I wish there were more write ups about people installing their own systems. I have been looking into Geothermal for some time now, since I installed my first mini split in my house a few years back. Anyway I recently bought my parents house, where I grew up. It is about 1800sq ft 2 story center hall house. It was built in early 1900's but has newer low-e windows and blow in insulation. Currently on Oil heat with Radiators on first floor and nothing on second floor (was planning on putting baseboard on second). Anyway as I just got done building zone manifold on the current boiler I said to my self, man its a shame it has this Chimny in the way keeping the kitchen and living room from being opened up. That got me thinking of where I will be putting the mini-split heat pumps come spring for A/C (Love these, have installed about a dozen for friends and family) Just then in clicked to me that maybe I should be looking more seriously into actually doing a GeoThermal system. Back into doing research I see some of these loops people are installing (300' long trenches!) I have a small field about 40' wide by 200' long that I really hate to dig up. BUT I also have a well on my property that used to serve for the full house until they did some blasting near by that made us switch to city water (Only about 4' of water in our 26' deep well) So maybe an open system using my old well as a return and a new deeper well as the feed might be in my best interest?

Do you guys have any insight into using a system like this?

Once I come up with a plan for my water source I need to come up with a good idea to get heat/ac in between the floors.

Where are you located?

What is the quality of the well water in your area? Does it have a high dissolved mineral content? If so, this complicates its use as a water source for a geothermal heat pump. It is not insurmountable, but it will mean additional maintenance will be required as a minimum.

All projects must start with a load calculation as different size heat pumps need different amounts of water.
If you don't want to run ducts to the second floor, you could run a seperate airhandler and split up there or you could use hydronic consoles if it is only a couple rooms and use a WTW set-up.

A separate air handler would certainly simplify things BUT after some looking around last night I did find a spot next to my other chimney I could run the duct work.

I am located in Burrillville, RI - Should they have info on the water in the area or should I send a sample of my well water out to have tested before having quotes on a second well?

I am going to have to do something for a Central Air or multiple mini split systems come spring time to keep the wife happy, If I am spending a couple grand already might as well spend a few more and go this route.

I am in Glocester RI, well water at my house is full of iron, my in-laws well is less then 300' away, their's is clear no iron problems.

So I went with closed loop for my water source for my GSHP. I did 5- 200' trenches, 10' apart, 4 ton HP.

Your shallow well may not be deep enough for a return well. You need to find a driller with geo experience.

Chris

Hmm so I need to get my water tested. I am on a little more then half acre of land so there is no way I can do 5 200' trenches @ 10 foot apart. How deep are yours berried? Are you using slinky? How big is your house?

I was thinking I should need a 3-3.5 ton unit for my house. When this was my fathers house he used to keep it cool in summer with a single 9,000 btu unit on first floor (902 sq ft on first) and was good through the summer as long as it was just 2 people. Any more then 2 people it would heat up a bit but this was only 9,000 btu window unit. We were planning to put a single 12,000 btu mini split in on the first floor and a 9,000 in the master bed room up stairs but going this route will create some rooms hotter then others so a central style a/c (geothermal) would probably be in my best interest.

Straight pipe not slinky, 7-8' down. 1900sq ft Ranch.

It will be a lot cheaper to go the min-split route, not "a few thousand more for geo". Your money better spent on air sealing/ insulating and the room temp differences will be less when using the mini-splits. You could use them for heat late fall and early spring not using the oil.

Sounds like you have a good bit of experience with the mini's, like Joe said you should still have a heatloss/gain done so you know where you stand.

Chris

I just had Richardson Wells & Pumps come buy so he could give me a quote. He has been doing these installs for 7 years and gave me copies of a bunch of training and certs he has for geothermal. I told him what I wanted to do and thinks it would work well. So he is going to give me a quote on drilling one well and using my old well as the discharge for me to do everything also also doing a quote for him doing everything, He gave me a pamphlet on Water-Furnace 5 Series 500A11 to look over. He did not take any measurements just asked about my windows, insulation and sq ft and off the top of his head said I will need a 4 ton system. I showed him my spot I found and said it would be big enough to run duct work to attic so I wouldn't need 2 systems unless I wanted them.

I have a feeling I don't even want to see what this quote will be seeing I don't have any duct work or anything but we shall see what he comes up with.

The "count the windows and square feet" approach is about to the world's crummiest heat load calculation method ever devised. It might be good enough for sizing a cheap gas-fired hot air furnace, but it's downright criminal to size a GSHP (or even a gas fired boiler) that way. Since you have an oil heating history on the place, you can get close to reality with a calculation of fuel use against heating degree days, using the boiler as the measuring instrument. Do you jave a mid-winter oil bill with a "K-factor" on it?

In neighboring CT/MA the typical cost for 3-6 ton geo comes in at $9K/ton, which is pretty pricey if you're dropping in a 4 ton system when 3 would do. At this price point it's also worth climbing for more than just the lowest possible hanging fruit on building envelope improvements.

In addition to blowing in wall insulation, if the original windows are in good shape and can be tightened up with weatherstripping, adding low-E storm windows will give you better performance than a code-min replacement window at less than half the installed cost. (The Harvey Tru Channel is are the tightest storm window in the biz, and they have a hard-coat low-E option. The Larson low-E windows sold through box stores are pretty good if you upgrade to the silver or gold series. The bronze series leak air and have crummier hardware.)

Odds are the foundation leaks a ton of air and isn't insulated- there are cost effective ways of dealing with that too. The foundation sill/band joist leaks are usually the biggest leak in the house, and fixing both the foundation leaks and attic floor leaks (including any flue/plumbing/electrical penetrations) are an order of magnitude more important than all the leaks in-between, since that's what defines the stack pressures of the "stack effect" 24/365 air infiltration.

With it all buttoned up tight and better insulated there is some chance you'd be within range of heating it with the Daikin Altherma air-water heat pump at near-geo efficiencies using the existing radiation, if that turns out to be cheaper than a 2-3 ton geo system after subsidies.

Improving the building envelope would also reduce the room-to-room temperature deltas by quite a bit, should you opt for the mini-split approach. Run an I=B=R spreadsheet type heat load calculation- if the master bedroom doesn't have a heat load of at least 5000BTU/hr @ +5F (your approximate 99% design temp) a dedicated 3/4 ton mini-split isn't going to work too efficiently. Radiant cove heaters under occupancy sensor + thermostat control for the doored- off rooms can work pretty effectively, sipping power since they only come on when the room is being used, letting it heat passively via the mini-split through the partition walls most of the time. Radiant cove heaters are more comfortable than baseboard type resistance heaters (provided you don't oversize them so much that it feels like a broiler than a sunny spot when they come on), and can be quite comfortable even when the air temps are low during the heat-up ramp, since they heat up the objects in the room directly, including the human objects.

(BTW: Hi neighbor- I live a couple-dozen miles up 146 from you.)

Hi Neighbor! Glad to see some locals on here! I could use as much local information as possible.

Quote came back, nice guy, pretty much exactly what I thought it was going to be about 32K for the geothermal system installed (I guessed 30k) and that is just too much for me to swing, I can but payoff wouldn't happen till it was time to upgrade equipment. The well quote was actually pretty reasonable though at $4500. I will try to post up the quotes so you guys can take a peak.

My house does have blown in insulation in walls and foil faced batt insulation with a tiny bit of blow in insulation in the attic. I do have some doors that leak a little bit so I will probably replace them come spring. My Father just got done upgrading every window in the house (His second time in the 30 years he owned it) and they are supposedly all low-e, supposedly.

Those Radiant cove heaters look kinda nice, I am/was in the process of bringing hydronic baseboard upstairs and after comparing cost of electric vs oil, it is almost worth it to do electric upstairs.

Again whether baseboards or whatever else you should start with a real heat load calc.

I downloaded the Taco Load tool but not sure if I did it right or not as it says I need a 75,000 btu system or 6.5 ton unit, Maybe so but that just seems large. My boiler is 75,000 BTU.

I contacted a few local heating companies to see how much it will cost to get a proper heat loss calculation done. If I can do the whole system for around the 10k mark I will go a head and do it, $4500 for a well is almost half that BUT if I go with a Single stage unit like this http://ingramswaterandair.com/geocool-geothermal-heat-pump-p-19134.html it is only 2500 for the unit leaving me with aprox $3k for duct work, plumbing and so on but obviously I am flexible on the 10k mark I would just like to stay around there assuming I am doing all the back breaking work.

Click these for the pictures:

Well Contract

Geothermal Page 1

Page 2

My House

My Shallow Well 1

Well 2

There's no way your heat load is anywhere near 75K, but it might be half that, or even a bit more.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and offer a WAG that it's probably 40-45K as-is,  but that it can be easily and cost effectively reduced to about 25-30K.

A fuel-use/heating-degree-day ratio is a fairly accurate way to measure the actual heat load. (75K is ridiculous- are you using 1800-2000 gallons of oil per year? Didn't think so!)  Got a K-factor on an oil bill to report? (K-factor HDD/gallon- it's simple arithmetic to get from there to a pretty realistic heat load number.)

If going geo, it should be sized for the "after" picture of all of your building envelope improvements, but a fuel-use calc can tell us where you're starting from, then be aggressive on the heat load calculations from there.

And be aggressive about load reductions as well:

Those clear storms over the single-panes delivers a U-factor of about 0.5.  From the pic it looks like you have about 24 windows at about 10 square feet each, or 240 square feet total.  Assuming a design temp of +5F and an interior temp of +70F would give you a load from just the windows of about 240' x U0.5 z (70F-5F)= 7800 BTU/hr.  Replacing the storms with low-E storms would run about $200/window (less, if DIY), call it ~$4800 total and deliver a performance of about U0.3, which would reduce the window heat load to about 0.3/0.5 x 7800= 4680BTU/, a reduction of 3120 BTU/hr, or about $12K/ton, which is more expensive than the geo required to support the load, but with a much longer lifecycle, and zero operating costs, and has comfort benefits you can FEEL, beyond the mere energy use reduction.

It looks like the above grade portion of your foundation averages about 2', and assuming a 25 x 36' perimeter that's about 120' perimeter x 2' is 240 square feet.  A foot-thick brick/stone foundation will have a U-factor of about U1.0, so even if you let your basement drop to 50F when it's +5F out ( 45F delta), the losses out the foundation are going to be on the order of 240' x U1 x 45F= 10,800 BTU/hr.  If you put 3" of cheap reclaimed roofing EPS (R12) on the interior side of the foundation the U-factor would drop to about 0.075, and the basement would "coast" at about 65F for a 60F delta at +5F.  That makes the basement losses now about U0.075 x 240' x 60F= 1080 BTU/hr a reduction of about 9720 BTU/hr.  If you do it with reclaimed roofing foam (there are several local vendors- search the Worcester or Providence craigslist materials section for "rigid insulation") it'll cost about $12 for a 4x8 sheet, and with a perimeter of 120' you're looking at about 30 sheets for a total of less than $400, call it $1000 by the time you've paid for the furring & tapcons (or an interior non-structural studwall) and 30 sheets of wallboard, plus labor.  (If you take the studwall approach you can go with 2" foam then use unfaced batts in the studwall cavities to cut another 400-500 BTU/hr or so off the basement load.)

If you hire an illegal from the Azores or do it yourself it's pretty cheap.   Assuming you paid union-scale it might run as much a $5K total, for a load reduction of about 3/4 ton or about $6700/ton, which is cost competitive with geo.

Almost all of the relevant air leakage is a at the band joist & foundation sill, and at the attic-floor plane, since that's what drives the heat load.  You may still want to replace the doors (if you do, go with something insulated, to at least R4, steel or fiberglass), but they're a minor player in the whole house  infiltration problem.  You can air-seal and insulate the roughly 120' square feet of band joist & foundation sill to the top of our basement-wall foam with 2" of closed cell spray polyurethane.  Since you're only looking at about 250 board-feet of foam it's probably cheaper to do it your self (wait until June, to let the band joist dry out from it's winter load) with  300 board-foot Tiger Foam /Fomo-Foam kit, and some unfaced batts on the interior side. Total cost, under a grand, total load reduction is unknown, but substantial. 

Use the remainder of the foam kit (or buy a 12 board foot FrothPak at a box store) to seal all of the electrical & plumbing penetrations in the attic floor before adding any insulation. Box over any recessed can lighting and foam-seal it to the plaster & lath or gypsum or whatever you have up there.  It looks like you have two brick chimneys, which probably have a 2" clearance to combustibles at each floor pentration, with an open chase running from the basement to the attic.  This can be blocked using sheet metal air barriers, using fire-rated duct mastic to seal the seams, standard mortar (mixed with bonding agent) to bond to the masonry, and can-foam or duct mastic to seal where it meets the wood or gypsum. Seal them both at the upperfloor ceiling, and in the basement. Left open it's literally sucking air out the top, depressurizing the house, sucking air in at every other air leak.

To insulate the attic, first wrap the chimneys with R15 rock wool batts starting at the upper floor ceiling, up to above where you intend to blow insulation and use steel wire (chicken wire fencing can work here) to hold it in place.  Roxul is now available thorugh the box store chains, and the goods designed for 16" o.c. spacing are fine if you're only looking at a depth of a foot, but the 23" inchers for 24" o.c. studs may be better.  You're looking at only one $35 bag of batts, either way, so just go with the 23 inchers.  You'l need to install either rigid board insulation or something else to keep the blown insulation a couple inches away from the roof deck or it may rot (1" is code min, but 2" is better.) make yourself some cardboard depth gauges, and blow it full of at least a foot of cellulose.  For 1000 square feet that's about 1200lbs of cellulose, or about $500 worth of goods. (Box store will give you a couple days free blower rental with that much cellulose, or you could have a pro do it.)

Between the air sealing and cellulose you'll be knocking another 8000-10,000 BTU/hr or so of heat load off the peak load, at a cost WELL below that of the geothermal required to support that load.

That's where to start- looks like a 20-24K reduction in heat load for about the cost of 1.5 tons of geothermal. I'm sure there is more around the fringes, but that would be the bulk of it. If you were re-siding you could cost-effectively do a foam-over on the walls and really knock it out. With a blower door test and infra-red cameras you can spot any big air leaks in the walls, as well as any uninsulated or under-insulated wall cavities, which can often be easily blown from the exterior on vinyl-sided homes  by popping a vinyl clapboard and drilling into the cavity from the exterior. 

Anything less than this on the building envelope front would be a waste of oversized geothermal.  I'll bet you can get the heat load on this place to the 2-ton range without breaking the bank, at which point you'd be looking at the rare sub-$20K geothermal installation rarely seen in these parts. (I've never seen one my self, but I've heard rumors that they might exist. The average in CT a couple of years ago under their rebate program came in at $9K/ton at an average size of something like 5-6 tons.)

Thank you so much! Great info right there! Okay I just went outside and looked behind a piece of siding, it does have the fan fold foam insulation under it!

The basement is half finished to just use for work out. BUT my dad did put the R-13 Batt insulation on the walls (field stone foundation) HALF the basement ceiling/first floor has R19 insulation that he started to do before he just insulated the foundation.

I thought the window were just vinyl but they are low-e, bunch of different sizes in the house but they are all the same. There are 22 Total.

You have some pretty close guessing because the house is 32x28

All the walls are cellulose and the attic is batt insulation with maybe 2" of cellulose blown over it ALSO I forgot BUT the second floor when he sheet rocked all the rooms between the plaster & lath ceiling and the drywall he put up he put foam board in for more insulation.

I have been redoing the heating system to add more zones in, putting it on hold but currently only have radiators on first floor and it keeps the upstairs comfortable.

He told me he used to burn about 500-600 gallons of oil, BUT he also burns wood here and there and usually runs an electric fireplace thing in the living room when he would be in there. (675watts) I have yet to put oil in as he filled it up this summer (300 gallons) and am at about 1/3 tank right now.

I looked by the chimney and it s framed right around where it goes up from the basement, in the attic i could not really tell but looks like it is framed right around it. On one side of the house (woodstove side) there is about a 2x2' section going from top to bottom of house that my dad just turned into shelves. On the other side he has our fridge in there (I DO want to maybe take out this side chimney if I go Geothermal so I can open up the kitchen and living room.

Posted By oceanstatetuning on 14 Jan 2014 03:28 PM
Basement

Chimney

Basement Insulation unfinished

Heating system I have been working on

Low-E Windows

Attic insulation where I just put bathroom blower fan in

attic insulation

Foam he used between ceilings

In order-

Basement:

R13 batts in a studwall up against the foundation doesn't cut it- the risk of mold is high, and the air-tightness dubious at best.  The IRC calls out R5 for dew-point control for above grade wood sheathed walls, but with the fiber right up against the foam you're fine with as little as R4. You can re-use the studwall materials, but it needs at least an inch of foam between fiberglass and masonry, and air-sealed to the foundation sill.  It's also best practice to put an inch of EPS (not polyiso) under the bottom plate of the studwall and the slab as a capillary break against moisture draw into the wood, as well as a thermal break against the cool subsoil.  If the batts have foil facers, when you re-install, install them with the facer up against the foam, not the gypsum.

Chimney :

You can seal the cracks between the masonry & wood with an acoustic-sealant caulk in the basement.  Take a look where it penetrates the attic floor & insulation. Code requires a clearance to combustible insulation, which includes cellulose and kraft facers on batts.

Basement Insulation unfinished

As with the fully finished basement, you need air-tightness and sufficient foam-R between the fiber and foundation for this to remain mold-free. The foil faced iso at the window wells are fine, but use can-foam &/or FSK tape at the seams & edges, as appropriate, and seal/insulate the foundation sill and band joist all the way up to the subfloor of the room above.

Heating system I have been working on

Looks tidy enough- hard to say how it's plumbed just looking at the pic. The expansion tank appears to be on the small side for bulky old school radiators. Micro-zoning can lead to short-cycling the boiler if you don't have sufficient mass & or radiation on each zone separately.

Low-E Windows

Looks a U0.35 vinyl replacement window. Hopefully it was installed with backer rod & low-expansion foam sealing it to the framing, not merely stuffed with fiberglass (or left with a leaky unfilled unsealed void.)  If vinyl it could be problematic to install any sort of storm window over it, so it is what it is (and not terrible, if sealed & flashed properly during installation.)

Attic insulation where I just put bathroom blower fan in

The fan unit needs to be foam-sealed to the ceiling as part of your overall attic-floor sealing project.  Hopefully you put a sealed and insulated duct on the output, and vented it outdoors rather than into the attic (where it WILL create mold conditions in the proximate wood.)  Hopefully there is a decent backflow preventer on the fan too, otherwise it's just a big hole on the top of the house driving stack-effect infiltration rates through the roof (both literally and figuratively.)  The insulation looks like R11 foil faced fiberglass or rock wool of 1960s vintage, with a spritzing of cellulose overblow. The foil facer is on the WRONG SIDE of the assembly, and the batts probably experience performance-robbing condensation (or even frost during the deep-freeze) inside the fiberglass at those facers when it gets really cold out. If you increase the total depth of the insulation to at least 10" that won't happen, but a foot is better.

attic insulation

To add insulation without damaging the roof deck sheathing you'll need to install something beween the rafters at the soffits to keep the insulation off the roof deck. Otherwise, same comment about foil facer being on the improper side for this climate. (Kraft facers would have been OK, since when they get wet from condensation they become more vapor open, which lets the moisture through at a reasonable rate, as long as it's air-tight to the conditioned space side.)

Foam he used between ceilings

The foil facers on the rigid iso are powerful vapor barriers. As long as you only have ONE layer, and it's on the conditioned space side of the assembly you won't have much of a moisture trap.  But with foil-faced batts above it can be a problem, particularly in places where the batts are installed with the facers pretty air-tight with the joists. With another half-foot or more of cellulose above the batts it won't be a dew-point problem but there still could be a drying rate issue. Moisture can get into that space between the foil-faced iso and the foil facer on the batts by any number of paths, but the primary drying path would normally be vapor-diffusion, and that requires materials much more water-vapor permeable than foil facers.  If much of the ceiling has been done with the R5 iso it would be prudent to remove the foil-faced batts above those areas before insulating.

I would love to just gut everything and re-do it all BUT I did that with my other house and yes it came out nice and all the amount of time and aggravation just wasn't worth it to me.

Right now with the house I just want to:

1. Finish my upstairs bathroom (Was Green and yellow tile and the tub leaked for years causing the subfloor to rot out, almost done finishing)

2. Do something for a Central Air/ Geothermal

3. Build Addition off the barn with concrete floor for my lift.

For this Geothermal though I need to figure out what size I need, if I should do 2 systems (one in attic and one in basement) or just a single, And the rest of the parts I will need to do so.