In 2008 we had a 5 ton  EarthLinked DX system installed. Worked good for about a month then some stand pipe in the compressor unit broke and released 27 lbs R22 into my house. Installer fixed it and re charged the system. That spring I noticed that one half of the area where the field is was humped up from frost heave while the other half was flat. Told the installer only half the field was working. He laughed at me and said that's impossible (later discovered dirt had entered the system when it was being put together and blocked some lines).
Spring of 2010 system quit. Again it had released all the R22. Installer said problem was in the field. The manifolds were uncovered and found that one line had pulled out of the manifold. This also allowed the field lines to be contaminated with dirt & water. It took almost three months to get the system running again.
Noticed that the pump that circulates water to the storage tank had quit. This was fixed after about a month of complaining.

January 27th, 2014, 5 years and 27 days after installation, Field failed again. The full warranty for the field expired at the 5 year mark. EarthLinked states they will furnish parts but labor, service call & excavation are not covered and parts must be installed by an EarthLinked installer or the warranty for parts will become invalid.

Here's another big problem, the original installer who was EartlLinked certified went out of business and filed bankruptcy. There are no other certified installers in my area (Spokane, Wa). The closest is 427 miles away in Bosie Id. A service call from there would be very expensive.
During the 5 years we have had the system it has not been functional for 537 days.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

How have you been heating & cooling the house for the other ~1300 days?

Yes. The cooling worked better than heat.
What I now have is a very expensive electric heater.

It seems apparent that the first installer did a poor job. I do not think I would repair the system. If you are going to put money into excavation, parts, labor and service, why not get a new system with a new warranty. After you deduct the money you are about to spend and a 30% tax credit, it may not be much more.

Call me bias, but this is a story I hear over and over again with DX systems.

Some of the issue might be bad luck, but some of what you mention here appears to be also inherent issues with DX systems.

HDPE water based loops are simply less prone to have those issues. HDPE pipe is warranted for over 50 years, and we give all our customers in addition a lifetime guarantee for the loop.

Posted By Boomologist on 20 May 2014 08:29 PM
Yes. The cooling worked better than heat.
What I now have is a very expensive electric heater.

So you've been heating solely with the auxilliary resistance heaters?

Posted By Dana1 on 21 May 2014 12:05 PM

Posted By Boomologist on 20 May 2014 08:29 PM
Yes. The cooling worked better than heat.
What I now have is a very expensive electric heater.

So you've been heating solely with the auxilliary resistance heaters?

Yes. Any savings from installing a geo system will never be realized due to the high electric bills in Feb, March.

Installing another system is not an option now. I'm on a very limited fixed income. I inherited a small sum which we used to install the system.
I have complained to EarthLinked both before and after the warranty expired. They tell me it's the installers fault and not theirs and as I stated before he went bankrupt.
We may be forced sell out and move into town.

In the absence of competent & local geo contractors getting your bills under control is probably going take improving the building's thermal performance (which would take some analysis) or PV solar (when the price gets low enough, which may take a couple of years), or not fully heating some zones and using a wood stove or a mini-split to cover the major portion of the load for a main zone.

In some parts of WA you can get $1000 back from the utility for installing a mini-split if you've been heating primarily with resistance electricity, but there might be some awkwardness to explaining that despite the presence of the geo system that it is not actually functional, nor can it be cost-effectively repaired. A 1-ton cold-climate mini-split is about four grand (three if you can get the rebate), and can cover a pretty decent sized zone with an open floor plan. A wood stove can put out more heat for roughly the same installed price, but you have to be committed to dealing with the bulk fuel issues (and it won't air condition.) In a Spokane climate a mini-split will have nearly the same efficiency of a so-so geothermal system (and way better efficiency than the atrocity that was committed by the installer/designer of your system.) But it's a mini-split- it heats/cools just the room that it's in and any adjoining spaces with large convective air transfer, but no direct heating/cooling distribution to other rooms. That can work pretty well for smaller homes with open floor plans, not so much for big homes with long hallways and lots of doored-off rooms. If you can get the bulk of your heat from the mini-split you could cut your power use by half or more. It's clearly a band-aid and not a total solution for your predicament, but it works. (I doubt you can get the current system fixed and running up to any kind of efficiency for that little cash.)

Should there ever come a time when a competent geo contractor starts working your area it may be worth reworking the hardware from the original system, but don't hold your breath while waiting. I'm sure you can find competent contractors in Seattle & Portland, but they're probably not going to be interested in supporting an orphaned, previously botched system in Spokane.

And this is why I always warn customers of DX systems, i have heard this same story time and time again and it has been discussed at length here. As a Portland installer(not of DX or Earthlinked) I would not touch that system, you either need to abandon it and start over unfortunately. There is no point in putting good money after bad and if you repair the loop chances are you will be in the same predicament in another 5 years.

Adding a minisplit to help cover the load might be a good idea for a much lower cost, you also might want to try a true ground source heat pump installer in your area, they are not an Earthlinked dealer but look for Waterfurnace, Climatemaster, Geocomfort, Hydron Module and others and they "might" take a look at your system or have a simple solution.

Thanks for the good advice. I agree that throwing more money into the field doesn't sound like a good idea.
Our house is 3168 sqft and has 12 foot ceilings in 1584 sqft. It's an old school house that was built in 1894. We moved it to our property and set it on a full basement and completely remodeled the inside. For 20 years we heated it with only wood (3 stoves 15+ cords per winter). I got too old and crippled up to do wood anymore. After my aunt passed away I inherited a little money and we had the house insulated & new windows put in. Wood consumption dropped to 1 1/2 cord per winter. A year later we installed the geo system and we went for 5 years without burning any wood. In winter it would keep the house warm but the best was air conditioning in summer. In August/Sept we could cool the entire house to 60 with no problem. 100+ outside and we're inside wearing sweat shirts & sweaters.

Not knowing much about these systems, I'm curious if we can use our existing system and use something else for the field.
I will be calling some of the local dealers this week.
Thanks again to everyone for the advice. It gives me a direction to go.

I feel for you and wish you luck. Hope all turns out well.

If you are on a well you might be able to use the well water as the field fluid with a heat exchanger to the DX unit and use some of the existing system. Without much cost.

"Not knowing much about these systems, I'm curious if we can use our existing system and use something else for the field.
I will be calling some of the local dealers this week."

the easiest way, depending on water quality and regulations in your area would be a DX to water exchanger as was mentione. I think you are ignoring the obvious however;

Sloppy practices of your installer have contaminated the entire system. It's the loopfield now, it will be the compressor next.

Earthlinked trains and certifies their installers it would be difficult for them to swear off all responsibility if their feet were really held to the fire.

Earthlinked trains and certifies their installers it would be difficult for them to swear off all responsibility if their feet were really held to the fire.

I am talking to an attorney today.

We are on a well that I dug back in the 70's. It's shallow at 38 feet and in solid basalt. Flow is about 15gpm. How could this be used? We also have a 2 acre pond near the house that has 10-12 feet of water most of the year but in late summer it drops to about 5 feet. Could it be used?

Posted By Boomologist on 21 May 2014 10:55 PM
Thanks for the good advice. I agree that throwing more money into the field doesn't sound like a good idea.
Our house is 3168 sqft and has 12 foot ceilings in 1584 sqft. It's an old school house that was built in 1894. We moved it to our property and set it on a full basement and completely remodeled the inside. For 20 years we heated it with only wood (3 stoves 15+ cords per winter). I got too old and crippled up to do wood anymore. After my aunt passed away I inherited a little money and we had the house insulated & new windows put in. Wood consumption dropped to 1 1/2 cord per winter. A year later we installed the geo system and we went for 5 years without burning any wood. In winter it would keep the house warm but the best was air conditioning in summer. In August/Sept we could cool the entire house to 60 with no problem. 100+ outside and we're inside wearing sweat shirts & sweaters.

Not knowing much about these systems, I'm curious if we can use our existing system and use something else for the field.
I will be calling some of the local dealers this week.
Thanks again to everyone for the advice. It gives me a direction to go.

If you can heat the place with 1.5 cords of wood in a ~6800 HDD climate like Spokane the GSHP is ridiculously oversized: 

The wood stove is probably no better than 75% efficient, but lets call it 80% to worst-case it.  Assume again that you're using something dense like apple for firewood, at about 28MMBTU/cord. 

Burning that 28MMBTU of wood in an 80% efficiency woodstove delivers ~22.5 MMBTU of heat to the house per cord. 

Times 1.5 cords you're looking at ~34MMBTU of heat over 6800 HDD.

That's 5000 BTU/degree-day.

With 24 hours in a day that's 208 BTU per degree-hour, (which seems VERY low for a 3000' house- I'd expect 3-4 times that even for a decently retrofitted & tightened house.)

Spokane's 99% outside design temp is +7F, but let's use +5F (so I can do the math in my head without more coffee. :-) ) At +5F you're ~60 heating degrees below the presumptive +65F heating/cooling balance point (on which the heating degree days were calculated.) That implies a heat load of 208 BTU/degree-hr x 60F degrees= ~12,500 BTU/hr, which simply has to be wrong. (That would be the heat load of a super-insulated house.) But it's not inconceiveable that the true heat load is only 3-4x that (maybe it was 5-6 cords/year instead of the prior 15 cords?)

If you have power consumption data for a specific winter billing period and the EXACT dates of the days between meter readings that it covered, and your zip code (for weather data), that would be sufficient to put a true upper bound on your actual heat load using the kwh/heating degree-day data to infer the heat load.

A couple reasons for such a high wood use before we insulated & installed windows was the 12 foot tall ceilings, very drafty windows and no insulation. The windows were the originals with wood frames that were rotted in places and the frames shrunk over time. Whenever the wind blew slightly the curtains would move.
The building has rough cut 2x8 inch walls that were blown full of cellilous insulation and 16+ inches of the same in the attic space. The basement is also insulated to above the building code.
The windows were the best we could find.
From the little research I've done I agree with you that the system was over sized. Our TOTAL electric consumption when the geo was working properly averaged $50-60 in summer and about $100-120 in winter. That's for geo-system, lights, well pump, hot water, etc.
When the field broke and we were running on the backup resistance heat (no wood) our total electric usage went up to $331 in Jan, $247 in Feb, $163 in march.
I have kept very good records of our electric usage since installing the unit.
I really liked the idea of having no flame to heat the house (I retired from firefighting) plus the additional benefit of a super air conditioner.

Curious about something. When my field broke before it resulted from one Cu tubes pulling out of the manifold. Would this be a result of frost heave? The ground swelling more at the manifold that out in the field? I suspect thats where it failed again.

Could have been frost heave. Could have been poor installation practices, could've been a bad backfill with no crusher dust......

Today I dug up the manifold where it broke last time. Sure enough, a tube broke loose. I believe this is due to frost heave because even though it's almost June there is still very hard, frozen ground above the manifold but the ground is free of frost two feet from it. The manifold is 8 feet from the surface.
I may repair it and just use this system for air conditioning in the summer and figure out something else for heat.

On a system like mine is there a way to have it cool outside air between heating cycles? That should put some heat back into the ground when it's not pulling heat out of it for the house.

Can't cool outside air, you would have to cool the house, which obviously would then need reheating.

Was just thinking that if the system ran continuously it could heat the house part of the time and when not heating the house it could draw heat from outside and put it back in the ground for future use. Guess I'm just dreaming.

Also, Heard from EarthLinked. They will replace the manifold BUT it will only be delivered to a certified Earthlinked dealer and must be installed by them. That's 427 miles one way and to do the job properly will take at least 4 days. I'm screwed. Thanks EarthLinked. I now have a $20,000 electric furnace that isn't very efficient.

Would it be possible to take the same amount of copper tube that's in the ground, make it into coils, put it in a box with a fan and use that instead of a field?

"Was just thinking that if the system ran continuously it could heat the house part of the time and when not heating the house it could draw heat from outside and put it back in the ground for future use. Guess I'm just dreaming."

Well you are dreaming of an air source heat pump. they do have some low ambient units now (works in very cold outside air). It would be easier (and probably cheaper) to buy one vs make a Frankenstein version.

"Would it be possible to take the same amount of copper tube that's in the ground, make it into coils, put it in a box with a fan and use that instead of a field?"

Same answer.

"Also, Heard from EarthLinked. They will replace the manifold BUT it will only be delivered to a certified Earthlinked dealer and must be installed by them. That's 427 miles one way and to do the job properly will take at least 4 days. I'm screwed."

Obviously that is not reasonable. I would try to find a local contractor willing to get involved and then offer Earthlinked a compromise of a contractor in the absence of THEY providing you with one.

Today I dug up the manifold where it broke last time. Sure enough, a tube broke loose. I believe this is due to frost heave because even though it's almost June there is still very hard, frozen ground above the manifold but the ground is free of frost two feet from it.

You may want to surround the manifold with a non-frost susceptible fill material such as gravel. Including an area underneath it that can hold any water that makes it down there.

Posted By jonr on 01 Jun 2014 11:48 AM

Today I dug up the manifold where it broke last time. Sure enough, a tube broke loose. I believe this is due to frost heave because even though it's almost June there is still very hard, frozen ground above the manifold but the ground is free of frost two feet from it.

You may want to surround the manifold with a non-frost susceptible fill material such as gravel. Including an area underneath it that can hold any water that makes it down there.

What you don't know jon is the manufacturer dictates the backfill material. Variation from that isn't recommended.

Hi,
The soil where the field is consists of clay, without any rocks or gravel, that is sub-irrigated. Right now there is standing water 6 feet below the surface. At times it will rise to 4 feet. The field is 8 feet down so it is in saturated clay all the time.
Before installing the system I had a long chat with EarthLinked about the soil/water conditions. They assured me that this would the best soil because of close contact.

I have thought of surrounding the manifolds with a well or large box of some kind but with the water I don't think it would work.
I believe this was a very poor system design for my area. It may be ok in a desert where there's no moisture in the ground.
Thanks

I think that the manifold needs to be raised up far enough that it isn't sitting in water/ice. Plus whatever non frost susceptible fill the manufacturer recommends.

"It may be ok in a desert where there's no moisture in the ground."

Unfortunately dry sand conveys btu's much more slowly and with the limitation of not being able to add a bunch of loop to compensate, DX is not a good canidate for those conditions.

DX systems are viable. It is often the design that fails not the product.

For instance if your system was designed heavy to ensure downtime every hour for adjacent soil to thaw, then you wouldn't be crushed by frost.

"For instance if your system was designed heavy to ensure downtime every hour for adjacent soil to thaw, then you wouldn't be crushed by frost."
Good thought but I think I'm done with the field in the ground. Too difficult to locate problems and fix them.

I have a heat/cool contractor who is willing to look at the system and make recommendations. He is thinking of replacing the field with an above ground exchanger and using my existing system (compressor, air handler, etc.)

Good Luck, just consider looking into a ASHP system price (complete) before spending too much "modifying" a system that likely has lots of damage to the compressor after pumping itself dry a few times.

Hi all,
Just wanted to thank everyone for the advice. After a lot of thought we decided to use the existing "A" coil and install a new 5 ton 2 stage air source heat pump. It's been running for about 3 weeks on air conditioner mode and seems to be doing a good job. It's been 90-100 outside and it will maintain 65 in the house. (Friends visit us and after awhile they go back outside to warm up) As near as I can tell it is adding an extra $30/month to our electric bill which is about the same as the geo system. Hope it works as well in heat mode.
Thanks again,
Ron

Was also curious if instead of using copper tubes in the ground in a low pressure system would PEX pipe be a better material? It's more flexible. Not that I'm going back to geo.

"After a lot of thought we decided to use the existing "A" coil"

If it's working I'm going to guess the installer changed the metering device (installed a new piston or TXV)

"Was also curious if instead of using copper tubes in the ground in a low pressure system would PEX pipe be a better material? It's more flexible. Not that I'm going back to geo."

Refrigerent pressures easily exceed PEX ratings. However a water to air heat pump circulates water and antifreeze through HDPE pipe. These systems are preferred by the majority of geo pro's (to DX systems like you used to have).

"If it's working I'm going to guess the installer changed the metering device (installed a new piston or TXV)"

He did add a TXV. He also said the original installer didn't have a metering device on it and it was free flowing. Also found out my old compressor was a 2 stage but was wired to run as a single.

Also, I noticed the new installer didn't level the outside unit. It's about 2 inches off level. He is scheduled to do a one month check up soon. Should I insist on it being leveled? Will this harm the compressor?

Correct the old one would not have had a metering device as the refrigerant is regulated differently with Earthlinked. I'm not aware of a 2 stage Earthlinked system, so it maybe a compressor substitution. When working correctly the system is efficient without multiple stages.

Best practice is to level the system. If it is on a poly slab, you can pry up the corner and throw some pea gravel under it if you don't want to take it up with the installer. Not likely to harm it.

Does EarthLinked have a history of manifold issues. My system was put in in 08. We had some issues and finding a dealer was horrific. My dealer also went out of business. Someone can out for routine work and found a leak which ended up being the manifold. This winter we experienced our 2nd frozen field and had to thaw the field before we could excavate. We found that the smaller (it does look fragile) manifold had a broken "arm" up at the top. My system is still not operational. Having problems getting water out of it.

Can't help but wonder if the manifold is defective in design.

What you are describing are the inherent issue with direct exchange system. I know of a good amount of similar case, if not exactly the same.

Thank you, doc jenser. If anyone else knows of problems, please post

"Having problems getting water out of it"
Are your field tubes full of ice? I had frozen tubes which were full of ice. The only way I knew of to thaw them was with an arc welder connected to each end of a loop while keeping pressurized nitrogen connected to one end. At 80 amps it took a couple minutes to thaw a loop and when it did thaw it shot small cylinders of ice out the open end with such force they would easily penetrate skin.

Are you in the Spokane area? I did talk to someone here who had the same issues.

Bogey, got your message.
Can't be of much help, simply stated that I had seen about 8-9 failed direct exchange systems, most of them with leaking pipes somewhere in the ground.