who out there geothermls?

Also I wanted to say that the pic @ the top of this blog is a slinky loop and I would never recommend someone using this method first of all its a lot of excavation and second of all the pipes run over each other cause the water to have a hard time bring ground temp back to the system. People usually do this type of system when they don't have room for a typical loop system. I warn you please dont have this done. Thank you TOm

First of all geothermal is installed all over the place in canada Iceland and so forth.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal ... in_Iceland
“Because of the special geological situation in Iceland, the high concentration of volcanoes and geothermal energy are very often used for heating and production of electricity. It may be the same situation in the other places.”

For a cost per BTU analysis that includes geothermal for a northern state (New Hampshire) see:
http://nhclimateaudit.org/calculators.php
The calculations for fuel cost and efficiency, if known, can be adjusted for other areas.

my father just had a geo installed a month or two ago. so far he loves it, but has not needed the central air yet and it has not gotten very cold yet either. soon he will have some results. an HVAC friend of mine advised about to hike in electrical bills and high maintainence of parts, but went ahead with it. i suggested a stoker furnace lol

Two of my neighbors in PA had geothermal units. They used well water as the heat source/sink. They were both very happy with it. I would have liked to put in a ground coil and a geothermal unit where I live now but the ground is like cement and you have to go at least 4 feet down to get below the frost line. Too expensive.

They have the same flaw as do Heat Pumps have. Regardless of how much electric they consume, they only blow out 80 degree heat, nothing like the fossil fuel heat we are used to. When we had our heat pump, it just seemed never to be warm, and always ran. Very happy with our Hand Fired Unit. Dan

Most of the new installs in southeastern PA are heat pumps. It's really too cold there to get the most efficiency out of those units. Most of my friend who had them hated them because the air was never very warm and when it got really cold out the electric meter would spin like a top.

Cheetah wrote:That would be a vertical loop closed system. They still make what is called an open loop system which takes water from one well, runs it through a heat exchanger, and injects it back into the ground through another well. Their big selling point is reduced installation cost. They can work but they can also have problems that make them more expensive in the long run.

My parents built a house in 1980/81 and installed ground source heat pumps (Carrier) - one for upstairs and one for downstairs, as well as a Weso stove in the family room and a Woodchuck add-on furnace in the basement. The heatpumps were fed from a well and the "waste" water was dumped into the creek that ran behind the house in the woods. A few other homes had similar systems but had a return well, and I remember a few ice rinks for front yards in the winter when the return well couldn't handle the water flow and overflowed.

We moved in 1984, and while we only had issues with the well tank bladders failing, the new owners had to tear out the entire well pump shortly after moving in - I seem to recall acidic water and it ate the drop pipe as the reason. Finally the entire system was ripped out and I think conventional air-source pumps were put in. This was southern Indiana, so it didn't get REAL cold for long.

Chris

Ground source heat pumps systems can have low operating costs compared to other heating fuels in many parts of the country. The huge problem is they need to be engineered to the local weather, geology and water source. When this is not done the system will fail. Competent engineers and installers are difficult to find and are expensive. The total cost is often way beyond a residential home owners budget. My local school district is currently installing a large well water sourced system in a very large 40 year old high school. It's a multi-million dollar installation that will dramatically reduce electric costs, over the old electric resistance heat system. It's engineered to have a 40+ year lifetime. Break even on the investment is about 15-18 years if electric rates increase at historic rates.

I'm building a house in NW PA and am having a ground loop geo system installed. Like was posted previously, it takes a good installer with good references. I've done quite a bit of research and have 6 quotes. Yes, its more expensive to install but the incentives are good and expected payback should be in about 4-5 years or sooner.

Having said that, I do have a fireplace extrodinair insert being installed and a flue to the basement for a wood/coal stove. Nothing like a good fire to knock the chill off.

The best way to evaluate something is to look at geothermal systems in your part of the world - say like Sullivan County technical college NY (BOCES). Put in 7 years ago at incredible expense and now lies unused. There are two problems.

Ground water at say 48F and you can heat pump it down to say 35F and lets say it's 90% efficient. In summer great for air but the vast majority of the use around here is for heat. If you do the math you find about 70% of the energy comes from electricity. Artesian well systems do a little better.

With Sullivan, much more heat is required than air and so the system got less and less efficient over the years the AS THE GROUND FROZE UP. I evaluated this technology and rejected it. Never mind the STUPID pay back time.

PS would anybody like to guess how solar is working today and most NE winter days and again the payback. People opt for these systems as they are ignorant - sorry to say it like it is.

Now I'm busy - lit up the DVC today and the Pocono is churning in the basement. Upstairs is at 80F - phew. Energy wasting - yup and I don't care. So over the whole winter I will be TOASTY warm and perhaps I will manage to burn another ton of coal if I'm unlucky. So? another $200 wasted or so - having a blast and thinking of you guys. I wonder if I can melt the paint off the ceiling?

I priced a system for my 4k+ sq ft home less than 2 years ago.....$48,000 without any problems or glitches....so probably $50k....and no guarantee that it would work perfectly so I still needed to keep a backup system....
Thank you....I'll keep my coal

Well Bear,

From your posts I had already decided you were a smart man - now I know it. After your 50 grand would come the glitches I promise. From a net energy perspective can anybody estimate the net energy involved in just making $250,000 of solar panels or digging 6x500' wells. I can abuse energy with my coal for the rest of my life trying to melt the paint off the ceiling and never spend as much as the interest payments on the loan......DUH.

PS I'm keeping a number really good AMERICAN guys employed - not a bunch of Chinamen making panels. You see it's not that I want to stay warm and comfortable at reasonable cost all winter - I'm only doing it to be patriotic.

So if a was completely stupid and picked very expensive solar, wind, geo or wood, the govt will pay half my bills. Had to add the Pocono this year out of my chewed out hide with no help - it's still a no brainer.

I have just finished a preliminary analysis for a Geo installation located outside of Albany New York .

The original heating system was oil and the Geo installation cost was $38,600. The installation is now just over a year old and showed a first year savings over oil of $2,047, this is based on $3+ per gallon oil and $.108KWH electric rate.

This year his current oil price is $2.70 and his electric rate has jumped to $.12KWH. With these numbers I have projected that this years savings might be around $1,820.

Now a lot of people cannot dig up $30,000+ without some type of financing so lets look at the additional costs of this system using outside financing. Let's say that he borrowed $30,000 for 5 years at 6% (this is probably a little low). The system price would be increased by the interest cost of $7,580 for a total system price of $46,180. Now we subtract the first years savings of $2,047 and we get $44,130.

So at a savings of $1,820 per year we have a simple payback of approximately 24 years and that's saying that he can get away without any more electric rate increases which I figure is very unlikely.

Now dll stop being so optimistic -

An accountant would tell you you have to depreciate the asset so it's much worse than that. i.e assuming it's worn out after twenty years (a good bet) it's worth nothing at that point. Also, the simple fact is that in Albany where the ground water is 46F about 75-80% of the energy comes from electricity (it's just about all heating so please don't anybody tell me about air conditioning savings). So let's talk about cost of component failures. Motors failures, we know about those, but don't ignore SS components in 12ppm hard water etc.etc.etc. So its up more like $60,000. But let's not worry about that silly money stuff (Albany certainly doesn't), let's look at the percentage of time it's cooling over the time spent heating. If they are not about in balance the ground will freeze unless it's an Artesian system (which I doubt). When the ground freezes the system output dies. Of course then it's time to build another system twice the size. I am of course dismissing ground magma geothermals (in NY) or diverting hot air from the NY Senate twitterings... wait a minute here I have a solution. . Of course, magma geothermals might be possible one day if a fault opens up. Oh wait a minute, there IS a fault line that is active every 100 years that is just South of Albany.... hmmm...... let me follow that to its epicenter...... hmmm.... I got it, that would be right under the Indian Point nuclear reactor (and you think I am joking). So by ignoring anthracite over the years, not only are we dramatically escalating costs we now risk Armageddon. Let's also gloss over the number of good extra people in NEPA that would be employed if we gradually expanded the anthracite industry as a coordinated plan.

So to conclude ... other than this board (of course) the whole place is filled with idiots it would appear (beam me up Scotty).

... and to think my wife calls me insensitive... hah.