Archive for the ‘Geothermal’ Category

Geothermal Complete!

Calvert wrapped up the Geothermal portion of our project yesterday and did an excellent overall job. Before a cold front rolled in last night we tried the air conditioning and my wife said “this house has never been so cool, this is great”.

Here are some pictures of the completed system.

Next Wednesday the solar panel installation will begin and should only take three or so days to complete. If the weather holds up I can’t beleive both systems will be functional in less than a week.

Domenic

Manifold Madness

The geothermal portion of our project is nearing completion and we should be fully operational by the end of the week. Today the inside portion of the coolant piping was completed. Basically two 2″ lines come into my basement data room from outside, get split into four 1.25″ lines that run out and through the ceiling of my office into the boiler room. Once in the boiler room each set of  lines go into separate manifold / pump assemblies that feed each of the geothermal units independently. Several more pics are here. Tomorrow the Ecobee thermostats will be installed along with the downstairs zone controller. We should be up and running in a couple more days.

On a related note I got word yesterday from the solar contractor that we should be able to start intalling the panels in a couple of weeks or so. Stay tuned…

Domenic

Trench Warfare

After several days of rain we finally got a a good day to trench the geothermal lines into the house and start the installation of the heat pumps. Its going to be unusually warm tomorrow (90F) so my wife is “encouraging” the installers to move things along as fast as possible.

Today the trench was opened, the wells were tied together, the supply & return lines were stubbed into the basement, and they even had enough time to fill the trench back in. In parallel the HVAC guys removed the old basement system, removed one of our hot water heaters (but left the 90 gallon one which is enough), and roughed in the geothermal units in the boiler room. Tomorrow they will make more progress on the downstairs system and hopefully start the upstairs system.

Pics of the old system

Pics of the new system

Pics of the trenching

Video of the mayhem

Update – May 9th – The inside installations are progressing but very slowly. It looks like the systems won’t be totally completed until next Thursday the 18th. No real issues but its just taking longer than expected. Some real cool looking gear is getting installed in the basement in and around the units so I will post some new pics as things take shape.



Drill Baby, Drill!

Today was the first day of Geothermal well drilling. Originally the plan was to drill four ~300′ wells but after hitting a layer of rock they decided to go with three ~400′ wells instead. When everything is finished we will have about a half mile of underground plastic pipe providing over 7 tons of heating and cooling capacity. We wanted to place the wells in the back yard but since the ground is so wet  they weren’t able get the equipment up the hill so now we get to destroy the front yard also (smile). Once the wells are complete they will dig a trench to the basement and run the lines into the boiler room.

Day 1 drilling pictures are here and the video is here.

Update – We hit some water on days/ wells  2 and 3 but all three are now complete. The next step is to fill the shafts in with thermal grout to maximize heat transfer and then (next week) to trench to the house.  A few more pics are here. Our front yard never looked better…

DOM

Timber!

Its sort of ironic that I need to cut down several trees to be “green” but then again that’s how it goes sometimes… Many of the trees in my backyard are getting cut down tomorrow so here is the first of many short Video Blogs that will document the project over time.

Before & after Pictures are available here.

The Geothermal wells are going to be drilled in about two weeks (4 wells = 4 days of work) with the actual system going in afterward (5 more days of work). I will have lots of pictures and additional video then.

Geothermal Contractor Selected

Calvert Comfort Heating and Cooling will be our Geothermal installer. Also K.L. Madron will be digging the wells. We should be able to get started with the Geothermal portion of the project much sooner than the solar.

The Geothermal system will consist of:

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