House is 1680sf 2 story built in 1991 with original 3-ton York NG furnace w/AC.  I looked at both DX and water based and went with the most experienced Geo firm.

I'm getting a 3 ton Envision with a 4 ton (4x200' loops, I wanted the extra ton of loop)

More to come.

CH

CH,

Did they size your system based on the old?? If so, you need to have them perform a complete heat loss/heat gain for YOUR home. The numbers generated by that report should be used to size the system.

Please define 4x200' loops... Are the vertical wells 100' deep (200' of pipe) or 200' deep (400' of pipe). Are they horizontal bores? 100' or 200' long?

What about a desuperheater and it's buffer tank? A desuperheater is required to qualify for the 30% tax credit.

Bergy

Loops are vertical, 200 feet down (400 feet of pipe), I don't have the contract specs with me for pipe size.  System will include desuperheater and a 50gal storage tank to feed into my NG fueled HWT.   Manual J was calc'ed about 2 months ago.  Permit process this week will determine if loop field can be at the side of the house instead of the rear.  I have a underground storm drain in the common area between my house and the neighbors (we are on a cul-de-sac) that might require a setback.  The existing SC cuircut is 35amps so another permit will be pulled to replace it with a 45amp line over to the new equipment for the10kw backup heat.

Anyone have a wholehouse surge protector?  I'm thinking it might be a good time to install if the electrican will already be out but I thought it will take up 4 slots in the panel (200 amp sqD) which is getting close to max.

CH

 I have a whole house surge protector.  Some designs use up breaker slots, some don't.   Very simple to install.

CH,

All sounds good...

Bergy

C,
What is the purpose of the extra loop and what is it costing you (vs payback)? I think you are south of me and we would do 150'/ton.
What did other installers suggest?
j

It's about $1700 for the extra well.  I'm east of DC and south of Baltimore.   150-180' from two other bids for water.  The DX bid went 100'   I wanted the extra well if I decide to expand the house some down the road.  But then I heard the news today and the local utility (Pepco for me) is raising their rates again for electric so next year's project might be a solar install  ;)

Payback, rough numbers:

Total system 26k

-7.8k Fed Credit
-1.5k Maryland Grand (They changed the rules again, instead of 1k /ton max 3 tons, now its $500 /ton max 5 tons but you now need a Home Energy Audit (aka blower door test) before submittal of application.
-5k Prince Georges County Property Tax break (can be used over 3 years if your tax is less than 5k)

- 13.5k grants/credits approx 50% of cost.

CH

Those was some nice tax breaks. I only got a 2k write off on my system.

Sounds like you already have an extra ton of capacity, but I get the extra loop for growth theory and at least you made an informed decision. I was afraid you spent $1,700 to "save money" with a higer ewt.
j

I just found your wonderful forum and have read everything that I could find here...

How much time is everyone spending from contact, bid and install. I have been thinking about this Geothermal option for awhile (last 6 months) but unfortunately we just today had the hvac guy leave as our ac just stopped working... Our 8 year old 3.5 ton outside unit needs to be replaced along with the inside coil unit (compressor is shot). The "guesstimate" at this time is $4000 to 5000.

Our all electric house bill runs from $200 to $300 per month (year round). Our house is 2100 sqft not counting the finished basement which stays pretty comfy year round as it is totally underground (it is also run off of the 3.5 ton system though we have all the vents closed to push the heat/ac upstairs). Our house is 25 years old "cedar sided" home and is heated with an "oil back up". We only burn about 300 gallons of oil per season as the heat pump runs until outside is temp is 35 or below... We had all of our windows replaced last year with very high efficiency units which seems to have kept our bills down.

I am not sure what to do as our hvac guy (knows someone that does Geothermal) estimates at least one month until a Geothermal would be installed... His guessimate would be $20000 to 30k... My wife almost fainted twice (price and timetable without ac). I am guessing that we should save about 50% with all of the various tax credits (Fed, Maryland and Montgomery County).

What does everyone think?

Anyone have a Geo contractor that they would recommend?

My boss lives in the same county and is ready to change as well so this would be a double job!!!

Thanks, Joe
[email protected]

There are several Earthlinked geo dx dealers in montgomery county. Check earthlinked site. get a quote and go from there. I would never go back to conventional system after 15 years of dx.

I'm committed now  (neighbors think I need to be committed )

They started drilling  Friday afternoon and just arrive this am (Monday) to drill the 3 remaining wells.   They are really happy with my dirt  ;)  or the lack or rock.   It's about 5 minutes per segment.

I'm not sure if this site allows pics.  Can anyone recommend a blog site or should I just host on a picture site and paste the links?

CH

CHuntMD, you can include up to 3 images per post on this site.  Each image needs to be in JPEG format, and at less than 100KB.

It looks like you're installing a WaterFurnace 3 ton Envision unit with a vertical loop.  If so, then you can compare what's going on for your installation with images I have of my installation done 2 years ago, noting I have the same equipment as you (see http://www.pbase.com/neukranz/gshpinstall ).

Good luck!  Design adequacy and quality of installation of your water loop will fundamentally define your overall satisfaction with the HVAC performance you ultimate get.

Best regards,

Bill

How these pics come out ok, had to resize. One well done last Friday, three yesterday and today was connect the pipes, drill two holes in my foundation wall and test for leaks. More pics to come. CH

Joe,

I too live in MoCo and am evaluating a geo system versus a conventional and a high efficiency. The MoCo property tax credit is subject to funding - it sounds like they already have committed most of FY10 funds to people on the waiting list from FY09 (the county's fiscal year just ended yesterday). So don't count completely on it plus you'll have to front the cash (and for the fed tax credit, same thing). I think the state one is faster.

I have all the systems laid out in a spreadsheet with the credits to evaluate total cost. Ours is more complicated, as our systems all are functioning, including our 21 year old A/C compressor and 11 year old nat gas 78% furnace. The problem is our house was added on to and they didn't add any supply ducts, so that side of the house is hot or cold, plus the ducts are leaky as hell (over 50%) and behind drywall so not easy to seal. Additionally, the return is too small and we need to add more air getting to the handler. And our house is really humid (close to the Potomac) so to get rid of the humidity, we have to run the a/c, which doesn't really get the house cold except by a few of the supply ducts.

So we could just try to fix the supply duct and return duct problems and keep this system going, but both firms I have estimates from (had 2 more out that I decided I wouldn't use) said that just doing the ducting would be $2-3k mostly because it is hard to access, and if the equipment is out, the labor is reduced to almost zero, so we could save over half. And because of the humidity problem, we really should get a 2 stage compressor so we don't have to run the a/c at full blast.

We too think we will be in the house for another 5 or so years, but with the power/gas savings, I think that's about our breakeven point. You also should know that MoCo requires all home sellers to disclose the prior year's utility bills. The county council attempted to pass a rule that buyers had to get a full energy audit, but the people's republic at least voted that out as going too far. So an energy-saving system could look good to a potential buyer (if they think about incorporating that into their monthly cost - mortgage, taxes and utilities).

Hope that helps. And we hope to decide soon when we firm up the estimates and get final numbers.

Well, after crunching all the geo and non geo numbers, we decided to install a brand new heat pump and oil furnace hybrid. We finally found an oil heat pump combo that will give us the $1500 fed tax credit plus another $350 rebate from Carrier... Not sure if MD or MoCo will kick in anything, but our end cost will be around $7k and that includes a whole house humidifier and air filter... Frankly, putting out $22 to $24k for Geo and still using our old oil furnace as an air handler and then having to cross our fingers for all 3 tax credits to pan out at years end, pushed me back over to the more conventional. Plus, our AC has been down for almost 3 weeks now... :-O The new system will be a15 seer HP plus a 120k btu oil furnace with a vari speed blower. That replaces our 9 seer/85k present combo. Unfortunately, we had to go with a 120k oil furnace, because anything less voids the tax credit. Makes no sense but those are the rules...

You could not have gotten a more seasoned or experienced firm than Winslow!  congratulations on your drilling.

Eric Sackett
weberwelldrilling.com

It's been a month since the new Geo was put in.  I've been a little lazy in posting pics.  Here is a link to the project.


I'm expecting a electric bill soon but my last one was $141 where the June one was $200.  This new bill will be 100% Geo-Thermal.  I've kept the thermostat at 74 all the time and it stays one stage one.    I did get a gas bill late last week and it was 1/2 the therms used vs. July 2008 but I do have a new GWH (but not one of those super efficient one)

Anyone know what temp the air should be in cooling mode?  Within a hour of initial turn on the temp was 58 degrees!  

The quietness of the system is wonderful.

CH in MD

Rule of thumb is unit should cool air passing through it by 17-21 degrees.

I have the same (3 ton) unit as yours - WaterFurnace Envision 2 stage variable speed.

See this chart for evaporator temps: http://welserver.com/cgi-bin/plot/WEL0043/AirTemps-EvapCoil-3TonUnit.gif .  My supply air temp, right off of the evap coil, averaged 52 °F for the month of Aug.

And see this chart for evaporator deltaT: http://welserver.com/cgi-bin/plot/WEL0043/AirDeltaT-EvapCoil-3TonUnit.gif .  My deltaT averaged 27° for the same month.

I'm running my 3 ton at 850 CFM, and have dampers adjusted to limit ESP to 0.25, for all single zone situations.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,

Bill