Christine,

Wow!

What a nightmare! My heart goes out to you and your family.  It sound like taking things on yourself is the best course to get things to where they should have been to begain with.  It sounds like your family were taken advantage of big time.  Have you gotten any response from the builder or architectural firm?  You have to wonder how this builder and architect can sleep at night.

Please keep us posted on how you are doing and what sets you are going through to make your house what it should be......a home.

Regards,

Eric D

I don't understand how these contractors (idiots) sleep at night. Sorry about your dilemma. To figure out what's demanding so much energy, buy a clamp meter, pull the cover off of the electrial panel and check all the circuits. If your not into this stuff, get someone that is and give it a check. These high electric bills are what scares me about geothermal, although people tell in the business it's not that big a deal. I don't believe anything that anyone in the renewables business tells me without varification.

Topgas,

Though I agree with some of your posting, I feel the need to defend the geothermal industry as a whole. I think they are doing a good job of documenting their products. I have yet to see any geothermal system that draws more current then what is published in their manuals. In most cases with a properly installed unit, the current draw is at least 5% less then published. Performance is similar in the units I’ve worked on normally exceed the published performance ratings. I don’t know this to be a fact, but I expect that the industry puts the absolute worse case scenario in the manuals for current draw and performance. I have an idea that lawyers were involved somehow.

For anyone planning any type of construction project, they need to talk with more then one company and should get at least three quotes and references of folks they already have done work for. Even then, you need to keep a close eye on what they are doing, don’t rely on someone else. If you see something that doesn’t look right, start asking questions and if the answers don't seem to address your concern get someone from the outside to take a look and give you an opinion. Probably the most important thing, NEVER PAY IN FULL BEFORE the job is completed and agreeing that it was done correctly.

There are good companies and good folks out there. Finding them can be the challenge but can be done.

Regards,

Unfortunately you made the mistake that most homebuyers make, Sales people are not your friends, Real Estate agents, Mortgage brokers, Builders and it looks like Architects are not your friends, they are sales people looking to sell you something at the highest possible profit to themselves. Also building any house in the last couple of years was compounded by the fact that housing was booming and skilled contractors were in short supply. I'm sure if you had the same house build today, given the housing crash would be cheaper and better built. It sound like to me that the Architectural firm had a too cozy relationship with the builder and it lead to many conflicts of interest.
 
My first question to the builder about these metal 5-V crimp roof would be why didnt you state this detail BEFORE you accepted the contract to build the house. The whole thing stinks to high heaven to me. I don't know what your budget is like, but my suggestion would be to go to another architectal firm to look over the original blue prints, tell them what problems your having and see if they can suggest to design alterations to the house to solve many of these problems. Then get estimates from several contractors before having any work done.

As far as the high heating bills, if you had the thermal imaging done to determine you heat loss and the system is the correct size to heat you home, then I would guess your running on backup heat most of the time.      

Eric, although most of the manufacturers and reputable dealers are honest about the electricity usage of heat pumps, I have seen way too many advertisements in the vein of "free heat" or "uses a tiny amount of electricity", or "100% renewable energy". The bottom line is that geothermal heat pumps like any other heating system will use energy in proportion to the load. A good system will provide 3 or 4 units of heat for every unit of electricity, but for a large house in a cold climate such as mine, it will still use a very significant amount of electricity (in my case about 10,000kwH per year). In the winter months this can easily add up to a $4-500 electric bill. This is still better than a $5000 yearly oil bill, but it is the responsibility of the dealer/installer to make sure the owner knows this so that they have realistic expectations. If the system design and heat loss calcualtions are done correctly, the annual electric use can be predicted quite accurately and should be included as part of the design/bidding process.

I am a huge proponent of geothermal heating, don't get me wrong. However, it drives me nuts to see some of the marketing hype that leads customers to expect "free heat" and talks of $100 annual heating bills. Sure, a well-insulated house in a mild climate may only spend a couple hundred on heating/cooling per year, but here in the Northeast with high heating loads and relatively high electric rates, the average house will probably be in the $500-1000 range for an annual heating bill. In most areas this still represents a huge savings - no need to oversell geo with deceptive marketing.

Sorry for the rant - as I said most of the manufacturers and the good installers are upfront about the performance of the system and do a good job educating the customer, and from what I've seen the pros that are regulars here fall into that category.

Christine,

I know you probably didn't come to this board for sympathy, but you certainly have mine. I have been a housing contractor for 30+ years, and have seen first hand how unscrupulous contractors make life miserable for owners and honest contractors. There is a saying that contractors and politicians are tied for bottom place in the public opinion polls.

Have you pursued any legal action against the contractor? Can you file a complaint with the BBB or the State Licensing Board? Please do everything you can to be compensated for your loss and protect others from the same fate.

Well said!  

I also have to differ on your second point - I can only speak for my own installation, but my power consumption is actually about 10-15% higher than the manufacturer's spec for  a given running condition (taking into account both loop and hydronic temps and flow rates). I've been logging the performance for 5 months now, and it is pretty consistant. I've raised the point with the manufacturer, but gotten no response. It is a relatively small difference given the amount of money I'm saving with the system, but it bothers me that the published specs don't seem to be accurate. As you said, if I was writing the specs I'd err on the side of caution to avoid any issues.

That is too bad about your design/construction issues - you obviously put a lot of thought and effort into the house and got a raw deal. Let me know what you find on the operating temps. If you wanted to post or email some pictures of the heat pump installation, controls, pumps, etc, I'd be happy to look at them and give you my thoughts. It is seeming increasingly likely that your high power use may just be due to envelope issues and no fault of the geo system, though.

If you want a very basic way to look at the electricity usage of the heat pump and other things, "The Energy Detective" monitor (http://www.theenergydetective.com/store) looks like a neat unit and very easy to install. I have no experience with these (I use a WEL logger from ourcoolhouse.com), but the concept is good assuming it works. 

Do you have a sense of how much the heat pump runs on the coldest days of the year? In other words does it run 50% of the time, or nearly constantly?

 

Cnygeo,

I'm sure there will always be exceptions when it comes to equipment meeting manufacturer's spec sheets. In the case of yours, you mentioned in one of your past post about using the 220 three phase power charts. Is that what you are comparing to? Has the refrigerant level been changed or check? Do your loops use straight water or do you have a mixture? Point being, there are many things that can influence the numbers including the equipment used to measure. What brand and model units do you have installed and what is the calculated cop?

Regards,

Eric, I don't want to hijack Christine's thread any more than I already have with a lot of details on my own system. I'll put together some background info and data and start a new topic if you're still interested. Briefly, the 3-phase vs 1-phase compressor was a possible explanation I stumbled across digging through Copeland's compressor specs. Basically the 3-phase compressor matches pretty well with the published heat pump spec, and the single phase compressor matches pretty well with my data, so I theorized that the specs were developed with the 3-phase unit. But as there is no mention of single vs 3 phase in the specs and I am still waiting to hear back from the manufacturer, it is just a possibility - I could be completely wrong. Your experience that power and COP specs are generally conservative is interesting - I had wondered about this since it seems like the vast majority of systems aren't measured for COP except perhaps during commisioning.

Again I don't want to seem like I'm bashing a particular manufacturer or the industry - in the grand scheme of things my power/COP discrepancy is pretty minor (although I do want to get to the bottom of it) and overall I'm pretty happy with the quality and performance of my unit. I just hit $3000 savings to date for the season a few days ago.

Cnygeo,

Excellent idea!  Here is a LINK to a thread that we can use to talk more about performace of geo systems if you would like. 

Christine,

Sorry for the hijack in your thread.  I hope you keep us posted on how you and family are doing with your home issues. 

Regards,

I looked through the old photos, and definately no rigid foam insulation under the tarp.  There is just gravel, except where it goes over the basement and that is plywood. The photos reminded me of other details that I should mention.  The foundation has 2inch rigid insulation in areas that are covered with earth.  Where it is on the interior of the foundation (the portion that forms the slab floor), it starts several inches below the sill plate and goes down from there.  When the concrete floor was poured, they poured over the top of this 2" rigid insulation, and against the foundation they put a 1/2" foil backed insulation of some type.  In other words, the thermal break between the concrete floor and the foundation is this 1/2" insulation and not the 2" rigid insulation, on main floors as well as the basement. 

On the exterior walls that form the basement, there is 2" rigid insulation that starts about 3 ft. below grade and goes down to the bottom of the foundaton.  There is no exterior insulation at all on the walls of the walk-out basement that are not covered by earth (we have now added interior isulation).  There is some 2" rigid insulation on the very bottom of the exterior of this wall, that forms a break between the concrete patio and the foundation wall of the walk-out.

I hope this makes sense.  Well, it doesn't really make sense, but I hope you can understand what I'm trying to explain.

My temps are reading 72 and 110 at the moment and we are getting a pretty snow on this 1st day of spring.

I'll keep working on answering the other questions.  Thanks all for your help.

[b]Hang on one second.   Everyone missed one key thing.  The tank heater outside for the animals!  I have two running on our farm, nothing else not even a light bulb.  88-100kw a day costing 9-10$  per DAY!  and that is a tank that is wrapped in 2 inches of foam all sides and bottom.  In a poly tank.  An uninsluated metal tank sitting on the ground much worse.  Most tank heaters are 1500 watts that's like running your hairdryer on high all the time!  I know of one couple that ran a loop from the radient in the tank to keep it open.  I would be worried about the animals chewing on it and getting antifreze in the water and harming them.
[/b]

Er Why? Do you animals take hot showers? The only think I can thing of is to heat the outside drinking water up to a temperature that is above freezing so it doesnt freeze. Other than that, why would animals need hot water?

Yes up here in the north water freezes!  Animals do not like hot water, the tank heaters raise temps of the water to the upper 30's and use alot of kw in the process.

I didn't realize they were so big. A 1500W tank heater would certainly use a lot of juice - 1.5kW*24hours*0.12/kWh=$4.32 per day. That would be $120/month if it ran 24/7, but it shouldn't need to run all the time, even in January - thre are usually at least a few days well above freezing.

I didn't realize they were so big. A 1500W tank heater would certainly use a lot of juice - 1.5kW*24hours*0.12/kWh=$4.32 per day. That would be $120/month if it ran 24/7, but it shouldn't need to run all the time, even in January - thre are usually at least a few days well above freezing.

Yep that sounds right.  giveing me 9-10$ per day bills for jan and feb this year.  I yanked them out 2 weeks ago.  I am going to put in some sort of watering system before next winter.  I can pay off the system in one year of tank heaters!

Carlo,

There are a lot of postings in this thread and that makes it hard sometimes to read all of them, but the animal trough was pointed out earlier.  Here is the quote from an earlier post:



Regards,