Hey all, So, I know radiant pretty well you could say. But, Geothermal in particular I am not as familiar with as boilers. We have integrated with many geothermal systems, but typically we let the geo guys do their thing, and we simply pick up off of the storage/buffer tank with a mixing valve. It's come to our attention that this is not really adequate. Like boiler installs, there are lots of guys out there who "do geothermal" but who don't really get how to run their own systems optimally. Given this scenario: We have an intelligent control that knows exactly how hot the water has to be for the radiant system, and knows what temperature it is now at the buffer tank. Say it decides the radiant only needs to be 95 degrees right now; it won't fire up the geothermal until the tank gets cooler than that. Later in the season, it may decide we need 115 degree water in the tank. We have two possibilities to control this further: 1. We let our control run it, which means it will run the geo up to our "boiler minimum" temperature (say, 120 for a nice long cycle?), but if it loses a heat demand, it stops running the geo immediately. Heat demands should be fairly long, but this can still happen, especially during the day during solar gain periods. 2. We find a way to rig it up so the geo, once triggerred, runs the tank up to 120 or some other temperature whether we need it right then or not, to minimize cycles and maximize the temperature rise of the tank/run time for each cycle. Question is: Is triggerring an on-cycle energy intensive enough to make it worth figuring out how to make #2 happen?

Rob,
Ask this question over at OurCoolHouse(talk/forum) and you'll definitely get a response.

Thanks, I didn't think of that.