Am I reading that correctlly? Heating Stage 1 covering 97% of load, with the 064 model.

And an 072 was installed.

960 ft of trench? Was that designed for the 064 or the 072?

Did they give you (any) documents on your system AS BUILT and not as designed? Other than the charges, of course.

Yes. 072 was installed. I believe the attached estimate did not account for finishing the basement (another 1200 sq ft).

Designed for 064. No, I received no documents for AS built. Luckily I can still see where horizontal trenches were put. There are four, each approximately 150 feet long; however for the first 30 feet out of the house all are in the same ditch, then they separate, but never more than 20 feet between ditches. So approximately 1200 of loop in the ground, but all in fairly close proximity. Could that be an issue?

So approximately 1200 of loop in the ground

If that's the case, that would appear to be woefully inadequate for a system of your size. You can see that the preliminary GeoDesign report had 960 feet of trench, implying about 2000 feet of loop for a smaller system.

On the other hand, it seems to have been working for some time without throwing a fault.  It will be interesting to see how an electrician will prove the usage isn't from the GT unit.

With out data on the loops, this is a lot of speculation. As was mentioned earlier determining if and when your system is in 2nd and 3rd stage if ever is critical. Some of the worst geo fubars I have been involved in, went back to control wiring, bad manual J, short looped, in that order.

Gather that data and we can help.
Eric

Eric,
What specific data on loops do you need?  I'd be happy to provide it.  I did finally get digital thermometers to measure EWT and LWT.  EWT was 35 and LWT was 30.

Installer came with electrician today.  Electrician used amp meter to measure load on Geo related circuits in CB box.  He also checked all connections for tightness.  Amps on two seperate 60 amp circuits were 20 or less.  "Magic formula" provided by Geo installer was P=iR (Joule's law, although he didn't recognize it as such). So he told me that circuit was drawing 20 amps, voltage was 240 divided by 1000 (kilo) and multiplied by 24 (hours) to get max draw of 115 kwh in a day if it ran all day.     

Installer also shut off "super heater" saying it felt as if pipes at unit (coming from/to hot water heater) were hot, indicating that unit was pulling hot water from the water heater.  He flipped a dipswitch in the unit to turn it off.  As I understand it super heater should be PRODUCING hot water in AC mode and putting it IN the hot water heater. 

Finally, note I took someone's advice and downloaded Firefox to be able to make paragraphs.

Thanks,
Sam

ICFHybrid,
So to be clear, Geo Design gives the installer the length of TRENCH, not the length of loop???  If that is true, that certainly could be the problem.  My EWT of 35 and LWT of 30 would certainly back that up.  Installer said, it has been a cold winter...which is why temps are down. 

Can you positively say that GeoDesign is for TRENCH?  Is there a manual for GeoDesign that defines inputs?

Thanks,
Sam

Your loop temps look good. now you need to see your flow, and that will tell you how your unit is performing.

Part of it is that the expectations were set wrong. 4.5 cent/kwh are unlikely your real electricity costs, in my area is it 12-13 cents/kwh, so your $623 are way off. Chances are that the electricity costs were unlikely set correctly in the software.
A desuperheater is making hot water in heating and cooling season, so it should not be shut off, otherwise you are making hot water with electrical resistance. Do you have 1 or 2 tanks? Kind of a rule of thumb is that the units use 1 KW/ton/hour, so a 6 ton should use about 6 KW. One of our 6 ton systems uses 5.58 KW/h when running in second stage. Here is the link. http://welserver.com/WEL0447/

Docjenser,
Loop temps look good?  I don't know anything about what loop temps should be, but 35 F in is just above freezing and 30 degrees out is below freezing;  5 F differential seems to indicate loop is too small.   Shouldn't I expect higher EWT?

My expectations are based on kwh usage not price.  My kwh usage for the year prior to installation was approximately 3000 kwh/month, while the year after was 3300 kwh/month.  I expected to cut the heating/air/water heater portion of my usage in half.  I would have settled for even 33%; but a 10% overall increase was not expected and is definitely not worth the $20k installation.   

Another helpful poster above pointed out that the Geo Designer I posted showed "Trench length" as 960 feet.  My installer put about 600 feet in 4 trenches and apparently is counting loop (pipe) out and back in each trench as 1200 total feet and therefore meeting the requirement.  However, I now agree the intent of "trench length" is just that...TRENCH and therefore my loop is undersized.  Anyone have any thoughts on that?   

Thanks! Sam

Geo Design gives the installer the length of TRENCH, not the length of loop???

Well, you're looking at the printout, presumably, length of pipe is twice length of loop (out and back) unless there is another default input which specifies how many "layers" of pipe there are in a "trench". The "nice" thing about that software in separating the design inputs from the outputs is that customer friendly presentations can be made to appear just about any way desired. That helps the sales process, as I'm sure you can see.

Docjenser already noted that your loop temps look good. Presumably, they were taken during a reasonably high demand period. If everything is okay there, maybe the worst thing that happened is that someone was sold a rigged story on how money would be saved with this new system. The least the installer owes you is to come up with the "as installed" specifications (showing projected performance) and maybe sit down with you and show you how his money-saving presentation WAS NOT rigged.

Posted By flynlion on 09 Feb 2013 09:55 AM

Loop temps look good?  I don't know anything about what loop temps should be, but 35 F in is just above freezing and 30 degrees out is below freezing;  5 F differential seems to indicate loop is too small.   Shouldn't I expect higher EWT?
 

Thanks! Sam

This time is year it is completely normal for loop temps to be in the low 30's.   5° differential is good.   No you shouldn't expect higher EWT.

Hi FlyinLion,

I empathize with you greatly as you didn't see the savings that you anticipated. Yes, I made our decision on our new home not many days ago after creating my study which shows that geothermal demonstrates negative savings (in our case). I decided that if my study helped us it may help others in their decision as well. You may check it out at http://goo.gl/3PWWQ

Fats

Did you get your EWT/LWT  readings after the unit was running for 40-60 mins?

If you really only have 600 feet of trench length I get the following:

Avg Pipe Depth: 5.5 feet
Trench Lenght: 600 feet

Avg Source-Heating 37
Min Source-Heating 23  (which is quite low)

Electrical heating use for model 072 would be 9,185Kwh  (given the above loop data)   ( +2,000Kwh from your estimate, COP drops down to 2.94)

Given we are now in February, I would not expect the loop temperature to drop all that much more.  Hence my first question, how long was the system running when you took the readings?  The data you have posted doesn't seem to be consistent.
 
One other question - What type of pump(s) are you running you loop field with?

Pump says Grunfos on actual motor, but B&D Manufacturering on another label on the tank. 
Thanks! Sam

Docjenser,
I looked at site...great stuff.  I assume you added various sensors to collect all that data?  I noted the 6 ton unit on that site had 4800 feet of loop.  I'm beginning to think that is my problem, only 600 feet of trench with 1200 feet of loop/pipe. 

I only have one hot water tank. 

Thanks,
Sam

says Grunfos on actual motor,

So, just a single pump on that flowcenter?

Posted By flynlion on 10 Feb 2013 11:07 AM
I'm beginning to think that is my problem, only 600 feet of trench with 1200 feet of loop/pipe. 

In the absence of AS BUILT information, that may be jumping to conclusions.
The heat pump doesn't "know or care" how much loop pipe is in the ground,
it only cares about EWT and GPM. The 35F EWT sounds perfectly reasonable
for this time of year in central PA -- assuming that the heat pump had been
running for 20-30 minutes before the measurement was taken. If your loop
was grossly undersized, I'd expect to see a much lower EWT -- indicating
that the system had sucked all available heat from the soil around the loop.

FWIW, I'm currently seeing about 37F EWT from a deep vertical loop in the
Philly 'burbs -- and the heat pump is working like a champ.

Your 5 degree delta-T also sounds reasonable -- assuming that the loop
flow rate is somewhere in the vicinity of 3 GPM per ton. However, without
AS BUILT data or an actual GPM measurement, that's pure speculation.

Roger on AS BUILT, I'll ask the installer to run that for me, although I'm not holding my breath that I'll get something.  I'd provide flow rate, but I'm not sure how to get that.  Any easy way>?

  To answer open questions, flow center has two small pumps on it.  EWT was taken with unit running, but it usually doesn't run for 30 minutes/readings taken after unit ran about 10 minutes. 
Thanks Sam

usually doesn't run for 30 minutes

Crank up the thermostat a few degrees.... then it will.

Flow rates. - You need a PSI gauge/probe. Something like this: http://geohydrosupply.com/tools.html?___store=default Once you have the pressure drop the book will tell you your flow rate.