I am trying to see whether geothermal might work for me. One approach that I have been thinking of is to buy a pressure washer and doing some water drilling. Online videos have shown that drillers getting down 30-40 feet. If I could make a few of these holes down to ~40 feet, then I would be happy to see how a small scale geothermal system might function in my house.

Comments please!

Hello! My apologies in advance if this isn’t the right place to ask this, or is this is a really stupid question.

We live in Maryland, where the GREC value has increased to $90 per credit. I believe this is state specific and based on state legislation, but my question is whether this is dependent federal funding or legislation?

I wasn’t sure if the inflation reduction act provided the states extra incentives or something.

Also, does anyone have any experience with the tax years crossing an administration change? If the federal tax incentives are repealed, would an early calendar year 2025 install still be claimable for the 30 percent tax credit?

Thanks in advance

Not sure if this is the right sub, but let’s give it a try.

Noticed the house was cold today, and realized the heat was blowing cool air. When I checked the system, the heat pump was not on and not getting power (checked wires with voltage detector). But power going to the main system.

Any ideas? Full disclosure just changed filter a few days ago and was very dirty. Could this have something to do with it?

Hello all!

We're approaching winter, which means we're due for a lot of "are my loopfield temperatures normal" questions. Given we're in an era now where a lot of our loopfield temperature data is easily accessible, I think it may be beneficial/fun(?) to have a post where we share timeseries images of our loopfield temps, ideally from a full year.

When sharing, please provide the following information:

1. Region
2. Loopfield orientation (horizontal/vertical)
3. (optional) depth of loopfield/number of wells/length of pipe/any other misc info you might want to add

Note that I've gone and allowed images to be shared in posts for this community. Don't make me regret this!

I'll start. and hopefully this isn't just a thread of me talking to myself

Region: Buffalo
Loopfield Orientation: Horizontal, 9 rows of slinky at 600' each. 8' deep
Note the spikes in my plot in June are from air entering the line and disturbing the flow.

Entering Water Temperatures from Nov 2023-Nov 2024

Long story short I'm an hvac guy and I installed closed loop geo in the house I built. I hired out the loop because I've never done it before and didn't want to mess it up. I did the duct work, controls, and zoning.

They dug a 4' trench and There is 200' total of 1 1/4" line. 100' heading out and 100' heading back. There are 8 400' "coils" coming off the 1 1/4". They are 3/4".

They also hit an old drain tile when installing the loop. Id assume thats unrelated but i did want to mention it because where they hit it in my field is now always wet.

This is a two stage 4 ton unit. I have a geo link two pump variable speed flow center. It is running off delta and the delta always looks normal.

I am getting a bit concerned with how fast the EWT has dropped in the last month. A month ago it was 55°. Last week it was 48.5°. Yesterday it was 44.5°. This morning it was 43.1°.

I am in michigan and the temps have dropped here. yesterday 33° outside. This morning 26° outside. the ground is not frozen yet.

Am I being paranoid? I'm not a geo guy by any means but logically if EWT keeps going down at the rate it is going down it will be 20° EWT by January or late December.

Any and all opinions would be great!

I need to replace my gas boiler and would love to go geothermal. Problem is I live is an 84 year old house with no duct work of any kind. I know you can get them installed, but I'm wondering if there is any way to get around that.

Heat is radiators and some radiant heat flooring. Wife has vetoed not having heated floors, so I need to stick with something that works with a hydronic heat setup. I know such systems exist, but what I do not know is how cooling would work. Currently we use window units, but I'd love to go with mini-splits.

I had a company come out and give me an estimate. The tech was nice but said the owner would not install a system that would work with the radiators. The proposal was duct work or nothing. I felt bad because the tech knew that was a no go for us, but his hands were tied by the owner (he said he tried twice to convince him).

Should I try a different company? Or am I chasing an impossible set up?

tl;dr, is there a geothermal system that can run minisplits (for cooling) and radiators (for heating)? I don't want duct work.

HI, I have a 36x76 barn with hay loft. Total ceiling height is about 32 ft. I insulated the ceiling to R20+ and walls will be average of R20. I sealed it up pretty well. No under slab insulation. I own an excavator to dig geothermal lines in. I want to to do a heat pump to maintain 60's temp in the winter and keep it comfortable in summer. Is this feasible with ground source closed loop? If so what would be a guess on how many ft it would take? Soil it mostly clay, I can add sand around lines and have a port to direct rain water down to the underground loops. Any input would be appreciated. Video of barn in link.

https://reddit.com/link/1h2d4lx/video/g86hp3f7kr3e1/player

Hi,

For one of my projects I need information regarding production wells of a geothermal plant in USA. Where can i find information on that?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

I'm building my own house right now and starting the installation of my water-water geothermal system (NY USA). My crew and I will be doing all of the work ourselves (I don't install geothermal for a living currently, but have past installation experience for horizontal loop GSHP systems and extensive professional HVAC experience).

Does anyone know how this would go from a taxation perspective? Can I write myself a reasonable bill from my business and then deduct the 30% for the tax credit? Or, am I locked into just claiming the 30% on the actual cost of the installation, not accounting for my time? Having this done by an outside vendor would cost me $80k+ before incentives (5500 sf house).

(yes I will be contacting my tax advisor, but I want to know what others have done)

EDIT: Just as a reference point, I did a personal 4-ton water-air installation at a cost of 14k in materials in the past. I realized a $20k savings off the cost of an install by one of the big local companies. I only claimed the 14k for tax purposes but definitely walked away thinking I left a lot on the table.

Just replaced my old geo with a new Water Furnace 5 series. Also got solar just over a year and half ago. So still slowly coming up with an understanding of ways maximize their interaction.

In the summer, I've worked out pre-cooling the house right before our 5 hour peak period. Usually more than enough production going to do it without anything from the grid. We usually coast thru the peak without A/C coming back on. And we're 1:1 net metering so that lets me send everything during peak to the grid for max credit. (If anyone sees a problem with that which I missed, please feel free to say!)

Trying to figure out if there's an equivalent gimmick for the heating season. Production is way less overall (mid-Michigan) but at any point, clear skies do produce and even cloudy days are seldom zero. (In fact solar is more efficient in cold, just way less hours of sun to take advantage of it.)

I have a smart thermostat. We run 65 degrees all morning until 1:30p then 67 for the rest of the night, down to 62 for sleeping. (The Ecobee takes us back to 65 the next morning with smart recovery, no aux ever comes on.) What I'm toying with is setting a period from 1-1:30p to go up to 69 (from then-65) and then coasting as far as possible into the 67 degree period. Been trying it for a couple weeks and right now, before real low winter temps, we are going right thru the evening and all night with the smart recovery the next morning being the next time it comes on. And sometimes it is pretty cloudy and we're only producing at 1kW or so during that time period. But today it was 6-7kW so...and of course I can manually override this process on a real bad day.

So my inclination is to play the odds. That would be heating up the house during that half hour in what is typically the warmest part of the day (a VERY relative term!) and usually the peak power of whatever sun is happening that day. Whatever production is going on at the time is offsetting what I draw from the grid so whether it is 10% of the total or 100%, it's something either way. I think that, over the 3-4 months of winter, I would come out ahead. Thoughts?

they oversold me a five ton and a three ton, coils were never installed properly. They gave me incompatible thermostats and I had to upgrade to ecobees. My house is drafty in the winter and very cold in the summer. I have enough solar to power of 3000 square-foot house. My house is about 2800 ft.² I pay in the coldest months of the winter $1000 a month for my geothermal to run with a cold house and I’m not even here but on the weekends as I stay with my mother during the week. I wrote to the district attorney and they did nothing for me. I’m gonna try again if anybody would like to take a class suit all I would like them to do is repair my system 100% just had a geothermal man here and he told me it would cost $50,000 to fix the problem. I don’t have that kind of money. I’m a college professor for the city university of New York. They told me that the schedule D for the duct work was not correct. If anybody would like to join forces, I am so disgusted by this and broke and a cold house.

The National Renewable Laboratory (NREL) and US Department of Energy recently launched GeoBridge,  a web portal that provides access to information on a wide range of geothermal topics ranging from home geothermal heat pump (GHP) installation to careers in geothermal, educational tools, and cost savings opportunities/incentives for businesses.   

NREL is hosting an informational webinar for the tool on December 3 at 12 p.m. ET. This could be a great opportunity to let the team know how they can make it easier for folks to find good information about geothermal.

Webinar Registration Link: https://nrel.zoomgov.com/meeting/register/vJIscOCqrDgjHPRihL0_3ZUD3kx5bhNs5Sg

Hoping someone here can help shed some light. We have an open loop system, with a WaterFurnace 3 Series 300A11. A new Honeywell TH6320WF2003 thermostat was just installed. This system has been in place for 30 years.

The issue we are having is when the desired temperature is reached, they system is not cycling off. It cycles from low fan/high fan, and you can hear the water continuously running. The thermostat is constantly showing "Heat On" in the top left (see screenshot) even though it reached the correct temp 20 mins earlier.

We had a guy out yesterday and he said that even though we could "hear" the furnace running, the compressor wasn't running the whole time. He also said our pressure was wrong (not sure where/how he measured this, the water tank is showing ~45 psi right now), changed it from 5 psi to 25 psi. Left saying everything was all working fine, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

We are still having the issue of the fan/water not cycling off. Any ideas of what to look at or even say to the furnace people to help them troubleshoot? Seems like there aren't many people in our area that know much about geothermal/open loop systems. Thanks!

Update: So, furnace guy was able to come back, we didn't trust the thermostat so he replaced it with an Emerson (what we had before) and he was able to figure out that the root of the problem was the first valve not working properly and needs to be replaced (second valve was fine). Hope this is helpful for anyone else seeing a similar issue.

https://preview.redd.it/yczkmbpogg2e1.jpg?width=1462&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9aed5591e15cea6dd8903127542dbe5ea028fb50

Does anyone have a 20 gallon preheat tank (or other small size) for use with the desuperheater? Any thoughts on why this a good or bad idea vs a more traditional 50g tank?

Context: I have 9yo geo system with desuperheater (Climatemater tranquility 30 split) and am looking to replace my natural gas water heater with rheem heat pump. Right now I have a 50g ng tank and 50g preheat tank (cheap rheem electric not connected to electricity). The plumber I got a quote from was not familiar with geo systems, but pointed that I should probably replace the preheat tank because it will likely corrode in the next few years, and I cannot replace it without removing the primary water heater (small space). He is recommending a 20g rheem marathon for the preheat, which apparently will not need to replaced.

I'm curious if anyone has other recommendations or thoughts on a 20g preheat tank vs 50g. I believe the advantage of the 20g is it could be serviced without removing the primary heat pump water heater.

I should also add the preheat tank is ~35% of the total cost, and he was wondering if I might be better off just disabling the desuperheater and skipping it. Again he is not experienced with geo systems though.

System 20 years old. One tech said new coul needed next guy used some sniffer and found it to be the coaxial and wants to sell us a bosch system staying its cheaper to run and install then geothermal?? Any advice please. This is frustrating.

Hi, I hope I'm in the right subreddit for my questions, and sorry if not.

I just bought property in Iceland and about 5 kilometers away there's a natural hot spring where you can bathe in a decent-sized little pond that naturally stays between about 36 and 42 degrees Celsius. My question is, can I drill a borehole on my property to reach similarly hot water? If so, how do I find out where to dig or how deep? I assume I could contact a construction rental company and pay someone to dig a hole, but I was hoping to find out on my own if that's even plausible or not. Many thanks to anyone who can point me in any direction here!

Hoping someone can help me understand how much work it would be or if it is even possible to swap to geothermal. I heard it is the best thing since sliced bread but I have three heat pumps. Two air handlers are in attics and one is in the basement. Two of the heat pumps are right next to each other outside and the third one is mid way down a rancher style house.

How cost effective would it be or how pricey would it be to swap everything to geothermal? Or if we mainly live in two zones where the heat pumps are right next to each other would it be possible to somehow tie those together with geothermal and leave the one by itself as is?

Heat pumps are somewhere around 20 years old so it could be any day that we need to replace one. We have solar on the roof and if geothermal is as good as they say I think it could nullify our electric bill in the hottest and coldest months.

Thanks.

Need to purchase a replacement filter. Ideally washable/reusable.

I've purchased a couple of filters previously which were 30"x 36"x 2" and slightly too large. Not sure how to order a filter with the exact correct size (29.5" x 35.5" x 1.75").

So my geothemral waterfurnace is 20 years old needs new coil so far. 3400. To install new waterfrinace 16000.

I decided either to replace the coil 3400or its time to get a new furnace or maybe replace with a bosch heatbpump system. New to geothermal just bought the house.

Is it worth 16000 for a new furnace? or should I get and just replace the geothermal with a regular furnace? Wondering for future? I am 46 plan to stay in the home permanently So obviously these furnaces last supposedly 25 years.. also how many years years have u gotten from your system before replacement?

Our unit is 20 years old . The unit has got a leak in the coil we got a repair price for the coil at 3400 . A new system is 16000. With rebate our cost would be 11000. I do not like the idea of replacing it, but has anyone else had a unit last for over 25 years. I am concerned we pay for the repair and end up having to buy a whole new unit in a few years? Thank u! Also which furnace do you recommend?

Hi , newbie here trying to learn about geothermal cooling.

Here in India, we have a lot of dug borewells some if which go 100 ft below the surface till they hit water. With groundwater rapidly drying up , these then fall into disuse. What is the feasbility of revitalizing these bores as cooling loops? I mean, half the work is done but need the forum to critique this and point to any high level deficiencies in my thinking.

Hi guys, I'm doing my masters in Energy Engineering. For one of my subjects I have to do a project, kind of like assessment of a geothermal plant. I chose DIXIE VALLEY GEOTHERMAL PLANT in USA. I need technical specification data and economics related to the plant. Any suggestions on where to find it would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Thanks for reading. In my home I have the TZV060BGD Geo heat pump, closed loop. Over the past couple of weeks it is has been faulting with the well known LT1 low water temp message. I have experience with refrigeration and have my 608 Universal certification, but I don't have any experience with things specific to geothermal troubleshooting ... until now. My experience is with walk-ins, chillers, refrigeration.

I've gone through the CM troubleshooting. Here's what I have found so far:

- I got marginal readings on testing LT1 so that was an easy hit to replace. Did not solve it.

- On the CM thermastat operating parameters, LT1 is dropping to below 10 degrees, causing the cut out.

- Pump speed rarely changes from 15%.

- Both sides of the filter/drier are around 130 degrees.

- Leaving air temp is in the mid to high 80s. Sometimes electric Aux kicks in.

- The odd part - the CM display shows leaving water temp and entering water temp in the low 50s with only a few degrees difference. Sometimes leaving water temp is higher than entering, which is counterintuitive. Leaving should be lower because heat was extract, right?

- And really odd to me - the leaving water pipe is frosting up. I put my Fluke temp probe on it and it is 27 - 30 degrees.

- Loop pressure readings are 14 psi on both Schrader ports. This seems off?

- I have not attached gauges it. I read that these units have a narrow refrigerant charge margin and I didn't want to take pressures until I collected data on other stuff.

I sort of narrow it down to 1 of 4 possibilities:

1 - Insufficient Loop water

2 - Low Refrigerant

3 - Possibly the loop is not absorbing heat? It's a vertical well *closed* loop. We are in a drought condition. Could the water level in the well have dropped to the point that the loop is not absorbing heat?

4 - Why is there such a great difference between the CM showing leaving water at 53 and the loop pipe frosting at 27? Bad sensor? I have not been able to locate this sensor, that's next.

Thanks!