We’re entering another one of those “sit back an wait for materials and/or while professionals do the work on our house” phases of construction.
With the roof on (and the thrill of that project being done cannot be overstated) and the interior demo complete, we’re ready to move on to more exciting projects like siding! and getting running water!
We’ve decided to fork over some additional dough up-front for geothermal heat. MysteryMan is a certified something-or-other-pertaining-to-geothermal (and has a bumper-sticker they sent him in the mail to prove it. no shit.) so as with many other things, our house is the test project. Sometime in the coming weeks we’ll be digging 3 – 3ooft wells into the property. Not by hand. Obviously. I mean, I’m wicked with a posthole digger when I’ve got Flogging Molly on the iPod, but even I have limits. About four feet deep.
Anyway, we’ve got pros lined up for the geo and the plumbing. And I’ve got approximately 4 weeks until the siding, trim, and various posts for our porch show up.
Which means it’s time to finish what we started back in December – when we gave up 60 hours of our lives to completing the prerequisite courses for obtaining our contractors licenses. A few weeks ago we were both given the go-ahead to take the licensure exam.
Now we have three weeks to remember everything we forgot since the classes ended in April.
Like how not to die when building a house, and how much we really don’t know about anything. Awesome.
MysteryMan actually spent a lot of those 60 hours kicking me under the desk because I have a low attention span when it comes to people talking at me for 4 hours in a row. I also happen to be a champion test-taker though, so we’ll see who’s kicking who under the desk when the No. 2’s are out.
5 Responses
OMG yay!! You’re going to love it! I can’t say enough about our geothermal system and it’s exceeded us on our cost savings expectations. You guys are in an even better location because you’re south of us (more equal heating and cooling season) though it’s slipping my mind on what state you’re in…
What brand heat pump are you guys going with? Are you getting a desuperheater (pre-heats your hot water heater)? How deep are you bores going to be? I’m a bit surprised you need 3 but they also might be shorter.
Anyway good luck on your big tests. I’m sure if MM can pass the PE can pass this.
Fingers and toes any anything else that crosses=crossed.
good luck!
Robin – We need a 3 ton system – MysteryMan seemed to think it was going to be three 200 ft wells? That would give us over 3 ton.
We were looking at WaterFurnace heat pumps, but the guy who is putting in the rest of our HVAC on the cheap isn’t certified to buy them.
The desuperheater sounds familiar – MM tried explaining to me something about “uses this hot water first” and then my eyes glassed over and I was like — you’re the engineer, please just take care of this! LOL. If I have a question before this is through, I know who I’m askin!
Good luck!
That should be way more than 3 tons! We have 3 200′ wells for our 4 ton system. The general rule of thumb (at least around here) is 150 ft = 1 ton. But depending on your soil type and water levels it will very. Plus it looks like you are 2degF cooler in ground temperature than us:
http://threeacres.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/going-geothermal-part-3-calculating-residential-heating-and-cooling-loads/
But that shouldn’t change that 150 # much. You could try contacting a local IGSHPA designer and ask what # you should use:
http://www.igshpa.okstate.edu/directory/directory.asp
I work with one of the few designers in our state and he gets calls like that all the time.
My parents are going to be installing an Envision WaterFurnace HP soon and we’ve loved our Climate Master. Both are good brands.
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