8 feet underground where Mother Earth is always 50 degrees, all year round. This is like the coils in the back of your fridge. So this antifreeze returns to the house 50 degrees, which is the 'relative' warmth we are looking for. After that it's run into a compressor. All liquids heat up when compressed, so this liquid becomes 160 - 180 degrees. Then while compressed it goes through a radiator like your car, that is in a forced air chamber leading to the ducts in my house. The air is warmed by going through the rad and blows into the rooms warm. After the rad the liquid is allowed to decompress which makes it much cooler as it has now lost allot of it's relative heat, so it leaves the house about -30. The field warms it back up to +50 and the cycle goes again in winter. Excess heat not needed for air temperature can be directed to the coils that are within the hot water tank by the system prior to decompression.

In summer when the house is too warm the liquid is compressed to go through the coils for the hot water first then decompressed to go to the rad in the forced air chamber and the air going through there is cooled by the relative lack of heat in the liquid before it returns to the field.

The field alternates between being a sink for unwanted heat and a source for needed heat even though it's always 50 degrees. To me the confusing part was the idea of 'relative warmth/cool' and how we manipulate it by pressure to move heat from here to there. Unlike your wood stove/propane heater/electric furnace Geothermal does not ever 'create' any heat, it just moves it. By concentrating heat energy where it's wanted in winter and taking it away from where it's unwanted in summer it keeps you happy.

Obviously we opted for the forced air type system but in floor heat geothermal is available too. Where we live however AC was as important a consideration as heat. I love our very consistent temp house, and the running costs are low. Propane would be our only other option out here and the cost of delivery alone makes that way too expensive, plus we would be using electric AC in the summer. Due to the temps varying from +35 to -35 C here it was felt a air heat pump system would be insufficient.

I suggest you get a contractor the will work with you, we did, and we really enjoyed laying the lines ourselves and helping him hook it all up, but the expert was there, and it's installation has a warrentee. We were his laborers and for that we have the knowledge of where everything is and lowered our costs.

 

[Buster]

My place had geothermal when I moved in. Because we have a large pond, we assumed it was a pond unity, but it turns out not to be so. We are now assuming it is a laid out grid, but we aren't sure about that, either. Nobody seems to know for sure.

It wasn't operational at first (the place was a trashed HUD foreclosure), but we had a guy come out and service it and it works great.

Anyway, we love our geothermal. When you look in its closet, there is a hot water heater that we haven't quite figured out the purpose for, since we have a good sized one on the interior of the house.

We figure we save a minimum of $50 a month on heating and cooling, and it seems to heat and cool the house very quickly when we turn it back on upon entering the home at night.

 

[me&thegals]

April--what an excellent explanation. Even I could get that one, and I am not mechanically inclined whatsoever.

Here's what I'm trying not to freak out about: We live on a farm. My BIL and SIL are building across the field from us. They are installing geothermal and expect to pump up as much as 1200 gallons per day, probably yearround since they air conditioner all summer, too. Instead of a 2nd well, they are burying the pipes in the fields between us to somehow drain back down to the aquifer. Two concerns: How can that much possibly drain? Plus, this is an erosion-sensitive field with bluffs emptying into it and hills sloping down towards it. Second: Will there be any contamination from the whole process of geothermal?

I work REALLY, REALLY hard to conserve water. While the way people build a home is their business, water is a shared resource and I can hardly keep my mouth shut on this one. My husband is concerned about sinkholes opening under the field--just really not sure what might happen. Is there any precedence for this?

 

[dacjohns]

April--what an excellent explanation. Even I could get that one, and I am not mechanically inclined whatsoever.

Here's what I'm trying not to freak out about: We live on a farm. My BIL and SIL are building across the field from us. They are installing geothermal and expect to pump up as much as 1200 gallons per day, probably yearround since they air conditioner all summer, too. Instead of a 2nd well, they are burying the pipes in the fields between us to somehow drain back down to the aquifer. Two concerns: How can that much possibly drain? Plus, this is an erosion-sensitive field with bluffs emptying into it and hills sloping down towards it. Second: Will there be any contamination from the whole process of geothermal?

I work REALLY, REALLY hard to conserve water. While the way people build a home is their business, water is a shared resource and I can hardly keep my mouth shut on this one. My husband is concerned about sinkholes opening under the field--just really not sure what might happen. Is there any precedence for this?

I would check local codes.

It sounds like they are trying to install an open loop system where it should be a closed loop. Draining back into the aquifer doesn't work. Aquifers take a long time (thousands of years?) to recharge.

It sounds like a bad idea.

Check out the difference between open and closed loop geothermal systems.

Here is a quick link.

http://www.dougrye.com/geothermal.html

 

[nightshade]

my hubby does Geo's for a living he has been installing them for 8 years and the company that he works for has done them 23 I think I will ask him if after supper he can get on ad give ya a run down on them.

 

[me&thegals]

Ok--bad math. It is apparently going to pump 8-10 gallons per minute. On really hot or really cold days, running 20 hours, that could be as much as 12,000 gallons per day! I almost choked when I calculated out that I would have to conserve 33 gallons every single day of the year to offset their one day of use!