Geothermal advice needed. ....
Last Post 02 Mar 2017 11:22 AM by cmc8. 4 Replies.
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cmc8User is Offline
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24 Feb 2017 10:02 PM
Hi, Looking for advice as my first electricity bill as owner of geothermal unit home is outrageously high..I tried bit with minimal understanding was not able to provide many answers on the prerequisite questions. I also provided a longggg description of my challenges...although looks like i jumped atound alot.. 1) Where you live - hamilton Ontario 2) Heat loss/gain calculations for your home - don't kbow 3) Brand, size (model), age and type of heat pump - Polar Bear water source heat pumps ( 3 pumps) 4) Type of loop field (open/closed/vertical/horizontal) size and design parameters - i believe it's closed 5) Average cost/Kwh of electricity and consumption - peak $ .18/kwh 6) Entering and leaving air temperatures (EAT, LAT) measured immediately upstream and downstream of the heatpump - not sure 7) Entering and leaving water temperatures (EWT, LWT) measured at the geo system - not sure 8) Percent of load to be covered by geo and balance point - not sure 9) Installer's assessment of your systems operation. - not sure 10) Projected operating costs, actual operating cost and previous heating and cooling costs - unknown Background: near hamilton Ontario Canada i moved from a gas furnace home to a geo unit place last December that was equipped with 3 geothermal units. Ranch style home approximately 6000 sqft with an separate indoor swimming pool and room in total 1800 sqft. Main geothermal system (68k BTU) heats/cools the main part of the house. Two separate geo units in the pool room, one for heating the room while the second is a dehumidification/pool water heating system. Challenges I'm experiencing is I find the 3 units to be constantly on all the time. My overall hydro bill is about $1200/month which I suspect is primarily driven by the three geo systems and pool pump. I'm trying to see how to reduce the hydro cost but with little experience with Geo I'm not sure if I'm making things worst. Temp settings are set constant at 71F house, 79F for pool room, 84F for pool water. For house, I'm thinking of closing off air vents to area not normally use. However I read somewhere that it may actually reduce the efficiency geo unit. Also will top up insulation. But i thinking there must be something i can do with optimizing the units. For pool room/water, I'm stuck on what to do. The room furnace seems to be all the time and the water temp seems to always drop which triggers the heating system. As I'm new to the Geo concept I am not sure if this is normal or that something is off track. i recognize its winter months and therefore higher costs. Just seems to be so out of what I read about cost efficiency with geo system. Also reading some forum threads that the high cost maybe due to auxiliary heat usage during cold winter days. I'm not sure if my units have these auxiliary heat nor how to confirm usage. Sorry....really a newbie at this. Any help or advice would be most appreciated.
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26 Feb 2017 11:23 AM
Sounds like you should hire someone to do an energy audit.
cmc8User is Offline
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27 Feb 2017 08:43 AM
Energy audit us in the plan. I do feel though that the pool room heater for both air and water is rhe main culprit and hence targeting that first
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27 Feb 2017 11:44 AM
Probably. It's not hard or expensive to put meters on each of them.
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02 Mar 2017 11:22 AM
as the units are made from local contractor, I am unable to get specs or understand how to diagnose issues. My question would therefore be targeting the "norm" operations the unit that is used to heat home, there are 2 temperature readings of 43.3F and 39.2F..generally is this the incoming and outgoing water temperature, and is a difference of 4* in the good range. i read in another thread that the expectation in 10-12* My dehumidification units shows 82.9 and 84.6, which is a difference of 1.7*. That seems like really low although I think that is the pool water in and out rather than loop water. Any thoughts on these readings?
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