New geothermal install gone bad

[chrisw]

I just had an existing forced air HVAC replaced with geothermal. The old unit was electric A/C with gas heat - both forced air. I chose my contractor because he made some promises about re-zoning that sounded like they'd solve some problems we were having and save some energy costs while doing that (only heating/cooling the area of the house we were using during the day/night).

Unfortunately, the install hasn't gone so well. It's taken almost 4 months now and it's very hard to get the installer to come out and finish the job. We're also experiencing electricity bills that are higher than they've been over the past year even though the last month hasn't been extremely hot. Needless to say, we're concerned but we're not sure what to do. This unit is a new ClimateMaster Tranquility 30 two stage Digital. There have been many other mis-steps including being without A/C for 8 days because the installer wasn't familiar enough with the unit to know that the expansion tank wasn't turned on.

At some point in the process, our installer was convinced that we needed to convert all of our ducts on the main floor to supplies and add one new large central return. During this process, they stressed that return was the most important between supply/return. This was also to replace our original 3-ton unit with a 4-ton. I was concerned that we'd basically lose a big portion of one of our closets and they said we could do a 3-ton unit and not have to go with the huge return. Because of some funky duct work in the basement, they ended up switching our dining room from a supply and return to two supplies. This basically leaves us with 7 supplies and 3 returns on the main floor. This seems to go against the installer's previous statements about return being a major factor. One of the returns is in the middle of the house in a hallway, another is on the East side of the house in the living room and the other is also on the East side in a bedroom. The West side now has 3 supplies and it always seems a few degrees colder over there now. Is this normal? I know it's hard to just read this and immediately say whether or not it was a mistake and should be corrected.. Is there any way for me to figure out whether it's correct on my own?

In addition to that question, I'm wondering if there's any reason to try to call around and hire another contractor to come in and check the work. If so, any general ideas as to how much something like that would cost assuming there's no major duct work to fix, maybe just some settings on the geo unit?

Thanks for your help, I'm really frustrated at this point and I'm not sure what to do.

[beenthere]

Going from a 3 ton to a 4 ton takes a lot of duct alterations, and adding ducts. Sounds like your now short on return and supply.
Check our contractor locator map, link is in my sig.

[vstech]

it sounds like this was a small company that had his feet in too many fires.
supply and return are EQUAL in importance. they both have to be large enough to flow correctly and condition your home, they also have to be sealed properly to prevent pressure differential in the home, and not waste energy.
I HIGHLY recommend you getting another contractor to come evaluate the installation. also an energy audit to see how the home is wasting energy.

[SkyHeating]

ChrisW where are you located? I would certainly be calling a new installer at this point, these issues should not be occuring with a geothermal system these issues are bad installer. I don't know why they would want to size UP your unit if the old one worked fine.
Any information on the ground loop, is it horizontal or vertical, how many feet of pipe, how many circuits, what type of configuration, these all come into play with the geothermal. If you have a 3 ton climatemaster with a 1.5 to 2 ton loop its never going to work.

[Tommy knocker]

Geo is expensive on front end, ground work and pipe, but pretty efficient and operating cost should certainly not be higher then what you had before. Unless you have added several hundred sqft to your home, since original system was installed, upsizing should not have been nessisary. With info provided I would highly recommend you stop where you are, find a reputable contractor, and have everything evaluated. I recommend finding the local factory authorized contractor for the equipment to start. If the install is wrong the best equipment in the world is junk. Good luck.

[chrisw]

The install was a horizontal bore. Some of it's 30 feet deep and the shallowest parts are around 4 feet deep where they connected the ends. They basically ran two bores and pulled back 3 pipes in each. Then they used one pipe to install grout. Each bore was probably around 100 feet so I'd estimate maybe we've got 400 feet of total pipe in the ground but I'm not sure what the configuration is in terms of how the pipes were connected at the ends and run to the unit.

Load calculations and a marked up survey haven't been given to me yet. The installer refuses to give them to me until we "close out" and I pay him the remaining funds (only about 10% of the job that remains).

I'd also like to clarify - we ended up not going with the 4 ton and instead installed a 3 ton unit which matches what was taken out.

I should also mention that the return and supply trunks in the basement were reversed (the old return is now the supply) but there was some significant duct work to get supply to rooms that needed it that only had one supply and no return before.

I'm in the Washington, DC/Northern Virginia area.

[SkyHeating]

I need more details on the horizontal boring but that sounds VERY short looped. Only two bore holes that are 100' long? There should be two pipes going in with a U-Bend attached at the bottom and then the third pipe should pull out as it grouts the holes, typically in a horizontal bore its a 50% or higher mixture of grout/slurry.
The last three ton system we did was 8 bore holes of 100' each because the system size was close to the heating load. On two recent horizontal bore systems that I quoted we specified 125' bores with 6 holes. So on my systems I design for about 500-550' of piping per ton not the 133 feet per ton that your contractor specified, that will never work unless you are missing some details.

What kind of EWT(entering water temperatures) are you seeing on the ground loop and what PSI is the loop operating at(contractor should have left this for you when starting up the system, however we often comission the system 2 weeks after install was started)

Here is how a horizontal bore should be done and how many pipes there should be in most areas
http://youtu.be/2vVOpamKz_c

Here is the live energy logging of that system so you can see how much energy it uses in real time
WaterFurnace 3 ton horizontal bore live energy logging
This system cost $13.98 to operate last month and has cost $1.49 up til 9:30AM PST 9/18/2012 to operate and it got into the high 80's possibly 90 yesterday but that is a bit hotter than normal for this time of the year. I think the highest cost we have seen was $40 the month of the install, we are monitoring the flow center, all electronics inside the unit, the electric heat and the compressor is all taken into account.

[chrisw]

Wow. Thanks for all of the information. I just looked at a recent survey of my house and I'd re-estimate that the bores were probably 150' long each. Still significantly shorter than your 500' per ton number, though. Like I said, if I decide to go with another contractor to verify/fix what's already been done, I won't be getting any of the other information. I can maybe get the EWT information from the ClimateMaster rep. I've been trying to get one to stop by and take a look at the unit.

[chrisw]

At this point, I need to decide whether to quit working with this guy and have another contractor come take a look or delay final payment to him. Do any of you have any recommendations as to how to proceed?

I owe him about 10% of the total cost. Not much but enough for him to try legal action against me if he wanted to.

If I delay, he may try to sue me anyway.

If another contractor actually does have to do a significant amount of work to fix what he's done, I could potentially sue the original contractor for the difference so I'm not as concerned about that.

Has anyone here been in a situation like this before?

[SkyHeating]

Some of the matters you mentioned can not be discussed here, feel free to e-mail me(my address is in my profile or on my website) and my name is Travis and we can discuss further off the website.

[beenthere]

Talk of litigation is not permitted on this site.

[beenthere]

Post pics of your supply and return ducts.

[chrisw]

Sorry, I don't want to break any rules. Please ignore any questions that aren't allowed to be answered here. If you'd like to discuss those, please message me separately with your email address and I can email you.

[chrisw]

Here are pictures of the unit. The supply running out of the top is 20" x 16" and it runs into an 8" x 16" and an 8" x 12" duct. Both have a damper on them. The return is 28" x 8.5".

The installer also insisted on opening some of the return duct work in the basement so alleviate some pressure. The grill you see here hides one of those holes. It's about 8" x 8". There's another, much larger hole at the end of the return. It's probably a good 12" x 12".

[second opinion]

Here are pictures of the unit. The supply running out of the top is 20" x 16" and it runs into an 8" x 16" and an 8" x 12" duct. Both have a damper on them. The return is 28" x 8.5".

The installer also insisted on opening some of the return duct work in the basement so alleviate some pressure. The grill you see here hides one of those holes. It's about 8" x 8". There's another, much larger hole at the end of the return. It's probably a good 12" x 12".

Where are you in N Va.?

[jtrammel]

Looks like a fairly good install from here but sounds like the contractor may have gotten in over his head and doesn't have the knowledge needed to install and service a geothermal system properly. You need to find a contractor who is experienced with the machine to find out what is going on, it may be that the loop is insufficient like others have stated but it will take an experienced tech on site to figure it out. Good luck to you

[beenthere]

Good thing you don't have any fuel burning appliances in your basement. Or it would suck the fumes into that return opening.

[chrisw]

As a follow up to the possible issues with the length of the loop. The installer did mention something about mixing the grout in such a way so as to have increased conductivity. The horizontal runs are 2x150' and they go from a depth of 4' at the ends to maybe 15' or more in the middle.

Also, SkyHeating posted some video of some horizontal loop. In our case, I know the tubes were larger than that. I wish I had a sample around somewhere to measure but I'd say it was at least 1.5" tube and maybe 2".

Is it possible that was enough to provide for a 3-ton unit?

[genduct]

3 possibitities
1,Equipment not installed properly, 2,not enough pipe or 3. the duct issue
Seems if you call the equipment rep/ factory question 1 and 2 can be answered and they may have an opinion about 3 as well.

The Equipment manufacturer's reputation is also on the line, so involne them

[Artietech]

Should not have return from the basement. All returns should be from the conditioned space.