Geo Thermal Field

The Geo Thermal Field looks more like a mine field to me! What a cool process to watch unfold. Basically to heat our home I need about 1200 lineal feet of tubing to go under the ground to pull out the earths natural heat. We fed the tubing from inside the home under the footing and into piping that would pull heat from the earth.

We have around 2 1/2 acres of property to work with so you would think that creating 2 300' trenches would be easy. As you can see by the pictures, we had to snake around several trees and ultimately had to work really hard to achieve our total distance of 1200'.

The trenches we dug are around 3' wide, 5-6' deep, and at minimum 10' apart. We would have to dig the entire first trench out to the 300' mark, layout out the tubing and then start doubling back after filling in the hole with around 18' of soil on top of the original tubing. Each leg being 300' gives us 600' after doubling up the tubing at 18" higher.

It is hard for me to believe that this tubing will carry water out into the earth from the home, travel through the 1200' of the earth, pick up around 10 degrees of heat travel back into the house and then the furnace inside the home will be able to harness that energy to heat our home. You just gotta love it!

We just got done trimming so the painters are inside our home. I sure am looking forward to a painted home.

Geothermal System

We know have installed the furnace in the basement. There two parts to this furnace. First we will be using our geothermal field (which will be installed next week) to heat the water that will radiate into the house. Our primary source of heat will be derived from this method. My homeowners would like to heat the home with the radiant heat that is flowing below the mainfloor and in the concrete.

We have 3 zones for our 2500 sqft. home. One in the basement which is an approx. additional 1300 sqft. and two on the main floor.

Secondly, the furnace will have a blower function. If for some reason, the geothermal field cannot keep up with the heat production requirement, the forced air will kick on and help us heat the home. We will still be using the geothermal, it will just be supplemented by the forced air. The holding tank that sits next to the Synergy Water Furnace is holding hot water for us and will release hot water into the system when we need to increase the heat in the home.

Floor Tubing

The next phase for our Geo-thermal radiant floor heating system is to install the tubing below/in the concrete. It is winter here in Kalamazoo so we had to spend a couple of days thawing out the ground below the concrete. After the ground had the frost removed, we installed a foam/vapor barrier seal. This foam acts as an insulation between the ground and the home as well as the vapor barrier we need for our radon that is required in this county. Above the foam (not sheet goods - roll goods) we installed wire mesh to attach our geothermal lines to. This keeps the water lines from rising up to the top of the concrete when we pour. It also keeps the water lines in the position that we placed them in when we set them.

We are also heating the upstairs with the geothermal radiant floor. Since we are not installing the tubes in a slurry on top of the OSB, we have to attach them under the subfloor and then put an insulation blanket under them. Individual areas all terminate at different points or manifolds. From there we can control the heating and cooling of specific sections of the home.