Wednesday, November 07, 2007

GeoThermal Heat Pump

Back in October 2006 I made an appointment to have Geothermal Sytem installed in my house. Now if you dn't already know a geothermal system is an excellent way to heat and cool your home because it uses a completely renewable source of energy to heat and cool your home and that source is the earth itself. If you'd like to know more about how geothermal systems actually work you can google geothermal heat pump you'll get quite a few articles explaining it. However, you'll not find one bit of information about the actual process of installation and you definitly won't find a thing about having one of these systems installed a 160 year old 1000 square foot with no basement.
Now I called a few places to have this done and here is how it went. First I called Sinton Air. They quoted me about 30000 for the job without even seeing it. I have unique circumstances so that number would probably have gone up if I had actually gone with them. Then I called Ground Loop. The dude that answered the phone gave me attitude about me not having a basement and how do I expect him to install it. I don't knwo what he quoted me. It could've be free and I still wouldn't have that ass come to my house. I found another place in the lehigh valley area. I don't remember the name, I obviosuly didnt go with them. I wasn't sure if they would work inm y location. However, the owener was very informative and gave me a price of around 10,000 installation. The one did I did finally go with was Chelsea Heating and Air located in Avondale,PA. They made an appointment to come to my house and measured everything and then sat down and discussed the whole process with me. It was a lovely husband/wife couple that came over. They were very nice and they had the best pricing. There was no doubt I would go with them. They quoted me 8600 dollars for the installation and 4000 for the well drilling which the get K.L. Madron to do. Also a very nice guy. SO the total was about 13000 dollars for the whole thing.
Here how the proces went: The well drilling and ductwork/unit installation were independent of each other until the lines from the well outside had to be hooked up to the unit inside. AS I had mentioned before my hosue has no basement and is only about 1000 square feet. I had a section of it redone and thank god for this or I would never be able to install it. The unit itself went into the utilty room It is a Climatemaster 2.5 ton unit. It is about the size of a refrigerator and sounds like one when it is actually heating or cooling. It is completely silent when only the fan is running. The new part of my house has a very high ceiling which is slanted followingthe shape of the roof. The ductwork was hung on the ceiling in the triangular area of this uppermost slant. This all worked out very well because that part the ceiling spanned hte length fo my house. The ductowrk was hung right across and basically holes were punhed to put vents in all rooms upstairs and down. There was lot of wall cutting to do and Chelsea Heating and Air actually cleaned up after themselves each day. I was very impressed.
Now inside my house stayed prett yclean during the installation but the outside was a complete mess due to the well drilling. The truck to drill teh well was bigger thanI had ever imagined. I couldn't believe they got it through my gates. They had to leave it there until they were finished and there were a few days that I got hoem and actually had to keep driving and go to he store until they left because there was nowhere to put my car. I live in a very wet area and I'm not sure if the drilling uses water or if this water came out of the ground naturally but my entire front yard was a muddy lake. I could hardly walk through it. It took months for it to clear up it actually prompted me to get my driveway paved as it wasn't before this. I'm not really complaining about this. There was no way of avoiding it but just know that it is a very messy process.
Anyway everything was finally installed and running and it's one of the best purchases I'ver ever made. I do live in a small house but with either the heat or the air-conditioner on, my electirc bill has not exceed 110 dollars a month and my house is entirely electric. It's actually higher in the winter because I can't shut the heat off in the winter. Although I can shut the A/C off on cool days in summer. Also this unit creates hot water. My Hot water heater is set to the lowest setting and hte water still coems out piping hot after installing the geothermal. It's also godo to knwo that I am not using an fossil fuels to heat/cool my home. Yes perhaps at a power plant they are burning coal to create the electricity I use. Atleast, I am not using any foreign oil!

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