Our long awaited heat pump is finally installed. We’ve only run it once so far, but the water in our 120 gallon tank seemed to take no time to heat up (unfortunately there are no monitoring systems to measure any efficencies). The contractor gave us a blind estimate (he never came to the site), and when his crew arrived, they were surprised to find we had no buried manifold. Instead, all our pipes came up through the concrete in two groupings of six pipes each (outgoing and incoming) spaced about 1-3/4” apart. This gave them no end of trouble to try to bend the pipes and my husband says it took about four hours for two men to fuse the HDPE pipe to their manifold. When they were done, the whole octopus looking mess stuck out from the wall about 12”, pushing the heat pump that had to go in front of it way too far out into the room (you would not have been able to open the utility room door). They also ran the loop pipes behind our drain that came down the wall from upstairs that is designed to be replaced with a drain pipe heat recovery unit – they were attempting to get them into their manifold in the correct order for equalized return resistance. We offered to move the drain pipe and move our washer and drier locations so they could keep their manifold (think Gideon’s knot) and switch the heat pump location. They opted to re-do the manifold and also did switch the heat pump location, which in the end worked out better for everybody. My husband had emailed a possibly easier way to attach the manifold (he drafts a lot at work with Sketchup – see uploaded photos https://alexispdx.smugmug.com/GeoInstall/n-N4Hh72/ ) after watching them wrestle for so long with the first manifold. In a follow up phone conversation, my husband was told in no uncertain terms that his configuration absolutely would not work – essentially the reason given was that there is a tried and true way of doing things and that’s that – my husband immediately took his word that our diagram would not work, but the contractor was clearly offended by his suggestion and started into a tirade, and, after a few minutes of telling about his 25 years of perfect geo installation with not a single call-back, then finished by threatening to withdraw from the job and take their equipment out. My husband is very easy going and was able to reassure him that he trusted his judgement – our only concern was that the pipes not interfere with the drain pipes, and if they would, he would be glad to move the drain.
My husband recorded the call for me to hear later, as I had requested to keep me in the loop (yes, I’m kind of the back seat driver type), and the only conclusion I could reach after listening to it several times was the man must be suffering from senility or some other cognitive disorder… after that phone conversation, we are feeling a little gun-shy and want to make sure any of our follow-up concerns are legitimate before we contact them again and that we won’t be perceived as further challenging his professionalism.
Two men wrestled once again with the pipes for five hours to get the pipes against the wall – see insulated pipe picture. In the end, they connected to the manifold so that the water is running one way in the trench (rather than the every other pipe running counter to the one next to it), I’m sure making the their fusing job a little bit easier. The contractor was so insistent on the importance of this that we were more than a little surprised he'd compromise.
We will be contacting the contractor next week.
Our questions:
1. The contractor states in his proposal that we will get a Water Furnace water heater tank. The tank that is installed is State Industries brand. Looks identical to the WF, is glass lined, but we paid $2400 for it, and want to make sure it is equivalent to what was proposed. We are thinking that maybe State Industries makes the WF tanks? Model # SGV-120-1OTO
2. The contractor did not hook up electric to the hot water tank – one of his crew (we have never met the contractor) said that’s on us as they were leaving. Their proposal is vague, simply stating “furnish and install WaterFurnace storage tank.” Is this standard practice in the geo industry? We have wired several houses together, but it seems like we might compromise the warranty if we did such an important part of the job, to say nothing of the fact that they are the permit holders.
3. They also did not include hooking up our potable or hydronic system water to the tank. We don’t so much mind the hydronic side because all of our pipes are 1” copper, and we want to keep things consistent. But is this too standard practice not to attach the new buffer tank to the existing water systems when installing geo systems?
4. The tank has four ports on the top – two are ¾” and clearly labeled hot and cold for potable water. The other two are listed as alternative attachments for a solar hot water panel hook up in the installation manual. We could not find a diagram to show how the coil is configured inside. My husband wants to attach at these 1” ports so that there is less resistance for our pump flow going to our hydronic heat exchanger. Would it work to have both the heat pump and our hydronic water go through the same pipe? Could you eliminate the plate heat exchanger and just use the coil in the tank? It would also be nice to have the potable hot water not effected by the heating pump changing the water pressure – in our current system the water pressure is slightly reduced when the hydronic system is running.
5. It’s a bit hard to see in the photo (we have not relocated the dryer and its duct yet), but there is a 1” pipe through the water heater tank's bottom cover plate. It does not show up on any of State’s diagrams, so we are not sure if it was installed by the contractor for tank fill or something, but just want to know its purpose?
6. I’m personally concerned about the loop pipes being bent so drastically at the floor – my husband said they heated the pipes with a heat gun to create the bends (and heated, and wrestled, and heated…) so the pipes should not be under any excessive stress and that the plastic virtually indestructible, but I’m not so sure. My experience with plastics comes from working retail when I was younger with plexiglass displays and cabinetry, and plastics often either turned white showing fatigue or shattered when put under prolonged stress, so I’m worried. Anyone know if there is a limit to how much stress HDPE plastics can undergo?
7. I'm curious why my husband's suggestion for the manifold configuration does not work? |