I know around here it's hard to find a contractor that will finish an install they didn't do. Best chance is to find a tech that will do it on the side. There are a lot of obstacles to installing a furnace yourself here, permitting and so forth. License requirements, etc. I guess it's to keep people from blowing up or burning down their house. I did the furnace in my first house. Had to install all the ducting too but saved a bundle.
Geothermal Heating and Cooling
- Thread starter Krich
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Help Support House Repair Talk:
Where I'm at.... no permits are needed at all.
I'm just talking about setting all the parts in place and having a tech come in to wire it and fire it. and that is just because they are supposed to know more about it than I do.
I could probably find some people that do this for a living on utuber and get all their expertise that way and do it all myself. If they all demand to do the entire job at a high markup, then this is what I'll end up doing.
I spent a lot of years as an auto repair tech so I'm mechanically inclined enough to be able to learn. This isn't rocket science... if others can learn how to do it, then I can to if it comes to that.
I'd prefer having an experienced tech do the final setup just to save time since I'd like to actually move in to the house someday
I'm just talking about setting all the parts in place and having a tech come in to wire it and fire it. and that is just because they are supposed to know more about it than I do.
I could probably find some people that do this for a living on utuber and get all their expertise that way and do it all myself. If they all demand to do the entire job at a high markup, then this is what I'll end up doing.
I spent a lot of years as an auto repair tech so I'm mechanically inclined enough to be able to learn. This isn't rocket science... if others can learn how to do it, then I can to if it comes to that.
I'd prefer having an experienced tech do the final setup just to save time since I'd like to actually move in to the house someday
A guy I worked with built his home into the geothermal mass. His property was a south facing slope and he poured a concrete house into the bank so it was covered on 3 sides with earth and had a glass south facing front that took advantage of the low winter sun angle and heating thermal mass between the windows and the living area. The whole place was super insulated to boot. If he had 5-6 people over in the coldest part of the winter their body heat made the place too warm after a while. He was 100% electric and had low heating bills.
As a kid my dad built our family home and for the first 10 years we had a basement house as he saved up to build the upper floors. We had a small gas furnace down there and the whole place was warm as toast. It would seem odd doing that today even if code would allow it, but back then half the houses on the block were doing the same thing. something to be said for no house payments and no interest payments.
As a kid my dad built our family home and for the first 10 years we had a basement house as he saved up to build the upper floors. We had a small gas furnace down there and the whole place was warm as toast. It would seem odd doing that today even if code would allow it, but back then half the houses on the block were doing the same thing. something to be said for no house payments and no interest payments.
My daughter had a friend in high school that had an underground house, open on the south side. They had a pool inside that I believe provided most of the heat. Was kind of cool but always seemed a little musty smelling to me. I think the could have maybe done better on moisture control. Another thing I've seen done here is more like what your dad did. Buy property and put up a barn. Then park a big camper inside to live in while you build or renovate. Same basic concept. The county will usually allow that for a year, if they know about it.
I would never want a pool or even a hot tub inside the house just doesn’t seem like a good idea.
As to a building inside a building I had an old friend that had a salvage business and he built a 60x100 steel building that had a lot of doors on it for his equipment. He had a door on each long end in the back and once he got it up in the middle of the night he rolled in a 70’ long mobile home and moved in. He did good there both him and his wife for about 10 years and often talked about how easy it was to heat. Eventually the township caught up with him. Mostly because of other things and as a lever told him he wasn’t zoned to live there. He told him he didn’t live there it was his office and his wife was there as she did the books. They then asked him where they live and he gave them his son’s address saying he pays him rent for part of his home they live in. It went on and on for a couple years and they finally got him to move out. I thought it was a great idea from his standpoint of living cheap. It was like he had a covered front yard and year round we would sit in lawn chairs and have a cookout in front of his house when it was snowing like crazy outside. He even had a gas fire pit to take the chill off.
Eddie_T
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In southern GA and FL heat pump systems were being installed that used water from a shallow well then expelled the water along the roof ridgeline in summer. It also had a loop in the water heater. My concern was that minerals the water would discolor the roof.
Open systems like that can deplete ground water. Florida has had a number of sink holes from pulling too much ground water out. The closed system allows you to use demineralized water and/or antifreeze if required. Was the thought of running it on the roof to cool the roof and reduce the AC load? Evaporative cooling is tough in a swamp.
An engineer friend at work had a property with a small stream flowing thru it that flowed year round. He calculated out a water to water heat pump system based on diverting part of the flow and then returning it to the stream. All he intended to do was take a very small amount of heat out of the water. Small amount of a large volume as he put it.
I respected his abilities enough I was sure it would have worked. He was close to retirement when he planned on trying it and after retiring he had poor health and never put it into practice.
At my old house I had two wells both high capacity and shallow depth. One was the original well that wasn’t used. The water was always very cold even during the warmest summers and I often fantasized about almost a siphon system of moving water from one to the other with just a small high volume pump and running it thru an air to water heat exchanger making myself a low energy AC unit. Also never built. It always appealed to me to use the water and put it right back in the aquifer it came from just a couple hundred feet apart.
I did one hot day after going to the basement and noticing it was about 10 degrees cooler down there. I removed the filter and the door on the filter area and turned the furnace blower on to manual pumping the cold basement air to the first floor and the first floor warm air returned to the basement by the stairway. Took about an hour and the house cooled right down. I was pretty proud of my accomplishment when she came home from work and stated why does the house smell like the basement. That was that.
I respected his abilities enough I was sure it would have worked. He was close to retirement when he planned on trying it and after retiring he had poor health and never put it into practice.
At my old house I had two wells both high capacity and shallow depth. One was the original well that wasn’t used. The water was always very cold even during the warmest summers and I often fantasized about almost a siphon system of moving water from one to the other with just a small high volume pump and running it thru an air to water heat exchanger making myself a low energy AC unit. Also never built. It always appealed to me to use the water and put it right back in the aquifer it came from just a couple hundred feet apart.
I did one hot day after going to the basement and noticing it was about 10 degrees cooler down there. I removed the filter and the door on the filter area and turned the furnace blower on to manual pumping the cold basement air to the first floor and the first floor warm air returned to the basement by the stairway. Took about an hour and the house cooled right down. I was pretty proud of my accomplishment when she came home from work and stated why does the house smell like the basement. That was that.
I may have mentioned this before, but we have many new members.
As a kid as mentioned above we lived in the basement until I was about 7 and then my dad had built the upper house and he was all into Frank Lloyd Wright and that modern style and also an avid reader of Popular Science. He built the house with a flat roof and around the edge he ripped 4x4 corner to corner making a triangle and put them around the edge to make a sloped sided 4” deep pond up there. He had a pro company come and do a built up hot tar roof system that would hold water. I remember when I was around 17 he had them back out to do another coating of the hot tar. I never remember any leaks and he had a way to drain it in the winter and I always assumed the sloped sides had something to do with any water that was up there freezing wouldn’t blow the sides out.
That evaporation kept the house nice all summer and he would keep an eye on the water if rain wasn’t keeping it full he would add water. That system lasted my dads full life and later on my mother got tired of being the only flat roof in town and hired a peaked roof put on.
Eddie_T
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Yes it was to cool the roof and lower AC load. The hot water evaporated so fast in the sun that the eaves didn't drip. I haven't been back to that area so i don't know what the long term effects are. The open system concept bothered me and it may not be legal now. In college we studied the concept as a closed system either using pond water or returning the water to the well. I know returning the water to the well would be illegal nowadays but one could do it after the inspector left.
Speaking of inspectors a friend of mine (a retired master builder) was required by the inspector to support a small cantilevered balcony. He said the support column was removed prolly before the inspector got to the foot of the hill.
I don't know if he did it but a neighbor built a small house with a loft. The inspector wouldn't approve it with a ladder to the loft and stairs ate into his floor space. I suggested that he remove the stairs after he got his certificate of occupancy.
edit: In retrospect maybe I should have also suggested a fireman's pole beside the ladder so the kids wouldn't be late for breakfast.
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Did you do that in Erie? Or did you grow up elsewhere. Evaporative cooling is big in the desert SW, but in hot and humid NC not so much.
We were just outside Erie. I would not call this area a dry area but we also don't require the cooling as our temps are not as high. Now just about every new home has central air here. Almost no homes in the 70s had central air but having a window unit was common. Right now we have 2 window units a large one in living room that takes care of the whole ground floor and a small one just in our bedroom. I also have a small window unit someone gave me that's in my little workshop room in the garage.
I grew up in Camp Hill outside of Harrisburg. My dad added central air to our house in the early 70s. We didn't have the benefit of a big lake cooling us down in summer. But then again, we didn't get lake effect snow storms in the winter either.
