Debunking 3 Geothermal Myths

the build show today we're talking geothermal heating and cooling i'm in beautiful and windy rhode island right now visiting my friend wade paquin at wkp construction and look at this gorgeous house behind me now wade's done several geothermal systems before including the one on this project that believe it or not it has four geothermal wells right over here under the ground we're going to be meeting with wade and his contractor to talk through three common myths i think that are out there about geothermal systems today's build show with wkp construction let's get going [Music] all right guys if you don't know him wade paquin wkp construction he's also shooting videos for us at buildshownetwork.com and lou his mechanical contractor a l mechanical right lou yes thanks matt all right so we're going to get into three myths before we do that let's explain where we are lou what are these pipes that we're seeing in front of us here at this house so matt these are four these are our four return legs going to our four geothermal wells um these are all inch and a quarter lines going down on the ground and out to our four wells we came up put in some manifold stations isolation valves draw offs this way we can maintenance and service each well independently gotcha so these are the four loops that are going to then go upstairs to your geothermal systems in this house right essentially what we're going to do with these four loops is we're going to manifold these together into a two inch main we're then going to take that two inch main bring it up to our mechanical space and put in our pressure controlled variable speed pump love it now in the future these guys are going to be shooting a couple of other videos about geothermal and about the mechanicals of this house that lu is putting in so make sure you go over to buildshownetwork.com sign up for our newsletter there so you can see those future videos but wait let's kick off the three myths in your experience what's the number one myth uh on geothermal or the number one thing you hear from clients about it every time cost every time it's price and so let's talk about that what is that price is it double or triple to go to geothermal compared to conventional equipment it's not double my experience before lou with some other systems seven years ago was maybe uh close to 50 percent okay now now i think we're seeing it's more like about 35 the the real big difference in cost is the additional of the drilling of the wells right that's an expensive component the house the ductwork oh that's pretty much the same whether you're putting a traditional three-ton compressor outside or not it's these wells in these loops right right you're still you still have a heat pump if you're going you know geothermals heat pumps so you'd still have an exterior condensing unit with a heat pump and an interior unit all the duct work all the infrastructure the the big difference is we don't have interconnecting refrigeration piping we're carrying uh glycol mixture geothermal pipes got it i think too also that if we looked at pricing this a traditional system with higher end equipment higher efficiency and so forth that the difference in price is mostly the well drilling really it really ends up boiling down to the wells because the equipment inside is very similar when you get into this higher efficiency equipment yeah smart one thing that i think is interesting on this job because you're coastal here we're in kind of a basement area that could be a future flood zone that you're being flood hardy you don't have outdoor equipment to worry about flooding on this house right no outdoor equipment at all with this system we've got a couple pieces of equipment going in two mechanical rooms here two mechanical spaces in an attic for the third unit but yeah all the equipment is now housed inside the house there is no external equipment that's pretty cool flood happens there's nothing to get damaged or to go away it's all underground right and it's also not being so close to the water we have nothing outside that can deteriorate from the salt yeah that makes sense what's the second myth would you say in your uh experience on these systems wade uh i think lou would agree with me reliability definitely reliability yes so talk to us about that later is that are these systems as reliable as conventional equipment yes if not more reliable nowadays the technology today with the heat transfer of the wells uh we now use closed wells instead of open wells years ago talk to me about that what does that mean open well versus close well so open wells is more of like a potable well that you'd have for your regular drinking water where we just pump the water out of the ground into the house we go through our coaxial heat exchangers we send the water back to the ground the biggest problem with that is you get a lot of sediment dirt some type of debris that ends up falling out the pumps and the heat exchangers in the system over time so nowadays with the closed wells we're we're not utilizing we're not touching the ground water so to speak that we're not bringing that water into the house right so in other words this loop here that's the return this is one continuous home run from here through the loop and then on the supply side all in one pipe right it's all in one pipe there are mechanical joints okay um but the piping that goes down in the well casing is a continuous loop all right and then you've got some some mixture of water and glycol in that loop that's going to transfer that heat from the ground to your heat exchanger in the house yes we actually use a inhibited propylene glycol and we'll run that down to about a 15 degree mix uh that way we get a little freeze protection meaning it won't freeze until it gets to 15 degrees correct that becomes our freeze point it's 15 now instead of 32 for straight water and it also gives us some inhibitors uh to help keep the pipes clean and make sure everything stays where it's supposed to got it very interesting all right number three what do you think is the third thing lou on uh on these that's kind of the myth of these systems well i would say i would say the third thing would be like longevity and you know kind of working in with reliability that the big thing was that the water was always an issue we would have to install special filters uh one type that we use is called a sandmaster it's a helical filter it allows the water to come in and be whipped into a scent like a centrifuge almost and that would separate the dirt and the sediment and cause it to go down a drain line some places were open wells you wouldn't have the filters or the filters wouldn't be working and then everything would get fouled now with the closed loop and the glycol much more reliable much more uh effective we get better heat transfer now than we did before meaning more efficient our coaxes don't we we don't have fouling on our coaxials we're now using with the technology today we're using variable speed pumps that are monitoring uh the pressure in the system at all times we have three-way control valves that are modulating inside the units to help maintain the performance and a properly installed geothermal heat pump you could get 25 years out of it wow more or more and then is that also 25 years out of these pipes or could those actually go longer than that oh they could definitely go longer we're talking about just the pump system and everything that's on the i mean a pump is a mechanical device at some point the pump is going to fail but if there's no you know if there haven't been any issues and no dirt and no reasons for the pump to fall it could easily run 25 years that's great so you could in theory get several decades out of this pipe system yes yes you could that's pretty awesome guys i really appreciate your time i'll put a link to lou's company here in rhode island in the description if you're not currently following this guy go follow wade on instagram he's doing some incredible coastal projects stay tuned for some future videos with wade knight and go check out his work on build show network i'll have a link to the description below where you can sign up for our newsletter and see what's new on wade's videos every week guys if you're not currently a subscriber hit that subscribe button below we've got new content every tuesday and every friday follow me on twitter instagram otherwise i'll see you next time on the build show [Music] you

Channel: Matt Risinger

Views: 243,640

Rating: 4.9284658 out of 5

Keywords: Matt Risinger, Build Show Network, The Build Show, Build

Id: GiLns7OFpiY

Length: 8min 21sec (501 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020