Geothermal Phase 1: Finished Drilling

Here's what our backyard now looks like after the drilling, trenching and lines are connected into the house. Of course, the lines come into to the laundry room's new drywall.

Geothermal Phase 1: Drilling Problems

Because of our yard's soil make up what had been planned to be a five day drilling turned into more like 9 days. The clay and gravel held up the first hole for over a day. They move a bit faster with each hole, looping the pipes and then trenching them to the house.

Geothermal Phase 1: Vertical Bore Holes

We will have a closed unit with four 150 foot vertical bore holes for the loop. Because of trees and the property lines a horizontal system wasn't deemed practical. Step 1 drill the holes.

Geothermal HVAC

While technically not a DIY project we decided to switch our oil boiler and an undersized SpacePak air conditioning system with a geothermal HVAC system. It should save us between $250 and $300 monthly on fuel bills. That's a very conservative estimate, I'll post the actual savings as we get the system up and running. Also we should drastically increase the comfort level in the house as well.

With the undersized SpacePak if the temperature got above 85 degrees the system just couldn't keep up. We would set the thermostat at 68 and parts of the house would reach 90 degrees in the evenings. If night time lows dipped into the mid 60s things would cool off but if it stayed warmer the house never could catch up. With the heat this summer we had to do something.

Laundry Room Interuption

The laundry room renovation took a back seat while we had a geothermal HVAC system installed. As luck would have it lines for the new unit had to come in through my brand new drywall. Now I will be covering the duct and pipes before moving on with the renovation of the laundry room.