Most of you have seen my posts recently:
Summary: HVAC guy inexperienced with geo (but certified).  Installed 4 ton geomax2 in 2100 sq foot house.  Issues so far include: undersized ductwork, wired thermos wrong so no aux heat for a while, problem now with low EWT and system lockouts, shoddy new return ducts.

When I got his quote, I had another, for $8,000 more, different company, same basic specs (4 ton WF) though.

I'm still not thrilled about the system....the house still feels cool, the duct air temp is low, the ground loops run about 31 F EWT.  If I turn up the thermos, the aux heat cycles constantly.  Yes, it's cold here,  We just had a blizzard. 

Would you call the competitor to evaluate the system, now that it's installed?  It hard to find someone really experienced around here who could give it a thorough going-over and make sure all is really set to be the best.

Where are you located, in what climate?
31F EWT in a northern climate at this time of the year without you putting heat in the ground during summer and having a fresh loop where ground is not settled does not sound too concerning to me. If the ductwork is undersized the you have lesser flow and a higher load temp in the leaving ductwork. WE HAVE SOME COLDER THAN usual temps in the northeast.

HI docjenser
That's why I'm posting here :-) I haven't read much agreement about whether loops settle over time for better performance; same with "storing summer heat" in the ground. If someone has posted hard data about either, could someone point me to the post? I'd love to read more.
31 F EWT didn't concern me until the unit began going into lockout. My installer is non-committal about whether this is all normal, or not normal.
Re the ductwork, see my post titled "1300 cfm, 10x10 ductwork, discuss" :-)

Length of time heat is stored in the ground depends on soil characteristics - diffusivity and moisture. I believe that most here (but not all) believe that heat pumped into the ground during cooling season is long gone before winter begins in earnest. An exception might be the case of a huge commercial borefield

Stuart, what does your degree day figures tell you about how much colder this year is compared to last year (divide heating degree days from this January by the heating degree days from last January)?

From a much earlier post, wasn't your register vs return delta t 22 degrees, or something like that. From what I understand, that would be very good. Maybe I'm thinking of another poster.

If you disable aux, does the system hold the thermostat set point?

It has been my experience that no good will come from calling the guy who did not get the job, to talk about what went wrong with the guy that did the job.  My guess is that he would tell you that is where the money differance came to bear and hang up.

Eric Sackett
weberwelldrilling.com

True. I'd probably do that, too. Thanks, guys.

Call him anyway. What do you have to lose by talking to him — or not, if he hangs up? You may be surprised. It's good for business to fix a "competitor's" mistakes.

Regards,

Masoud

I disagree, it is a lose lose situation.  No contractor wants to go behind anybody.  It costs more time and agravation to
do it over.  For the owner if the quote spread was 8,000.00 initially they can anticipate 16,000.00 to fix it after the fact.  The owner will forever feel put out because they cannot have it fixed for the original 8,000.00.
In business the "pool" is a lot smaller than think.  The best policy is to keep your head down, do the work, and mind your business.

It sounds to me that your installer is continuing to work with you - a good thing. If he stops working with you, I would go to the manufacturer. If that fails, then I would call the second installer. If your installer provided you with any kind of "installer warranty" as opposed to a manufacturers warranty, it may be in jeopardy if you call in someone different. I wouldn't expect the installer to honor their warranty on something that others have messed with.

I'm not sure I'd write off the idea completely. Much would depend on the personalities involved. It may be that cheap guy got in over his head technically and might be grateful for the help if the idea were properly presented. Expensive guy might (carefully) enjoy the opportunity to clean up a mess, resisting the urge to crow "I told you so", instead letting the facts speak for themselves.

Posted By engineer on 14 Feb 2010 12:59 PM
I'm not sure I'd write off the idea completely. Much would depend on the personalities involved. It may be that cheap guy got in over his head technically and might be grateful for the help if the idea were properly presented. Expensive guy might (carefully) enjoy the opportunity to clean up a mess, resisting the urge to crow "I told you so", instead letting the facts to speak for themselves.

I agree. We are called many times when something else does not work. We treat this all in the spirit of collegiality and are trying to help whenever we can. This is the moment to shine for you as an experienced installer. And who do you think the customer is going to recommend to his friends or neighbors? Plus we don't want people running around and bashing geothermal technology in general, we want this to work in any application. We know most of the installers in the area, see them as colleagues, and they are the ones calling us if there is an issue, usually not the homeowner. In terms of the fresh loop issue, we see a difference between 2.5 - 3.5 degrees differences in EWT between a fresh loop and a loop which is 1 year old. We do not know if that is because of settlement or because of air conditioning in the summer. The change in the seasons happens very rapidly here in western new york, in september you still run aircondition, in october you already heat the house. At the beginning of the heating season my ground loop is in the mid 60's, where the normal ground temp is about 52, so yes I have reason to believe that air conditioning makes a difference. We put energy and temperature monitoring on most of our systems now, give me another year and we have more concrete data for our area.

As a homeowner I'll throw in my 2 cents... if I was not getting satisfaction from the installer, I would call the regional sales rep of the product - I belive you wrote "geomax." I would ask this person if I could even pay to have a thorough analysis of my system completed to find why their product was not working the way in which I expected. I would rather put $300 towards an analysis than call in the competitor (not only installation competitor, but also geo brand competitor - you wrote WF) because they may not be as experienced with the brand and/or components.

I'm not saying this because I think that WF isn't good - I have one and I love it, I'm just saying that you chose something and you may still be at the point of making it work in-house.