We just finished getting a 6 ton geocomfort unit installed in our house.  We have an old feild stone house with poor heat loss and we talked to a couple of different installers and all said we would need a 6 ton unit.  The noise seems to be more from the air speed then the actual heat pump and fan motor itself.  I am told by the installer that the fan speed is set at the lowest setting but the volume of air seems exessive.  We have a couple of vents that are 1 foot up from the floor on the wall that are approximately 4"by 8" and the air from the duct will move magazine pages that are 6ft away.  
I am not sure what we can do?  May need to add more duct work to distribute the volume of air? But i would like to find out for sure if the fan speed can be turned down.
Any help would be great
Thanks

Thank you for your reply.  I will ask again to clarify but i am told that the fan is at the lowest possible setting. i have talked to others who have a 5ton unit and their fan seems to be running at a much lower speed and is quiet. I dorealize duct work could impact what is needed and it is a smaller unit.
All the vents in each room of our house have significant air flow coming from them so i would think that if possible the fan should be turned down. Would not having enough venting be part of the problem?

Are the two 4" x 8" supply registers (vents) that are blowing so hard the nearest to the fan (fan and evaporative coils) or are there other supply registers between the these two and the fan.  In most cases that I have seen where there is a lot of noise, the registers are sized to fit the ducts but the ducts are too small.

Maybe someone much more knowledgeable than I will comment on this problem.

If your system is 6 tons then rule of thumb would be 400 cubic feet per minute per ton .As you slow down the fan , you are also reducing the airflow. All systems have a minimum airflow requirement across the coils.When you reduce the airflow below the minimum all kinds of problems will develop.Your ductwork sizing is more than likely the issue.You will not be able to evaluate just how poorly it is engineered until you take some readings or post a drawing with sizes here of your installation.

With an Envision dual-stage compressor system (I know your system is different) there is a separate fan (blower) CFM setting for each compressor stage.  If your unit is similar, confirm with the installer that the blower setting for EACH stage is set to no more than the factory default settings.  I'd ask them to show you the settings on the unit (with all power to the unit OFF.)  The blower settings can be reduced, but efficiency may suffer.

If you have dampers in your duct system, it may be worth ensuring that they are all full open.  Do the same with all registers.  Throttle them as necessary.  See if you still have an issue.

We have done some more work on trying to figure out why this system is so loud and unfortunately we have not any luck in reducing the excessive noise. I have two links below showing the unit running in the basement with the duct work and another one with the noise that is coming from a couple of the vents on the main floor.(the upstairs is just as bad) We had our follow up energy audit done and checked the static preessure of the house and it was fine. The person who did the audit agreed that loud noise did not seem right and he has not heard a system this loud. The installer insists that it is set at the lowest speed and doesn't seem to want to help. We beleive that most of the noise is from the fan and the air speed. When we pull the sides of the unit off there is a lot of noise at the fan and going into the header.
Not sure if this helps but the header box is 12”highx23”longx21”wide, with duct work heading out both ends that are 21” wide x 8” high.

I have been to two other houses that have geothermal systems, one is a 5 ton the other a 6. Both are not geocomfort systems. These two systems are very quiet and are doing a great job at heating their houses, so i know that mine is not normal unless this is how geocomfort systems opportate.
I have e-mailed the geocomforts support desk but unfortunately have not gotten much help there either. We are waiting for another installer to come and take a look at the system but since they didn't install it they are not in a big hurry.
So if anyone has any ideas I am willing to listen.

Thanks


http://youtu.be/j43y7acV43A
http://youtu.be/YCFKX9QR9cc

Here's a thought... Have you checked to make sure the shipping strap on the blower, or the styrofoam blocks under the blower has been removed?
If there is a strap it will be on the back of the blower housing. make SURE to kill ALL power to the unit before getting into it!!

Bergy

You have not mentioned if you have a 6 ton dual stage or single stage heat pump. Your unit could be louder because its a single stage so it runs at full capacity all the time while the units you saw were 6 ton two stage units, meaning they could have been running at a lower stage when you saw them with less airflow.

However, I would still agree its probably undersized ductwork. If the ductwork was existing it was probably designed for a 5 ton system max(gas heat with AC or Heat Pump systems usually are 5 ton as the largest size) so you probably need another 1 ton(400CFM) worth of ductwork to dissapate the air

Thanks for your questions and input.
Our unit is a dual stage combination heat pump which is the same as the other two systems I have seen. There was definitly less airflow on there systems, one was running at the lower rate the other ran at both stages when i was there. Our sytem starts slow and gradually ramps up as the vidio shows. The other systems did same but didn't sound like a wind storm like ours.
All packaging, strapping, foam have been removed.

We have been with GeoComfort for about ten years and I can tell you their units are not noisy. There is either an install issue or an unusual unit issue. You should ask your contractor to bring in his teritory manager to help with the problem.

Bergy

Duct work is two small. Fix may be as easy as cutting a register into the supply and return plenum or as elaborate as new duct system.
Not a lot of 6 ton duct systems.

Ductwork is too small.
I would call a good sheet metal contractor and tell him you need to move 2200 cfm.

Check TESP (Total External Static Pressure) across the unit. Contractor should be able to handle that w/o territory manager. Should be 0.5" WC or less. I once measured one at 1.41", a six ton WF, and it was doing its darndest to blow the registers off the walls.

"No ma'am, I can't quietly put all the air flowed by a six ton unit in low stage into your master bedroom's three 6x10 registers..."

Like all the others have said, to small of a duct system.
May have to count up all the supply openings and all the return air openings.
Check actually Free Air Space of all registers and grilles.
If you are trying to move 6 tons of air, you may need as many as 25-26 supplies, depending
on pipe and register size.

Merely computing supply and return register and grill area is unlikely to tell the whole story.

I said may, have to count supplies and returns. He can have all the duct work size, but still have 14 or 15) 6" supplies pushing 6 tons of air. He may have 3 or 4 returns. I don't know, so it would be nice to know a little bit more about what OP may have as far as what his distribution system is. Less see if he can clarify what he has so we can clear it off of what he may have to do or not to do. We are all reaching, until we know a little bit more about it.

"We are all reaching, until we know a little bit more about it."

I already know. Virtually no home with one heat plant is built with 6 tons of duct unless it was a geo house from the git (and then probably only 50% of the time).
Air noise and high pressure on a 6 ton retrofit isn't crystal ball stuff.

Me too

From Video that doesn't look like too bad of a ductwork job. Hard to tell but it maybe a little smaller than optimum.

I think I hear two types of noise. Before the compressor kicks in I hear a velocity noise at the plenum and later at the registers. This is the higher frequency noise, particularly that "haaaaah" sound at the registers. That's always air velocity noise.

The plenums and the ductwork should be acoustically lined 1/2" min. for about the first 8 ft. from the heat pump. The manufacturers ALL recommend that. Bank on the plenum, it should have a dulled sound rather than a tin can sound. The acoustic lining attenuates the noise at the plenums about 95%. As recommended, there are flex connectors in the ductwork. Flex connectors prevent any lower frequencies such as motor noise from traveling up the ductwork and on into the wooden structure of the house by isolating the unit from the structure. Given the location of the flex connectors however, the plenum could be either attached directly to the floor or touching it.

As the unit starts up I think I hear a motor noise, (a lower hum), that could be from the compressor bolts being too tight, or sometimes there are metal shipping blocks below the compressor which should be removed. The compressor should be free to rock on either rubber or spring mounts. I have forgotten that step myself on occasion. Makes a heat pump really noisy even when standing on an anti-vibration pad if this step is forgotten.