I guess the photo is kind of deceiving. We installed a total of 7 slinkies each 150' long on that job. There were two trenches 12' wide by 150' long and one trench 4' wide by 150' long.

sorry for the confusion.

If you did a 6-pipe horizontal on a 4 ton it would take a trench about 400' long 2' wide 5' deep ( in indiana ). Our guys install that loop in about 6 hours.

I am relived to see that it is possible to do a 8900 Sq Ft House with only 9 Ton, I have run HVAC-Calc with several different options on a custom home I am building that is about 7000 Sq Ft I am in The Tulsa, OK area
I keep getting 8.5 ton max 6.5 Ton Minimum.   4 HVAC Contractors have bid wanting to install 16 to 18 Ton they say thay have done load calcs but won't give me a printed report I think they are using only a general rule of thumb.
( Hard to do a load calc without taking a set of prints with you they all just looked the plans over took notes and later faxed a bid. )

I plan using 5" of Closed Cell Foam in the walls, Insulated Slab, Unvented Attic with 6" Closed cell on roof deck underside. Some Radiant heat in selected areas etc, Zoned HVAC in bedrooms.

I did 450 Feet of trench 8'Feet wide lower 2 feet are solid limestone it took 4 weeks of Jackhammer work to excavate. We put in 6000 feet of 1" ( 6 1000' loops ) Bedded the pipe with limestone screenings
then layered the excavated limestone mixed with screenings to prevent any voids, We watered the trenches during backfill and compacted well I think this should work out fine. ( I Hope !)

I have built 2 other homes using geothermal by 2 different contractors both have wells and both work ok but I feel are really oversized as they have short  run times.

This house is for my own family and I am  planning on doing most of the HVAC myself, Planning on 1-5 ton for main house, 1-1.5 ton for master and a 2 ton for upstairs. Either Climate Master or FHP

We are digging footings next week so it will be a while before I have it finished.

Lots of great info on this site.

Ed,

It sounds like you are on the right track. Get us informed and let us know if we can help you.

We have a 3 ton system for a 1400sf home and we had 3 horizontal trenches at 3.5 wide and 130 feet long....gotta have some room to go horizontal.

Kelly......it sounds like the HVAC people didn't run actual calcs for you house. That's only 466 sf per ton. I'm NOT a pro or anything.....just from reading here for a long time. Pros??

Kelly,

How old is your house and where do you live?