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shameless dude 
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Joined: 10 Apr 2017
Location: east NE
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 Topic: ? for plummers/furnace installers....
Posted: 13 Jul 2022 at 1:01am |
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o-k....so if we are able to buy part of the farm, we wanna build a new house on it. i'm familier with the tube loops out in the yard to aid in heating...but can it also be used to cool the house? as for the heat, it'll be floor heat and prolly not gonna use the loop for that, but i'm not figgering out how to use the earth's in ground temps to cool with. ya'll know what i'm talk'in about?
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WF owner
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Joined: 12 May 2013
Location: Bombay NY
Points: 4397
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Posted: 13 Jul 2022 at 5:08am |
Geothermal Basics | Department of Energy
Just a suggestion, but you might also want to look at mini-splits.
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DMiller
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Joined: 14 Sep 2009
Location: Hermann, Mo
Points: 29538
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Posted: 13 Jul 2022 at 5:52am |
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We went with a geo unit on ground loops to hear and cool our house. Over 3000sf of heated area done with a 7000btu unit. I cannot afford to cut firewood for gas and saw repairs to heat with water loops in the floor. Highest bill so far between house and shop which are on same
Meter jas not been over $300 except when the geo unit went down and had to rely on the electric furnace resistance element.
Still contemplating a wood stove to add character to the house and a nice dry heat I can enjoy and as a power loss backup but wife runs around 120 degrees where hormone swings run her t-stat and she wants cooler. Perhaps one day.
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jaybmiller
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Joined: 12 Sep 2009
Location: Greensville,Ont
Points: 21481
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Posted: 13 Jul 2022 at 6:27am |
yes, geothermal units can cool as well as heat the house. If I could live long enough ,I'd have one. Two installs....1, the huge snake under the backyard and 2 , 2 or 4 'wells' drilled. 1 is cheaper IF you have a HUGE backyard, 2 costs more but needed for small yards. Geothermal installs have the usual ductwork and need a backup heater.
minsplits are 'interesting'. 2 big issues for me are 1) filters MUST be cleaned every month or so....and ,since no ducts WHERE they get placed is CRITICAL and NO closed doors allowed( no air flow..)
silly SIL had a minispli installed in her home( small 1 floor 2 BR 'cottage' with FULL basement). Two 'heads', both on main floor on the same wall. There's no way that floor will be 'evenly' heated or cooled AND nothing in the basement ! The 'walkout' basement that has her well pump,softener,etc.... where she figures the grankids will play... sigh
I would have gone 'conventional' ,propane with ducts or added 2 heads in the basement, correctly installed for proper airflow. oh well.....
Now, assuming you get to design your new house... I suggest 1 floor,using floor trusses, with 9' basement walls. This alow ANY configuration of interior walls AND gives you 8' finished basement ceilings.
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3 D-14s,A-C forklift, B-112
Kubota BX23S lil' TOOT( The Other Orange Tractor)
Never burn your bridges, unless you can walk on water
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shameless dude
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Joined: 10 Apr 2017
Location: east NE
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Posted: 13 Jul 2022 at 6:36am |
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thanks WF...that is real informative! I know we'll be using a hot water heater for heating in the floors, but it won't hafta run all the time either, prolly suppliment electric with my solar panels i already have. i'm not real sure how much it would cost to run the electric hot water heater yet, but it has to be lots cheaper than how we heat now! the pellet stove take ALOT of electric. plus we would enjoy the quiet. i thought too that we might build a fireplace in the middle of the living space...both for looks and for emergency heat run by LPG, but not used all the time. (this is going in a steel building home) all open except bathroom and bed rooms. haven't decided if will put in floor heat in the machine shed shop attached to the house yet. DMiller...is your unit run by electric or gas?
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tadams(OH)
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Joined: 17 Sep 2009
Location: Jeromesville, O
Points: 9649
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Posted: 13 Jul 2022 at 12:54pm |
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I started with electric hot water heater on our raidiant floor heat and then went to electric boiler which was a wall unit that done a great job but the day we moved into our home they put a gas line through and in do time we change over to a gas boiled and a generator so that we didn't have to worry able anything freezing up if the electric went off for too long of a period of time. Our house is 28' X 52' and garage and shop is 28' X 56'.
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plummerscarin
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Joined: 22 Jun 2015
Location: ia
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Posted: 13 Jul 2022 at 5:51pm |
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I would definitely go for a heated floor in the shop as well. I really like mine. Is heated with wall mounted boiler
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LouSWPA
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Joined: 11 Sep 2009
Location: Clinton, Pa
Points: 24021
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Posted: 13 Jul 2022 at 6:11pm |
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Dale, as you probably already discovered, it takes A LOT of buried pipe, OR a couple of wells to support such a system. I think the biggest cost there is the excavation or well driller, as the black plastic (PVC?) pipe is relatively cheap.
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I am still confident of this;
I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. Ps 27
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DMiller
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Joined: 14 Sep 2009
Location: Hermann, Mo
Points: 29538
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Posted: 13 Jul 2022 at 6:42pm |
Tubing, is more appropriate, Black HDPE, requires a seamless welding set up to heat glue the tube sections if make a splice or a repair.
Same stuff used wells or fields, wells requires the odd end fitting to go down the boreholes. Fields have to be 5-7' below grade for efficiency, same for wells supply/returns
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steve(ill)
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Joined: 11 Sep 2009
Location: illinois
Points: 77803
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Posted: 13 Jul 2022 at 7:40pm |
Geothermal is expensive and can take several years to pay off/ break even...Depends on your age and how long you will use it.....
Depending on the price of electric or natural gas ( propane)... IF AVAILABLE.... you might be cheaper to use a hot water heater or boiler type system to feed the floor piping.
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Like them all, but love the "B"s.
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jaybmiller
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Joined: 12 Sep 2009
Location: Greensville,Ont
Points: 21481
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Posted: 13 Jul 2022 at 8:21pm |
at the very least, put PEX into the shop floor !! You've got ONE ,economical, chance to do it right... so put in the PEX.
you can find online.. the needed calculations and laying patterns. typically no more than 300' per run or zone. I've heard guys using just a 40g gas water heater for their garages, no pump either. A LOT depends on size of slab...thickness of concrete, insulation.
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3 D-14s,A-C forklift, B-112
Kubota BX23S lil' TOOT( The Other Orange Tractor)
Never burn your bridges, unless you can walk on water
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shameless dude
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Joined: 10 Apr 2017
Location: east NE
Points: 13611
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Posted: 13 Jul 2022 at 10:35pm |
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right now the size of the shop/storage is about 60x80, then the house part "T"'s off from that!. not sure what size the house part is gonna be yet, the old lady....ooooops....i mean the loving wife can't decide on how many bedrooms/extra rooms she wants yet. i figgered i'd just move a Tuff Shed into the shop area to house my toy collection. DAMN....i still gots prolly to much keeper stuff yet!
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DaveKamp
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Joined: 12 Apr 2010
Location: LeClaire, Ia
Points: 5638
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Posted: 17 Jul 2022 at 10:46pm |
 jaybmiller wrote:
at the very least, put PEX into the shop floor !! You've got ONE ,economical, chance to do it right... so put in the PEX.
you can find online.. the needed calculations and laying patterns. typically no more than 300' per run or zone. I've heard guys using just a 40g gas water heater for their garages, no pump either. A LOT depends on size of slab...thickness of concrete, insulation.
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^What Jay said^ !!!
(but put a layer of 2" pink styrofoam (Foamular 250) insulation down before you pour the slab!)
As for geothermal, there's pros, and cons. The concept is basically just like running an air conditioner, but the compressor condenser, rather than using a fan over a coil to cool and condense the refrigerant, they use coolant through the subsoil loop.
the problem is, that you're exchanging the energy inside your home, with the energy available in the soil of your yard. In the heating cycle, you're taking heat from the soil around the loop. In the cooling cycle, you're heating that soil.
IF your lattitude is extremely cold during the heating season, or extremely hot during the cooling system, you're eventually gonna see that system efficience fall apart because the exchanging temp has gone too-high to cool, or too low to heat... at which case, you'll be lighting a wood-stove, or opening a propane valve... in order to heat... or shoving in a window AC unit to cool.
If your soil is rock, you won't be getting a geothermal system installed at any bargain price.
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Ten Amendments, Ten Commandments, and one Golden Rule solve most every problem. Citrus hand-cleaner with Pumice does the rest.
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shameless dude
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Location: east NE
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Posted: 18 Jul 2022 at 2:33am |
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thanks Dave!
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Lars(wi)
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Posted: 18 Jul 2022 at 7:06am |
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We looked into a geothermal unit once when we owned a home in southern Dane County Wisconsin. The estimated depth for the ‘field’ was 15 ft or so. Definitely the most expensive portion of the system was in excavation, the house needed a new furnace at the time, so we discounted a portion of that cost. ROI, was decades into the future, in other words we would be doing it for true benefit of the next owner. We opted for a Bard lp high efficiency furnace.
Edited by Lars(wi) - 18 Jul 2022 at 7:08am
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I tried to follow the science, but it was not there. I then followed the money, and that’s where I found the science.
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Dave H
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Location: Central IL
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Posted: 18 Jul 2022 at 8:46am |
take heed to what Steve said. My geo unit just went t*ts up after 22 years. New unit was a cool 15K. 
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