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What type of exchanger are you useing? If closed loop, are you monitoring your EWT?
Eric

ASHP close here

Originally Posted by commtech77

Has one tech affiliated with Geo- thermal given anyone advise that would suggest Geo might not be practical ?

I guess in my neck of the woods it just doesnt add up.

In my area of Texas with 2465 heating degree days and 3495 cooling degree days, a geo system costs marginally less to operate than a high efficiency dual fuel setup. At my personal home I have a dual fuel (propane) with A/S 15 SEER heatpump for the upstairs and a Climatemaster tranquility 27 split downstairs. The only thing I use propane for now is the stove, outdoor grill, upstairs furnace when it drops below 25 deg. and tankless hot water. Since I installed the geo and dual fuel setup last September, I have only used about 50 gallons of propane.

My only geo customers are rural that are afraid of propane and want the absolute in efficiency and/or do not want a condenser outside spoiling the view.

I love my geo system and it has saved me $$$ in propane with only a marginal increase in electricity usage this winter. The acid test will be this summer. We're already regularly hitting the mid 90's with lots of humidity due to recent rains.

Make sure a 4 ton unit isn't oversized for your cooling loads. If you wind up with too much cooling you may find your home feels like a cave.

Bergy

Sorry mod, I've got to pay more attention to the rules on the different forums. Thanks Skyheating, maybe I will stick to 4 ton. I do like that it will run more in stage 1 and like you said, if the price difference isn't that much, why not.

Prices are not allowed in post. We don't allow pricing questions.

You probably won't see much drop in cost, most geo units are VERY close when going from 3 to 4 to 5 ton, its the loop that changes it and since its only 70' less drilling it won't be much difference, i would say less than 1K.

Part of the reason he may be suggesting a 4 ton is because he wants you to NEVER go into backup strip heat. That is a goal that many geo guys I know size for. It also puts the unit running in first stage more often and at least with the equipment I represent a 4 ton unit in 1st stage is about a 4.8 COP and in second stage it runs at a 4.1 COP, so many will argue that a slightly oversized two stage unit will be perfect for the home. Also with a geo unit a 049 does not mean 49K BTU's for your specific loop. We often see loop temperatures in the high 30 to low 40 degree range which means a WaterFurnace/Bosch 4 ton unit is only putting out 41K BTU of heat.

I also don't know your area but in my area we put in 200' of vertical bore per ton so a 600' bore is a 3 ton loop(he also might be using larger diameter pipe but there are both negatives and positives to this) but im sure your contractor knows your area/soil better than me, or it could be that he is letting his loop temps get into the low 30 degree range where a 4 ton system is now only putting out 35K BTU's of heating capacity.

Others here may disagree but I think I would go with the 4 ton as well especially for the price difference. The only thing you have to loose is a little bit of comfort if first stage is a bit oversized and second stage is a bit oversized but you are really between sizes depending on loop Entering Water Temperatures.

I have some quotes to share. First, I had the house modeled by an energy auditor (resnet/bpi certified) and he has it at 30,000 btu heat loss. HERS rating of 72. Tight house. I have quotes at $, $, $, and $. Some guys want to put in 4 ton , some want to do 3 ton. So yea, $ and that includes desuperheater with buffer tank. That puts me around $ after tax credits. And that $ quote is from the biggest, most experienced company in the area. They've installed 4000 since 1980. They had A+ BBB rating with no complaints and all 5 star reviews on the Bosch dealer rating page. The quote is for a Bosch 4 ton, TA 049 unit. Vertical loops, 600 foot bore, 1200 foot pipe. They do their own drilling, nothing is contracted out. I've since challenged him on it being 4 ton instead of 3. Here's what he said,

"I just checked my heat loss is 43,000 btuh with an outside design of 0 degrees. Reason I design for 0 degrees is history. We have installed over 4500 geo's over 31 years and I can tell you that with the new 2 stage units you do not want to undersize them. It would take me a long time to give you the reasons but most of the problems that we see in the market place is undersized loops/ ductwork design / improper manifolding/ pump sizing / etc. If you want to drop back a ton ok but I would note this on the proposal or if you want to install a 3 ton unit with 3.5 ton of loop ( 535 feet of bore ) let me know."

I'm not sure why he's using 0 degrees Winter design temp (I'm near Allentown, PA). Other guys were using 11 degrees which seems more reasonable. So I told him I like the idea of going with 3 ton unit and 3.5 ton of loop ( 535 feet of bore as he said above). I asked him what this would do to my costs.

What design temp would you use for this area, for those who are familiar with this climate? Clearly a 3 ton unit is what I need and 4 ton is oversized, agreed?

So obviously I'm trilled at the $ and it's a no brainer that I'm going to do geothermal. I am disappointed that he's @ 4 tons, 43,000 btu, but that may be correct using 0 degrees Winter design. Like many of you say, I'd rather size for %90 to %90 of heat loss and spend less upfront on equipment and use a little more aux heat. But at least he's willing to do three ton and isn't fighting me on it. Should be interesting to see what he comes back with as far as costs to do 3 ton, with 3.5 ton loop.

Greg

nothing else

I'm new here , nice thread!

Originally Posted by commtech77

Has one tech affiliated with Geo- thermal given anyone advise that would suggest Geo might not be practical ?

I guess in my neck of the woods it just doesnt add up.

I did. Saturday morning while standing in a potential customers front yard on the 6th fairway. The proposed geo project was affordable, his current system had taken a dump. He was a prime candidate for a geo change out.

To him the restoration that would be required post installation of the vertical loops was the deal breaker. I told him that drilling on his property was NOT in his best interest nor conducive to his attachmen to "lawn beautiful". In my opinion geo was not for him.

Eric

Has one tech affiliated with Geo- thermal given anyone advise that would suggest Geo might not be practical ?

I guess in my neck of the woods it just doesnt add up.

I agree with WaterPirate, it sounds like in your situation you will save a ton of money and if there is one thing I can say about my geo customers is that they are the happiest of them all, I think 30K seems in line after excavation. You will have to replace your other units at some point and propane is not getting any cheaper, based on your calculations your also using todays propane rates, what if propane reaches $4 or $5 a gallon in 5 years even if electricity goes up a decent amount you already use so little of it it doesn't change your heating cost much.
Don't forget about the additional comfort of geo, there are a lot of benefits of geo that don't add a savings like no outdoor unit noise, piping that has a 55 year warranty. Based on your numbers it seems like it really makes sense you just need that little push from us.

You are lucky to pay 3.00 a gallon. This past heating season propane sold for in the neihborhood of 3.85 a gallon for heating.

I am no math wiz, nor am I a economist. What I am is a guy with a lot of common sense. I hate the whole investment/Roi pitch because I understand that with enough swagging you can make 2+2=37.

Price gougeing is rampant in geothermal due to inexperiance of both the HVAC people and the people doing the loops or othe exchanger install. Gougeing happens do to inexperiance so they add danger money or no competition in their OA, or both.

This is how I think about the costs, understanding that any contraption used to heat and cool your home is a choice. If a traditional system costs 20k and a geo costs 30k that is a difrance of 10k additional cost. That is the amount of money we should be looking at for any math discussion. My other question about ROI is that what is the return on a conventional system? You buy it, you use it, you pay bills to run it, you fix it, when it dies you throw it away. That is a great ROI.

Most loops are warranted for a minimum of 30 years and sometimes 50. In my mind loops will be under the fridge with the cockroaches, still working after a nuclear event.

Geothermal is a choice and does not need to be marketed or justified, it just is.
Eric

You certainly seem to have the numbers down. Unfortunately with the price of lp in your area there aren't a lot of options. A geo system seems like a huge investment if your considering a move in the near future. Contrarily, you will invest about 16k in lp alone over the next 8 years (assuming prices don't inflate). Your in between a rock and a hard place. Either way you have a considerable amount to spend. In this scenario given your installation cost and factoring in rebates, hot water and ac; I would personally lean towards the geo system. Even if you didn't quite make it to your payback period (8-11 yrs) at that point it would be water under the bridge. You could at least say you improved the local economy and foot print on the environment. Best of luck!

It looks like $20,000 after tax credit. My savings should be about $2000 per year, including hot water and a/c. My furnace and a/c are 8 years old, so that's part of the ROI also. Yes, about 700 gallons to heat the house each year. We use propane only to heat. Blower door test shows about 7.5 air exchanges per day, or .33 per hour. 8 year old house, r-19 walls, r50 attic. Yes, so about 65 million btus.

I'm figuring $5000 added to value of house if we sell, so now we're down to $15,000. So now break even is at 7 to 8 years, plus factor in buying new a/c @ $5000 in 8 years, and in that case I'd replace whole system with heat pump at $10,000 vs going with new a/c and staying with propane.

Still waiting for more bids to come in, will reevaluate then.

Working on getting a price on the altherma. Also, Carrier Greenspeed air source heat pump @ $12,000 is a possibility, (HSPF of 13), saves me $1200 per year, break even in 10 years.

I have a pretty elaborate spreadsheet that I created showing all my options and the costs breakdown and net cash flow each year. Doing nothing and continuing to pay $3 for propane is the worst option. Only risk with geo is having to move and sell house before year 8. I have option through PA state for 10 year loan at %1 for half the cost of geo and %4 through state for rest. Payments on both loans combined should be less than my monthly savings from geo, so net positive cash flow month to month.

Gotta do something, I told propane company I refuse to pay $3 and asked him how he sleeps at night, price gauging customers who are leasing tanks. Three neighbors had to dig their tanks up and replace with identical tanks so they could shop around. Propane company refuses to sell the tanks (underground 500 gallon tanks that we signed a lease agreement when we built at settlement). There is no cheap solution.

Outside wood hot water boiler is probably my cheapest, smallest break even point option, but I'm not chopping wood and dealing with all that.

Put it on paper. The avg. install cost of a geo thermal system is 30k.(in my region) If your saving 1.8k per yr that is almost 17 years before a return on investment. (ROI...yes that means before you even begin to save a dime)
My big concern is your heating figures seem off. Is your 700 gal figure based on the entire year or just heating season? Your numbers say....700 gal of propane x 91600 btu per gal = 64,120,000. If that is for the gal usage of the season your hourly heat loss calculates to : (64120000/352)/24 = 7589 btuh. This is unreasonably low. Even changing the number so that your 700gal bill is for just the heating season (roughly 6 mths) it still seems low. In different scenario using only 6 mth usage (1/2 of previous example) our numbers are 700 gal lp x 916000 = 64,120,000. (64120000/176) /24= 15179btuh.
In either case it seems your ROI is very lengthy and this is not even considering maintenance, repairs, equipment failures, depreciation and inflation. In my honest opinion a geo thermal system is not your best option. (Unless of course the bids you are receiving are much more reasonable than my 30k and from reputable companies)

No thanks!
I will stay with my sand and shale, thank you. lol
Eric

Originally Posted by waterpirate

Just to stir the money pot a bit. Vertical closed loop resi goes for 6 dollars a foot in my AO.

Come to Oregon, I would go vertical on most jobs and sell twice as much geo for that cost! Every driller here complains about our soil and rock etc and nobody can do it for less than $18 a foot. Hell charge $10 a foot and I will guarantee you will stay busy.

The lion share of drilling issues are based in in-experiance. I have taken my share of lumps. When you pile up issues on one site, you are generally asking for it. We counter act nature by talking alot upfront about fall back positions and plan B's on sites where the lot size does not allow any flubb. The other side of that is that you really need to hire a looper that is local. They know when and where to expect what and how to deal with it, or punt.
Eric

Just to stir the money pot a bit. Vertical closed loop resi goes for 6 dollars a foot in my AO.

At nominal 200-250 of borehole ft/ton equipment, that sounds like it would be 20 to 25 k to drill plus equipment and installation less the tax credit. Which isn't bad, I guess. I'm not sure how much Altherma systems are running per ton, and in propane territory you should have lots of skilled people who can make big holes in the ground for a reasonable price. So it's something to consider.

I've dealt with a bunch of site constrained closed loop projects and drilling ends up being expensive and logistically constraining the balance of activities on site. Worse, I've had a bunch of boreholes come up short due to broken drill bits and difficulties getting through frag rock. When you've got lots of space accessible to the drill rig it's easy to just dig another hole if one goes awry or comes up short and the drill rig doesn't hold up other activity.

From a carbon and energy perspective, ground source is hands down the way to go. I've just been burned with drilling issues.

Maybe your area is much different than mine but an Altherma costs MORE than geothermal where I am and does not receive a tax credit. I can put in a vertical bore or horizontal bore(about $18 per foot in my area to drill) for the cost of an Altherma and still have higher performance. Just something to consider.