Our 1st interaction with a geothermal heat pump...

[amickracing]

Granted all we did was the duct work... and man there was a TON of it, another company did the rest of the heat pump piping and control work.


Mechanical room #1. I don't know the size of these units or any details other than the shiney stuff is ours lol.


Same mech room, took this just as I walked in the door. Man that room is HUGE... tons of wasted space IMHO, but what's a few hundred sq feet wasted when you got a total of 15,000? In this room is also a fire safe room. Not sure why....


A close up of some of the tangle'd duct work.


another view. Not exactly thrilled with the duct tape on the pipe insulation joints... but maybe it's how they do thier stuff? At least use black


Mech room #2


different view.... yes.. I know.. settle down with the pictures, this has to be as bad as watching someone show their family vacation photo's!


I had to take a picture of that.... It's very rare to see that much black pipe ran in a house now-a-days!


You know it's a big house when you have this much electricity coming into a house.


This picture is smilar to the gas pipe picture... ya don't see much copper in spec houses, but it sure looks purrdy


This looks mighty fugly to me. This is part of the geo HP system. Seems like they should have supported it a tad better than that, seem like a leak waiting to happen to anyone?

[square2round]

Again, nice metal work. Good job.

[BaldLoonie]

Nice big basement and they make you cram the 2 units in a tiny space

Where's the air filters? I'm used to seeing them right where the metal attaches to the RA opening on the side of the unit?

[nutshell]

Why no insulation on the ductwork?

[amickracing]

Yeah, kinda strange all of that room and one tiny corner is for the HVAC.

The filters are in the units, that's how the guys doing them wanted it. I thought it woulda been a perfect place for a nice 5" filter... but... I just beat tin ya know?

Around here 99% of the duct doesn't get insulated. If it's in an unconditioned space it does though. We don't have too much humidity so it's very rare to see any duct sweating.

[square2round]

Originally posted by amickracing
We don't have too much humidity so it's very rare to see any duct sweating.

I deal with the total opposite. Sweating, insulated ducts are a big issue here. We started using 3" duct wrap a while back.

[phosgene]

Those look like "Hydron Module" units (goe thermal), I think they are made in north or south Dakota. They are the brand we use, stainless steel. Your tin work looks excellent. Must be quite the home geothermal, pre-heating the domestic HW, and is that infloor heating as well by the HWT. We use 1 ton loop per pipe to the header so that would make that an 8 ton system if they do the same. Impressive.

[amickracing]

No in floor heating in this house... I have no idea why though, seems they are willing to spend some mega bucks.

I'm really dying to know more about this geothermal HP stuff, but since there's basically only one company around here that does it, learning a bit here and there is tough. I've done some reading on it, but like anything else, one day playing with it teaches you more than a whole book does.

I'm not sure what they did for loops around here, I'm almost thinking they would have had to go in a hole. There's not much yard space behind the house, and not really much in front... not enough for 3 systems of loops (and huge loops I'm sure!). I know a lot of them around here do the pump and dump method, but since this is high atop a hill I kinda doubt they went with that method either.

I wish I could have gotten a picture of thier bathroom. From their 4 person jacuuzi/tub/thing, through one of the windows you can see Mt Rushmore (which is probably about 20 miles away). This has to be in the top 5 of the faciest houses I've ever worked on.

Thanks for the compliments everyone!

[mechanicalmaster]

Love the tin work dude not to many true sheetmetal craftsmen left. LOOKS AWSOME...

[sheetmtlman]

I agree with phosgene, looks like a combination unit on the right with storage tank. That unit will heat hot water for radiant floor heat and forced air heat. I think they should insulate the pvc pipe from the geo units to the pump pack because they could sweat in the winter time if the loop temps get too low. We install alot of Hydron units, they are made in Mitchell, SD. We are only about two hours from the factory. Great job on the ductwork.