without pressurizing/depressurizing and measuring the air flow you really can't tell how tight it is.

Or at least pick a hot humid day and report the pints per hour that the AC is removing (plus indoor and outdoor relative humidity and temps). The price is right and it may be more accurate than a blower door test (and is certainly more accurate than your inspector).

Posted By Dana1 on 02 May 2013 10:31 AM

Posted By jonr on 01 May 2013 07:07 PM
> I just had a visit from an insulation contractor, and he said all house is already very tight.

If he didn't do an actual test, his assessment isn't likely to be very accurate.

Nobody, (and I mean NOBODY) can walk into a house, poke around at the insulation and declare it "tight".  It's a relative term, and while one could easily state that it's "tighter than some shack with no wall insulation" with a visual inspection, without pressurizing/depressurizing and measuring the air flow you really can't tell how tight it is. Curt Kinder's ("engineer") foam installers converting attics into conditioned space are dedicated & competent insulation installers, but he still doesn't let them break down before doing the house pressurization & theatrical smoke test to find & fix the other 3 square feet of air leakage that was hard to see & fill on the first pass.  The problem with air leakage is that it's really sneaky, it doesn't take much to hide quite a cross-section of leak.

The framing complexity of multi-story Victorians have a great number of possibilities for gaps in the insulation and thermal bypass air channels, which much easier to find in pressurization/depressurization testing in combination with infra-red imaging.  If the house tests under 1000cfm/50 without the IR imaging, fine, it's not going to have excessive natural air leakage, but it could still have significant gaps in the insulation.

I suspect the contractor declaring it "tight" didn't have the requisite air sealing & testing equipment or experience, and saw that it was already had substantial retrofit insulation, making it a low-volume low-profit job for the services they actually DO provide.

Sorry, my bad, what he actually said is that the steps Dana1 listed at the beginning of this thread as low hanging fruit that should be done before geo is installed were done. He did say only that the work was "done" he did not vouch for how well it was done. From what he could see it looked like they did a thorough job. What I should have said is the house is tighter than I feared. I didn't ask for the test, I asked for a visual inspection as a first step.

It never ceases to amaze me how poorly a typical foam retrofit (or even new construction) project functions as to actual air sealing performance. I work with several crews and all know what we are trying to achieve and want to make it happen, but a typical smoke QC job is 4-6 hours, a minimum of 3 complete iterations of smoke and foam.

Posted By engineer on 02 May 2013 10:05 PM
It never ceases to amaze me how poorly a typical foam retrofit (or even new construction) project functions as to actual air sealing performance. I work with several crews and all know what we are trying to achieve and want to make it happen, but a typical smoke QC job is 4-6 hours, a minimum of 3 complete iterations of smoke and foam.

I have learned, and continue to learn, a ton from you guys (would've been 8 tons, but there were some design issues....). I think I have found a local resource who is qualified to review and do some performance testing of the system. He was involved in the very early stages of our system install, then left the intalling company. I have an initial meeting set up with him in a few weeks to discuss our geo experience so far.

I have a small progress report, and some additional information. We had an outside party out to the house yesterday, and his opinion matches a lot of what's been said here. We will meet with our installer next week, with this info. If anyone is interested in the details, send me a PM, I do not want to post it on a public forum before we meet with our installer.

I got the following information about the manifold from our new contact at the installing company:
2 6 port manifold reverse return
200' wells 10' apart 1 1/4 ' leader

Thanks for helping me get to this point! I am pretty sure I couldn't have done it without you!

I wanted to provide an update.  What follows is an email from our installer.

Good morning Tamar,
Thank you for discussing with me on Tuesday your latest ideas about the system repairs...we have decided to hire a 3rd party mechanical engineering firm to provide additional support and expertise with the repairs required on your system. ...They will conduct their own heat loss...and will evaluate your mechanicals at that point. From there we will be able to determine the necessary steps...We want to be 100% sure that you are more than satisfied after the repairs and we believe bringing on a 3rd party will help ensure that will happen.

What a bizarre situation! - your contractor looks to be essentially abdicating technical responsibility for your satisfaction through bringing in a 3rd party to manage mitigation. It is impossible to predict how that will pan out.

It is also virtually impossible to recommend an expert based solely upon credentials - there is such an alphabet soup of credentials out there; most of them consisting solely of paying big bucks to sit through a few days of training and, perhaps, taking some sort of creampuff test to get the certificate. Know that these training and certifying organizations depend on high throughput of butts in chairs, and if their testing is made rigorous enough to wash out the incompetent, the butt / chair count declines precipitously, killing their business model.

I've sat through a bunch of such nonsense, much of it subsidized by a local utility trying to do the right thing. One time I showed up 7.5 hours late for an 8 hour training and then aced the two hour internet-based test in less than 15 minutes. Voila! Certified to perform deep energy audits qualifying clients for 5 figure loans toward energy upgrades!

I know that sounds overly pessimistic, but you should insist upon seeing references and knowing actual experience of this third party savior before buying in.

The "we don't understand this stuff very well" installer bringing in a well selected consulting engineer is a prudent move and doesn't imply that responsibility is being abdicated.

I understand that this probably sounds unusual. I hope my whole situation is unusual. The well-boring started almost 3 years ago (Aug 9, 2010 to be exact). Believe me, at this point the proposal that we receive for a fix is going to have several sets of eyes on it...hopefully even some from this forum, if you haven't lost interest in my situation!

I am not sure exactly what prompted this decision to involve a 3rd party, but I was actually hoping they would, since they clearly haven't been successful with the many band-aids that have been applied to they system over the past couple of years.

the installer bringing in a third party absolutly passes the buck in design/performance responsibility. Make sure you get some residential references for the party used.

That's why I find it bizarre!

I'm not saying it won't work, could be a knight in shining armor, but its impossible to forecast based on alphabet soup.
Joe's right - check references.

In early June I gave the company a nicely worded written ultimatum that outlined our dissatisfaction with the system performance and reliability so far, and also with their handling of our concerns. I am now working with a new rep who genuinely seems interested in making things right. My ultimatum included an expectation that all repairs/changes would be made by mid-September. Unspoken was what our next step would be if we weren't satisfied....but I think it was probably pretty clear.

I provided my research, which included selected posts from this thread, an analysis by the certified installer who left the company mid-install (he was very surprised at the current control strategy) and other stuff I've found on the web.

About a month ago, the lines to the SpacePak started freezing (on the 3rd floor). We think this is new behavior this year, but are not sure that the txv and blower motor failures were not caused by this, which would make it an ongoing problem that wasn't diagnosed. It required a couple visits by the company's new geo guy, and helped bolster our case.

New rep was out on Tuesday to take measurements for a buffer tank and new heat loss analysis, and he mentioned some elements of their tentative plan, which included pulling the Phoenix and adding a boiler and buffer tank. Then he said the control strategy would by W2W geo, then SpacePak, and gas boiler last. I expressed surprise that the SpacePak would be 2nd instead of third, but also said that we were expecting them to be the experts, and to back up their decisions with data that they could present to us.

Now, it seems, they've decided they need another opinion. From what I can tell, it does them no good to bring in an unqualified mechanical engineer for an opinion. They are still ultimately responsible for our satisfaction. I think the main reason for the email announcing the decision was it's unlikely they'll have everything in place by our original due date...so it was acknowledging they may need an extension to do things right.

I think our options are to stick it out and see if they can make it right, or to request our money back and start over with someone else. If you guys see other options from your side of the fence...lemme know! I might be missing something obvious.

sounds like they don't have confidence that they can even understand the issues.

Let me get this straight. It is still the same installer who installed your system, and had everything wrong, from loopfield design, flow, load and system staging....?

Now they want to add another boiler? What are they trying to achieve with that. They have to fix the flawed infrastructure first. What did they say to the flow issues with the loopfield?

Posted By docjenser on 28 Jul 2013 05:31 PM
sounds like they don't have confidence that they can even understand the issues.

Let me get this straight. It is still the same installer who installed your system, and had everything wrong, from loopfield design, flow, load and system staging....?

Now they want to add another boiler? What are they trying to achieve with that. They have to fix the flawed infrastructure first. What did they say to the flow issues with the loopfield?

Yes, this is the same installing company.

I don't know what their proposal will look like, except I know they are going to lead with the W-to-W geo controlled by the outside temp (at least as it stands now). I was also told (though I haven't seen it in writing) that the air return to the Spacepak is insufficient.

I made it clear that I want them to come back with a plan and explain it to us before they do any work. I can't even speculate what is going on behind the scenes.

Doc, the 10 ft of 1 inch pipe should have been replaced...I found out from one of the original installation techs (no longer with this company) that it was called for in the plan. It is front-and-center; in fact it's hard to work on the system and not bang your head on it, so there's no way that doesn't get replaced.

Posted By joe.ami on 26 Jul 2013 09:03 AM
the installer bringing in a third party absolutly passes the buck in design/performance responsibility. Make sure you get some residential references for the party used.

So...I got the first name/company name of the person that they want to bring over to our house Friday morning. It's a large firm, with lots of geo experience, but as far as I can tell, all of it is commercial (campuses seem to be their specialty). Based on this, I think this is someone calling in a favor, rather than the installer hiring an outside party. Not sure what I think about that.

Well it's the out come we are after not necessarily the course. At some point we are going to have to believe in your contractor or fire him. Let's believe first.

Can anyone tell me what CxA and DES certifications are? These are the certs listed for the individual from the 3rd party who has provided recommendations. I'm not happy, either with the amount of time it has taken, the lack of back-up documentation, or how far afield they seem to be from what has been recommended on this thread.

They seem to be set on replacing the Phoenix with a boiler, adding a buffer tank, and replacing on short section of 1" pipe in the loopfield with 1.5" pipe and making serveral modifications to controls. They say there is not an equipment sizing problem, based on their evaluation, but they do not have that evaluation to provide to me. The SpacePak, on the other hand, was installed incorrectly, and needs to be moved, duct size needs to be increased, and return air has to be increased. I feel like I was some novice's extra credit experiment.

Of course you have enough capacity there to heat your house if you add it all up, but when does what come online at what temperature to carry what load?. Sure, going from 1" to 1.5" is a way to improve. How about 2"? Let them run the pressure drop calcs and verify what is a good size. What are they trying to achieve to replace the phoenix with a boiler? Your 3 ton high temp is too small to carry the load of the house, do they want to supplement with a boiler going through the buffer tank.
I am not saying that this is bad, but I am trying to encourage you to ask them to show to you why there are doing what they are doing. Make sure they have a rationale behind it, and did their homework.

Last time I checked, DES stands for "Department of Economic Security and certifies childcare workers "https://www.azdes.gov/main.aspx?menu=128&id=4919
CxA to my knowledge is a building commissioning certification, but it does not indicate in depth knowledge of geo or hydronic systems.

Thanks, Doc. I couldn't find a DES related to HVAC, either.

I am at my wits end trying to get information out of this company. I have told them multiple times that if they are recommending a solution other than what has been suggested in this thread, that they'll have to show me how they got there. Yesterday I finally got the report from the 3rd party, and when I said I was not convinced that the equipment was correctly sized, I got this response:

"....Regarding the equipment, our analysis right now shows that we do not have any issues with sizing. As the preliminary findings from MEP demonstrated, and which we support, the primary issues with the forced air is air flow. With the radiant, the primary issue is equipment staging and wiring. We do have some piping issues, but they are minor. On the whole, we do not have “major overhaul” solutions ahead of us. "

Can anyone send me a sample of a written contract that they use with customers along with the language of how disputes are to be handled??? Thanks!

their approach seems to be ....baffle em with bull stuff