Geothermal

[Bill Nesbitt]

We're going to put a geothermal system in our house. Just wondered if any one here is using one and how they like it. We're in Ohio.

[dajarrel]

I think that would be neat. The only comment I have ever heard is that you will need some type of humidity control in your house if it is a direct heat/cool transfer system. Apparently there isn't enough temperature differential to pull the water out of the air. This was about ten years ago. Perhaps they have continued to improve it.

fwiw

dj

[kurtm]

UUUUUGGGGGHHHH! It ISN'T Geothermal! Geothermal is like a Hot Springs or as most would know it like Old Faith full in Yellow Stone National Park. You need an area of volcanic activity that is close to the surface of the earth which heats the caping rock strata to call it Geothermal. It can be hot dry rock or fractured rock that carries and heats water from an Aquifer, but Geothermal and Ohio don't go together. Sorry but I hate it when the uninformed try to foist off their "special technology" as something it most certainly ISN'T

What you are asking about is called a "ground loop" for your heat exchanger. They are fairly efficient and will help your heat pump be more efficient in the fact that it now has a fairly constant source of temperature to deal with instead of large temperature fluctuations from open air systems, BUT the cost of doing the ground loop, the water pumps, water treatment, and filtration and drilling and plumbing to do all the above is fairly costly and the last time I looked into it the break even point on energy consumption to cost outlay was around 27 years, now the cost of energy has gone up a bit since then, but so has the cost of setting up the systems so I bet it is still right around the same.

If I were to build a new house and price was no object I might consider it as the warm air you get in the winter is ..well warmer than an an ice encrusted heat exchanger can provide without a back up heat source, and you cool air in the summer is cooler as you now don't have to deal with a sun soaked heat exchange....but I wouldn't look at it as a way to save anything. I truly believe you can do more with thicker and better insulation than a ground loop, but I am NOT a H.A.V.A.C. Engineer, just a Geologist. KurtM

[chuckbradley]

I am considering this also. My neighbors decided to build their house with it and love it. They heat 2800 sq ft for about 100.00 a month. Guess it depends on where you live. On real cold days here a heat pump wont run below certain temps, think its 18 degrees, and it needs emergency heat which is very expensive. We installed a wood burner to supplement on the cold days and for situations where power goes out. The heat from a heat pump still feels cold. It does fine down to about 30 degrees. They say it takes about 10 years to recover the cost of the system with lower electric bills. If you are in an area with high electric rates and cold temps I would think it would really be a wise move.

[dajarrel]

Smart a$$ed remark deleted

dj

Edited April 13, 2009 by dajarrel

[FranDoc]

Installed it when the house was built ~11 years ago. Expensive on the front end, less expensive monthly than other options. The ONLY problems are on days when it is bitterly cold and the 'emergency heat' has to kick on OR when the electricity is out. You'll want to have a woodburner or other supplemental heat source for those days.

The house heats evenly, no hot/cold spots. You will need humidification in the winter.

We've been very happy with it. I'll be shooting Rayner's on Sunday if you want to talk more in person.

Fran

[John Heiter]

Ok Kurt, I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn last night, but I once farted while sitting on a boulder so I consider myself an expert on geothermal events.

Please explain why utilizing the heat retained by the earth as a source of heat for your home could not be appropriately referred to as "geothermal" heating. I can understand that there are multiple methods of doing this this based on the geothermal sources available in your particular region, but...

...and yes, I do frequently find myself placing my sock expander into my teeth container so what's one more round

[kurtm]

AHHHH Hold on to those sock,s amigo and quit emitting "Green House gases" while sitting or standing anywhere near talus, float...or any other Quaternary material.

The quick Smart A## answer is that..hey it helps COOl the house in the summer, so how can you say you are using the "heat" of the earth??

Now let,s take a real look at your statement. In the zones/depths we are talking about 15'- 700' or so the best we can hope for is a CONSTANT temperature of roughly 65 degrees. it never warms up in the summer and never cools off in the winter. This isn't really enough to be considered very warm nor very cool. The over burden above 15' or so acts as a very effective insulator for Sun load heating, and the depth we are talking about isn't nearly deep enough to provide any "heat", UNLESS there is a source of from within the area from hot magma/gases....(real Geothermal, but I digress). Just so you can get a feel for how deep you have to go in order to get meaningful heat WITHOUT any Geothermal source..IE. no volcanoes, up welling magma, super heated water from deeper aquifers, at around 14,000' deep through good old sedimentary rock we would see a temperature of around 300-350 degrees, or just a bit over the heat of a standard house heating Boiler system. Now unless you are going to hire Unit drilling company and drill a nice 9 5/8" hole down to 14,000 feet ( rig costs around $70,000.00 per day) you are stuck in the zone we mentioned before 15'-700' (note for ground loop pumps anything much deeper than 70' and cost sky rocket!)

So we are talking about a zone that neither stores nor gives off much in the way of thermal energy. On top of that you may encounter aquifers that will give you more water than you would ever want, or take away all the water you want to circulate to heat/cool your house, so we have to run casing which further insulates the water YOU are circulating from the surrounding overburden/strata. Now I will be the first to admit that in a closed circulating system (cased hole)that you can elevate or depress the temperature of the water YOU put in there and it will loose or gain heat at the rate the casing can transfer heat to the overburden/strata, but we are talking a couple of degrees at most over vastly long periods of time.

So we are using a zone that neither stores nor gives off thermal energy so the "stored heat of the earth" statement is miss leading at best, but sounds really cool in a ground loop sales pitch Further more the areas that we are talking about seldom drill as deep as the first real rock strata so all we are talking about is a steel tube sunk down into the overburden ( what I like to call....dirt) filled with water that WE put there and filled with water that WE put there, that only very slowly can be heated or cooled by the energy that WE provide.

Mean while back at the geyser THEY get hot water that THEY don't put any energy into nor do They have to pump and circulate...you know kind of like Geo-Thermal heat! KurtM

Edited April 13, 2009 by kurtm

[mpeltier]

Sure makes me happy to live in central florida. The Beer here is ice cold summer or winter. But I still have a headache after reading Kurts last post.

[hdrules59]

We have had one for 15 years and two houses. The latest one we installed is the best one, it is a water furnaces made in Ft Wayne Indiana. I also live in Ohio West Central Ohio and we love the heating and cooling efficiency.

http://www.waterfurnace.com/

They have rep's in your area...

WaterFurnace Dealers

16 Miles Pro-Aire LLC

50580 National Road East

Saint Clairsville, OH 43950 740-695-9948

16 Miles Rumer-Loudin Inc.

67679 Clark Rd

Saint Clairsville, OH 43950 740-695-2487

Territory Managers

John Cari

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(800) 934-5667 ext. 8816

Edited April 14, 2009 by hdrules59

[GentlemanJim]

Facts are facts...its kinda hard to argue with them.

LANL...played some games with geo thermal here in N.M.

There are active volcanic sites here in the Jemez mountains.

The experiments here used natural hot water from drill sites

It did work until the sulpher and other minerals plugged up the works

A closed system would have been a better choice.

Some places like Iceland have the market cornered...with the volcanic activity in their back yard.

And knowing what Yellowstone actually is....Im glad to be as far away from it as possible

Jim

[hdrules59]

Facts are facts...its kinda hard to argue with them.

LANL...played some games with geo thermal here in N.M.

There are active volcanic sites here in the Jemez mountains.

The experiments here used natural hot water from drill sites

It did work until the sulpher and other minerals plugged up the works

A closed system would have been a better choice.

Some places like Iceland have the market cornered...with the volcanic activity in their back yard.

And knowing what Yellowstone actually is....Im glad to be as far away from it as possible

Jim

I agree. The closed loop is the way to go.

[mdstihl]

I had thought the whole thing with the geothermal (sorry Kurt) idea was that you ARE working with a constant temperature. It's going to be easier for your heat pump to work with 65~ air year around than deal with the fluctuations that we get here on the east coast.

Then again, I burn wood in the winter and have shade trees and a couple window fans in the summer, so what do I know?

[kurtm]

Yes Jim! Matter of fact I did quite a bit of work on the hot dry rock project up on the Mesa above Espanola. It was kind of funny drilling igneous rocks to produce energy in "Nuke Ville". Had to have all sorts of clearances just to drive to well site, and I never quite got used to a M&H guard having to watch us work. I also did a lot of power generation Geo-Thermal work in Railroad Valley Nevada, and at the moment I am yet again less than 60 miles form the "Wyoming ground zero".

Yes Mdstihl, that is exactly why GROUND LOOPS work, and if the Yellowstone caldera ever decides to let loose, EVERYONE on this discussion WILL understand the difference between ground loops and Geo-Thermal. When ground loops let loose you need a plumber. When the Geo-Thermal energy in Wyoming lets loose we will need a whole bunch of new western states as the ones that are there now will have been vaporised! Kurtm

[mda]

So we are using a zone that neither stores nor gives off thermal energy so the "stored heat of the earth" statement is miss leading at best, but sounds really cool in a ground loop sales pitch

Kurt

I have to disagree.

The zone used for a ground source heat pump system does store and give off thermal energy.

A heat pump system is just that, pumps heat from one location to another. In the Summer you are moving heat from the house and storing in it the ground. In the Winter you are moving heat from the ground into the house.

And yes, I am a HVAC engineer.

MDA

[Carlos]

What you are asking about is called a "ground loop" for your heat exchanger. They are fairly efficient and will help your heat pump be more efficient in the fact that it now has a fairly constant source of temperature to deal with instead of large temperature fluctuations from open air systems, BUT the cost of doing the ground loop, the water pumps, water treatment, and filtration and drilling and plumbing to do all the above is fairly costly and the last time I looked into it the break even point on energy consumption to cost outlay was around 27 years, now the cost of energy has gone up a bit since then, but so has the cost of setting up the systems so I bet it is still right around the same.

Good discussion folks! Without straying over the line into the realm of politics, I think we are better off as a country if we can get closer to energy independence.

At any rate, what Kurt describes is simply a different type of "heat exchanger" or "heat pump" than MOST of us have (or have had) on homes in the US. Here is the difference:

Our current heat pumps use air as the "medium" of exchange. Air is not a very efficient medium when compared with water as used in a ground loop system. Example: for the machinegun-loving crowd out there, everyone knows that the early heavy machinguns would melt barrels under sustained fire and had to use water jackets for cooling, except in the case of aircraft-mounted guns, where there was so MUCH air, that air cooling became possible.

In Scandinavia, lakes and ponds are so common that heat pumps oftne use a submerged loop - which is far more efficient than out current electricity-gobbling air heat pumps. Consider that route if you live on a pond or lake.

[kurtm]

I can only guess that in the spring or fall no storage or transfer of heat is taking place since we only talk about summer and winter. I guess I missed that part as I was studying hard at the "Fluids Lab".

I will make this as easy as I can. Take a nice small lake, say around 1/4 mile in diameter and say 1/4 mile deep. (we may or may not have underwater currents of which we will talk about in a bit). Insulate the lake very well so it receives virtually no seasonal heating or seasonal cooling. (just like the first 15' of overburden that I like to call "dirt" does). Now run a 18" pipe (a very generous figure for the depth we are drilling it to) into the lake 2/3rds of the way to the bottom and circulate water in the pipe only. Now let,s say we pump heated water at around 100 degrees for 6 months and we pump cold water at around 35 degrees for 6 months (note we aren't even taking into account that it isn't 6 months of solid winter nor 6 months of solid summer). About the time we "heat" the lake 1/8 degree, we are now in a cooling cycle. And on top of that the heat transfer through our pipe...I like to call it casing, isn't 100% either. Now we will talk about an underwater current (like an aquifer) say our lake has a steady influx and outflow at around 1/8 of a mile deep over a 20' zone that effectively pass cools, or pass heats our casing depending on the water temp you are pumping through the casing. Let,s say this "transient water" has a constant temperature also which is the same as our lake. Now we have really screwed up our model, and now anything we "stored" is flushed away to some degree in this zone.

I propose that we are storing nothing. What we are effectively doing is is tapping into a constant temperature zone for all intents and purposes which is akin to trying to heat or cool a bathtub by circulating hot or cold water through a cocktail straw. Now I will admit that the "heat" has to go somewhere, but it is going into such a large heat sink/source as to become infinitesimal. We are not "storing" heat in the ground in this zone it is a fairly constant 65 degrees, and we are not "cooling" this zone it is a fairly constant 65 degrees, and even if we can infinitesimally raise or depress the temp of this zone, WE did it, not the earth so IT AIN'T GEO-THERMAL!

[Bill Nesbitt]

Thanks for all the info everybody. This is an interesting thread.

We are installing a closed loop system. We have plenty of land for the loop. They'll be running the loop just above the shooting range.

Fran, we'll be shooting IDPA in WV on Sunday.

hdrules59. Thanks for the info. We are using one of those dealers.

Still looking for positive or negative reports from anybody who has one of these systems.

[Graham Smith]

I cannot use one here in the city, but in southern Delaware they are having pretty good luck with them. There are charts that can help you calculate effectiveness for your area, but the real trick is finding an experienced company to deal with - one that can help you find all the available alternative-energy rebates.

[chuckbradley]

Sure makes me happy to live in central florida. The Beer here is ice cold summer or winter. But I still have a headache after reading Kurts last post.

Yea, i didnt even read it. Dont want to argue the fact of whether the people who market the system as Geothermal are technically correct in their name or label. Its just how they market it, they call it Geothermal and thats all the original poster was trying to ask about. He used the term it was marketed under so we would know what he was referring to when he asked his question. If he would have asked.

Original question changed to be techinically correct using Kurts term.

We're going to put a "ground loop" in our house. Just wondered if any one here is using one and how they like it. We're in Ohio.

We would have all said WTF?

[-JQ-]

We're going to put a "ground loop" in our house.

That's where that electrical hum comes from...

[kurtm]

Gee Chuck, the house I lived in in Railroad Valley Nevada had Geo-Thermal heat, and a Geo-Thermal steam powered generator, completely off the grid. Maybe that was the orriginal question being asked, how well does that work in Ohio, after all it is all Geo-Thermal...right?

To me it is just like saying "Assault rifle" or "Assault Weapon"...yea we all kind of know what that means, but it is INCORRECT and MISLEADING, but I guess that doesn't count for anything anymore. KurtM